Q&A: Armie Hammer, Jesse Eisenberg, And Aaron Sorkin Talk ‘Social Network’
The following interview originally ran on Starpulse.com in 2010.
The Social Network is a gripping drama directed by David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club), which tells the events behind the creation and proliferation of the social networking website Facebook.
Taking an objective stance, it shares the accounts of three separate parties that can’t seem to agree on a single truth. There is Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facbeook, Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s best friend and co-founder of Facebook, and the Winkelvoss twins, who claim Zuckerberg stole their idea to create his website. Through this method of storytelling, it is left up to the viewer to decide what really happened.
I sat down for a roundtable interview with Armie Hammer who plays twins Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, Jesse Eisenberg who portrays Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the film’s writer Aaron Sorkin.
Q: Armie, you play twins in this movie. How was that accomplished?
Armie Hammer: What we would do is that I would show up as Cameron Winkelvoss and we would play all the scenes that way, shooting it until Fincher was happy. Josh would be sitting there…Josh Pence, the other actor who played Tyler, he would sit here (pointing) and then Fincher would say “Okay, switch them.” Then I would get up, change clothes, sit in this seat, and then I would look at Josh and go, “What did you do on that one line? And he would go “I coughed.” Oh good (nodding head) I’ll do that. (coughing). Basically that was how we worked together to create the twins.
Q: What did Josh think about all this?
AH: When I grow up I wish I could be a man like Josh Pence. He honestly is such an amazing person. He worked just as hard as I did and he had no problem doing it. He was there on set every time that I was. He and I worked for three months to create the twins and to create how they dealt with each other interpersonally.
Q: What would you say are the major differences between the brothers as characters, if any?
AH: We definitely wanted to have the differences in personality. You have Cameron Winkelvoss who a little bit more than his brother adheres to the concept of chivalry and the idea of nobility, and the thought that being a gentleman of Harvard that you should behave yourself as such…There’s a certain level of tact that you have as a gentleman and it’s almost like that old world sense of charm a little bit. Whereas Tyler Winkelvoss has a little bit more of that modern man in him, he’s a little bit more litigious. He’ll sue someone; he wants to beat the crap out of somebody if they steal something from him.
Q: Have you spent a lot of time in Boston? Can you think of any restaurants or bars you’ve liked hanging out here?
AH: Let’s see where are some places we went…uh Legal Sefoods? We went there which was amazing. What’s that burger place?
Q: Bartleys?
AH: Bartleys! We actually shot a scene at Bartleys and while shooting that scene I had to eat 17 of those Bartleys double burgers.
Q: Jesse, I saw back in 2006, you came up with your own idea for a website called oneupme.com which you started with your cousin, who now works for Facebook. Do you think this experience of starting a website helped you when creating the character of Mark? Do you feel your inside connection to Facebook helped you with your role as well?
Jesse Eisenberg: Yeah you got it all right…My cousin who did all the coding for my site got a job at Facebook about a month before we finished shooting. I gave him the script actually when I read it because my cousin is a brilliant computer programmer and I asked him to explain some of the technical jargon to me, and he tried to, and it didn’t work. He also told me how greatly he sympathized with Mark’s character in the movie, about how he had a similar experience at the University of Pennsylvania.
Being a computer programmer and generating idea after idea for sites and the business majors would always come to him and to try to make money off of it, off of his ideas, and how frustrating that experience was for him. He said that’s exactly Mark’s experience in this movie: the business kids trying to capitalize on the idea kids or the programmers, according to them doing all the real work. That’s how Mark felt.
I’d like to mention also that my cousin had such wonderful things to say about Mark Zuckerberg which actually increased my great affection for him that I had for him after thinking about him every day and playing him. He just loves working for him, he thinks he’s a brilliant guy, and a great boss, and a great leader. Again not surprising that the site is as successful as it is.
Q: Can you identify with Mark?
JE: Yeah of course. I had great difficulty in school interacting with others and I took refuge in the contrived setting of play acting which is what I still do. He took refuge in the contrived setting of Facebook which he created. In a similar way we both created worlds where we feel more comfortable.
Q: Was it at all daunting, knowing that you would be working with David Fincher?
JE: Not daunting, it’s kind of a really exciting challenge. He demands a lot of his actors, but I demand a lot of myself and nothing is more disappointing than working with people who are not demanding of you or yourself, because you know that’s just like why bother?
Q: I had read that he (Fincher) made you do as many as 80 or 90 takes in some instances. I don’t know how much that was accurate for you or not but what was that like for you?
JE: The first scene in the movie which takes place at the Thirsty Scholar, we filmed that scene 99 times over the course of two nights. That wasn’t uncommon. He likes to do many many takes so for that scene there were five different camera setups but over the course of those five different camera angles we did it 99 times. It’s thrilling because you have the opportunity to do it 99, if you want, different ways.
Q: Aaron, could you explain what it was like working with David?
AS: I don’t think anybody can explain working with David. It was a fantastic experience from the first minute right up there until today. Intuitively it’s not a logical marriage of director and material. What David is most known for is that he is peerless as a visual director. I write people talking in rooms. It’s a bit of Felix and Oscar except that it didn’t turn out to be, it turned out to be a perfect marriage because first David absolutely embraced that this is a story told through language. He did bring his distinct visual style to it. He was able to get very remarkable performances out of a very talented but very young cast. Finally in post production he really took my breath away with his cutting style.
Q: How did decide to get involved with this film?
AS: Ben Mesrick who is right here in Boston, wrote a 14 page book proposal. He wanted to write a book about this: about the founding of Facebook and all the turmoil. That book proposal was so good that he gave it to his publisher, and his publisher immediately wanted to shop it around to the movie studios to setup a simultaneous film deal. That book proposal got in my hands and I said yes on page 3 of this book proposal. I assumed that the studio Sony would want me to wait until there was a book to adapt, but they didn’t they wanted me to start right away.
Q: Were there many differences?
AS: There is no question that if you read The Accidental Billionaires that you would say these two are blood relatives, but we attacked it from slightly different places… What you discover is that two separate lawsuits were brought against Facebook at roughly the same time, that the defendant, the plaintiffs, the witnesses, they all walked into deposition rooms, they all swore an oath, and they came out with three very different versions of the story.
Rather than choose one, and say “That’s the truth, I’ve decided that one’s the truth, that’s the story I’m gonna tell,” or choose the one that’s the sexiest, that’s the story I’m gonna tell, I liked that there were three different versions of this story. I wanted to do “Rashomon” and present it that way. So that’s how I came up with the construct of the deposition rooms and everything was coming out of that.
Q: Someone comes up to you on the street. They say I love you, I love all these actors, I love David Fincher, but why should I see a movie about Facebook?
AS: My answer is that it’s not about Facebook. Facebook is the invention at the center of this, it’s not about Facebook, it’s about themes as old as storytelling itself of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, power, class and jealousy…I would tell them see it, because they will see themselves in these characters, or in one or more of these characters. I want to be incredibly clear about this. You don’t have to be on Facebook, you can like Facebook, you can hate Facebook, never have heard of the Internet. It will have no effect on your enjoyment of the movie anymore than you need to be a fan of robbing banks in order to enjoy The Town.