Zuck Dynasty, Pt. 2 — The Social Reckoning

0:00 The Next Picture Show is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. See any standard 2D movie, anytime, with no blackout dates or restrictions. Sign up now in the Regal app, or at the link in this episode's description, and use code NEXTPICK26 to receive 15% off. It's very difficult to keep the line between.

0:23 The past and the present. Do you believe that someone out of the past can change? Enter and take possession of a living being.

0:31 We may be through with the past, but the past.

0:33 Is not through with us.

0:39 Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a Movie of the Week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with Keith Epps, Scott Tobias, and Genevieve Kosky, who I hope are all paying attention to this recording and not distracting themselves on their various social media accounts right now. In our last episode, we discussed The Social Network, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's scathing, mesmerizing adaptation of Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, which tracked the early origins of Facebook and how a bunch of 20-something programmers and entrepreneurs turned a college website into a billion-dollar business while falling out spectacularly along the way.

1:17 These days, Facebook is a trillion-dollar worldwide business with unprecedented power to shape public opinion. especially by widely disseminating misinformation and deliberately prioritizing inflammatory posts and extremist views over any other form of content. Sorkin returned, this time as writer and director, to address the business of social media from this new angle. In 2021, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, working with internal documents provided by whistleblower Francis Hagan, published a series of articles taking Facebook to task for its often deliberately harmful policies, which prioritized profit over social good, over users' needs or desires, and over addressing problems identified

1:56 by Facebook's own internal studies. The Social Reckoning follows Horowitz's investigation and his relationship with Hagen, who starts out just wanting to point him towards the story and step away, until she becomes the story herself. The timeline jumps back and forth between their work together and the fallout as Facebook exec Mark Zuckerberg, now played by Jeremy Strong, robotically practices his damage control moves for an upcoming congressional hearing.

2:21 The film is not doing well in theaters as we record this. Where the social network was an instant hit, its spiritual companion is suffering. There are a lot of potential reasons for that. We'll talk about that next.

2:32 Facebook wants you to stay on the site for as long as possible. And two years ago, the algorithm was changed.

2:38 Wait.

2:39 Mark, we're trying to address hate speech and we're going to amplify and turbocharge it.

2:46 The debate is over.

2:49 Why haven't you printed it?

2:50 Because you didn't give me a story, you told me a story.

2:52 Oh, you're useless.

2:53 It's not the first time I've heard that. I want the internal documents.

2:57 I want proof.

2:57 She's going to get sued into small pieces.

2:59 We have 102 hours to get everything.

3:03 Evidence of drug cartels and a study that hasn't been made public on Instagram and teen mental health.

3:10 He has a source?

3:11 He won't give me his name, but he works here.

3:13 Did you know this was happening? So Social Reckoning, guys, what'd you think?

3:17 Here's my aim for this episode of The Next Picture Show. It's going to be kind of like the last episode, except really, really boring and just not as good in any way. But it will remind you enough of the previous episode that you keep rooting for it to get better.

3:34 See, I think it's going to start out like, fine. You're like, oh, this isn't as bad as I was expecting. And then just as every minute goes by, you feel that creeping feeling of, oh no, oh no, oh no. Just the wheels fall off.

3:47 Oh, we should also be really sanctimonious in.

3:48 This one too.

3:49 Yeah.

3:50 And at the end of it, I'm going to do a fist bump.

3:53 I thought that Scott was the best part of the last episode. So I think we should minimize him in this one and just have him come in to To do scenes that are admittedly hilarious, but that kind of feel out of place. And then otherwise just not appear at any point in this podcast.

4:10 Genevieve, I'm with you, though, because I think this first scene of this is Cracker Jack. I was like, oh, what are people talking about? Because I saw it a little later. I saw it after reviews already come out. I was like, I think this is a really great start to this movie, the police interaction scene. And then, yeah, it's kind of all downhill from there, isn't it?

4:26 My big takeaway, like after it was all over, was this doesn't feel like he was trying to make a companion piece for a social network. It feels like he was trying to make a companion piece for Spotlight. except that this is the story of one person, one journalist, instead of a lot of them. And the story could not move forward in any way except through the actions of this one person. So a lot of it is just kind of waiting on this one person to decide to do the right thing. And no shade against her for, you know, waiting to upend her life, take on some of the richest, most powerful people in the world, and...

5:07 give up any chance of doing what she spent her career trying to do and what she cared about. Like, I definitely do not flaw Hagen for not wanting to be a whistleblower and to be public about it. But an awful lot of the action of this movie just kind of feels like it's waiting, you know, for the shoe to drop. You know that there's a shoe. We keep flash-forwarding and seeing the effects of that shoe. And then we kind of go back to somebody who's holding onto a shoe.

5:35 And.

5:37 really hoping that there's going to be a way to not drop the shoe.

5:39 I really believe in the shoe.

5:41 I really believe in the shoe. I want to be a part of the shoe. The shoe is important to me. I don't want this shoe to hit the floor. Could you please do all of the things that would happen if the shoe hit the floor, but without me letting go of it?

5:55 I don't know. It's one thing to fight gluten. but that's another to fight a trillion dollar business. So I don't know. I think you hit it. I mean, you talk about Spotlight, obviously also All the Presidents, but anything, you know, basically a movie about a story coming together, but the fact that it is a single source, that's not a movie, really. It just isn't. Like All the Presidents of Men or Spotlight, there's so much to put together in that story. There's so many pieces of, and voices that you have to kind of, so many dots that have to be connected, people that may go on the record, people who won't go on the record, people that are leading to things, various red herrings that you're going to have to reject. I mean, the creation of

6:42 that story is so complex, but if it really does here involve just establishing a trusting relationship between a journalist and a whistleblower, and then having her get to a position where she can commit as fully as she does to it, That's not much of a movie there. And, you know, I guess the other thing, too, is about, you know, getting the documents that are needed to support this series of articles. But Sorkin's just complete lack of imagination for how to make this dynamic is kind of stunning.

