Pirates of Silicon Valley
by Martyn Burke
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Actor: Anthony Michael Hall, J.G. Hertzler, Joey Slotnick, Noah Wyle, Wayne PéreDirector: Martyn Burke
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Writer: Martyn Burke
Producer: Joseph Dougherty
Producer: Leanne Moore
Producer: Nick Lombardo
Producer: Steven Haft
Writer: Michael Swaine
Writer: Paul Freiberger
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-30
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: T6996
Studio: Turner Home Ent
DVD Reviews of Pirates of Silicon Valley
DVD Review: Apple Cores. Revolving Doors. Silicon Sails The High Seas. Gates & Trees & Fences Free.
Summary: 5 Stars
Several aspects catapulted me into this movie with a mesmerizing intensity which caused me to watch it several times, and to know I'll continue to do so periodically.
The strongest draw to this work of art for me was to the performance of the actor (Anthony Michael Hall) playing Bill Gates, which he did with such exquisite skill that he made me feel he had captured the essence, the quiet radiance, the charisma, maybe even the core, of that larger-than-human persona, more brilliantly than I've seen done for any other characterization of a "real-life-person" on film.
In fact, each of the key actors in this film went beyond the level of outstanding, in seeming to capture his/her character in a primal essence. The voices and mannerisms of Gates, Jobs, and Wozniac, have stayed with me with such a synaptive strength that I can hear and see them any time my thoughts go there.
The actors didn't stand alone, however. They were supported with awesome perfection by the book's balanced storyline, and the art and technique of the film-making, which was executed so naturally as to be baseline effective without the viewer noticing the designs and efforts toward effect.
There was no overwhelm of design; only the feel of it.
There was the being one with the language of film, which overtook whatever reality had been playing prior to the first millisecond of the movie's motion.
(For a bare bones of additional detail about film-making technique, feel free to see my review of the DVD of the movie, Suspect Zero.)
Each time I re-view my copy of PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY, I'm left with an intense curiosity about how true to reality it seemed, and about Gates, Jobs, Wozniac, and the other characters "takes" of this rendition of who they were and what they did. A few reviews have helpfully mentioned visiting Wozniac or Gates web sites, and noted that the movie was described as being generally accurate.
If anyone has any added information on Gates or Jobs specific comments on this movie, please consider beginning a Forum in the Customer Discussion section on this page?
To be fair, maybe I should offer a few backup details for my over-the-top praise above.
Here's what I see so clearly, even now, in Bill Gates as shown in PIRATES:
I see him regularly pushing the bridge of his glasses up to a clearer viewing angle; I see the direct, open-eyed gaze of this ancient, wise soul working within a child's free-flowing, anticipatory mind.
I see his continual eagle-eyed expression, his intense curiosity and constant calculation.
It appeared to me that, for Gates, as portrayed by the actor in this film, computers are not machines; they're kindred spirits. And I don't mean that as an insult.
Steve Jobs was also shown in his unique ways of gazing, studying whatever was in his presence; his ways of speaking, and of flickering continually from a sun-splitting smile to a deadly scowl. Moods. He was a full course STUDY in them, at least as dramatized by the actor who portrayed him.
Then, of course, there was the most obvious of the many film techniques used so beautifully, that of posing the head and shoulders of Bill Gates on a large movie screen in the background, with Steve Jobs standing in a full-body pose, live, behind a podium, below the huge, two-dimensional, yet ominous presentation on the screen. Yeah, Big Brother was alive and well, ever ready, ever in the background of Jobs' motions, with no loss of strength or imposition. And yet ...
And yet ... Bill Gates came across as a hero, to me, along with everyone involved in this landmark expression of part of the evolution of human brain cell enhancement.
The way these two cultural giants were played against each other, in storyline and through the art of film, was an accomplishment of the type of simple genius which, in some ways, goes beyond even the great gifts of the Einstein's among us.
There is so MUCH art, angst, and significance in this film, I doubt its makers have seen every angle and facet of it.
This is something. This is something.
