Steve Jobs (2015) film: A story told in product launches

Mikey Mioduski (00:02)
Presentation... Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller Study Club. This is Mikey Medusky, co-host, founder of Ghost Ranch Communications, joined by Molly Gagan out on the West Coast, knee deep in rain. Molly, what's going on?

Molly Geoghegan (00:21)
Hello, presentation nation. ⁓ Mikey, thanks. This is exciting. This is a wintry ⁓ day, a wintry episode. And I don't know about you, but around the holidays, I'm always watching more movies, you know, Christmas or otherwise. And we're gonna put on our cozy movie cap for y'all today, ⁓ bit of a Aaron Sorkin storytelling cap, I think too, and a bit of a milestone in our journey towards watching every

Mikey Mioduski (00:43)
Mmm.

Molly Geoghegan (00:51)
Steve Jobs keynote ever, right? Every Steve Jobs product launch. And Mikey, this was your idea. You watched this a few months ago and you were like, ooh, we've never covered this. But Steve Jobs, the film from 2015, Danny Boyle directs Aaron Sorkin writes, we've taken the Aaron Sorkin screenwriting masterclass. ⁓ Go listen to episode 163 back in presentation thinking archives. And so this only felt right.

Mikey Mioduski (00:53)
Yeah, yeah.

Recommend.

Molly Geoghegan (01:20)
and two of our journeys colliding in studying Steve Jobs' presentations and studying Aaron Sorkin's storytelling. so if film, film buffs, I was a film minor, Mikey, you like some film. Listen up. No. If you're, if you're watching this, Mikey's wearing his Hills film glasses. He's wearing his like seventies, ⁓ what do you call those? It's not quite an aviator, but it's a good look. There's, there's the kind of, yeah, the kind of the creeper glasses that are in though. So.

Mikey Mioduski (01:29)
Mm-hmm.

I I'm out of my league here. Yeah, I watch a lot, but you studied this stuff.

Yeah.

creepy yeah

Molly Geoghegan (01:50)
We saw a lot of these in the movie as well and

Mikey Mioduski (01:50)
Yeah, and they were in during these product launches apparently. Yeah. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (01:56)
Michael Fassbender does pull it off. Seth Rogen? What a performance. Go pull it up.

Mikey Mioduski (01:59)
Yeah. Yeah, Rogan is in it. So

where did you see this? I watched it on Amazon Prime. Where'd you find it? Prime Video.

Molly Geoghegan (02:08)
I

watched it, I've enjoyed renting movies from Fandango at home, because it just feels nostalgic. ⁓ I've written. No, we don't. It is two full hours. prep yourself for that. But if you are sick of a little, of the Christmas Rudolph, maybe your kid is playing over and over again and you have two hours to yourself.

Mikey Mioduski (02:12)
Okay, very nice. Yeah, we don't have any promo codes to give you, just track it down if you want to follow along. What is it, a couple hours long? Yeah, and it's Sorkin, so there's a lot of dialogue. That's about all there is. Yeah.

Ha

Molly Geoghegan (02:36)
and you want to watch a hard-hitting, kind of stressful, stressful screenplay as people argue before three important, important product launches throughout Steve Jobs' career. This was, I was very, I was very impressed and we're gonna talk about it. Let's go, Mikey.

Mikey Mioduski (02:40)
Very stressful.

Yeah, yeah, so

okay, and we know, you know, if you're listening, if you're a first timer, what Molly and I do, you know, we work in the presentation space, you probably do too if you're here, ⁓ and we thought, hey, who is known for the best presentations overall? Steve Jobs, commonly cited, so we're like, you know, instead of just regurgitating what everyone keeps saying, maybe we should actually watch his presentations, and so we're on this

Molly Geoghegan (03:11)
Always excited.

Let's study it.

Mikey Mioduski (03:18)
Yeah, we've

assigned ourselves with the task of watching every single one. We watched the IMAIC, what was it, Molly, 1997? Eight? So yeah, and it turns out that is one of the keynotes that is one of the three scenes of this Sorkin movie. So we're like, yo, we gotta talk about this Sorkin because we did study him. Everything we talk about here is always to try to make, in the attempt to make ourselves better communicators and.

Molly Geoghegan (03:23)
Mm-hmm. The name, 1998, yeah, May of 1998.

I'm

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (03:49)
and presentation thinkers. the other, Molly, you mentioned two of them. The Sorkin-Steve Jobs-Venn diagram is overlapping, but we know that Aaron Sorkin is a massive student of Aristotle, right? And he says everything a writer should do, a storyteller should do, should heed the rules of Aristotle, his poetics. And so we, ⁓ this is really the third.

