‘The Social Network’ Premiere: Justin Timberlake Talks at the Afterparty

The Wall Street Journal

 

The 48th New York Film Festival kicked off last night with the screening of “The Social Network,” the movie that chronicles the birth of Facebook and the machinations of its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Set to ominous music that infuses each scene with a sense of both gravitas and doom, the film has already gotten critics talking about Oscar nominations.

Before the screening, we caught up with Andrew Garfield, who plays Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, the businessman who initially bankrolled the operation and whose shares were later diluted. Garfield, who recently starred in “Never Let Me Go,” will take over the Spider-Man franchise from predecessor Tobey Maguire. He doesn’t expect to drink sixteen egg shakes a day to bulk up though. “I don’t think the idea is for me to be Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he said. “I’m skinny. Spider-Man’s skinny.” He wouldn’t tell us his first choice to play Mary Jane Watson, though Emma Stone’s name has been floated recently.

We also ran into Armie Hammer, who plays both Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, the identical twins who originally commissioned Zuckerberg to work on their website. After asking whether Lindsay Lohan inspired him in arguably the best film of her career, “The Parent Trap,” Hammer said that the movie was the source of all his research. “I watched ‘The Parent Trap’ 247 ½ times. I can say all the lines backward.”

After the screening, guests headed to the Harvard Club, fittingly, to celebrate, which made us wonder whether Harvard fundraisers besiege Zuckerberg for donations even though he dropped out. Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster founder and Facebook president Sean Parker in the film, rocked dark frames and gamely posed for pictures with fans. When we asked him about his foray into film, fashion, and restaurants he told us, “I’m jumping around so people don’t find out how moderate I am. I didn’t want people to find out I wasn’t the best singer, so I became an actor.”

For Facebook, Movie Damage Control

The Wall Street Journal

Executives Sought to Influence 'The Social Network,' Which Harshly Portrays CEO Zuckerberg, Offered Another Version

Facebook Inc. executives have sought to discredit a new film's unflattering portrayal of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, even as they worked behind the scenes to influence the movie.

Those efforts range from attempting to massage the script, according to one of the film's producers, to promoting an alternative corporate history.

The movie, "The Social Network," depicts Mr. Zuckerberg as a socially awkward egomaniac who may have stolen the idea for his company from fellow students while he was an undergraduate at Harvard University.

The film—which premieres Friday night and will be widely released Oct. 1 by Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures—takes as its narrative framework two lawsuits over the company's origins. Facebook later settled the cases.

On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg will announce on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that he is donating $100 million to the public schools in Newark, N.J.— his first major act of philanthropy.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Facebook didn't time Mr. Zuckerberg's gift for the film's premiere.

Mr. Zuckerberg, through a company spokesman, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Facebook's efforts to combat the film stretch back to the 2009 publication of Ben Mezrich's book, "The Accidental Billionaires," upon which the film is based. "Ben Mezrich clearly aspires to be the Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele of Silicon Valley," Facebook's top communication and strategy executive, Elliot Schrage, told several news outlets in a statement last summer.

Mr. Mezrich defended his book Thursday, saying, "They haven't pointed out anything that isn't true."

The movie's producers made the film without attempting to secure rights to Mr. Zuckerberg's life story, because they felt they had enough research to back up the film without his cooperation.

The company didn't formally cooperate, either, but at least one executive engaged in detailed negotiations with the filmmakers over the script, an attempt to mitigate the damage the film could do.

Scott Rudin, one of the film's producers, said Facebook's Mr. Schrage read the film's script and gave guidance, some of which was incorporated into the final product. The company provided biographical background on Mr. Zuckerberg, helped the filmmakers portray the computer-programming and hacking processes and referred the filmmakers to speeches Mr. Zuckerberg gave that were online.

A Facebook spokeswoman said Thursday, "We found working with Scott Rudin and his colleagues to be a terrific learning experience. They do a wonderful job of telling a good story."

Mr. Rudin said a Facebook executive expressed worry the movie could hurt an initial public offering the company is considering. Even though any stock offering is likely at least a year away, the executive worried that skepticism over the company's origins could lower its valuation, currently north of $20 billion.

"They were trying to figure out a way not to tie Mark's personal identity to the identity of the company," Mr. Rudin recalled. "Because they were and are talking about an inevitable IPO and clearly want the company to be bigger than Mark Zuckerberg."