7:13 And it kind of speaks to the limitations he's already shown us as a director. That's something he's been trying to do lately with his films is direct as well as As Wright and all of the films kind of feel like they need somebody who has that kind of dynamic force behind the camera and not be one of those screenwriters who kind of bellyache that they're not well represented enough in their movies. And then if they make a movie on their own, It's just talky and lacking the kind of dimension and the pop that a good filmmaker is going to actually bring to the table.

7:49 I think I can imagine this being an underwhelming, but whatever, journalism movie. But I think it becomes a true disaster when January 6th enters the chat.

8:03 Yeah.

8:05 And I had forgotten that Sorkin said he was like working on a January 6 movie. And I don't know like at what point that got tied into a Facebook movie, if that was like always the idea or not. But like the moment that I was just like, I had to like wash my hands of this movie is when it's revealed that this day we're watching Zuckerberg practice his testimony is also the day they find out that the Facebook files are going to be published and they have to comment on it. And oh, yeah, also, it's January 6.

8:42 So now we're going to go to that. And the way that the final ish scene, like the congressional testimony at the end, integrates January 6 is. Frankly, embarrassing. I felt kind of mortified watching it. yeah, that was just like an element too many. And I don't know why he felt he needed to combine these.

9:07 I mean, I like, I get the idea of enabling extremism. This is the endpoint of that, you know, and him having to make the decision to take down the video. Yes, fine. That makes sense narratively, I guess. But you didn't have to do it to begin with, my man. You could have just focused on telling this all the president's men type story and done a better job of it instead of trying to do this other thing that just does not work.

9:32 I agree that it doesn't work, but at the same time, I do feel like the film needed it or needed something equivalent to it. January 6th just seems so like sort of tonally off base for where the rest of the movie is and the way it's handled is very awkward. But at the same time, I feel like one of the reasons this movie is not doing well is not because it's bad, because plenty of bad movies blow up and make a ton of money, but because it feels kind of too abstract. The issues at play that Facebook knows that it is extremely harmful to push all of this false information on people, to prioritize kind of the worst voices on the net as much as possible and normalize them, this is a huge problem. It's a huge

10:29 problem worldwide and we're seeing the results of it every day. So the movie risks making that very abstract by focusing closely in on a bunch of people having conversations and then a bunch of documents that we don't see, can't see, can't digest and the huge huge huge wave of information that we're not going to be able to parse through and the film does not parse through it for us it needed something to show like what the impact of all of this is and make it real instead of an abstraction that opening scene is maybe a really good example but it's also you know one person and it is so easy to write off one person's behavior especially on the internet especially for hashtag content as you know

11:15 an outlier and not meaningful so The movie really needed to illustrate in some way that all of these terrible profit-driven policies are having an effect on social intercourse in the world that are real-world effects. I don't know that January 6th was the best way to go about it or that the way he did it really draws the strings clearly at all for the average person who isn't looking for connections and context.

11:44 OK, so what if instead you had your protagonist overhear a family at a restaurant talking about the daughter getting bullied and she walks up and it's like, hey, I work for Facebook. And they're like, oh, can you do anything? She's like, no. And then walks away.

12:00 No, I mean, I think not to think like a marketing person, but like, you know, what is the social network about? Facebook's origin story.

12:07 Boom.

12:08 Right. I mean, what is the social reckoning about? Well, there were some bad things and people looked into it and ultimately January 6th happened. And, you know, it's just, it's just, it's hard to.

12:18 And also Mark Zuckerberg is a robot. You know, we, we keep kind of circling back to that. And that to me is maybe the most fun part of the movie, but also just a bunch of stuff that doesn't really belong in the story.

12:31 I mean, I think you get down to it. This is just, I think the social network is the best thing Aaron Sorkin has ever written. And I, and I, I like a lot of what he's done quite a bit. And, but I mean, if I would not even necessarily, if it weren't for the sanctimony and the lines, like the mansplaining, uh, the exchange, which has made my eyes roll, I wouldn't necessarily even peg this as an Aaron Sorkin script in, in many ways. It just doesn't have the pop or the bite or the wit or the insight. that I associate with his best work, but I think it's been a while.

13:06 Since he's done.

13:07 It's got a lot that you associate with his worst work, though. Yeah, it's very newsroom-y. It's very newsroom-esque.

13:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And in terms of direction, I don't think he's a terrible director in the sense that there's a competency there, but I've seen every film he's directed, and there's also no urgency or push or drive or anything that Fincher or a better director would bring to it, eras or conscripts.

13:33 Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about those comparisons in Connections because I do think there's a lot in the staging that makes us such an important difference about kind of putting this material on its feet. But I actually think there is a movie here. And I think the point that Sorkin is trying to make is important in terms of just understanding what... social networks like Facebook do, what motivates them to train the algorithm as it is trained, what kind of impact that has had on rending the social fabric, tearing the social fabric apart, of messing with elections, changing the way people think and interact with each other.

14:17 All this stuff is incredibly important, and it's almost worthwhile for him to speak about to an audience of people who are on Facebook and have been on Facebook for a long time, uh, to really be able to step back and think about what their experience has been like and what, what kind of impact, you know, this, you know, really important platform has had on society at large. Um, so I, I think there's something to it, but I think, but there's just so much in the making of this movie that is off. And I just like, okay. I mean, if I could continue to rant here about this, about the relationship between the journalist and the whistleblower. I heard about some of the truer facts about these people after

14:59 seeing the movie. But when you watch the movie, there are things in it that make you say, that doesn't seem right. Like it doesn't seem right that the reporter is that much of a Luddite and that he's been asked to write this complex story about technology. That seemed wrong and is wrong. And then most ludicrously, he's having Frances show up, trying to obscure her identity somehow by going to his hotel as if she were on a date.