I don't know, exactly, if the film intended it, but each time I come away from this movie, I see all the people in it as nothing less than heroic. Yet, the movie clearly brought out actions and behaviors which I could not condone in any other context, in fact, which I might condemn. However, I rarely mark something with a negative triple six; as soon as I think about picking up a single stone, the smudges on my vest begin growing. Very purposely, that chagrin situation was exposed here.
This movie captures and holds not only high entertainment with heavy drama and deep comedy; it also expresses:
Irony, Anomaly, Paradox, Dichotomy, Dilemma, and more.
I seek words which mean: "The containment of opposites within a single framework, containment of a long enough duration for the duality to do the Hegel-ian thing, the ultimate growth sequence of Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis."
Yet, these two opposing elements will not synthesize, except separately, so the Thesis, Antithesis, Thesis, Antithesis seems to be in an eternal loop, which somehow enhances life and growth rather than diminishing or draining it.
If I attempt to analyze this movie much further my eyes will cross and my brain will ... will what?
It won't melt down ... it won't shut off with "does not compute." What it will do is slip irrevocably into a Gordian Knot at the base of a Universal Labyrinth. Bye, bye.
Don't go there. I have more work to do.
Thank you Bill, Steve, the makers of THE PIRATES OF SILICONE VALLEY (see the credits on this page), and the authors (Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine) of the novel, FIRE IN THE VALLEY, upon which this movie (made for cable, TNT, in 1999) was based. I could almost say the film went as far as Gates and Jobs (and their associates, friends, and families) took us, as a race, as a species, as an intriguing culture in a sentient Universe.
Maybe it's not achieving warp drive capacity which first brings a species to the attention of aliens at higher levels of consciousness and accomplishment (as Star Trek has so lusciously dramatized). Maybe it's achieving what all the above, and the ripples from them have done.
I can't understand why the debut of this movie didn't bring on First Contact. Or, has it? Where are the X-Files? Are they SLEEPING??
Chust Kidding!
What would you expect from an author of a sci fi and a paranormal mystery series who periodically reviews Amish mysteries?
I, myself, am an Anomaly, a Dichotomy, ... and some (though not a "sum") of all of the above.
Linda Shelnutt
Description of Pirates of Silicon Valley
The revolution came when we weren't looking. It happened in a garage. In a dorm room. In countless hours of effort, imagining and intrigue. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates were changing the way the world works, lives and communicates. The event-packed saga of the quirky visionaries who jump-started the future unfolds with exhilarating, cutting-edge style in Pirates of Silicon Valley. Noah Wyle (ER) portrays Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall (The Dead Zone) portrays Gates in this chronicle of the fierce and often humorous battle to rule the fledgling personal computer empire. "The story is almost Shakespearean... it's a tale of lust, greed, ambition, love and hate," writer/director Martyn Burke reflects. And it's a success story unlike any other.This dramatization of the tangled history of Apple Computer and Microsoft, based on a book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, hits enough of the right notes to make its failures all the more frustrating. The script follows the entwined paths of Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates with a pointed sense of the cultural divide between the hip, self-absorbed Apple cofounder and the brilliant alpha geek behind Microsoft's eventual software empire, contrasting the Mac's countercultural underpinnings with the PC's more strait-laced origins. But Pirates of Silicon Valley seemingly can't decide whether it wants to be a serious-minded history of these key figures in the personal computer revolution or a trashy wallow in the more ignoble foibles of its principals. As a result, it falls short of exacting history while never achieving the guilty pleasure it might have.
If Gates has become synonymous with corporate conquest at its most striking, Pirates' interest lies more with Jobs, given a nervous energy and flashes of adolescent selfishness by Noah Wyle, who benefits from a reasonable physical resemblance to the Apple chief. Eyewear and a comb-over do nearly as well for Anthony Michael Hall, who also grafts some of Bill Gates's better-known mannerisms onto his performance and renders Gates as a smart if socially maladroit entrepreneur who, like Jobs, provides the ambition and business savvy to exploit his partner's computing talents. There are a few fanciful touches (Ballmer and Wozniak become Greek choruses, addressing the viewer as they comment on the principals), but the story plays out in straightforward fashion. It's tantalizing to consider how the Apple/PC melodrama might have fared with an edgier, more openly satirical script. --Sam Sutherland
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