The Social Network Analysis

• 1. One lawsuit was from the Winklevoss twins because they felt like Mark stole their idea for a college social network, and the other lawsuit was from Eduardo because he got screwed out of the company after Mark diluted his shares in the company and then kicked him out. I'm pretty sure the lawsuits were happening about 6 years after this, but I guess that wouldn't make sense that it would take that long for the lawsuits to happen. Erica is in the movie to serve as a "before success" reminder that forces him to reflect on the people he's plowed over and the relationships he's destroyed in order to reach the success his company has reached. The undercuts Sean as a coward when he flinches at Eduardo's fake-punch, depicting him as a scaredy cat who hides behind his fame and money to seem tougher than he is. There's also the part in his house when the cops show up and he says "that's not mine" and has to panic-call Mark from the police station, his face all splotchy and red. We come to learn that he's really not as sure as he makes himself seem, which draws us (and Mark) back to his line, "look at my face and tell me I don't know what I'm talking about." He really doesn't know the full extent of what he's talking about after all. I think Mark diluted Eduardo's shares to give him less control over the company because he had frozen his account and the funds that Facebook was using to get off the ground, and Mark hated that Eduardo was able to have that little power over him. He was also insecure about Eduardo getting into the Pheonix Club and felt lesser in that sense socially, and wanted his own little power trip over Eduardo to make it seem like he didn't care about popularity or social standing because he was the ultimate owner and decision-maker for Facebook. The question I still have is how much time has passed since creating the company when he was dealing with the two lawsuits? 
• 2. I think this movie was ultimately about exposing the dichotomy between fame/success/apparent popularity and the actual social standing of the people who achieve that fame. Because the movie is only reportedly 40% true, according to David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, it seems like the filmmakers used Zuckerberg as an example of a larger theme and exaggerated his personal story in order to make him the face of this dichotomy that was larger than just him. I thought it was interesting how he came back to Erica in the end and just kept refreshing and refreshing the Facebook page waiting to see if she'd respond to him, because it made it seem like he wasn't totally satisfied with the success he'd achieved, given what happened between Erica and him. It's also interesting that Erica had a Facebook page at all -- maybe she didn't know that he created it, since she said she'd never heard of it when he brought it up. Some of Mark's motivations were distinguishing himself from his peers (who also got 1600s, like he told Erica) in order to feel better than them even though they, like Eduardo, were succeeding socially; retaliating against what Erica said about him when she broke up with him; making himself seem bigger than the "big guys" on campus who row crew by beating them intellectually. This movie seems to reveal that he's seriously insecure and immature but masks it with his intellect, success, and eventual fame. 
• 3.  All of these movies revolve around a central character with potential in some way or another -- Kane with his money, influence, and political power, Gittes with his investigative prowess and social standing, and Zuckerberg with his drive for sucess and aptitude for computer science -- that drives them towards their ultimate goal, inevitably sacrificing other things that they deem comparatively unimportant, namely love. All three of them are too blinded by their personal motivations to see how any other person can hold any true value. Kane uses his wife's opera career to feel successful vicariously through her, and is incapable of loving her or allowing her to quit because of how unhappy it's making her; Gittes gets physically violent with Evelyn when he realizes how she lied to him and jeopardized his career success in this investigation; Zuckerberg insulted Erica for going to BU and insinuated how he was better than her, and lashed out at her when she challenged him. Kane and Zuckerberg also screw over their best friends because they feel slighted by what their friends have done to oppose them. All these movies are about highly motivated men who basically become ravenous with potential success and look for satisfaction in that possibility by discarding everyone and all their relationships around them. 
• 4. As the scenes get more and more heated and intense, they shots get closer and closer to the characters' faces. In the opening scene, as tension builds when Mark clearly is dismissing everything Erica says and only tries to talk about his own endeavors, the audience knows that Erica is irked by this -- we see the displeasure in her face. When she breaks up with him, we see close shots of Mark's face processing this and trying to understand why she's getting so upset, and Erica's face angry and hurt. We basically see Mark's guard get let down to see how he's genuinely hurt by the emotional situation, something he always seems to brush off. This paralleled with the last scene where he kept refreshing the Facebook friend request to Erica as the camera slowly zoomed into his face. This emphasized his slumped and dejected posture and his woebegone expression as he is reminded of what Facebook cost him. There's also really rapid cuts between his him and Erica during their conversation and a noisy background environment, adding to the restless and overall unsatisfying relationship between the characters; the audience feels uneasy, and this culminates in the breakup at the end of the scene when Erica expresses her disdain for Mark: he's an "asshole." This contrasts with the last scene when Mark is talking with Marylin. There are much more spaced out cuts between the characters, and Marilyn slows down the speed of the conversation, unlike Erica in the bar. They're in an empty office, not a noisy bar, which further adds to the  reflective tone of the scene. Marilyn, unlike Erica, doesn't think Mark is an asshole, and even explicitly tells him that. We see a slightly different side of Mark because of these filmmaking techniques used. 
