Facebook Execs and 'Social Network': Not Friends

By Christine Fenno Posted Aug 22nd 2010 12:31PM

Heard about that little website founded in a Harvard dorm room that soon made status updates, friend requests, and stamping "Like" on comments a daily part of modern life? 'The Accidental Billionaires,' Ben Mezrich's controversial book about the founding of Facebook, has been adapted into an already controversial movie, out this fall: 'The Social Network,' written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher ('Fight Club'), and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Now, a new report exposes the back-channel diplomacy between Facebook and producers of 'The Social Network,' and the desire of execs at the hugely popular website to ignore the movie when it opens Oct. 1. But can they?

In a New York Times article published this weekend, 'Social Network' producer Scott Rudin talks about his largely futile attempts to involve Facebook, or at least obtain their tacit blessing on the film -- which depicts Zuckerberg as an ambitious player and willing betrayer of his cohorts, while also capturing the enormous achievement of his vision. Now 26, Zuckerberg declined to comment for the article.

With no apologies, Rudin says Zuckerberg is "simultaneously a builder and a destroyer." He adds, "It's a big subject. It's a big American subject." (Zuckerberg doesn't seem to think it is. He told ABC's Diane Sawyer in July, "The real story is actually probably pretty boring....We just sat at our computers for six years and coded.")

And what's Sorkin's take on his hero/antihero? The script leaked online clearly portrays Zuckerberg as a 19-year-old brainiac with nothing more than a motivation to be accepted socially, and the tech savvy to make it happen. Much of the story is reportedly based on depositions in cases (settled by Zuckerberg and his company's attorneys) that were filed in efforts to vie for a stake in Facebook.

According to the Times, David Kirkpatrick, author of 'The Facebook Effect' (which is not source material for 'The Social Network'), insists that too many details in the movie are fictional and "horrifically unfair." And Chris Hughes, a Facebook cofounder who left the company three years ago, concurs: "All of a sudden Mark becomes this person who created Facebook to get girls or to gain power....That's not what was going on. It was a little more boring and quotidian than that."

Rudin says that during production, he reached out to show the script and a cut of the film to top Facebook execs, who he says "saw the movie a while ago, and they do not like it." Rudin admits the filmmakers did accomodate small requests for changes to the script, but says, "We made exactly the movie we wanted to make."

In recent weeks, Zuckerberg -- considered the youngest billionaire in the world -- has been consistently reluctant to even acknowledge 'The Social Network,' dismissing it as "a distraction" and insisting, "The movie is fiction."

Obviously this goes without saying, but anyone wanting to learn more about 'The Social Network' can always visit...its Facebook page.

Tags: aaron sorkin, David Fincher, facebook, jesse eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg