Latest / Best of: Features / 'The Social Reckoning' premieres in the Bay Area with exclusive Q&A
Transcript
- 0:05The Social reckoning premieres in the Bay Area with exclusive conda. This
- 0:13article is being read by an automated voice, generated by Everlet. The
- 0:18twenty ten drama The Social Network told the story of Facebook's origins,
- 0:22portraying Mark Zuckerberg's early years. The movie earned three Oscars and has
- 0:27gone down as one of the most critically acclaimed films of the
- 0:30decade. The Social Reckoning, coming to theaters on october ninth, takes viewers
- 0:34fifteen years into the future, but to hear writer director Aaron Sorkin
- 0:38tell it, the film stands on its own. This isn't a sequel
- 0:42to The Social Network Sorkin said in a canda with tech journalist
- 0:47Kara Swisher after the first public screening of the film Wednesday in
- 0:50Mountain View. It's another movie about Facebook by the writer who wrote
- 0:54The Social Network, and all the characters from Social Network showed up
- 0:58as characters in this. It would be as if Henry Hill of
- 1:02Goodfellas showed up as a character in Casino, okay, that said, Yeah,
- 1:06I think that I've lost that fight. Swisher and Sorkin spoke for
- 1:10about twenty five minutes in front of a crowd of journalists and
- 1:13tech industry insiders, several of whom chimed in from the audience regarding
- 1:17The
- 1:17film verisimilitude. That was another criticism that Sorkin was quick to deflect.
- 1:23It's a movie, and for me there's a big difference between what
- 1:26I do and journalism. It's the difference between a photograph and a
- 1:30painting. And what I do is a painting. It's an idea of
- 1:33something, he said. The film takes place in The years leading up
- 1:37to twenty twenty one. It follows Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff
- 1:41Horwitz, Jeremy Allen White, as he recruits Facebook Civic Integrity Team whistleblower
- 1:47Francis Haugen, Mikey Madison of Honora, as a source for a series
- 1:51of stories that became known as the Facebook Files. Jeremy Strong plays
- 1:56Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, taking the place of Jesse Eisenberg, who portrayed
- 2:00him in the social network. According to Sorkin Eisenberg chose not to
- 2:05revisit the role because he felt the film lionized Zuckerberg and no
- 2:09longer wanted to be associated with the character.
- 2:12Strong approached the role with the same method techniques that have defined
- 2:16his other work. I only over heard him speak with Mark's voice.
- 2:20He only ever spoke that way until I called cut on his
- 2:23very last shot, Sorkin said. Sorkin also mentioned that Strong would send
- 2:27him emails defending Zuckerberg, which Strong clarified on the last day of
- 2:31shooting was part of him acting in character. The january sixth insurrection
- 2:36serves as a major plot point, with Zuckerberg in a war room
- 2:39like environment laboring over the decision to censor President Trump. One person
- 2:43in the crowd noted that this actually took place over Zoom. Swisher
- 2:47referenced a prescient twenty nineteen NY Times opinion piece in which she
- 2:51outlined a post election scenario eerily similar to january sixth, going so
- 2:56far as to use the word insurrection. Sorkin then shared details about
- 3:01his own twenty nineteen op-ed, an open letter to Zuckerberg that called
- 3:05Facebook's lacks fact checking of political ads an assault on truth rather
- 3:09than a defense of free speech. Zuckerberg's defense of that policy to
- 3:13Congress plays a large role in The film. When Sorkert was asked
- 3:17what he might say to Zuckerberg, who he has never met, he
- 3:20repeated one of the more damning statistics in the film that sixty
- 3:24four percent of members of extremist Facebook groups were directed to them
- 3:27by Facebook's algorithm, and how simple it would be for Zuckerberg to
- 3:31fix. However, Sorkin opined that, as long as tech oligarchs can continue
- 3:36to donate to political campaigns, there'd be little accountability for this type
- 3:40of policy. The interview concluded with Swisher asking Sorkin about which Tech
- 3:46Titan he might want to write about next, to which he demurred,
- 3:49ready to move on to different territory. I would love to make
- 3:53a movie about a bank robbery, he said.