Pirates of Silicon Valley: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

A MASTERPIECE FOR 1 MILLION $

‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’ has become an example of a low-budget 1-million-dollar movie, which has both delivered a story about the richest companies in the world and gained a cinematographic appreciation and respect. The screenplay of this movie was based on the ”Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer book”. Nevertheless, Martyn Burke has objected to the initial raw variant of the script to shift focus from the boring documentary to the emotional narration about the modern digital revolution, still on-going. The first and in this respect the last scene of the Pirates of Silicon Valley movie reflects the late 1990-s events, as well as the main plotline, which has a linear structure. Key actors do not like the 16-years old teenagers as the real one was in 1971 in Berkley, but in this respect, it’s more impressive to perceive a scene of a student riot from the perspective of two technical geeks. Within the moment Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are a sand grain in the background of the anti-war movement, but in some 10 years, they will change the world forever, modernizing the common way of thinking and interest in the technologies.

Although the majority of the audience who deals nothing with the IT-sphere probably considers “Pirates of Silicon Valley” as a cheap TV movie, the story itself is quite close to the actual events and characters as it was one of the main goals of the director. Martyn Burke once claimed that the cinematic crew had performed seven-month research work, including interviews with the former staff of Apple and Microsoft, studying books and examining old articles and photographs. Some unnamed sources had (Steve Wozniak in particular) also confirmed the accuracy of every main scene of the movie.

All three main digital revolutionists gave their positive attitude to the movie in a different manner of expression. Steve Jobs objected to taking part in doing the movie, but he pleased the performance of Noah Wyle. Steve Wozniak has been made a number of compliments in the course of the years past from the premiere and still admired with his “screen version”. Even Bill Gates commented on the movie in 2013 and concluded his character to be “quite precise”. Pirates of Silicon Valley, like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates movie, also appreciate Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, John Sculley, and even Ridley Scott.

While getting closer to the movie itself, we satisfy with almost Shakespeare’s characters of Jobs and Gates and with the satiric way of narration. Softly storytelling, a variety of satiric situations, brilliant sophisticated characters, unexpected combination of circumstances. Martyn Burke has taken the most interesting facts and events from the two-decade history. We appreciate the emphasized contrast between untrimmed future billionaires and high-profile officials of the BM, Hewlett-Packard, and Xerox. Bureaucrats just can’t get the sense of selling a personal computer, keyboard, and mouse. They could not imagine the future where every kid or teenager would be keen on getting the newest gadget. The movie strongly deals with the conflict between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for the palm of victory in this digital revolution.

HISTORY BEHIND BILL GATES AND STEVE JOBS

Steve Wozniak, in fact, experienced a plane crash in February 1981 and suffered amnesia. After getting to the hospital, he has not already felt the work tonus and decided to finish his college education. Woz then decided to teach pupils which were depicted in Pirates of Silicon Valley epilogue.

Reddit portal once had an “authorized” section of questions to Bill Gates, which were selectively answered. Gates has characterized his in-movie character as pretty precise and we still appreciate ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’ as a movie about Bill Gates.

‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs movie, reflects in detail the process of the Xerox technologies being absorbed by guys from the Apple and then by MICROSOFT in the same respect. The woman depicted in a movie, in fact, has a real historical prototype. Adele Goldberg was among the few employees of the Xerox, who were extremely unsatisfied with what was going on with the revolutionary findings of the team. Steve Jobs was amazed by the graphical interface and the “mouth” and behaved himself as a young boy in love with the technologies.

A disturbing scene with Steve interfering with the job interview was not a part of the screenwriter’s imagination. Jobs, in fact, could put his legs on a table and shock the applicant with impropriate questions about the sexual life.

Noah Wyle indeed has a lot of common with the legendary Steve Jobs. Even the members of the film crew acknowledged that an actor looks like his prototype. Daniel Kottke, Steve’s college fellow and close friend of the early 1970-s, was amazed by the level of similarity and praised the acting by Noah Wyle.

Pirates of the Silicon Valley pays attention to the fact that Bill Gates was mostly rude to his Microsoft colleagues and even with close friends. At the same time, Bill always was very attentive to Steve Jobs and did always control own voice and behavior. Bill Gates, in fact, was among the few people who could successfully stand against the so-called Steve Jobs’ “Reality distortion field” and make his opponent calm. On the other hand, Jobs had been always the one among these two who dominated the relationship or, anyway, he wanted things seemed like that.

Pirates of Silicon Valley opens with a scene within the filming location of the famous “1984” TV spot, directed by Ridley Scott. Sure enough, the scene reflects an important page in the story of Apple Computers as Steve Jobs was fascinated with the process of launching Macintosh in all possible respects, including a TV advertising campaign.

The movie story is being presented by two persons who were very close to the famous owners and creators of APPLE and Microsoft. Steve Wozniak is full of enthusiasm about the revolution of the personal computer, graphic understanding of the formerly well-known process of coding. He is still excited about Job’s talent to present computers as the revolution, as a piece of art. Steve Ballmer is a bit of comedian character, who mostly tells the story of success of the Microsoft and a group of geeks with Bill Gates in the lead ironically. He admits the fact of the truth distortion in order to make history and be a part of it.

Pirates of the Silicon Valley movie imaginary depicts the initial steps and the first office premises of both Apple and Microsoft. Two most profound technological companies of the era have started their walk to the stars in the garage and motel rooms.

Another two parallel lines of the plot depict the background sides of both geniuses: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs indeed had experienced drugs and later told a story about the classical music on the wheat field (Moment was also depicted in Jobs 2013 movie). Bill Gates, in fact, had an accident with the earthmover and Paul Allen’s new car and he was also stopped for the speed exceeding.

The next parallel narrative deals with the image of XEROX and MICROSOFT both as the companies without creativity, imagination and a sense of style. As the men who could not distinguish anything extraordinary and use it.

Steve Jobs indeed was an inspirer and initiator of a conflict within the APPLE, after he was dismissed from the LISA project. He encouraged the struggle between the teams of Lisa and Macintosh, openly greeted his own employees and humiliated the others. We can examine this conflicted upon a number of movie scenes, such as a kick-up in a bar, the pirate flag on the Apple campus, Steve’s speeches in from of the staff. T-shirts with the number of working hours per week.

Most of the viewers have paid attention to the scene with Steve Jobs on a tribune and Bill Gates as a “Big Brother” on the screen behind. This Macworld Expo presentation scene is next to the allusion to Orwell’s 1984. In 1999 Microsoft seemed to win the battle with the closest opponent.

Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Paul Allen had indeed hidden the truth about the revolutionary Operational System they did not have at the moment of the negotiation with IBM. Tim Paterson was a man who sold his MS-DOS for 50,000 dollars. In the actual circumstances, IBM was the one who asked Microsoft to assist in the project of the Personal Computer.

Other scenes that happened to be in reality

• Blue boxes and a phone call to the Vatican
• TV jammer by Steve Wozniak
• Work as activity organizers by Jobs, Wozniak and Chrisann Brennan
• Polish humor of Steve Wozniak
• Student anti-war strikes in Berkeley in 1971
• Homebrew Computer Club and the first presentation of the personal computer
• Steve Jobs’ attempts to gain credits from the bank and his outlook
• San Francisco Computer Expo 1977 and two different performances
• John Scully and his famous joke about Jobs’ suggestion and sugar water.
• The proportion of the Apple stock shares and Wozniak’s reaction
• The plotline with a pregnant girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan as Arlene, daughter Lisa and the fruitarian farm
• Bill Gates is late for his flight.