Aaron Sorkin says Steve Jobs biopic will have only three scenes

The script Aaron Sorkin is crafting for a film about Steve Jobs will be comprised of just three scenes, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter said Thursday.

“I hope I don’t get killed by the studio for giving too much away,” Sorkin said, speaking at an event for Newsweek and the Daily Beast. “This entire movie is going to be three scenes, and three scenes only.”

The scenes will all take place backstage before three of Jobs’ most important product launches: the original Macintosh; NeXT, which was the start-up Jobs created after leaving Apple; and the iPod.

Sorkin said the scenes would take place in real time, meaning 30 minutes for the audience is 30 minutes on screen.

The screenwriter also said that as part of the process he has been meeting with people from Jobs’ life, including Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak.

“I’ve been able to talk to these people who revere him in spite of the fact that he made all of them cry at one point or another,” he said. “But he made all of them better at what they were doing.”

Sorkin also related that, although he never met Jobs in person, he built a relationship with Jobs over the phone.

Sorkin said Jobs would sometimes call to compliment him for an accomplishment. He said that in the next-to-last such call he received Jobs asked for advice on his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. The last time Jobs called, Sorkin said, was to ask him to write a Pixar movie.

Sorkin said he intended to end the movie with text or voiceover of the line “Here’s to the crazy ones,” from Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign that ran after Jobs’ return to the Cupertino, Calif., company.

“If I can earn that ending then I’ll have written the movie that I want to write,” Sorkin said.

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