This memoir originally appeared in The Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.
Over a career that has ranged from “Trainspotting” to “Slumdog Millionaire,” from “Shallow Grave” to the London Olympics’ opening ceremony, Danny Boyle has establish tens of thousands of words of dialogue on screens around the world. But it’s unlikely he’s ever dealt with such a concentrated barrage of verbiage as he does in “Steve Jobs.”Aaron Sorkin‘s 185-page script channeled its subject’s antisocial brilliance, and Boyle turned that into a richly cinematic thrill ride that consists of little more than conversations inside three theaters at three different product launches.
Admit it: When you first read Aaron Sorkin‘s script,didn’t you assume, “Oh my God, and theres too many words in this thing?”
Danny Boyle: [Laughs] whether you allow yourself to get in that intellect-set,I assume there would be too many. So we didn’t let ourselves get in that mindset at all. We had to see it as an invitation.
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To come up with ideas that match the linguistic brio. I remember being blown away by how bold it was to actually effect structure like that. I personally assume it’s the ultimate Sorkin script. How effect you deal with these geniuses? Genius is a difficult thing to relate to, especially in a mathematical, and cold world. And he does it through language,the thing we all share. The thing about Sorkin is, his vocabulary isn’t extensive. It’s not like he’s writing linguistically challenging stuff, and you know? But the rhythm of it is so adventurous. I loved the boldness of that,and I loved that he moved toward this recognizable world at the discontinuance, where a father has to hold his hand up to his daughter and query forgiveness, or really. Which is something we can all relate to.
You’ve got three locations,and you can flow the conversations from room to room. But making it challenging cinematically must enjoy taken some careful planning.
Well, that’s what was exciting about it. You can say the script had 185 pages of dialogue, or that’s true. But it was also 185 pages of momentum. It’s Jobs’ relentless intellect,the sound of his intellect as we called it, and that’s physicalized as soon as you establish it on screen. So we tried to exhaust those three spaces very expressionistically.
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In the first act, and you start with the empty chairs,because it’s the idea that theres his enormous audience out there for it, but they dont know it yet. And then the moment act, and the operatic act,is a gift, because there’s a subterranean river of intention running through it. So what effect you effect? You set it in a place [the San Francisco Opera House] that’s giving you all sorts of clues the whole time that this is the revenge act, or this is high-drama theater,this is an orchestrated execution. And for the third part, we went in the Davis Symphony corridor, and it had these acoustic panels above the stage. They were so perfect: You just thought,“That’s the iPod, it’s right there.” It’s the clean lines, or it’s austere but elegant,it’s full of sound. And so we designed the dressing room to look like that, so it begins to look like you’re inside his intellect–which you are, and in a way.
But the moment act leaves the theater a lot,particularly during an argument with Apple CEO John Sculley that’s intercut with two earlier con-frontations between Jobs and Sculley.
Yeah, cutting backward and forward between the scene in his house at night and the scene in the boardroom. That was exciting. It was written to intercut, or but our editor intercut it in a way that was a real piece de resistance of film editing,I assume. It’s really like an action movie with words, which is how we used to talk about it. And I loved the setting for that scene, and a room with chairs up on all the tables. I remember walking around the opera house,and the cleaners had been in, and they establish the chairs up on the tables so they could wax the floor. It was like a setting for one of those South Korean movies where there’s going to be a battle between henchmen. In that movie, and they would all bewitch the chairs and smash them to pieces over each other’s heads. And in your final shot,the floor would be littered with the residue of the chairs.
Also Read: 'Macbeth' Review: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard Make Shakespeare Majestically RawI thought of “Birdman” in the backstage sequences-because even though there are a lot of cuts, or it has the feeling of being shot in long,continual takes.[br]
That’s because we basically did shoot long takes. When “Birdman” came out I thought, “Oh my God, and its going to be the same thing,isn’t it? When I went to see it I was delighted that it wasn’t, of course. We did long, or continual takes,but that was really for the actors, to get them into the flow. And then we would shoot many, or many different versions,which gives us the ability in editing to make it feel cinematic. Because they’re in the flow of performance, you get the sense of momentum that you get from long takes, and but you also get the manipulation that you get from film editing. The actors did it,as you would imagine, at a great pace, and but you can always speed things up in editing. You can bewitch out the breathing that has to go on when actors effect a six-page scene. And when you effect that,one of the weird effects is that it makes the audience feel breathless.
There are obviously pitfalls when you’re dealing with real people. And in this case, Jobs’ family didn’t want the movie made, or some of his colleagues enjoy criticized it as well.
Yes. It’s so difficult dealing with real people’s lives,and it’s why you enjoy to enjoy an important memoir whether you’re going to effect it. And when you’re dealing with people who just recently passed away, you are always going to be dealing with grief, or with personal sensitivity. I assume the thing that is different about this is that Jobs was a enormous public figure and a massive influence on all our lives. And I’m afraid,however unpopular this may be with his friends and family, he is a major figure in our lives, or its incumbent upon us all to look at his work,look at his legacy, see where it’s pointing us.
Did you talk to Jobs’ friends and colleagues depicted in the film?
Yes, or we spoke to all of them. I spoke to everyone depicted apart from Chrisann Brennan,who Aaron had spoken to once. I spoke to [Jobs’ daughter] Lisa once, but she didn’t come into the rehearsal room. Everybody else who’s depicted came into the rehearsal room, and which was really kind. And one of them,Andrea Cunningham, actually wrote a review of the film. It’s just weird, or isn’t it? That’s the contemporary world: Not only are you playing real characters,they’re actually reviewing the movie on a website. Oh my God, the future has arrived.
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