Molly Geoghegan (03:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep, yep.

Thanks

Mikey Mioduski (04:17)
trifecta of a Venn diagram of Sorkin, Aristotle, Steve Jobs. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, come on. Yeah, so, all right, so this came out in 2015, and it was one of those like, the trend lately has been like biopics about living people, which I was like, well, that's too soon, let alone, but this one came out right after, I don't remember when Jobs died, but it came out.

Molly Geoghegan (04:20)
So true.

And a fourth for me, Kate Winslet. Let's go. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, for sure.

biopic, biopic.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (04:46)
quickly like a couple of them did or maybe the Ashton Kutcher one did first.

Molly Geoghegan (04:50)
2011 is when he passed and the Ashton Kutcher one only came out a few years ago. So this was the first film I think post-Humulus, I never can say that word. ⁓ So I do think there was some commentary that is it too soon? That might be, that might have been some commentary.

Mikey Mioduski (04:52)
Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, and, but

I guess the counter to that commentary is, well, this was not meant to be the life story of Steve Jobs. It's truly just a little sliver glimpse into these three moments, which is, I thought, such a creative angle.

Molly Geoghegan (05:16)
Mm hmm. Yeah. This was a sliver. Yeah.

Definitely. I thought that was, I think that's what...

makes this film a little bit different than a lot of biopics we see now where you cover a wide swath of someone's career or life and you see the personal mixing in with the professional and you do see that here but it is in such a specific context and that context is the structure of which is very much lends itself to the three-act structure which Sorkin endorses through Aristotle's Poetics ⁓ of three product launches that throughout his career and one that you said Mikey

Mikey Mioduski (05:55)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (05:57)
that

we've already covered like his actual talk in 1998. And so it opens in the first Macintosh launch in 1984.

And this is so interesting to us as like presentation thinkers of like, here he is like prepping for the presentation. He's getting all these specific directions and the demo isn't gonna work because it like won't load on the big enough screen or the computer. And so there's all these little moments that we're like, this is what we talk about. Like this is what he's dealing with in 1984, getting ready for the computer to try and say hello. And he's super stressed because it's not gonna say hello. And of course he is.

Unfortunately being an asshole about it, but it's really it's Kate Winslet kind of plays his assistant head of marketing person and She's trying to speak sense into him, but he's big visionary and pretty much just Refusing to let any any piece any piece of the vision for this official Macintosh launch go and Mikey we've also covered this on the cast This was a few days after the Super Bowl ran a Macintosh ad

Mikey Mioduski (06:40)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Mm,

yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (07:05)
which

caught a bunch of people's attention.

It was called 1984, very much played on this like, everything's the same in computer world, boring gray PCs. It kind of plays on this like communist scare, right? Like because everybody's like, looks the same. He jokes in the movie that they hired skinheads for this, yikes. And then the Macintosh comes through, it's like the Olympian and crashes with like the rainbow, ⁓ the OG rainbow logo. that was like, people were really talking about this and this was this moment that he wanted to

capitalize on, right? Yeah. Crazy. Stressful opening, right?

Mikey Mioduski (07:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

And I guess this was, was it the original iMac, like a new all-in-one desktop? And it was a big deviation from what actually put Apple in business in the first place, which was the Apple II, right? So that was where all this tension in the company was like, Jobs is trying to push this thing that we don't know there's a market for. Whereas the Apple II is like this hardcore.

Molly Geoghegan (07:53)
Yeah, it-

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Brought in most of the revenue, as they say. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (08:14)
know, like developer friendly kind of instrument and tool. And why don't we just double down on that? Cause it's getting us rich, you know, like we should. So yeah, there was a huge, huge fracture within Apple at that time. And he stuck his neck out and said, no, this, this is the way, you know, and like put it all out there.

Molly Geoghegan (08:17)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Money, yeah, skinniness, Divide, yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

And there was a lot of disagreement. Yeah. It was the original Macintosh. I think before they called it, they'll call it iMac later on, but it was like the OG, that first desktop that was gonna be a closed system, which to... ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (08:36)
The original Macintosh, yeah.

Okay.

There's just Macintosh. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (08:46)
engineers was like very foreign was like we because people were able to build computers at that point on their own with like, you know, the operating systems and the circuit boards and everything. I'm acting like I know, but that's that is and and so it's a big deal to have what he calls end to end control. That was like and as we all know now, Apple does indeed like it's one of their things like you can't use the same cord for a Mac.

