"Jobs" Still Doesn't Work

Walt Mossberg’s review of Steve Jobs is all the more damning for it’s more sorrow-than-in-anger take on the choices made by Aaron Sorkin & Co:

Like every artist, Sorkin has the absolute right to make choices about how to portray people and events. And he has explained that he made the choices he did in this particular film because he decided to focus on points of “friction” rather than on his character’s “greatest hits.” He notes that he is a huge fan of Apple products — that he writes on a Mac and uses an iPhone and an iPod.

Well, I have been a huge Aaron Sorkin fan. I have seen every film and TV series he’s written, most of them more than once. I still love watching random episodes of The West Wing, and I even stuck with Sorkin through Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Newsroom, which were nowhere near as good as even his rookie TV series, Sports Night.

In 2012, when I got to interview him on stage shortly after he agreed to write Steve Jobs, colleagues teased me for being almost giddy about it. But his love of his Mac doesn’t mean he loved its father, just as my love of Sorkin’s other work doesn’t mean I think he did right by Steve Jobs. Because he simply didn’t.

In fact, he treats Jobs worse than his purely fictional characters.

Ouch.