15:32 Thus kind of introducing this semi-romantic sexual aspect to the story that, again, it all feels so obviously... contrived to give you that kind of banter that you're familiar with from Sorkin, from TV shows like Sports Night and The Newsroom and movies like The American President and other things that he's written where they have that kind of flirtiness that underscores these relationships between men and women, when in fact there are actually other issues, important professional relationships You know, and even kind of an emotional, you know, a trust personal relationship here that has to be devolved, that has nothing to do with romance, that suffers as a result of that and because of these contrivances.

16:19 The detail about dressing as if she was on a date. is particularly weird because it's it's just a distraction you know the the clothing she wears is extremely revealing especially when she's sitting down it's all you know clothing that would look much better if you were dancing or standing up at a club or standing up at a bar when you're sitting down on a couch kind of like hunched over and leaning over a laptop and It just becomes a whole lot of skin. And the idea of dressing for a date so no one will notice you when the whole point of dressing the way she's dressing for dates is to make people notice you just makes her judgment seem bad. So that's a weird detail.

17:01 Also, just another weird costuming, I guess, moment is the scene where Frances's co-worker, played by Anna Lam, comes to her apartment and she has the heat on and it's like very, very sweaty and wearing like a very like skimpy tank top because she keeps it hot because of her celiac disease.

17:22 I guess.

17:23 But it's just like another weird injection of like sexualization into this character that feels totally unnecessary. like having her be so sweaty for no reason, really.

17:36 The movie focuses a lot on details like her celiac and neuralgia and joint pain in ways that I don't see how they contribute to the story. So again, they just sort of feel like distractions, not major ones, but just sort of I don't I don't know, like spend more time on the story you're telling, I guess.

17:57 It turns that character into a collection of quirks, which I like. I really don't like the handling of Francis for a variety of reasons. Poor Mikey Madison. Like, I mean, I don't think she does a great job in the role, but I also don't think she's given a great role here. But yeah, like the weird kind of sexualization combined with the meanness, like in the form of banter, like she's like constantly calling him stupid. And the things about which she is totally ignorant for the sake of, again, banter.

18:31 And then these like quirks of the way she dresses and everything. It's just, I don't know. Like I said, it's a collection of quirks more than a character. And this is supposed to be, you know, our spotlight character that we care about and sympathize with. And she just feels like a piece being moved through this narrative, not a person.

18:48 I liked her hand warmers, though. I thought they were kind of cool. I can see why you think they were a fashion statement.

18:53 I want to zoom out just a little before we move on to connections and just kind of bring up Scott was talking about, you know, the importance of understanding how social networks manipulate what we see and what we understand. I think the other important thing this movie is getting at is how they lie about it. Because one of the points that this movie does make very clearly is that they made a change for profit reasons and they put out a statement saying they were doing it to give the users a better experience. And they very demonstrably didn't.

19:25 And as you know, what Genevieve was saying about examining your own experience and remembering your own experience with Facebook, I was a little more of a Facebook user when this change happened. And the gap between what they said they were doing and why they said they were doing it and the immediate changes I saw to my feed were so startling. Having somebody explain why this is, like why.

19:50 they did it and how blatantly they lied about it. It's just sort of an interesting thing to see on screen. And it's kind of a good reminder that when people who profit directly from you doing a thing, like make a statement to get you to do the thing, you need to examine whether they're telling the truth, what their motives are, what kind of behavior they're trying to control in you. If this movie succeeds at anything, besides making Mark Zuckerberg look... just particularly cartoonish and laughable. I feel that it succeeds in just underlining don't necessarily trust the words of people who profit from lying to you, which is just a media-savvy thing that comes up over and over and over in America these days.

20:42 They didn't lie about everyone pivoting to video, though, right? That was a real thing that definitely happened.

20:48 Oh, boy.

20:48 Yeah.

20:49 Well, when we start pulling out the pivot to video bitterness, it's definitely time to take a break and move on to connections. So let's do that. And then we can finally get into the sorkin of it all in a little more depth. The next picture show is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Coming to theaters in just a few weeks is the 50th anniversary screening of Sylvester Stallone's breakout hit Rocky. And shortly after that is the theatrical release of I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly's well-reviewed biopic drama about Stallone's push to play the lead in the movie instead of selling the script to producers and walking away. Together,

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22:32 I'm not going to risk my job, my future, or my freedom anymore to help a reporter who, let's face it, is biased against tech because we're taking journalism jobs. Who does this?

22:46 I appreciate all the help you have given me and the risks that you've taken to do it. You are absolved. For the record, my bias isn't because tech is taking journalism jobs. It's because you are doing them so badly.

23:08 Now it's time for connections when we bring these two films together and talk about all the things they have in common. Hey, guess what? Both of these movies written by one Aaron Sorkin. It is very strange watching them in such close proximity because, you know, the thing that he became known for is that like rat-a-tat, energetic, quick exchange, walk and talk. There's a line that sticks with me in Social Network where Erica during the date says something about how Mark keeps throwing out two things at once, and she's not sure what she's supposed to focus on, which is something that Sorkin also does. Just, you know, people battering each other with banter, and you kind of have to follow the through line closely, because what they're

23:56 saying can easily wash over you, but everything is important. And then Social Reckoning just felt so slow by comparison, so lacking that energy. What happened?

24:06 I have a question about the character of Francis, though. Does she believe in Facebook? I was unclear on this. Did she believe in their mission? I like the point the film made that obvious enough.