Mikey Mioduski (08:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Molly Geoghegan (09:14)
as you do for Windows. And it's one of those frustrating things, but it really has managed to work for them, as we all know now. Yeah, Mikey, what do you think as far as like opening, like, yeah, talk about like going straight into, I remember Sorkin in the masterclass also talks about delivering someone directly into a scene and.

Mikey Mioduski (09:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (09:34)
the hook we can learn from that in B2B storytelling of like get people there get people to the like where you need them to be and show them the stakes pretty much immediately and how do you feel like that's executed in these like first third i would say first 36 minutes before we even get to touch act two

Mikey Mioduski (09:52)
Yeah, I don't know. I was just like, wait, did I miss something? We're like right in it here. And I don't have any problem with that. I loved it. And then too, so what I think it reflects really well is, you know, we can sit here and critique and comment on like every big CEO when they get up and give their product keynote or.

Molly Geoghegan (09:56)
Hard publication. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it got me in.

Mikey Mioduski (10:19)
the talk at CES and whatnot, there's so much, I don't know, scrutiny, so much weight put on these communications. But what this reveals behind the curtain then is like, it is hard to separate business and personal life too, right? I mean, the business, the weight of all the business importance and everything that needed to happen.

Molly Geoghegan (10:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (10:49)
And then he's backstage trying to get ready. And meanwhile, he has this pretty massive, like, personal life thing going on, right? That is like, holy shit. Yeah. And it's just heating up. And we get a glimpse into that and the mania. Like, it's just madness that, yeah, one person is attempting to juggle all this and maybe not doing the best job of it. And I think that's, you know, kind of what the movie's about.

Molly Geoghegan (10:52)
Mm-hmm.

Scandal. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I definitely think at its core it's like humanizing him while also not forgiving the like scandals he was involved in which I didn't know. Okay, I'm...

Mikey Mioduski (11:27)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (11:31)
33 jobs was I only knew him as this like B2B or B2C, this like mythologized kind of dude and genius, but he had a lot of scandals you guys and maybe wasn't the best dad and that's what a lot of this movie wrestles with, but in a really kind and I think yeah, humanizing way. And I do think that line too.

Both because that's the other thing Sorcan talks a lot about. You want to be able to root for a main character while also understanding like, ⁓ I also have like, I'm also imperfect. ⁓ The line ⁓ at the end, he says to his daughter who he's had this tumultuous relationship with, ⁓ he says, I'm poorly made. and that's like, I think such a great, you know, it could apply to like, he's such an engineer brain, right? Where I'm like, that could be referencing so many computer kind of.

Mikey Mioduski (11:58)
Mm-hmm.

Right?

⁓ Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (12:22)
But like that only a computer engineer would say that in that in that way but I thought that was such a great line because he's recognizing his flaws and Kind of asking for forgiveness. Maybe do you think with his daughter on the roof? But and yeah, so I thought that was just I think that's the core of the the apple core of the of the movie is like his his personal coming into his professional

Mikey Mioduski (12:22)
huh.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (12:47)
and how blurry that is for him because he does, I mean, one could argue he treats the Apple products and his career there as ⁓ akin to him, right? Like that's his baby as well. And that often got a lot more attention than I think the family that he should have been tending to at home kind of thing.

Mikey Mioduski (13:03)
Yeah.

And with help from Chad GPT, course. When I was like, all right, Sorkin, Steve Jobs meets Aristotle, like tell me. And that is on point, Molly, he's like tragic flaw, ha-martia. ⁓ So Aristotle says the tragic hero falls because of a flaw, not because he's evil. So it's not saying this dude's jerk, but it was that balance. His need for absolute control ⁓ combined with his emotional avoidance is his tragic flaw.

Molly Geoghegan (13:10)
Yeah, let's hear it.

Mm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (13:36)
⁓ It

Molly Geoghegan (13:37)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (13:37)
created some amazing things, but it also created some sadness in other areas.

Molly Geoghegan (13:43)
Yeah.

Definitely and I think it's almost symbolic Mikey so each act that if we're calling this a three act structure of the movie which I think it really commits to is goes through the there's different product launches and before each product launch like up to the minute and then the second of like like Steve you're needed on stage so stressful I could never but ⁓ I think it's almost symbolic like was it realist was he realistically confronting

Mikey Mioduski (13:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, so stressful.

Molly Geoghegan (14:10)
you know, his baby mama, his, you know, former co-workers, the CEO that fired him from Apple, was he confronting all of these people every single time? Yeah, the journalist is always there covering it. Was he always getting, having those exact experiences before the product launch? Probably not, but this symbolic kind of like, for a movie, like such a cool tool to kind of put them in that setting. ⁓ You know, like he's not getting confronted by, you know,

Mikey Mioduski (14:10)
Right.

