Biopics can be really tricky, especially since the events of a person’s life aren’t always compelling. More than that, you can’t neatly pack a person’s accomplishments into two hours. With Aaron Sorkin’s biopic of Steve Jobs, he won’t be doing a straight adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography. Instead, Sorkin’s film will consists of three 30-minute scenes.
These three 30-minute scenes will each take place before the launch of a major Jobs product: the Mac, NeXT, and the iPod. In addition, these three scenes will be shot in real-time. So instead of condensing a life into 90 minutes, we see three key half-hours in the life of Steve Jobs.
This is a really daring formal challenge, and sounds like it might also make for a good stage adaptation if Sorkin pulls it off. By losing the constraints of a traditional biopic, this three-scene/three-act structure actually opens up a lot of room to play and a more interesting exploration of a personality in different points of time. I wasn’t that interested in this project before, but now I am definitely intrigued.
[Business Insider via Collider]
