In a
recent interview to Collider Jobs’ director Joshua Michael Stern talked a
little bit about financing the movie, Ashton Kutcher’s dramatic and dangerous
weight loss, what time periods to cover and much, much more.
“Collider:
With Steve Jobs being who he is, how tough was it to get the financing together
to get this film made? Or was it easy because of the subject matter?
JOSHUA
MICHAEL STERN: Actually the financing came to me because it was financed by a
guy in Texas who’d never made a film before, an entrepreneur who owns a
magazine named Mark. He just basically called me in and said, “Look, I want to
make this film. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s out of the box. I’ve never made
a film before, but I really want to do this.” So the fact that the first movie
about Steve Jobs was made by a guy who was completely entrepreneurial and
outside the film industry, I think is very appropriate.
So
you had essentially one financier?
STERN:
We do, but as with all films in the end it ends up getting diced up a little
bit. But the seed money is one guy for the most part. He had partners so I
can’t say it was just one, but generally it is and it was his vision to make
this film. He called me and I basically became his creative partner in the
sense that I was able to put it together for him, but he was really the backing
of it. I got Ashton on through the agency and we then just took off and made
the film in very quick order.
…
When
you’re telling a life story and you’re basically doing it in two hours, you
have to figure out what you’re going to omit, you’ve got to figure out what’s
more important. Was there ever a discussion about trying to do something
covering his entire life or limiting it to just Apple? Can you talk about how
you decided what years of his life to cover?
STERN:
I think that it was pretty clear to me that we needed to cover everything from
his early 20′s up until the iMac came out. Right before when the iMac came out
is when most people associate Apple started. That’s when people remember Apple
– that first iMac or that first laptop that was a clam shell. To me everything
before that was what was interesting. The fact that he got fired from his
company then comes back sort of resurrected and then he takes over everything
because he realized that he had to control everything if he was ever going to
realize his vision was important.
I
think that that was what most important and we had to sort of fluff away from what
I did not want to focus on, like a lot of his personal relationships like with
his wife, stuff where we’d have to be venturing into total conjecture, it’s
just what did we know? To me this is a movie about a man who had an idea for a
company and at some point becomes one with the company. People have asked me,
“Is it about Apple or is it about Jobs?” and I say it’s about how a man becomes
his company and the company becomes the man. That has only happened a few
times, like it happened with Ford, I think, they became inextricably linked
together.
Some
of the details that were left out might have been interesting to certain people
in the population because everybody has something different invested in this
man and in his product. So when he went to Xerox for example, where he got a
lot of the user interface from, we didn’t include, and a lot of personal stuff
like finding his biological sister, those were the things we left out. You have
to pick and choose and sort of streamline it. It was about the man and his
product and not about the bigger picture of what was going on in the world,
like we didn’t focus on Bill Gates and what was going on there. We did in as
much as it affected him in the world of Apple, but we didn’t step outside of it
too much.
…
From
when you first got involved in the movie to its end result, how much got
changed along the way in terms of developing the story and the script and the
project.
STERN:
I think that the last shot that’s seen in the movie, where’s he’s doing his
take of the commercial, was something that was added on during filming of it.
Because it struck us that this is a movie about now, in the sense that there’s
nothing super-objective. And it was very obvious where corporations are doing
more with less people, the recession has sort of adjusted the market and the
world. We’re no longer in the post-industrial society where you go in for a
pensioned job and stay in a factory or the corporations for 40 years. People
are out there looking for jobs and realizing that they have to look within to
do and create what the new and next thing will be. They can’t rely anymore on
what was usually given to them, which were these jobs that were waiting for
them. They have to find what it is that they have to contribute to the world,
what is the new idea that’s going to push them forward and better the world.
To
me that’s what Jobs was about. He said at the end of the movie, “When you
realize that the world was created by people no smarter than you, your life
will change.” That, to me, is a message for right now and people figuring out
what they’re going to do with themselves.
I
heard that before filming began Ashton was on that fruitarian diet and might’ve
gotten sick and might’ve ended up in the hospital. When you heard all this,
assuming that it’s true, what was your first reaction?
STERN:
First of all, I heard it three days before shooting when I was on an elevator.
I didn’t tell the producers, by the way, I don’t know if I’ve ever told anybody
that. I heard it from somebody’s assistant and then I spoke to him and I was
extremely worried. I was nervous, a) about the shooting of it, but, b) just
about him. He’d gone on a fruitarian diet and lost almost 18 or 19 pounds. When
you see him at the beginning of the film [he is thinner], but then he started
gaining weight because we shot chronologically, so by the end of the film his
face is pretty round.
He
followed the exact diet that Steve followed but I guess that diet relied a lot
on grape sugars and just fruit and his insulin levels went nuts is what
eventually happened and he landed in the hospital because something was really
just off with his insulin. But that was a scary moment. It was nerve-wracking
and I kept it from the production because I said, “I’m not going to tell
anybody unless this is really, really an issue the day of.”
…
One
of things people said about Jobs is that he could be an asshole and you’re sort
of showing that in the movie. Talk a little bit about the importance of showing
that he was a flawed individual.
STERN:
He was a very flawed individual, which is what interested me about his story. I
was interested that he was a guy who was frustrated and wasn’t a guy who gave
these beautifully eloquent key note speeches, which is what most people
remember from him, introducing the next Mac product. The thing that surprised
me most when I interview people who were in his team originally, was not how
eloquent he was. I mean some guy said he had a very difficult time explaining
things, which was sort of interesting because you could see why. Because he was
wanted things that didn’t exist and people didn’t have a point of reference for
what he was asking for and he was talking to M.I.T. engineers. He was like a
guy who didn’t know how to write music, but he knew exactly how the concerto
should sound. He would sort of interpret their inability or their push-back on
his ideas as not joining him and that kind of drove him crazy. It’s like the
guy who has the cure for cancer, yet doesn’t have the words, or the technology
doesn’t exist. He’s telling people, “If you could see it, this would work” and
people kind of thinking, “Yeah, maybe.
So
that interested me because that’s most of us, we all feel misunderstood and we
all feel judged by somebody and we all have to overcome that to be successful
and that’s what he did.
What’s
coming up for you next?
STERN:
I’m not sure yet. I’m working on a few different films and I’m just searching
for the right new story to tell. As a director, you just have to kind of like
just get through the first project before starting on the next one. You know,
this is just a little indie movie about a guy, even though he’s an iconic guy,
and so I really care for it and want it to do well out there.”
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