Ha

huh.

The journalist is right there covering him. He's like, great.

Molly Geoghegan (14:40)
almost remind me of is a Christmas Carol, which is also commits to this rule of threes where you're visited by the ghost of Christmas past, present and future. And he really is confronted by ghosts in a lot of ways for each before each of these big moments of his life. And then he has like the reckoning, right? So, and we're left with this more positive product lunch in the final scene where he has returned to Apple because he has fired.

Mikey Mioduski (14:43)
Ugh, yeah, that's right.

Right.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (15:06)
And he

Mikey Mioduski (15:07)
Right.

Molly Geoghegan (15:07)
and that's the one we covered where the iMac was the first one that really took off and Kate Winslet's character Whose name I cannot remember but it's Kate Winslet predicts head of marketing that they're gonna sell, you know 90,000 units in the first three months. It's gonna look like things are finally Taking off in the way. had always dreamed 15 years later from when we opened so that's kind of this that's the arc that we're working towards and the payoff is

Mikey Mioduski (15:14)
Hmm

show.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (15:32)
⁓ What do you think about, like, they never really show him actually get on stage. ⁓ What do you think about that?

Mikey Mioduski (15:37)
Dude, I... Yeah.

I assume it's a really... I don't know. It's that lean forward, lean back, the rise in the fall. ⁓ It leaves you wanting to see that. But also we know, we've seen it. A lot of people have already seen it. It might, you know what, leave a little curiosity in your head.

Molly Geoghegan (15:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (16:07)
⁓ Or give the audience the benefit of like, hey, we trust that you're pretty smart. You you've probably seen those. That's, we can't like recreate that. Like that is what it was. So let's dramatize the behind the scenes that you might not have known about, right?

Molly Geoghegan (16:14)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's so true, actually.

Mm-hmm. Yeah,

I like the idea that all of the Steve Jobs keynotes, graduation commencements are out there on the internet and you can access those yourself. But what you never saw was these behind the scenes conversations, which again, yeah, might not have happened right before you got on stage, but I think that's what the movie's giving you is that pull behind the curtain in the...

Mikey Mioduski (16:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (16:49)
specific structure of like, here's this little snippet. And in that way, for me, like as we were first talking about a few years after his death, it feels a little less invasive in a way, because it's just, it's cutting into that specific lens of like just before a product launch, here's some things like we're working, you know, might've been working through. ⁓ And, yeah, it's really, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (17:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. it reflects

really well strategic, like what is the corporate initiative at the time, right? Like that's what all the buildup is about, is like we need this to happen. And so here's how we're approaching it, ⁓ less about how the delivery went, but like, yeah, it's fun.

Molly Geoghegan (17:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Yes, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (17:37)
if you're at all into history or corporate history to see ⁓ these linear effects or the gambles that they may have made that maybe didn't pay off, maybe caused him to go to next, start his new thing, which he knew we find out, building this beautiful black cube in Act Two that was gonna be this overly designed, ⁓ really, really, really high-end

Molly Geoghegan (17:48)
Mm Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Talk about playing the long game.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (18:06)
desktop computer that Next was saying would be great for education, like great for classrooms, and yet it's $13,000. Like they over-engineered it, over-designed it. Nobody could afford that thing. ⁓ Right, right. But then sort of he reveals to Joanna, Joe, yeah, his chief of staff, Kate Winslet, that he's like, yeah, I knew that.

Molly Geoghegan (18:13)
Mm-hmm.

yeah, crazy.

Yeah, this is 19, still in the 80s. Like, yeah, that was not way too expensive.

Okay, Winslet.

Mikey Mioduski (18:36)
And here's the deal, he's like, what? Apple's gonna have to buy us back, because like this is, they need the hardware, we need the software, boom, it's gonna happen, I'm gonna get billions of shares back, total control, and it happened. And that leads us into act three.

Molly Geoghegan (18:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

It happened just like he said, yeah. And then

something that I wanna talk about the transitions between these two acts, even though they don't show him going on stage, they usually end with the biggest or the most impactful conversation with whoever is confronting him and in his life at that point. But the transitions play out in headlines to catch you up, things you kinda already know, but they're like, okay, so he went out and pretty zented at next, knowing that this product wasn't really gonna do what he set out.

