The Social Network (2010)

The result may be what Fincher kiddingly calls “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies”—not to mention a gimlet-eyed study of old-money, we’re-all-gentlemen-here entitlement versus the equally cutthroat stylings of classless (in both senses) New Economy titans. But it’s also something uniquely Sorkinian: an earnest, unsparing feature-length exploration of the question “What exactly does it mean to be an asshole?” It’s a tag with which Zuckerberg (played in the film by Jesse Eisenberg) gets labeled by a young woman in the first scene; two hours later, another woman semi-exonerates him, telling him he isn’t one, although the exact way she phrases it is pretty cold comfort. What lies between those bookends are a couple of philosophical stumpers for superachievers: How much of a jerk are you allowed to be in the name of getting the job done? And if you’re the smartest guy in the room, you know it, you act on it, and you don’t care who gets hurt, then what is the word for what you are?

Sorkin’s shooting script was 162 pages—a screenplay that, using normal one-page-equals-one-minute Hollywood calculus, would have yielded a two-hour-and-42-minute film instead of the one Fincher made, which clocks in at a fleet two hours, not including closing credits. After Sony looked at the draft and told them they’d have to cut the script, Fincher says he and Sorkin went back to his office, “and I took out my iPhone and put the little stopwatch on and handed the script to Aaron and said, ‘Start reading.’ He was done in an hour and 59 minutes. I called the studio back and said, ‘No, we can do this. If we do it the way Aaron just spoke it, it’ll be two hours.” … Before production on the nearly $40 million film began in October 2009, Fincher steered his cast members away from any impulse to try to contact their real-life counterparts. Other than Timberlake, who had chatted with Parker briefly when he was in contention for the role, the actors never met the men they were playing, and that’s the way the director wanted it