On July 24, whereupon the Internet first learned that Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for the upcoming Rudin-produced, Fincher-directed Facebook movie would be based on Ben Mezrich’s new book on the founding of the social-networking site, some worried that Mezrich’s history as a fabulist and total lack of access to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg might present a problem. And Janet Maslin’s awesome, blistering review of The Accidental Billionaires in today’s Times does not fill us with hope!
Writes Maslin:
[Mezrich] so enthusiastically favors hot air over specifics that he waits until the end of the book to offer up three little words that speak volumes about Mr. Zuckerberg’s Sphinx-like persona. However shy, vague, withdrawn, affectless and computerlike Mr. Zuckerberg is said by this book to be, he turns out to have business cards that say “I’m CEO — Bitch.†That phrase outweighs all 258 pages of Mr. Mezrich’s stalling. (The last two pages of this 260-page book are devoted to a list of published sources. Mr. Mezrich relied heavily on The Harvard Crimson.) […] The Accidental Billionaires is so obviously dramatized, and so clearly unreliable, that there’s no mistaking it for a serious document.
But what’s worse than a book about Mark Zuckerberg whose primary source is Eduardo Saverin, with whom Zuckerberg had a falling out and traded lawsuits? A book about Mark Zuckerberg filled with writing like this:
Mr. Mezrich churns up Mr. Zuckerberg’s Eureka moments with such inadvertent hilarity that he uses the words “if Balzac had somehow risen from the dead,†envisions Mr. Zuckerberg in a “James Bond-like lair,†adds an imaginary couple’s sexual tryst to complicate Mr. Zuckerberg’s surreptitious efforts to plug his computer cable into a port in a dimly lighted room, and describes the first flow of data as a whiz-bang movie scene full of animated special effects. Then he really hits for the bleachers with a few final flourishes about Mr. Zuckerberg. So: “We almost hear the James Bond theme running through the kid’s head.†And when Mr. Zuckerberg leaves — after the lovers have scampered out of the dark room, laughing of course — we “imagine him noticing, as he goes, that the girl’s floral perfume still hangs, seductively, in the air.â€
The Times also excerpts the book’s first chapter on its website today and, well, poor Aaron Sorkin might have his work cut out for him.
Harvard Pals Grow Rich: Chronicling Facebook Without Face Time [NYT]
First Chapter: ‘The Accidental Billionaires’ [NYT]