Mikey Mioduski (18:59)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (19:21)
like what it seemed like he set out for it to do on paper, but like his long game was to come back to Apple and to have that software or have that design sold back. And he does, that's exactly what happens. And so he transitions through those headlines. I'm sure they use like actual, actual little like papers running through kind of thing. So then that just catches you up and gets, and then boom, before you know it, now it's 1998. We're back in Cupertino and he's gonna launch the iMac, which is the third and final.

Mikey Mioduski (19:46)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (19:50)
So I liked those transitions that were like, yeah, okay, that's how it went essentially. Like hope the product launch went well. I write from my iPhone, like on letter body. Like that's literally it. know that this becomes successful, but it's cool to see the trials and tribulations to get there because the span of time from act one to act two is 15 years. It's a really long chess game to play and a lot of emotional turmoil, I think along the way, burned bridges.

Mikey Mioduski (20:11)
Right.

Molly Geoghegan (20:19)
Yeah, I just really thought that was cool. Mikey, another moment that I really loved is, and he does this consistently when someone's like asking him a question directly, and I don't know how true of course this was in his actual life, but a cool tool by Sorkin that's frequently used is that he responds in some kind of grandiose metaphor where he'll reference like

A famous composer that talked about the way that he led the orchestra and how even though he didn't play the individual instruments, he said, I'm playing the ⁓ orchestra. He says that to Seth Rogen in Act Two. ⁓ Steve Wozniak character, yeah, who was his collaborator.

Mikey Mioduski (20:50)
Mmm.

Yeah. Was.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (20:58)
Yeah, cause Steve Wozniak is calling him out and says, you don't do the design, you don't code, like you're not doing any of this, you're not marketing. And he's like, I'm playing the orchestra, right? He's the bigger vision guy, which one could argue like how, what kind of talent is that? But I think that is, there is a certain kind of talent there. But there's always this kind of like interesting metaphor that he...

Mikey Mioduski (21:09)
Yeah, he's the composer dude, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (21:21)
in a way, deflects a question, but also answers it in his own way. Another moment that I really liked when he's talking to Joanna about his long game with Next is they project onto the wall behind him. And this is such a cool visual storytelling thing. The story about the satellite mission. ⁓

I forget exactly which one it is, but he's again, it's this story of like going out into space. And so it's this grandiose story he's like drawing inspiration from or aligning himself with, right? And he, yeah, and he, as he's explaining that to Joanna, the visual story is projected onto the wall behind him that we as viewers get to see. So I like these sort of fantastical elements that are sometimes used to.

Mikey Mioduski (21:43)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (22:01)
in a very, very dialogue heavy, like this is mostly just a movie of conversations, right? So for that visual to be present was really fun. Very goofy, very goofy guy.

Mikey Mioduski (22:06)
Mm-hmm.

was cool. And then the

best visual of all, the black mock turtleneck emerges in 1998. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (22:19)
Yes, yes. That was a great outfit. He's dabbled in ⁓ his own

Steve Jobs wear. Me too, I love a good black turtleneck. And yeah, he really made a, maybe he finally took like a branding page out of Joanna's book and was like, this is what I wanna.

Mikey Mioduski (22:30)
That's right. ⁓ Yeah. And the great New Balance is-

yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (22:42)
This is what

Mikey Mioduski (22:42)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (22:43)
I want to be known for something in the the early onslaught of Y2K. But yeah, really as far as his presentation, Mikey, we've talked a lot about like his actual in the 1998 talk, there's.

He uses a shark image to show like the crisp images and stuff that the iMac can procure. ⁓ And we see a little moment of that in the movie where he's asking someone for like, he's like, we need a different shark, need a different shark. And the guy says, he's like, I don't know what's different about this shark than the other 38 I just found for you, but here it is. Like, what do you think of ⁓ his story screen and stage? Like the asks he has are so specific.

Mikey Mioduski (23:12)
Yeah.

huh.

Yeah, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (23:26)
He asks for the exit lights to go out so he can have a full blackout effect. Yeah, the attention to detail is commendable and maybe neurotic, right? Like that's the level of presenter that he was. So weird.

Mikey Mioduski (23:29)
I know.

Yeah.

I love it. Yeah, just the total

control, um, insisting on, I don't know, and getting what he wanted, you know? Like, the Hello World demo, it was life or death to him, and he wasn't gonna settle, uncompromised at all. Um, even threatened a dude, you know? Like, um, and yeah, and like, the exit light on the stage was bothering him, and they're like, yeah, that's like a fire code, we can't like, turn that off.

Molly Geoghegan (23:47)
control freak for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yes. A little too far.

