Although it officially premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the completed cut of Danny Boyle‘s immensely entertaining Steve Jobs screened at New York Film Festival this weekend. Gathering after the press screening, the director, Aaron Sorkin, Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Michael Stuhlbarg, and author Walter Isaacson gathered to discuss the making of the project and today we have the full talk.
We said in our review, “About halfway into the movie’s second act, itself around Steve Jobs’ halfway point, the convoluted, sometimes outright hackneyed pieces start forming a larger picture, one that, in structure, formal tempo, and Daniel Pemberton‘s Glass-aping score, is not at all unlike Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Bit by bit, there’s an accumulation of signifiers that what’s being staged is less a by-the-book recounting of significant events than it is a full-blown trip through — and, by extension of the medium through which we’re experiencing it, projection of — one man’s troubled subconscious.”
“We were always very insistent with everyone from the beginning that it wasn’t about being a lookalike and it wasn’t about physical mannerisms. They weren’t the driving force behind it. It’s Shakespearean, really,” Boyle said during the talk.” Fassbender agrees, saying when he first met the director he said, “Christian Bale looks a lot more like Steve Jobs to me,” referencing one of the many actors previously up for the role. Keen to have some fun during the press conference, he also joked, “I studied Ashton Kutcher” when asked about his preparation for the role. Check out the full talk below as well as a batch of B-roll footage.
Steve Jobs opens on October 9th in limited release and expands nationwide on October 23rd.