24:20 If you want to start there, that's an example of us being told something that is never shown. A good director shows and doesn't tell as much as possible. I think what makes the social network so powerful from the beginning is feeling like you are witnessing this origin story, this 2001, you know, origin story of just like the DNA of the site is being, you know, revealed here in a very exciting visual way. We're not being told, you know, we don't have, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is not telling us anything, like he's doing something and the visuals are supporting that. We don't have to like, be told by like we are with Francis that she believes in whatever the mission of this site is. And I don't even know if, I mean, even that seems painfully

25:13 naive given what, what she knows. I mean, it's not like there's like, I mean, maybe there's, there's a moment of revelation where she discovers the depth at which, which the company is misbehaving, but it just seems almost absurd to work for a site like Facebook and not have a certain amount of cynicism about what they're doing.

25:32 I mean, she's young and it is a constant slow drip. You know, keep in mind, she does start out on a team that is expressly supposed to study civic impact and mitigate harm. Keep in mind, we, you know, we, we do have a moment of seeing Google's don't be evil sign. It is sort of a reminder that all of these big networks have evolved and And, you know, the instantification of social networks and media as we move towards a billionaire-owned universe have changed a lot of things about a lot of these systems. And she does discover that in real time.

26:12 I think one of the things, though, I mean, the fundamental difference here, and, you know, I think that I would underline is just how important film direction is to movies and why we tend to talk about movies in terms of the director, even now. Even with Sorkin, Sorkin is one of those very rare voices that are distinctive enough to where his name tends to come up in the movies that he's written. But, you know, seeing these films next to each other, it's just like the film language is so stark and it happens from the start.

26:42 I mean, you just like. you know, I mean, like literally the opening shot and just like the vibe of, of the social network, which gives you that sort of lick of, of that white stripe song, a ball of biscuit and it gets you, it gets you immersed in this bar and it looks a certain way. And then, you know, and there is just scene after scene in that movie, you know, the, the backdrop of matters so much, the, the, the, the, the score matters so much, the lighting, you know, just the, just the general kind of visual principles of the thing.

27:09 And then the social reckoning, like, what do you remember about the way that it looks? you know what's the difference between one scene.

27:15 And another i remember the uh black and white flashbacks for no good reason or the there's just like a lot of kind of attempts at doing something interesting visually that is just that are just very boring.

27:30 Visual timeline dragging back and forth on screen to let us.

27:33 Know where we are yeah i'm gonna say something nice jeff croner worth this is the the dp on both these films and he does a good job generally speaking, but he's less of a presence here, but the shot where the two main characters meet in the rain at the top of the hill, it looks nice.

27:50 It looks nice. I like the way that looked.

27:53 Yeah, I don't think it's an egregiously bad looking movie. It's just not, you know, it doesn't really have finesse the way that Fincher does. But I want it like, like, yes, this is a very useful illustration of what a director brings to a movie. But like, I also don't want to discount what Sorkin does. brings to the social network script, you know, or to the social network via the screenplay, which is fantastic. You know, like he gave Fincher something great to work with. The screenplay here is bad. And I think like on for I mean, we've already covered a lot of the tell don't show things. But for me, like the best example of sort of the devaluation of the Sorkin brand between these two movies is the ending

28:45 on screen text that we get the what happens next text, the epilogue. And, you know, we were talking about the final scene and social network where Mark is, you know, refreshing and refreshing, waiting for the friend request that never is confirmed. And that's when we get this on the on screen text, it's like interspersed with this. And it's just like, it says what happens to the Winklevii. It says what happened to Eduardo. And then it ends with, you know, Facebook is in this many, has this many members in this many countries. And then Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world. And like, that's the period on it, you know, and it's really, really effective.

29:23 The ending text in Social Reckoning is, They all have a gag. It all has a gag attached. For Jeff Horwitz, it's like, he figured out how to use his GPS, this character beat that was added for no reason other than maybe to have this gag at the end. And then for Francis, it adds like the she caused some pain, like a callback to like wanting to cause pain. And it's just like... shouldn't need all that you didn't need all that for social network, you know, like, you just said flat out what happened, and it was effective because of the story you told. And in reckoning, it just like comes off as a completely unnecessary flourish. And it should be the period on your statement. And it's just sort of a It's like instead of ending with a period,

30:11 he ends with like an LOL, you know?

30:13 Smiley emoji. I don't think you get it. Like there's a point earlier where Francis sees somebody punch the air on TV and says, I've never been happy enough to punch the air. But then at the very end in freeze frame, she punches the air.

30:28 They should have put that in the titles.

30:31 So instead of she caused some pain, she was happy enough to punch the air.

30:36 It's the Judd Nelson at the end of Breakfast Club moment.

30:39 It really kind of is. Yeah, I get sometimes a little frustrated or amused at films that have the three-time callback. We're going to establish this as a meaningful line. Now I'm going to remind you that it's a meaningful line. And then at the end, it will be said in a sentimental way and there'll be a payoff, you know, because now it's become meaningful again. What makes me laugh is when they try to do that in two. You can build it over time in a TV show to the point where it feels organic, but then there are the things that are just like, we're going to say a thing, and then later we're going to say it again, maybe with a more triumphant tone at the end. Or we're going to say a thing that I've never done

31:21 this before ever in my life, and then at the end I'm going.

31:23 To do it.

31:24 It's so lazy. That said, I think for me the biggest... sort of contrast here in terms of Sorkin's script specifically, is the difference between, you know, there are a lot of kind of high powered, high punch monologuing scenes in this where people just kind of like run off at the mouth about their experiences or what they're thinking or the founding of Victoria's Secret or technology or whatever. The equivalent in Social Reckoning is the character that Bill Burr plays, who is a journalist who has written unflattering things about Mark Zuckerberg.

32:02 I think he's actually a venture capitalist guy who wrote an op-ed.