Mikey Mioduski (24:12)
and then it pissed him off. Eventually they're like, oh, we figured it out for you. And I don't know, yeah, that's an extreme. And I'll track this down, Molly, because we had a really good speaker, or interview a couple years ago, we were just talking, like, what do you recommend for someone new going, every time you go to give a new presentation? And I just remember that the phrase they said was like,

Molly Geoghegan (24:15)
you

Yeah, yeah I know.

Mikey Mioduski (24:42)
Be a bit of a diva. You can and you should. If you don't like how they're doing your notes in the downstage monitor, just tell them and tell them how you like it. But to do that, you have to show up early. You gotta practice. You can't just show up and then expect it to be there. You go, you walk around the room, you get a view, you decide what are the things I'd like to optimize to make this the best talk I can give.

Molly Geoghegan (24:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (25:12)
But you saw like, he would, it sounds like just practice unrelentingly. Even until 10 minutes before, he's still rehearsing dialogue, clicking, clicking, clicking. Even when people are like, yo Steve, like we gotta let people in. You know, and who knows if that's true, but it sounds like that was the gist of it, right?

Molly Geoghegan (25:32)
I'm sure there were some moments, because we're only seeing three of these product launches, so...

I would imagine Aaron Sorkin interviewing people that like worked with Jobs and you know, it's like, yeah, there's these, an amalgamation of those moments for sure. Like that's gotta be, yeah. And I mean, there's possible, you can, you're allowed to have like that attention to detail and feeling comfortable in your presentation for sure. You don't have to be, you don't have to be threatening people like Steve Jobs or changing your shirt or whatever with a member of the audience. Like minutes before that was another thing where he wanted a specific shirt with the flop so he could pull the floppy disk out of it.

Mikey Mioduski (25:39)
Yeah, yeah.

huh. Yeah.

Yeah. Little neurotic. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (26:06)
like in, yeah, such a specific way. He

Mikey Mioduski (26:06)
Yeah. He's a showman. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (26:09)
was a showman for sure. And he was a diva. I would definitely assign that for sure. So if Steve Jobs is allowed to be that kind of diva, you can be like, hey, can we change this lighting just a little? Like you're allowed to ask questions. So just if anyone's out there thinking about.

Mikey Mioduski (26:12)
Yeah. huh. Yeah.

And

you know, Molly, like classic Sorkin, he characterizes drama or like storytelling as like intention and obstacle. Somebody wants something, something is getting in the way of them from getting it, right? Like what do you, so like scene three, act three, what is it that he wants at that point?

Molly Geoghegan (26:37)
yes.

⁓ man, that's classic.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, okay, let's think about this. Intention, I think in fact it's the same throughout act one, two, and three. They shift, I guess, slightly, but by act three he's back with Apple, he's launching the iMac, which as we know is that beautiful, should have said this, the teal translucent desktop that his daughter says, that thing looks like Judy Jetson's Easy Bake Oven. Such a funny line. ⁓ But I think his intention...

Mikey Mioduski (26:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (27:18)
in that moment, because he really believes he's going to change the world, to get these computers, to convince people that computers are accessible for the every person. That was a big mission for him, which is commendable, right? And his head of marketing, Kate Winslet, she says that most of the purchases projected for this were going to be for first-time computer buyers, which was like his whole thing. ⁓ And even another percentage of them were going to come from people that

already owned a PC or Windows product. And so I think his intention without being too dramatic is like he thinks he's gonna change the world in Act Three because he kind of does. And he even alludes to there's this other little moment again, with his personal when he's confronting his daughter on the rooftop and she has the big chunky Walkman as she's walking away, the listening to music and she's always had that. And he's like, I'm gonna put songs in your pocket. So, know, I'm so sick of seeing that like ugly.

Mikey Mioduski (28:09)
Yeah. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (28:17)
chunky Walkman and he's like 500, you know, a thousand songs between a 500 and a thousand songs. I'm going to get it in your pocket. And we all know that's, and it starts, you know, you're like, all right, I, I get it. You're like, yeah, totally. And we all know that to be true. Yeah, totally. Yeah. He's denying her tuition. Come on, Steve, what the hell? Um, and so yeah, it's just, there's, um, there's this, I think intention is like grandiose, like world changer in the third act visionary. I don't know yet.

Mikey Mioduski (28:27)
She's like, cool, dad. Pay for my college. Yeah.

Mm, yeah. Visionary. Yeah, big. Change the world.

Get a Mac into the hands of like every consumer who doesn't have one.

