Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak says Hollywood has captured Steve Jobs’ best not in the splashy 2013 biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, "Jobs," but in a lower-profile 1999 made-for-TV film, "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
Gave Kutcher's 2013 ‘Jobs' Biopic A Chance
His verdict comes with the authority of a colleague who helped build Apple from a garage outfit into a personal-computing giant. On a May 2015 press call for National Geographic Channel's "American Genius" episode "Jobs vs. Gates," Wozniak gave the Kutcher film a measured review.
"I think that there were a lot of weaknesses about the ‘Jobs' movie, the one with Ashton Kutcher, a lot of weaknesses from the screenwriting and all, but I gave it a chance. I was hoping it would be a great movie," he said, according to a 2015 Business Insider article. He added that the film didn't probe deeply enough into Jobs' inner life.
Lamenting Hollywood’s Shallow Look At Jobs’ Impact
Wozniak said the shortcomings extended to the movie's treatment of Jobs' chief rival, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. "That one wasn't about Bill Gates, but it didn't get into how he worked inside and how he actually negotiated and worked on people and portrayed his ideas through," Wozniak explained.
"It kind of shortened everything. It sort of had the outside Steve Jobs, the frill, the façade and done very well, but I wanted more. I want to really know what is behind this thinking that goes a step further than other people."
Why Wozniak Preferred TNT’s 1999 ‘Pirates Of Silicon Valley’
He contrasted that with "Pirates of Silicon Valley," praising it as proof that dramatizations can get the story right. "I absolutely feel that it can be captured and has been captured in drama style," Wozniak said.
"One of the things is, yes, it not only captures inside of Steve Jobs. It's the events that occurred and what was their meaning in the development of computers, and ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley' was intriguing, interesting. I loved watching it."
The TNT film, starring Noah Wyle as Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Gates, earned five Emmy nominations in 1999.
Wozniak has often emphasized that Jobs partnered big-picture vision with relentless product standards, traits Wozniak says pushed Apple and him to think beyond the next circuit board. In 2015, he described Jobs as the futurist and Gates as the execution-first builder, a tension that defined the early PC era.
The debate over portrayals has extended to the box office, where Kutcher's "Jobs" stumbled on opening weekend, another data point in the long-running conversation about how to dramatize Silicon Valley's origins.
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