32:06 All right.

32:06 So he wrote an op-ed.

32:08 But he's like a former investor.

32:09 He's a former investor who Zuckerberg used to like. And then he wrote something very unflattering about him, which we don't learn much about. But he's been brought in as part of his media consult specifically because he's not afraid to look Zuckerberg in the face and say, don't do this. You're doing this wrong. The energy that happens in the exchanges, like Zuckerberg, the joke slash maybe real life reference throughout a lot of the Zuckerberg scenes is that he is very wooden and robotic and he does not come across on camera as particularly human, let alone warm. He doesn't have...

32:44 the Jesse Eisenberg versions kind of like viciousness or dripping like condescension, but instead he looks like a badly animated robot. So these scenes are about him being, you know, trained how to appear like warm and human before Congress, but also how to answer without that contempt, how to answer in a way that's going to make the company look good.

33:08 And Burr's character shakes him out of his kind of his programming and to the point where they start yelling at each other. And when that happens, it's the most energetic sequence in the entire movie. But at the same time, I want to like Burr's character because he's saying a lot of things I truly believe, like fact checking is important.

33:28 And when you have a platform this big and you're using it to disseminate misinformation and you don't care because it makes you money, this is like a societal problem that you are choosing to cause. But at the same time, he just speaks in these speeches, these manifestos, if you will. So, I don't know. Scott, you were saying you also think that he's the highlight of the movie. Does he work?

33:55 It just gives it a little bit of juice. I mean, because he introduces tension that doesn't exist in the movie. Where's the tension here? You're not really getting it in the central relationship of the movie between the journalist and the whistleblower. And then the other part of the movie is Zuckerberg sort of preparing to give testimony. And so, among the voices that he's listening to, Bill Burrs is the one that actually causes genuine dramatic friction. And so there's something at least productive about that, right?

34:25 Yeah.

34:25 And if you think about it in comparison to the deposition scenes in Social Network, those are all about conflict and confrontation. And it brings out so much of Mark's character, how he reacts to that situation when he is in a moment of conflict or confrontation, which he does not do well with. And in Reckoning, Bill Burr's character, Charlie, is the only person who brings any semblance of that to those scenes, you know, because it's not an actual hearing.

34:54 It's just a pantomime of one, you know, preparation for it. And Mark's just bored by it, you know, and that's why he comes across so disaffected. I mean, Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg also comes across kind of like disconnected in in social network. But you can tell because those scenes are built around conflict and confrontation. You can see the human reactions beneath his asshole ish responses. Whereas in reckoning, because this mark has just like evolved into someone who feels like above this sort of thing, even though it's become such a big part of his, his life is testifying, you know, he's like a professional witness, I think he says at some point. Like, he's just over it, you know?

35:37 He's completely disengaged by it. And the only thing that kind of re-engages him is those moments with Charlie, who pushes back on him.

35:46 With all due respect to Jeremy Strong, who, you know, I don't think it's really his fault, but my memory of Mark Zuckerberg in this movie is basically just him sitting there and not doing anything and acting bored. And, you know, who else is bored?

36:00 I'm bored. I'm really, you know, I... It just.

36:05 At least the... At least there's sort of a through line to the journalistic investigation strand of this film. The interrogation stuff is just deadly dull.

36:16 Well, what can you even do with it in a way? I kind of respect where Jeremy Strong kind of takes this character. Because if you think about the Mark Zuckerberg of the social network... And where you leave him and then project out from that, who is he at this point? Who is he when we return to him? And who is this guy many years later? And I think that the instinct is correct on Sorkin and Strong's part that he's just even more inhuman, even more monstrous, less... you know, it doesn't have even that kind of like petty spark that Jesse Eisenberg brings to that character. Like he's fully a corporate beast at this point. And so the character reflects that.

37:11 There is that like one offhand mention of his wife and kid, which feels like it's supposed to do something for his character, but it doesn't.

37:19 Yeah.

37:20 Yeah.

37:20 And I mean, there's something kind of Interesting, again, from a performance standpoint from Jeremy Strong, as much as I agree that the January 6th stuff is not the strongest part of the film, but his inaction, the way that he sort of freezes in that moment, and his processing speed, the slowness of his processing speed is so striking. Because if you think about the fullness of these two movies together, you know, The social network opens with a demonstration of his extraordinary processing speed, his ability to think very quickly and improvisationally and put together this face-mashed phenomenon in a drunken minute. And I think by the time you get to him as this aging empire-builder, who is given this

38:16 what would seem to be a fairly simple choice with regard to what he's seeing. The simple moral choice is frozen by it and isn't processing it well or quickly or at all. I mean, it's an interesting contrast for me, even though, you know, obviously it doesn't really work. It doesn't necessarily result in a particularly compelling character. I mean, I think the take on the character is probably about right.

38:45 I want to touch on a few things that these movies contrast with each other, just besides Sorkin and Mark Zuckerberg in general. One of them, I think, is just Facebook itself. What's appealing about it and why does it have so much power? I feel like social reckoning mostly takes that as read and that it's a mistake. Social network doesn't spend a ton of time on it, but watching people respond to face smash. Is is telling, you know, it's telling how new this all is and how how something goes viral, like how quickly it can get around, how much, you know, they they at least Zuckerberg talks about how people want to like see people. they know online you know they want to interact with people they know they want to connect with people they know and

39:36 potentially they want to chase you know love online they want things that are tailored to them and built around them And it's not the main focus of Social Network at all. You know, it's about the growth, not about the why of the growth. But Social Network does at least address why it would become such a phenomenon. I wish there was a little more of that in Social Reckoning.

40:01 You know, we are told why it's going in the direction that it's going because there's money there. But I do feel like that movie loses track a little bit of sort of the question of I mean, I guess to some degree it addresses in a way why infuriating internet content does get more engagement and does focus people more.