Molly Geoghegan (28:51)
Yeah,

and I think the obstacle truly in the third act is his personal ego there where he's like, because Kate Winslet's character who has been with him for the two decades been like her ask and her anger with him is make things right with Lisa, like your daughter who you've kind of fucked it up with. And so you can't like, you can't be the visionary without being, without addressing your like own personal demons maybe. So that's how I see the third act specifically, intention and obstacle. But, yeah, there's a...

There's always a heady obstacle. There's a heady intention and a heady obstacle for him in every moment. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (29:25)
Yeah. And

yeah, and sometimes you and I, like in the seven plots kind of stuff, know, a lot of time the obstacles are literal, like monsters or external villains, but it can all, in like maybe in more Aristotelian drama, they can be more like ethical or like moral kind of dilemmas. And so yeah, it's like he, he returns in Act Three as the, the king is back, you know?

Molly Geoghegan (29:34)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (29:54)
but then has that realization like the cost of the throne was, were some of these relationships that he's really stressed.

Molly Geoghegan (29:55)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and there's several, there's two of like his former collab, yeah, there's two former collaborators that essentially they're like, you know, like I'm rooting for you, Steve, but like, we won't be friends again, kind of. And so he like kind of loses, yeah, the cost of the throne was like some lost relationships and certainly seeing the cost of like his daughter, like a lot of anger towards him and yet justifiably so. And ultimately like needing to wrestle with like, yeah, apologizing and his ego and what.

Mikey Mioduski (30:05)
and fatherhood in general, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's sick.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (30:32)
what it costs for him to get there, you know? So, yeah, I know. then, yeah, such a cool, I looked up and then of course, you know, I was looked up all this, I was like, what's his daughter doing now? She wrote a book, she wrote a book, I'll plug it in the spice cabinet ⁓ called Small Fry, it's a memoir and that's what he used to call her. And so it's about her kind of experience with him. she does emphasize that he like, talk about a neurodivergent fellow.

Mikey Mioduski (30:34)
Yeah, yeah. Well.

yeah. Yeah.

Huh. Aww.

Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Molly Geoghegan (30:59)
I think he was extremely neurodivergent

and struggled socially. And so it's unsurprising that I think ⁓ there was so much like hardship and tumultuousness in his relationships. Crazy. Okay, as far as story, screen and stage of the movie, if you haven't listened before, Mikey and I love to talk about the storytelling, the screen and the stage. this can, in a film world, this can translate to the mise en scene, the visual elements, the color, the lighting. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (31:15)
man.

Molly Geoghegan (31:28)
Aaron Sorkin's story, I mean, this is just such a story, script driven, dialogue driven story for me. And even though it so dialogue heavy, I was really gripped. Mikey, what do you think? Story, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (31:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, same deal. I think just because it wasn't the expected cradle-dl-grave telling of someone's life, but just a unique take on three little vignettes that had a spine to them. mean, of course, it's like Aaron Sorkin. It's a 10. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (31:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think, yeah,

I think it's an Aaron Sorkin, like, ⁓ like, yeah. And if you've seen the social network and you liked it, this was another like, flawed visionary kind of ⁓ like hero fallen from grace, but like working to do something big, bigger than himself. And I think if you liked that, you'll love this for sure, yeah. It's a.

Mikey Mioduski (32:05)
Yeah, I think you have to know what you're getting into. You're like, all right, it's not action.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then screen, visual storytelling. You had a good, yeah, I think ⁓ they again got creative, like you said, in ways, hey, you can only show so much like two people fighting, you know, back and forth via dialogue. So I think, I don't know, there was certainly mood created with the lighting and just the dynamics and.

Molly Geoghegan (32:32)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (32:55)
And then it was like the interruptions, like, I don't know, there's just like people, like yeah, there was no just like restful moments, especially.

Molly Geoghegan (33:00)
yeah, constant interruptions.

Stacking

the stakes constantly and like even like I think yeah as far as like it wasn't directly on screen But so there'd be conversation interrupted conversation interrupted conversations the stakes getting higher with each conversation all the while that the time is ticking down for him to be like okay ten minutes till stage, know, five minutes like 30 seconds and so I think that screen like that

Mikey Mioduski (33:10)
Yeah.

huh.

I know

Molly Geoghegan (33:31)
And as those conversations, I don't know if you noticed this, as it got closer, you'd get closer and closer to faces as it got closer to the show time. So it started a little wider. You'd see the kind of general gist of the backstage or wherever they were and his daughter's walking around with her walkman or something. But then as the time would get closer, so there's just a cool visual effect. It's like we'd get closer and closer on faces, which is cool.

Mikey Mioduski (33:46)
Mmm.

Like, so what

is that called? Like the crop or the, like the, what do you call that? Like how zoomed in you are? Zoom? Okay. So you're like more up, up in someone's face or like tighter, tighter frames.

