Do We Really Need Another Steve Jobs Movie?

Do We Really Need Another Steve Jobs Movie? 

Films about Steve Jobs often portray his technical genius, his love of design, and his intensity. But Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” which just premiered at South by Southwest, is the first to examine Steve Jobs’ values.

Gibney, who previously gave us “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and the recent Sundance hit “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” says, “I don’t think this is the whole picture of Steve Jobs, the man. There’s a lot to be told about Steve Jobs, and Apple, and his management style each step along the way – and Pixar – that I didn’t get to in this film. I was focussing on his core values, what he keeps talking about over and over again: the values of Apple.”

And here’s a spoiler: the values that Jobs spoke of so eloquently are not the values on display in the film. He was a man so beloved for the devices he gave us – along with his individualism, rebellion, and entrepreneurial spirit – that millions of strangers mourned his death. “I was truly curious,” says Gibney. “When Steve Jobs died, there was this tremendous outpouring of public grief. Of course people who knew him were sad, but why were so many people all over the world weeping for this businessman?”

Anecdote after anecdote in this documentary shows how ruthless and tortured Jobs might have been. I say “might” because the very thing that makes Steve Jobs so captivating – his complexity –  makes it hard for any one movie portrayal to fully capture the man. Leading up to this release, I analyzed the Steve Jobs filmography, wondering if we really need yet another look into his life.

Since as early as 1995, people have been making both documentaries and fictionalized films about Steve Jobs. In just the last five years, there have been seven movies about Jobs (if we include both “The Man in The Machine” and the upcoming biographical drama starring Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak). So are we really so hungry for that many Steve Jobs movies? Or is it just that we’re hungry for ONE movie that will finally get it right?

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, hired the young Steve Jobs back in 1974 and knew him for pretty much all of his working life. According to Bushnell, the problem with any film about Jobs is that “Steve was truly multifaceted, and I think it would be very hard to create the balance, because there were so many things you could focus on.”

The BBC’s “Billion Dollar Hippy” spent much of its focus trying to prove its title. In their CEO series “Titans,” CNBC focused on his perfectionist leadership. The 1999 film “Pirates of Silicon Valley” starring Noah Wyle “focused too much on the money,” says Bushnell. And the 2013 biopic starring Ashton Kutcher fell short as well. Hostile blowups make for good drama, but so much so that they skew the portrait. Says Bushnell: “I feel like there’s always a little bit more focus on some of the noir sides of Steve. For example I never saw anything other than energy, respect. and charm.”

“The Man in The Machine” does a serious job at showing the obsessive and manipulative sides of Steve. And it balances that by examining Jobs’ lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism. But even at 120 minutes, it’s hard to capture every facet. For that, we need a 656-page book, like Walter Isaacson’s 2013 biography. But as someone who lived through the insane control and vindictive behavior of Apple’s PR machine (I’m still banned from their events), I applaud the documentary’s look at the Gizmodo stolen phone flap, the misinformation about Steve’s health, and the legend of Steve’s plateless Mercedes parked anywhere it wanted in Silicon Valley.

And I also have a ton of respect for Jobs and Apple, and I look forward to the more positive spin purportedly coming out in the upcoming book, “Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader,” due out March 24. And I’m still holding out hope for the October release of yet another Steve Jobs movie, the one starring Fassbender and Rogen, based on Isaacson’s book, and boasting Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball) as writer and Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) as director.

And yes, I will go see yet another movie about this man and hopefully many other tech legends. Nolan Bushnell tells me the rights to his life story have been purchased by Leonardo DiCaprio, and that, too, is a story I’m hoping to see.