40:25 But again, it just feels like something it could have spent maybe a little more time on. You know, the whys of why this is all happening relies on the users as much as the people manipulating the users. It relies on human behavior, which I'd like to see maybe a little more of in both of these films.

40:42 Yeah, I mean, I'm still upset that social network just completely glosses over the poke.

40:49 Is it still there?

40:52 Oh, no, no, the poke era was was quite early on. And it like predated the news feed, which was sort of the real tipping point for Facebook from, you know, sort of a college socialization based thing into a everything in our life based thing. But yeah, there's something so quaint in hindsight about the poke. I think this is another sort of contrast point, but not that much of a contrast, I think when you when you dig into it, between these two films is just sort of how they approach gender specifically in the tech space, you know, the tech bro culture, and how women fit into it in particular.

41:39 And Reckoning, obviously, our main protagonist is a woman. She does get definitely a few sort of dismissive comments, you know, in her work in Facebook, but that you can feel that the film really is straining to center her perspective. as much as possible. Whereas women in the social network are treated, I think, probably pretty accurately as completely on the margins and as girlfriends, pretty much, you know, we don't really have a female tech character of note in network, which is, I'm sure, again, probably pretty accurate to the way things actually were. But given that Network is kind of so focused on this petty gripe that Zuckerberg has with the girl who dumps him and just the threat of misogyny that runs through it from face smash onwards. Oh, also,

42:42 we can't forget Eduardo's like crazy girlfriend who sets the scarf on fire, you know, that all feels fitting to the story the movie is telling. Whereas Reckoning, even though it has a woman protagonist, a woman who is in this world, who is one of the few women in this world. It doesn't really engage with that at all.

43:03 And I don't know that it needs to, but it feels a little like it's something that's just being gestured at without engaging with it. And I don't know. I can't say I wanted more of it, but I guess I would have liked more of an idea behind it. Because for as marginal as the women are in social network, at least there's an idea behind their presence.

43:27 Yeah, that's the weird thing. I mean, the social reckoning is the more regressive of the two by far, even though, even though it does have, even though, you know, it's cheap protagonist is Mikey Madison's character. So, uh, you know, and plus it also is the movie with the, with the whole mansplaining, uh, bit, which was just, which is just disgusting. And something clearly Sorkin has been wanting to say to somebody at some point in his life. Uh, and now it has a chance to put it in a movie.

43:55 There's also Anna Lam as Morgan, one of Francis's co-workers, who she goes to a couple times. I just want to say, I love Anna Lam. If you haven't seen North of North on Netflix, she's amazing in it. She does almost nothing here with a very thankless role, but... Anyway, she's kind of introduced as a sounding board for Frances and kind of warning her against kind of going down this path, but then joining her on that path by giving her a very consequential flash drive full of documents.

44:32 And she is motivated by stuff she's seeing about body image, studies about young girls in particular, and how it is affecting their self-esteem and body image and bullying and all this stuff. And again, it's like the movie is gesturing at a gendered idea within this world, but not really following through in any meaningful way.

44:57 Anna Lam also is in the framing device in Heart of the Beast. She has some nice scenes with the dog in that movie.

45:02 Yeah.

45:05 I'm fine with there not being more study of tech bro misogyny and social reckoning. I'm pretty weary of it as, you know, a real world thing. And if it's if it's not the main focus, it just kind of feels like another distraction up there with Mikey Madison's near wardrobe malfunctions during so many of those hotel scenes. I mean, for me, just having a female protagonist at the center, as opposed to not really having women as anything except, you know, trophies and enemies, it just feels better.

45:42 Like, I.

45:45 I don't know. I mean, her male boss basically telling her to go get laid because she needs to loosen up as a way of saying, please stop criticizing your employer and thinking so much about things. God is offensive, but it's also, it's just so boring. It's just so petty.

46:04 I want to say two nice things about this movie again. Two more nice things. I think the best roles, such as they are, are female roles. I think when Musako- As the crisis management specialist and Betty Gilpin as editor or bureau chief, I guess.

46:20 Yeah.

46:21 They put some pepper on those performances. I think those are both. You kind of want to see more of those characters in some ways than some of the others.

46:30 I don't want to see more of Betty Gilpin's character because it's a one note joke. Like, I want to see I want to see her play better characters. But that character itself just exists to to to be nasty up into the point where somebody says, like, it's OK, you don't have it. I assume it's Jeremy Allen White says, like, it's OK, you don't have to have to compliment me.

46:52 On this amazing job that I've done. And she's like, oh, thank God. Because she's a completely negative character.

46:58 And one other nice thing to say. The one line in here that kind of stuck with me is when Jeremy Allen White's character says, democracy is the best form of government, but it's not the best form of everything. Which I think that feels like a good Sorkin line. And it's in a movie that's otherwise kind of short of them.

47:19 Well, that's sharp. Do we want to end on a high note? I mean, there are a lot more.

47:24 I'm trying to be nice to you, Social Reckoning. No one else is, but I will be a little bit.

47:29 There are a lot more comparisons that we could make about how both of these movies operate on split timelines. And, you know, they're both about trying to capture the tone of a specific historical moment. They're both about buried secrets coming to light and, you know, government agencies trying to pick apart the complexities of the human heart. They're both about the secret profit motive and people who say they aren't motivated by money being extra super motivated by money.

48:02 But I feel like we've talked a lot about these two movies and the degree to which we just don't love social reckoning. Would make it a little exhausting to keep picking it apart.

48:15 It's a lot of Facebook. We're Facebooked out. I can't wait for the Peach movie to be made.

48:22 Well, you need two of them. You need a reckless, incendiary, energetic movie about the founding of Peach.