Molly Geoghegan (33:56)
Yeah, yeah, totally the zoom and this the cinema this is cinematography cinematography choice. Yeah. And

And just generally speaking in film, like the closer you get to someone's face, the more emotional it is, right? Because we're looking at micro expressions. We're not looking at like a whole scene. And so it becomes a more, it's more intimate to be close to someone's face, right? So there's like, we're getting more more intimate the closer we are to show time every single time. So that's just a cool, I noticed that with each iteration was fun. And then I would love to share, this is not an original thought. I only learned by reading on letterbox, but Danny Boyle,

Mikey Mioduski (34:12)
⁓

Yeah.

Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (34:37)
director chose to shoot in different types of film for each act to align with the level of technology that would have been out in 1984, 1988, and then 1998 later. And so if you go back and look, like the digital quality is a little bit grainier with the first one, and then it kind of gets a little more upgraded. The lighting's a little different. And then I think he shoots on digital in the last one instead of film, which would have been

Mikey Mioduski (34:37)
Mm-hmm.

no way.

Molly Geoghegan (35:06)
present for 1998. So it's just cool to see. It's an interesting choice to move through those levels of film technology as the computer technology also changes. And that's a screen, visual choice that helps the storytelling move along. Fun fact. ⁓ And then stage, that's, I guess, the actors, right? We've never done that with a movie.

Mikey Mioduski (35:22)
That's cool. Yeah. What is stage like? Yeah. I

know.

Molly Geoghegan (35:31)
I mean, Michael Fassbender didn't win an Oscar, he was nominated for this and it was only because it was Leo DeKalb's year finally. Oh, I forget which one it is, the one where he's like solo in the wilderness or something. Yeah, but that was his year finally that Leo DeKalb won. And so I do think he probably would have won the Oscar if he had not. Yeah. I'm sure one of a few things now. We'll look and see.

Mikey Mioduski (35:35)
He was, okay.

Is it the... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, that's cool it got nominated. Did it win anything?

Okay. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (36:02)
And ⁓ one of my favorite letterbox reviews, just a shout out, is just says Steve Jabs.

Because that's just, there's a lot of jabbing from Steve. I loved that. Very fun, very fun. I gave it.

Mikey Mioduski (36:15)
Yeah, yeah. It has a, for what it's worth,

an 85 % on the tomato meter for rotten tomatoes. It's certified fresh.

Molly Geoghegan (36:27)
Certified Fresh, go check it out ⁓ if you want to consider other family's problems that aren't your own during this holiday season. Let's see, 28 wins and 117 nominations. So tons of accolades there for sure, including best performance by an actress in a supporting role by Kate for like the Oscar, same with Michael Fassbender in the leading role. Tons of BAFTA awards. Kate won for that one. Critics Choice Awards.

Mikey Mioduski (36:40)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. She did.

Molly Geoghegan (36:55)
Lots of just nominees. Looks like Michael Fassbender didn't win for anything there. Wow, bummer. he won for the Irish Film and Television Awards. There you go. Yeah, that's what matters. Yeah, fun.

Mikey Mioduski (37:01)
Nubbed. Yes!

Barry the lead, yeah. All right. Well, we did it. ⁓ Go check

it out. Shout out Kate Winslet. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (37:13)
Presentation Thinking, Interest Aligning.

Let us know if there's another movie that combines Mikey and I's specific loves of Steve Jobs talks, Aaron Sorkin storytelling, and Aristotle. that's, that's, I'm waiting. Stressful dialogue, yeah, stressful keynotes, yeah. And you can find us on at Presentation Thinking.

Mikey Mioduski (37:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, and high stressful keynotes. Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (37:39)
on Instagram and at Ghost Ranch PPT on LinkedIn. If there's a favorite Steve Jobs or just other visionary kind of leader talk that we haven't covered, we'd love to get into it. Also, if you have any fun Steve Jobs lore and facts, yeah, it's all, was just adding to the catalog for us. So fun.

Mikey Mioduski (37:55)
⁓ point is to the people who know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's do it. All right.

Well, Molly. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (38:04)
We got a space cap. We'll link everything in the space cabinet.

Mikey Mioduski (38:07)
We

will, if I don't talk to you.

Molly Geoghegan (38:11)
Happy holidays.

Mikey Mioduski (38:11)
Presentation

nation. Hope you had a happy holidays. It's gonna be a great new year. Thank you for tuning in and until next time, keep on pitching.

Molly Geoghegan (38:21)
Keep on

pitching.