Facebook: The Movie

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NEW FACEBOOK MOVIE

Dear Hollywood,

So we heard that you’ve decided to make a movie about Facebook. Specifically, about how the social networking site grew from a little project hatched by a vindictive, fame-whoring computer genius into a global phenomenon with over 300 million active users.

(Special note to Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06-’07: Relax, Zuckerberg! We don’t actually think you’re the asshole that the script makes you out to be. Please don’t hack into our computer systems and/or steal our business venture ideas.)

Now, we at FlyBy are going to assume that you think this movie—which you’ve blandly titled The Social Network—is going to be a big hit. After all, you got Aaron Sorkin to write it. Insiders are apparently raving about it. You’re talking to Justin Timberlake about playing Napster founder Sean Parker.  But we at FlyBy just got a hold of the script, and frankly…well, we’ll tell you what we thought after the jump.

First, we understand that you’re in the moviemaking, not fact-checking, business, so we’ll let our quibbles about realism slide. But here’s one scene—a conversation between Mark and the undergrads who accused him of stealing the idea of Facebook from them—that made us wince:

Mark: Yeah. How’s this different from MySpace or Friendster?

Tyler: How?

Mark: Yeah.

Tyler: Harvard-dot-EDU.

Cameron: Harvard.edu. The most prestigious email address in the country.

Tyler: This site would be based on the idea that girls want to meet guys who go to Harvard. The difference between what we’re talking about and MySpace, Friendster—

Mark: —is exclusivity.

Ouch, way to make us all seem like elitist jerks! As if we didn’t do a good enough job of that ourselves. (By the way, we think you mean fas.harvard.edu.)

But okay. We’ll take criticism humbly, even when it comes in the form of tiresome stereotypes. Although, really, we swear we’re not all A) blazer-wearing rowers, B) Indians, C) slutty Asian girls, or D) computer geeks.

What we really want to know is how Zuckerberg is going to take this. In the script, right before he creates facemash.com (a sort of hotornot.com spinoff that was a precursor to Facebook), he muses, “The Kirkland facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. Billy Olson’s sitting here and had the idea of putting some of these girls’ faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on who’s hotter….Good call, Mr. Olson! I think he’s on to something.”

Now that’s the kind of protagonist we’d root for! We bet the female half of the audience is really going to love him.

Granted, this appears in the beginning of the story, with plenty of time for Zuckerberg to redeem himself in a classic Hollywood feel-good about-face. But it never really materializes. The Zuckerberg we get here…

Mark: I’m saying I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the [final] clubs.

Erica: Why?

Mark: Because they’re exclusive. (beat) And fun and they lead to a better life.

…is roughly the Zuckerberg we get at the end. And that’s the main issue—the script sets him up as an underdog who fights against privilege to achieve a glittering rags-to-riches success, but his motivations seem so shallow (or, if we’re going to be kind, inscrutable) that we don’t really care.

Consider when Zuckerberg rails at Eduardo L. Saverin '05, Facebook's original CFO, who in this scene has just frozen the company's bank account (and at the moment is mildly preoccupied with a matter of life-and-death):

Mark: Do you get that?! I'm not going back to Caribbean night at the Jewish fraternity!

Eduardo: I've got a fire in my apartment!

Mark: Did you like being nothing?! Did you like being nobody?! Did you like being a pasty-faced geek?! You wanna go back to that?!

As Saverin struggles to extinguish the fire, Zuckerberg continues:

Mark: That was the act of a child, not a businessman. And it certainly wasn't the act of a friend. You know how embarrassed I was when I tried to cash a check? And I was with a girl, Wardo. It happened in front of a girl. I'm not going back to that life.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Zuckerberg here? Are we supposed to be even more dazzled by his character's ascent, knowing that it is tinged with this faux-humanity? Well, sorry, because we're not buying it.

Mostly we're disappointed because a movie about Facebook is a prime opportunity (one that you, Hollywood, have failed to seize) to comment on the zeitgeist of our times. Yet except for a scene in which a girlfriend demands to know why her boyfriend hasn’t changed his relationship status from “single,” The Social Network doesn’t even begin to capture the quirks and conventions of Facebook-saturated modern life. Perhaps that isn’t the story the script was trying to tell, but honestly, we think it would have been a better one.

Sincerely,

FlyBy