• 5. There's a pan following Sean as he walks around the house from room to room on the phone, talking to to the girls on the couch (there's actually a tilt here as he leans down to talk to them), going to pick up the drinks in the other room, nd then going to the other table to set them down. This restless camera movement mimics the restless nature of Sean and his business style, always trying to expand and become more successful than he currently is; it subconsciously brings truth to Eduardo's comment that Sean's "paranoid"; he's always moving and pacing, especially when he's talking about business, in this case on the phone. Another thing Fincher did that caught my eye happened when Christy lit fire to Eduardo's bed. When Eduardo is talking on the phone to Mark about going back to California and simultaneously putting out the fire on his bed, we hear Christy's voice from off-camera. He deliberately keeps her off-screen because this really startles Eduardo and the audience; he thought, as did we, that Christy had stormed out after lighting the fire. When we can't see her but are surprised by her voice, it adds to how unnerving both we and Eduardo find her. 
• 6.  I really like how Sorkin doesn't hold back his sarcasm. I think it's really effective, especially since Zuckerberg (or at least, Zuckerberg as portayed in the movie) is often scathingly sarcastic. I think it's really interesting how Sorkin tries to boost his ethos in writing this to Zuckerberg by finding a common ground with him: they both believe strongly in free speech. This softens Sorkin's approach so that when he catches Zuckerberg in a conflict of interests -- defending free speech or "assaulting truth" -- this accusation feels more grounded. I don't think movies have an obligation to tell the truth for a story based on true events if they're bending it with a particular intention in mind. This movie, like I mentioned earlier in this movie response, seems to use Zuckerberg as a pawn in a larger theme they're trying to convey in their movie. The theme would be much less apparent and the movie would become a much duller biography if we only saw Zuckerberg's career trajectory without the arc that Sorkin bends into it. I do think it is important that people understand when a movie is somewhat falsified, though, because people would form a different opinion about Zuckerberg as a person from watching the movie than they would from seeing how he is in real life.
• 7.  I watched "Analysis of Writing, Structure, Acting/Collaboration in The Social Network." Something I really, really liked about the video was that it mentioned how good it is to "collaborate with talented people who aren't afraid to challenge your work in search of the best possible version." It seems like there could be a bit of a power struggle between the screenwriter and director in any movie because the director tries to adapt and personalize what the screenwriter already had a clear vision for. In this case, though, the video points out that Fincher modified Sorkin's dialogue to make it seem more realistic because that was better for the film as a whole, and Sorkin accepted that note because he saw validity in what Fincher was saying about the film. I actually couldn't really find anything that I didn't agree with in the video. I guess some of the stuff at the end about stylized writing needing the right actor might go a bit too far because the video said that otherwise, "it wouldn't work." I don't think it necessarily wouldn't work as an actor in the role overall, but they might just have to cut some of those stutters and lead-ins. I really appreciate what the video said about Sorkin using overlapping dialogue to build the energy in a scene and make it feel more organic. This natural style of dialogue (it also appears in Noah Baumbach's screenplays a lot) often goes unnoticed because it's exactly that: natural. That's the way we speak, so that's what feels comfortable and familiar in dialogue between characters. It doesn't show up in all movies, but when it does, it makes the scenes feel so much more real.
• 8. This was the first time I saw this movie and, overall, I liked this movie more than I thought I would. I find Facebook really creepy, especially in the context of Zuckerberg's most recent trials, have a very low opinion of Zuckerberg as a person with a moral compass. This movie surprised me by integrating the relationships aspect of Zuckerberg's life into his business ventures and ultimately focusing more on the unraveling of a friendship than on the developing of a company. I honestly couldn't care less about how Facebook came to be as a company, but knowing about how Facebook's development cost Zuckerberg so much else in his life, I found a way to be interested in this movie. I don't think it's deserving of being on the "Best of the Decade" lists; I'm pretty sure it's because Facebook has been such a phenomenon over the past two decades that it finds relevance in viewers, enough to be on one of those lists. It's a really well made movie, but content-wise, I don't think it's as deserving as other movies on that list, including an obvious mention from me: La La Land. 
• 9. What was the relevance of Marylin (Rashida Jones's character; the associate eating the salad and telling him he's trying so hard to be an asshole) in the story?