Steve Jobs Flick Owes Much to Jobs’ Daughter, Says Aaron Sorkin

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Aaron Sorkin is at pains to stress that his untitled Steve Jobs biopic is not. A biopic, that is. That may be why he’s giving a dollop of credit to Jobs’ daughter Lisa.

Well, also, instead of focusing on the technology mogul’s life, the movie, based on a biography by Walter Isaacson, takes place in three acts, each of which are set “backstage before three of Jobs’s major product launches spanning 16 years.” So, yeah, that’s fair. The main difference between Sorkin’s script and Isaacson’s book, however, really lies with Lisa. From The Independent:

Jobs initially denied paternity of his daughter, now 36, though they later reconnected and she lived with him in her teens. “She didn’t participate in Walter Isaacson’s book, because her father was alive at the time, and she didn’t want to alienate either of her parents, so I was very grateful that she was willing to spend time with me,” says Sorkin. “She is the heroine of the movie.”

It’s tempting to read that as a major role for a character based on Lisa in the movie, but it’s equally (or even more) likely that Sorkin is just talking about the significant effect her participation had on his script. Still, if she was the lead role, that would make it even less of a biopic, wouldn’t it, Aaron?

Previously in Steve Jobs

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Susana Polo
Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.