48:29 One will be about the first weekend that Peach existed, and one will be about the second weekend that Peach is kind of fading out.

48:37 Are you still on Peach? Is Peach still existing?

48:41 Yes, I am. It's a lonely place.

48:44 You drawn any Batmans on Peach recently?

48:48 That was me.

48:51 Keith was the artist. I like to play Peach Ball. And I like to boop people. You can boop them in the nose.

48:57 We don't talk enough about the boop era of Facebook.

49:00 I have some news for you. This is what the Peach.com website now reads. Thank you for using Peach. Thank you for being a valued part of the Peach community. We want to let you know that Peach is now closed as we prepare for an exciting new chapter. We appreciate all our creators.

49:15 And users.

49:16 The Peach Reckonings!

49:16 We appreciate all our creators and.

49:20 Users for your support and contributions.

49:23 Was it because of the huge scandal that broke when the Peach files came out?

49:28 It isn't loading anymore. Oh, Peach.

49:32 Well, you can join Scott in Morning Peach, I suppose, if you want to, on various other social networks. Reach out to him on Facebook and let him know how sad you are about Peach.

49:45 That's my show, Morning Peach.

49:48 The social network is streaming free with ads on Tubi and Fandango. It's currently on the Criterion channel, and it's rentable on a wide variety of platforms. It's also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Social Reckoning is currently in theaters as we record this. As is so often the case, we don't know if it will still be by the time this episode drops. But, you know, if it is, I don't think any of us are recommending you rush out to help resuscitate it.

50:14 Sorry.

50:15 We'll be right back with your next picture show. Finally, it's time to recommend a film or film-related item that complements this set of episodes. We call it Your Next Picture Show in the hopes that it'll put some interesting choices on your radar. Scott, you and I have both given over four hours of our lives to a documentary about another tech bro with a whole lot of money and a whole lot of power. Let's talk about Musk.

50:47 How did that movie treat you?

50:49 It treated me for sure. I wrote a really long piece about it and Enron, the smartest guys in the room, just to kind of get into Alex Gibney, the director's whole deal and the sorts of people that he has chronicled. And Musk is, you know, there is kind of a machine-like quality to Gibney's work. He is a sort of a cookie cutter style that I don't think Musk transcends in any way but it is does feel like a pretty significant effort on his his part to to uh you know tie together a lot of information and it's kind of useful to me as just a reminder of just all that musk does because there's so much of it you know what i mean like like like i think you could there are ways that you could just kind of find out all of this stuff, or maybe

51:39 you know all of the stuff that he's done, how he got his start and how his career has developed and what kind of messages and things he's done and put out into the world. But to kind of see it all in one place does kind of paint a picture that I think is fairly useful, particularly with regard to the women in his life and his initiative to towards having as many children as possible, etc. He does get some interviews with Musk's first wife, Justine, who is the mother of his trans daughter. And then also Ashley St. Clair, who's a conservative influencer of more recent vintage, who also has a child with with him who has some interesting things to say, including, I think, which is kind of like the line of the movie, which is sort of

52:35 Elon is a nuke. That is something that she says. And I think that's a pretty, I think that kind of stays with you. But I'm curious about you, Tasha. What did you think of this? Because there's a lot. There's a lot here.

52:44 There is a lot. We talked briefly about doing a pairing with Musk. And then I let Genevieve know that Musk is four hours long. And she said, absolutely not.

52:55 Did you tell her there was an intermission?

52:57 I did not tell anybody about the intermission. I laughed out loud when that came up on the screen. Makes a lot of sense for something that some people will be seeing in theaters.

53:06 Does it play jaunty, let's call it the lobby music in the intermission or not?

53:12 I don't recall. By that time, I was already emotionally exhausted. This movie is a lot. It is not designed to be like incendiary, but a lot of the information that it puts together is kind of damning and horrifying. I do not think this movie should have been four hours long. I think if he wanted to have four hours of content, he should have picked two topics because there are many, many different threads here. and just a movie about Elon Musk's kind of terrifying breeder program and his habit of spawning children and then either abandoning them or stealing them and setting up women on these kind of terrifyingly controlling contracts, which he can pull out of at a moment's notice and just kind of like leave them dangling with his

54:04 offspring who he doesn't really care about once he's created them. That is a documentary in and of itself. And there's plenty of material in this movie for it. And it also would have been, uh, I think something that maybe could have been sold to the public. I think everything in this movie is stuff that the public needs to have like put together for them and, and look at linearly because he's the world's first trillionaire and possibly the most powerful person on the planet. And some of the stuff that he's using his power for is terrifying when you put it together narratively. But that maybe should have been a separate documentary. Or it should have been more obviously like a thematic two-part thing. I just think the

54:48 length of this is going to prevent the people that need to see it from seeing it. And the people that are going to see it, the kind of people that would go see a four-hour essentially historical political documentary... probably already know about half of this information although it may which half may vary by people i.

55:10 Mean it almost is a thing where it could kind of divide up as you need it to have been a series you know one thing one thing that yimini has done is is since from enron the smartest uh guys in the room is divide his movies into chapters and and there are just you know, these sections of Musk that you could just look at. It's like, okay, you want to, you want to see, uh, what, uh, his, what his takeover of Tesla was like, there's a, there's a section for you. If you want to see what SpaceX is all about, here's that, there's a section for you.

55:40 If you want to see what he did with Twitter, you can watch that part, you know, like, like it's all kind of neatly divided and kind of, you know, you could, you could break it up if you wanted to. Um, But again, I think I mean, I do think there is a purpose purpose to trying to put all of this into one gigantic, maybe potentially difficult to digest thing, because this is a very consequential person who has who is doing very dangerous things and in a pattern, I think.