Over the summer, Mr. Schrage and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg saw the movie and told Mr. Rudin they weren't happy about the way it portrayed their boss. Ms. Sandberg thought the depiction of Mr. Zuckerberg was not "sympathetic," said Mr. Rudin.

Other companies, including General Motors Corp. and McDonald's Corp., have had to address bad publicity generated by films such as "Roger & Me" and "Super Size Me." But popular movies don't always have impact on the operations of the companies they portray.

In recent months, Facebook has been supporting a book that offers a more flattering view of the company's origins. The company gave veteran technology journalist David Kirkpatrick extensive access to Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives for "The Facebook Effect." The author gave a talk about the book on Facebook's campus on June 24. The company has referred journalists to Mr. Kirkpatrick as an expert on Facebook's founding.

"Don't treat the movie as the history of Facebook," said Mr. Kirkpatrick, who has read the film's script but has yet to watch the film.

Mr. Zuckerberg himself has recently given interviews in which he said little about the film, but highlighted Facebook's social impact as it reached 500 million users world-wide. In a July interview with ABC News, Mr. Zuckerberg described the movie about his company as "fiction," adding: "the real story is actually probably pretty boring."

Mr. Zuckerberg has said in interviews that he had no plan to see the film.

The film ends with a disclaimer that says some events were created. The filmmakers say that's a boilerplate message, and aren't ceding any ground.

"Facebook keeps saying the movie is fiction, but they never say what is fiction," said Mr. Rudin.

It's been a week of headaches for Facebook. On Wednesday, some people couldn't connect to the site because of a problem with a third-party network provider. Facebook fixed the problem, but on Thursday it had another temporary outage.

Director Says He Put Justin Timberlake 'Through Hell' for Role in Facebook Movie

Yahoo News

Justin Timberlake has been a professional performer for 17 years, and he's not yet 30 years old. He started at age 12 when he joined "The New Mickey Mouse Club." He was in the one of the biggest boy bands of the '90s, and became a multiplatinum solo artist in the 2000s. So it's probably been a while since someone made JT jump through hoops just to land a job.

But that's exactly what director David Fincher did before he cast Timberlake for a major role in "The Social Network." The movie is about the early days of Facebook and how the site went from a project in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room to a global sensation. Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and first president of Facebook. But despite his fame -- or maybe because of it -- Fincher made the pop star work to land the part.

In an interview with HitFix.com, Fincher (who also directed "Seven," "Fight Club" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") admitted he was initially skeptical about casting Timberlake. He said, "Justin Timberlake was one of those 'do we dare?' kind of conversations -- he could easily have upset the apple cart in any number of ways." So rather than simply handing Timberlake the role -- standard practice for a star of his magnitude -- Fincher made him work for it. The director said, "[We] put him through Hell shooting screentest after screentest to make sure we could walk the razor's edge of 'extremely famous person as spoke of an ensemble.'"

Timberlake's track record in movies has been spotty at best. His first feature, 2005's "Edison," went straight to video. But he did receive critical praise for his dramatic turns in 2006's "Alpha Dog" and "Black Snake Moan." His biggest role in a major studio film -- besides providing a voice in "Shrek the Third" -- was in the disastrous Mike Myers comedy "The Love Guru." "The Social Network" will be his highest profile dramatic role to date, with Oscar buzz starting for the film long before anyone had actually seen it.

It is also understandable that there would be some hesitation to put such a familiar face in a movie where the cast is made up of mostly unknowns. For the lead role of Mark Zuckerberg, Fincher chose Jesse Eisenberg, who had a surprise hit last year with "Zombieland." Most of the rest of the young cast have been in relatively few films before this, but some are already on their way to becoming household names. Andrew Garfield, who plays Zuckerberg's former partner Eduardo Saverin, has since been named as the new Spider-Man in the 2012 reboot of that series. And costar Rooney Mara will soon reunite with Fincher to play the title character in the English-language adaptation of the bestselling novel "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

In the HitFix interview, Fincher also explained why Mara was the right choice for the highly sought-after role of Lisbeth Salander. He said that Mara is "smart and capable and works really hard." He also said that she has the right look to play the unconventional character. "She is ridiculously photogenic in a very interesting way -- she can be plain, or she can be exquisite in a matter of moments."

You'll get to see if Fincher's gamble with casting Timberlake paid off when "The Social Network" opens on October 1. His version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" starts filming soon and is scheduled to be released on December 21, 2011.