PopMatters: The Mad Man and the Comedy Writer

My latest article on PopMatters: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/131880-the-mad-man-and-the-comedy-writer-two-sides-of-the-american-dream/. I explore the connections between the modern-day hit Mad Men and the pop sitcom from the past The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Movie Review: The Social Network (Directed by David Fincher, 2010)

David Fincher's new biopic of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proves a sentiment regarding movies articulated by Roger Ebert: what's important isn't what a movie's about, but rather how it's about what it's about. I have no particular interest in computer programming or American business practices. I am only a casual user of Facebook. However, I was deeply engrossed in every last frame of this superlative film.

Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, of West Wing fame, manage to depict, with novelistic detail, what it means to be a 21st-century entrepreneur. If Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane, based loosely on the publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst, showed the simultaneous beauties and horrors of American ambition in the twentieth century, Fincher and Sorkin's Zuckerberg, based to one degree of accuracy or another on the actual man who runs Facebook, does the same for our times.

The Social Network revolves around two separate deposition hearings in which Zuckerberg is sued for various crimes and misdemeanors, including stealing the very idea of Facebook from a couple of his fellow ivy-leaguers and unfairly cutting his friend and former CFO out of the company's profits. While scenes of characters sitting around and talking have great potential for boredom, Sorkin gives us crackling, fast-paced dialogue reminiscent of the great screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s (think His Girl Friday). The depositions are used as a framing device, much like the journalists' interviews on their quest to find 'Rosebud' in Citizen Kane, which helps us follow the troubled journey by which Facebook came to be. We see Zuckerberg, played with incredible verve and sensitivity by indie favorite Jesse Eisenberg, during his days at Harvard. In one of the best opening scenes I have seen in a long time, all of the film's major themes are established. Zuckerberg chats with a current girlfriend, and we instantly understand our protagonist's arrogance, social awkwardness, and technical brilliance. Zuckerberg's broken heart leads him to not only say nasty things about his ex on his personal blog, but also create an application for Harvard students in which they rate the "hotness" of various girls on campus. The site has so many hits within a few hours that the entire Harvard computer network crashes. Zuckerberg is put on academic probation, but his career built on being an insistent outsider begins.

Along the way, we meet a set of twins, both played by the talented Armie Hammer, who first plant the Facebook idea in Zuckerberg's head. The fact that Zuckerberg agrees to work with the twins on the project and then steals it outright results in one of the framing depositions. Justin Timberlake--yes, that Justin Timberlake--plays the founder of Napster, a Mephastophiles-like figure who advises Zuckerberg on business practices to expand the burgeoning Facebook. Zuckerberg's friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) is arguably the only sane character in the film. He works with Zuckerberg on the Facebook in its initial stages but becomes wary of the young entrepreneur's arrogance and unchecked ambition.

The reason The Social Network soars above most standard Hollywood biopics is that Fincher brings creative visuals to the project, and Sorkin brings a complex and tightly constructed script. Fincher depicts the world of future billionaires that is Harvard in a style that alternates between naturalistic and delightfully stylized. Long tracking shots follow Zuckerberg as he darts about the New England campus with his backpack bouncing behind him. Later, he depicts Silicon Valley hedonism with the same careful attention to detail. We get a sense of the quick pace at which the phenomenon that is Facebook developed and spread. We are caught up in the whirlwind inside Zuckerberg's mind.

The Social Network will no doubt deservedly be recognized during awards season. It is rare that a film with such a popular appeal so starkly captures the mood and central concerns of our time. The most obvious antecedent for Fincher's Zuckerberg is Daniel Plainview from P.T. Anderson's There Will be Blood. If oil drove American entrepreneurs to both madness and genius in the early part of the twentieth century, the Internet is doing the same now. Zuckerberg, as depicted in Fincher's film, recklessly chases after the American dream, even while it descends into the American nightmare.