56:12 There's a pattern of behavior that I think you can track over the course of his career that this documentary does a good job of kind of detailing. So I would give a very reserved semi-recommendation to this movie because there's a lot of other things in the movie that annoy the hell out of me, too. So Gibney is not my favorite, but I think he kind of does a better job than usual here.

56:34 Well, I was infuriated by the ending, which is a.

56:39 Flip.

56:40 It's really flip and glib at exactly the point where you should kind of be thinking, OK, given all this, what's next? As he amasses more money and more power than anybody has had in the history.

56:53 Of the world.

56:54 Um, and Gibney's answer to that is a, a jaunty little cartoon of him getting onto a spaceship and going off to Mars with a bunch of robots and, uh, and blowing up the earth, which may be how the situation feels, but is, uh, it's just, it's, it's not helpful as a sendoff. A movie like this, you know, an alarm based documentary needs to have some form of call to action at the end. And the call to action here is kind of a big shruggy, what you gonna do, Elon? Go on, Elon. So, yeah.

57:32 Okay.

57:32 I have not seen this film, but I know how it should end. You want to hear it? Elon Musk punches the air.

57:38 Ooh, he's never been that happy in his life.

57:40 Sorry.

57:41 Actually, I mean, there literally is that famous shot of him at a Trump rally jumping in the air with his T-shirt pulling up. It is funny.

57:50 Though, watching the social reckoning and them talking about tinkering, little changes made to the algorithm. Meanwhile, over on Twitter, it is just a complete fire hose of misinformation and scams. It is so on another level of brutality. It makes Facebook just look like such a quaint little story. But anyway.

58:12 I feel like.

58:13 A musk sea.

58:14 Oh, God. I feel like any competent YouTuber could cut any topic on this down to like 10 minutes that then could be released on like Jenny Nicholson's channel and 10 billion people would watch it. And it would be it would be more useful than telling people here is a four hour documentary that has a ton of information you really need.

58:37 It's probably going to be broken up that way.

58:39 Well, that's it for this edition of The Next Picture Show. Scott, can you tell us about our next pairing?

58:44 Yes.

58:45 For the new documentary, You Can See Everything, Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the fraudulent health tech company Theranos, invited directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home for an experiment in radical transparency. During the 34 days before she was due to start a federal prison sentence in Texas, Holmes and her partner Billy Evans not only granted unrestricted access to their rental home on the California coast, but allowed Fielder himself to live in the space and ask whatever questions he wanted to ask. Yet the more time Fielder spends with Holmes, the more elusive the truth seems to get, and we're constantly aware of how much the cameras affect this environment. The whole situation calls to mind

59:25 Albert Brooks' first feature, Real Life, in which Brooks plays a filmmaker who convinces a Hollywood studio to allow him to shoot the daily lives of an ordinary suburban family for a major motion picture. Yet the purity of his intentions are immediately undermined by commercial needs and Brooks' own narcissism and presence in his subjects' lives. So for our next pairing, we'll talk about the truth in fiction that comes with seeing everything with Nathan Fielder. and Albert Brooks.

59:53 For now, we welcome your feedback on The Social Network, The Social Reckoning, and anything else film-related you'd like to talk about. Email us at comments at nextpictureshow.net or leave us a voicemail at 773-234-9730. Before we close out this week's episode, where can we find everyone these days?

1:00:09 Scott?

1:00:10 Oh, well, you can find me and my 2,000-word-plus Alex Gibney piece at the reveal. Should have been split up. Dot film, uh, the newsletter that I write with, uh, with Keith Phipps, uh, lots of good stuff there. It's such a, such a huge time for movies. Uh, and, you can also find my work at vulture, the New York times, uh, guardian and other fine publications. Genevieve, what about you?

1:00:33 You can find me sort of behind the scenes. You can know that I am behind the scenes at Vulture.com. You'll feel her there even if you don't see her. At Vulture.com where I am the TV editor and lurking around on Blue Sky and Instagram at Genevieve Kosky.

1:00:50 Keith?

1:00:50 You can also find me at thereal.film, where Scott and I are very busy. As he pointed out, it's a very busy time of year. We're sweating it, trying to cover all the movies, which we will never do because there's just two of us. But we cover a lot of them, and we have a lot of wonderful, interesting thoughts there.

1:01:06 Right, Scott? Yeah, I think so.

1:01:08 Yeah, you can find me on social media, primarily Blue Sky and Letterboxd at kfips3000. I also contribute to places like Vulture and where I just got done recapping both Strange New Worlds and Ted Lasso and TV Guide, where I just reviewed the new East of Eden miniseries. And yeah, you will not find me at the Chicago International Film Festival, but as I say, you should go. You should support our local film festival. Tasha, how about you?

1:01:36 Well, you can find me not at the Chicago International Film Festival unless I prepare for it, which, you know, I'm going to go listen to Adam and Josh's preview of it. And maybe it'll maybe it'll spark me to go. Usually at this time of year, I'm coming back from Fantastic Fest. And there was a time when I'd be coming back from Fantastic Fest and TIFF. And a lot of the movies would be the same and I would be exhausted. So, you know, now I don't have that excuse.

1:02:02 Maybe I should look into it. Regardless, you can find me recapping Vision Quest, the new MCU TV show, over at vulture.com. And you can find me on Blue Sky at Tasha Robinson. You can stay updated on The Next Picture Show at nextpictureshow.net and on Blue Sky at The Next Picture Show. Get bonus content and open discussion at patreon.com slash nextpictureshow. And as always, we appreciate your rating and reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks to Dan the Baked Jakes for his assistance producing this podcast. The Next Picture Show is proud to be part of the FilmSpotting family of podcasts.

1:02:37 Please tune in next time.

1:02:38 That was a good movie. Yeah, seen here before once.