Pirates of Silicon Valley

A television film set in California. Two stories run in parallel. The first is Steve Jobs. He has left university, works in a garage, and his friend Steve Wozniak is designing a computer. The second is Bill Gates. At Harvard, gambling, looking for an opening in software. From there the film describes the founding of two companies and their collision. Apple grows fast. Jobs builds a team, finds investment and puts the product on a stage. Microsoft grows differently. Gates sells an operating system he does not have and then goes and buys it. That scene is the best section and the narrative presents it as a talent. The visit to Xerox is the turning point. The Apple team goes to a research centre, sees the graphical interface developed there, and takes the idea. Jobs does not count it as theft. Later Microsoft does the same to Apple and this time he does not accept it. What the narrative is interested in is not technology but character: its idea is that both men were ruthless and that the shape of a company comes out of its founder's personality. Jobs is not drawn as likeable. He shouts at his staff, denies his own child, and spends his friends one by one. The telling breaks. Wozniak and Steve Ballmer cut in, speak to camera, and comment on events. It was made for a cable channel and the budget is modest. Noah Wyle's impersonation was noticed; he later came on stage in character at an Apple event and Jobs joined in the joke. Noah Wyle, Anthony Michael Hall, Joey Slotnick and John DiMaggio are in the cast. Martyn Burke wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone curious about the history of technology and founding stories. Who it is not for: anyone expecting accuracy; the narrative compresses events, invents scenes and draws its characters roughly.