Social Network creators compliment Zuck on Golden Globe stage

The Social Network walked away with a few choice awards, including Best Picture, at the Golden Globes tonight. The film is loosely based on Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook, and it largely trashes his reputation from the very first scene, where the Zuckerberg character (Jesse Eisenberg) gets trashed by an ex-girlfriend, who says some classic lines to him.

Erica Albright, played by Rooney Mara, says, “You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”

But upon winning a Golden Globe for best screenplay, writer Aaron Sorkin took the stage and said, “I wanted to say to Mark Zuckerberg, if you’re watching tonight, Rooney Mara’s character makes a prediction at the beginning of the movie, she was wrong. You turned out to be a great entrepreneur, a visionary and a fantastic altruist.”

Producer Scott Rudin accepted the award for Best Picture. He said, “I want to thank everybody at Facebook; Mark Zuckerberg for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other.” The film also won for Best Director and Best Score.

Interestingly, the rumor mill suggests that Facebook’s handlers resisted the creation of the movie, which is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires, a fictionalized account of Zuckerberg’s life by Ben Mezrich. Then, after realizing the movie couldn’t be stopped, Facebook’s founder embraced it, taking the whole company to go see it in the theaters (a number of times). He often said that the movie makers got a lot of details right, like how he owned almost every T-shirt worn by his character in the film, but noted that he didn’t create the site to get a lot of girls.

But Hollywood likes a good story and ran with the fictionalized account. Now the movie is a big contender for an Oscar. Zuckerberg has been laughing it off. Inside, it has to hurt to be depicted in such a way. But it doesn’t seem to have dented his reputation that much. Indeed, it seems only to have made him more famous.

  • http://ceoworld.biz/live/ Corinne Smith

    This film tells a unique story about a cultural phenomenon and everything — the look, feel and sound of it — is worth seeing. Fincher, Sorkin and Co. have made one of the great movies of — and about — the modern age

  • http://twitter.com/ikoniqueOS ikonique OS

    @ Corinne are you reviewing The Social Network movie?Correct me if I am wrong but this is the story of a chancer who stole, cheated and lied his way to success. His absolute lack of remorse that continues to this very day is hardly something to rejoice despite the huge PR efforts of Facebook to re-write history and reinvent Zuckerberg the thief as a benevolent heroes of sorts.What are we teaching our children here?

  • http://ceoworld.biz/live/ Corinne Smith

    I am still amazed at how well this movie actually did. Where would the world be without social media!!Complaining about the character of a private figure based on his representation from a movie is a stretch.Good advertising for Harvard Biz School showcasing Bill Gates and then Zuckerberg.

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