It’s not easy being a comedian in a dramatic film. Good thing Seth Rogen nails his performance as Steve Wozniak in the movie Steve Jobs. He talks about how he did not do an impersonation of Steve Wozniak and rather gave the character its own life
Each and every day on the set of Steve Jobs, Seth Rogen was reminded of the modern folklore that surrounds the tech geniuses who emerged from Silicon Valley — including, of course, Jobs himself.
Danny Boyle’s movie, based on an Aaron Sorkin script, is inspired by the life of one of the Valley’s most famous — and sometimes difficult — sons. The tightly knit Valley community, based in the Bay area of San Francisco where Steve Jobs was filmed, is, says Rogen, similar to the Hollywood community he knows so well.
“We shot in San Francisco, which was beautiful, and in Cupertino as well, where the Apple campus was,” recalls Rogen, who plays Steve Wozniak, Jobs’ friend and co-founder of Apple.
“People seemed enthusiastic about it. People were excited that a movie that they felt was going to be really good was getting made about Steve Jobs and Apple. I hadn’t spent a lot of time in the Bay Area in that capacity, but it’s like being from Hollywood. If you grew up in Hollywood, everyone has their stories. Even if you’re an electrician you have a story like, ‘Oh, once my dad fixed Clark Gable’s light switch’ or whatever it is. It’s the same thing in the Bay area. The grips on the movie would be like, ‘Oh you know, I actually was one of the grips for the unveiling of the iMac.’ Even the guy who was doing our behind-the-scenes camera work said, ‘I used to do camera work and Steve Jobs’ company rented some cameras from me when they were launching the NeXT Cube computer.’ That’s what was really neat, the lore of it all in the Bay area. Everyone, no matter what you did, was in some way infatuated and enamoured and connected to the world of it all.”
And all of us, in some way, have had our lives changed by the extraordinary innovations produced by Jobs, Wozniak and their contemporaries.
“I play Steve Wozniak who was the co-founder of Apple Computers and in many ways, you could argue, the person who really conceptualised the idea that computers could be something that a regular person could own and not just like giant companies could own,” says Rogen. “He was friends with Steve Jobs and Wozniak recognised that maybe through this guy he could kind of create a massive revolution of sorts - which they did.”
The film takes place over three acts at different launches as Jobs (Michael Fassbender) prepares to unveil his latest technological innovations to the world. The director describes Sorkin’s screenplay as “185 pages of some of the best dialogue you’ve ever read in your life.”
It begins with the unveiling of the revolutionary Macintosh in 1984, switches to the NeXT Cube launch in 1988 and ends with the iMac presentation in 1998. Each time, as the audience gathers outside eagerly waiting to greet Jobs like a tech rock star, backstage the man himself is revealed in a series of encounters with those closest to him, including Wozniak.
“Yes, they were very cool for that world. In a world where Bill Gates is the other cool person, Steve Jobs was like Robert Plant,” Rogen laughs. “He had a certain style about him and seemed like a guy who would be fun to have a beer with, and I think that put him about 100,000 miles ahead of the game coolness-wise for the tech world at that time. Wozniak literally put on music festivals and he really did hang out with rock stars, which again is hard to imagine especially after meeting him, but there’s photographic evidence.”
Rogen met the real Steve Wozniak several times before and during filming, but he says he was trying not to do an impersonation of him.
“I first and foremost approached the movie as an actor,” he explains. “He doesn’t talk exactly how Woz talks, so it’s not a direct representation of how Woz is, in my opinion. It was helpful to meet him but it wasn’t like I had to study him and try to emulate his every gesture and tick and verbal eccentricities. There were maybe some little things here and there, but overall it was helpful to meet him just to hear his side of the story. I’m very interested in the history of the company and he’s an interesting guy. One could argue that it helped my performance.”
Boyle, Rogen laughs, is one of the most infectiously enthusiastic people he’s ever met. “I’m a huge fan of his and all his movies. I had seen interviews with him and he seemed delightful. In real life, he’s one of the most enthusiastic people I have ever met in my entire life. Just the way he talks. He really buys it, in a good way, and it’s inspiring to work with someone like that because he clearly knows what he is doing, and it makes you more willing to do what he is asking you to do.”
He’d met Fassbender a few times in recent years, and they’d promised that one day they would work together, although Rogen jokes that he thought it would be on a rather different project.
“To me, Michael was my biggest experience of Steve Jobs because Steve Jobs was not someone I had put a huge amount of thought into before doing this movie. It wasn’t that different than working with a lot of the other actors I’ve had one-on-one scenes with. There are moments when you are incredibly focused and there are moments when it is incredibly light and jovial and you’re just kind of hanging out. Fassbender isn’t a method actor who is in character all the time. Overall, we got along very well. We had met several times before and had talked about hoping to work together on something. I did not think it would be a fancy movie,” he laughs. “I thought it would be like a Funny or Die video or something.”
The movie, Steve Jobs, premieres on Sony PIX on January 29, 2017 at 1PM and 9PM.