Pirates of Silicon Valley
Pirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 American biographical drama television film directed by Martyn Burke and starring Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates. Spanning the years 1971–1997 and based on Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine's 1984 book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, it explores the impact that the rivalry between Jobs (Apple Computer) and Gates (Microsoft) had on the development of the personal computer. The film premiered on TNT on June 20, 1999.[2]
Pirates of Silicon Valley
Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer
by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine[1]
Martyn Burke
United States
English
- Steven Haft
- Nick Lombardo
Leanne Moore
Ousama Rawi
95 minutes
- Haft Entertainment
- St. Nick Productions
June 20, 1999
Plot[edit]
Steve Jobs is speaking with director Ridley Scott about the creation of the 1984 advertisement for Apple Computer, which introduced the first Macintosh. Jobs is trying to convey his idea that "We're creating a completely new consciousness." Scott is more concerned with the technical aspects of the advertisement.
Next in 1997 with Jobs, returning to Apple, and announcing a new deal with Microsoft at the 1997 Macworld Expo. His partner, Steve "Woz" Wozniak, is introduced as one of the two central narrators of the story. Wozniak notes to the audience the resemblance between Big Brother and the image of Bill Gates on the screen behind Jobs during this announcement. Asking how they "got from there to here", the film turns to flashbacks of his youth with Jobs, prior to the forming of Apple.
The earliest flashback is in 1971 and takes place on the U.C. Berkeley campus during the period of the student anti-war movements. Teenagers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are shown caught on the campus during a riot between students and police. They flee and after finding safety, Jobs states to Wozniak, "Those guys think they're revolutionaries. They're not revolutionaries, we are." Wozniak then comments that "Steve was never like you or me. He always saw things differently. Even when I was in Berkeley, I would see something and just see kilobytes or circuit boards while he'd see karma or the meaning of the universe."
Using a similar structure, the film next turns to a young Bill Gates at Harvard University, in the early 1970s, with classmate Steve Ballmer, and Gates's high school friend Paul Allen. As with Wozniak in the earlier segment, Ballmer narrates Gates's story, particularly the moment when Gates discovers the existence of Ed Roberts's MITS Altair causing him to drop out of Harvard. Gates's and Allen's early work with MITS is juxtaposed against the involvement of Jobs and Wozniak with the "Homebrew Computer Club". Jobs and Woz develop Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs's family home, with the help of Daniel and Elizabeth. Eventually, Mike Markkula invests in the company which allows it to expand and move forward. In 1977, Jobs, Woz, and Markkula demo the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire. This event is followed by the development of the IBM PC with the help of Gates and Microsoft in 1981.
The film follows Jobs's relationship with his high school girlfriend and early Apple employee, Arlene (a pseudonym for Chrisann Brennan), and the difficulties he had with acknowledging his parental legitimacy of their daughter, Lisa. Around the time she was born, Jobs unveiled his next computer, which he named Lisa. The Lisa was followed in 1984 by the Macintosh, both having been inspired by the Xerox Alto.
On the eve of the release of Windows 1.0 (and with Microsoft's licensing deal with NEC undercutting Apple's dealings in Japan), Jobs and Gates have a bitter falling out. Jobs claimed that Gates completely ripped off of Apple's design. Gates responds by saying that Apple had done the same thing to Xerox, and rather that it was analogous to both of them stealing from a rich neighbor who left their door unlocked. The main body of the film finally concludes with a 30th birthday toast in 1985 to Steve Jobs shortly before he was forced out of Apple by CEO John Sculley.
The film ends in 1997, with the return of 42-year-old Jobs to Apple (after its acquisition of NeXT Computer) and with his announcement at the MacWorld Expo of an alliance between Apple and Microsoft. It also indicates that Jobs is now married, has children, and has reconciled with Lisa.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Burke notes that when he was shown the first draft of the screenplay, which is based upon Freiberger and Swaine's Fire in the Valley, "It was all about how the '286 computer' became the '386' and so on ... I was bored by it."[3] After the studio asked him for suggestions Burke states that "I'm a great believer in Shakespeare, and what we had was a modern equivalent of Hamlet, featuring two young princes, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs ... the more I read about Steve in particular, the more I saw him in those Shakespearean terms. He was brilliant, volcanic, obsessive, suspicious, even vicious in a business sense. He was about conquest, always conquest. I said, 'That's the sort of movie I want to make.'"[3] Burke was thus hired as director of the project and rewrote the screenplay.[3] In developing the characters themselves, Burke also stated that he chose not to speak with any of the central figures portrayed in the film:
Themes[edit]
Young Steve Jobs participated in aspects of the 1960s counterculture. Actor Noah Wyle, who portrays Jobs, stated in an interview with CNN, "These kids grew up 30 miles south of the [University of California] Berkeley campus, which was ripe with revolution ... and they couldn't have cared less about the politics going on. They were in the garage tinkering with their electronics and starting a revolution that was a thousand times greater than anything that was going on the college campuses, politically."[8] Director Martyn Burke also noted in an interview that, "Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the true revolutionaries of our time. Not the students who occupied the dean's office in the late '60s. Not the anti-war marchers who were determined to overthrow the establishment. Jobs and Gates are the ones who changed the way the world thinks, acts and communicates."[4]