[NewsPoster]

While the new movie from Universal Pictures, Steve Jobs, has won nearly universal raves from critics and a key endorsement from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (who worked as a consultant on the film), it is always interesting to see what other key team members from the early days of Apple think of this latest effort to capture the quixotic nature of both the company's late co-founder. Andy Hertzfeld, the chief architect of the original Mac OS, has weighed in with a qualified endorsement of the film, calling it a "fine" movie that "deviates from reality everywhere" but serves to "expose the deeper truths" about Jobs.

Hertzfeld, who these days is better known as the curator of folklore.org and part of the team behind the failed Google+ social service, said in an interview with ReCode that he had not seen the final print of the film, but an unfinished version. "It was still a work in progress when they showed it to me in August," he said. "Again, I am in a poor position to judge it, since I am too close to it, and my experience with the underlying reality distracts me from appreciating it as a film."

Actor Michael Stuhbarg with Andy Hertzfeld

"That said, I think it's a fine movie, brilliantly written and performed and full of humor and feeling," Hertzfeld added. "It deviates from reality everywhere -- almost nothing in it is like it really happened -- but ultimately that doesn't matter that much. The purpose of the film is to entertain, inspire and move the audience, not to portray reality. It is cavalier about the facts, but aspires to explore and expose the deeper truths behind Steve's unusual personality and behavior, and it often but not always succeeds at that."

Having met with writer Aaron Sorkin before the movie began production for background research, Hertzfeld noted that Sorkin convinced him that the best approach was a more "impressionistic" one, to take artistic license in order to get at the larger lessons and "truths" that Wozniak also touched on in his endorsement. "[Sorkin] asked me how Steve would react to a specific situation, involving the speech demo failing," he recalled. "I pointed out that it didn't happen in reality, and we had a lengthy discussion about artistic license, about how okay it is to diverge from reality. Basically, he convinced me it was not a documentary, so veracity is secondary to artistic considerations, and 'it's a painting, not a photograph'."

Hertzfeld also met with actor Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Hertzfeld in the film. "I think Michael's performance was excellent, but I am probably the worst person in the world to judge it, since I hardly get to observe myself - it feels strange to me, kind of like the first time I heard my voice played back on a tape recorder," he said. "I couldn't help but cringe at times, especially when they apparently put him in a fat suit for the third act." The movie will be released widely in cinemas on October 9.

[Hillbilly Geek]

So... fake, but accurate, then. ;-)

[Charles Martin]

To be fair: the real-life events involved took many years -- time compression and character compression (by which I mean having characters say things the didn't actually say but convey the point they were making more efficiently) are always used in any film about real-life events that isn't cinema verite (as it happens). As Sorkin notes, artistic license is nearly always used in dramatic retellings to a greater or lesser degree, because movies are a dramatized art form working within a limited amount of time.