How is it possible that the creator of our beloved, indispensible iPhones was such a jerk?
Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) begins his new doc with Jobs’ 2011 death, which occasioned many teary candlelight vigils outside Apple stores worldwide. Those outside the cult can only ask why. I don’t care who invented the toaster or steel-belted radial tires so long as they work (something not always true of Macs, despite their reputation).
But the charismatic Jobs was different, for reasons that Gibney largely fails to reach. One main hindrance is that Jobs’ family and close associates wouldn’t cooperate. Perhaps they felt burned by Mike Daisey’s 2011 stage show, which turned out to be partly fabricated — and yet dramatically truthful. Or maybe they dread Danny Boyle’s coming October biopic, with Michael Fassbender donning the black mock-turtleneck and dad jeans.
Regardless, Gibney has produced a shallow career recap of Jobs — essentially a clip job that occupies the same inconclusive shelf as Walter Isaacson’s more admiring (and authorized) biography. This is not to say that Gibney ignores the manufacturing scandals at Foxconn or whitewashes the Apple co-founder’s bullying, tyrannical personality quirks. (“Ruthless, deceitful, and cruel,” he calls him.)
But the wrong people speak freely — journalists, whose opinions are cheap — while the inner circle remains mum. We’ve heard most of these tales before; most date from Jobs’ rise, before exile from Apple. Following his triumphant return, he became more censored and press-savvy. Jobs, like most corporate chieftains, tightly limited access to writers who’d craft favorable stories.
To his credit, Gibney is no such hack; but if he couldn’t get access to Jobs’ family and friends, I wish he’d expanded his view to the cultural place of Apple and its sleekly alluring products. What part of our psyche did Jobs tap into? Why does everyone want an iPhone (or something nearly like it)?
For all his hippie Zen talk and love of Bob Dylan, Jobs was a master of eliciting consumer desire. First music in your pocket, then all the world accessible from your phone — he and his intimate products flattered us; their connectivity and power made us feel smart and important. (Facebook amplifies the same egotism today.) He and his design team reached into our brain’s pleasure centers; dopamine became just another app.
Gibney offers no conclusion but the familiar paradox: great products, unpleasant person. (The contradiction will ring true in South Lake Union today, and it was no different in the age of Henry Ford.) The New York Times’ Joe Nocera tells Gibney that product excellence often “requires you to shed extraneous things” — friends, family and courtesy among them.
“Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine”
Rating: R
Showing: Sundance Cinemas Seattle, Northwest Film Forum
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