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Analysis: Overcoming Narrative Challenges – The Social Network (2010)

The fictionalised account of the birth of social media platform Facebook provides an opportunity to look at how to successfully address some common problems that can arise when dramatizing an episode from history.

Director: David Fincher

Screenwriter: Aaron Sorkin 

Script source: Script Slug

Based on: The non-fiction book, The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook, by Ben Mezrich.

Synopsis:

*Spoilers* Harvard, 2003. After being dumped by a girl he likes, socially awkward undergrad Mark Zuckerberg uses his computer programming skills to create a website that rates the women on campus by their looks. While the site gets him into trouble, it catches the attention of the monied Winklevoss twins, undergrads, who want to set up a campus dating site. Zuckerberg agrees to help develop the Winklevoss’ site, but quickly realises the potential of the idea of putting the entire college social network online.

Zuckerberg sets about working on a rival site, with the help of his business-minded best friend, Eduardo Saverin. Zuckerberg leads the Winklevoss’ to believe he is developing their site, but then launches his own site behind their backs. TheFacebook quickly becomes a success and Zuckerberg expands the site to other college campuses.

The founder of disruptive music site, Napster, Sean Parker, finds out about the site and contacts Zuckerberg. Despite Saverin’s scepticism, Zuckerberg follows Parker to Palo Alto, where he quickly gets seduced by the party lifestyle and mingles with the kinds of people who snubbed him back at Harvard. Parker opens the door to more funding and tries to get Saverin pushed out.

Contracts are drawn up incorporating Facebook, leaving Saverin vulnerable to getting his stock share diluted. He duly ends up with essentially no financial interest in the company.

The disputes with Saverin and the Winklevoss twins lead to separate legal cases, with the depositions giving each party the opportunity to tell their stories.

Analysis:

This analysis will focus on how Sorkin tackled some of the problems that adapting the source material for the screen presented.

These are:

  1. an unsympathetic protagonist
  2. a story that takes place over a period of several years
  3. a real-life tale with an uncinematic ending

It should be noted that while the film credits the source as Mezrich’s book, there are some conflicting stories about the working relationship between Sorkin and the author, detailed in an article by Marshall Deutelbaum for the Journal of Screenwriting. What seems to be agreed, however, is that Sorkin came on board at the stage at which all that had been produced was a 14-page book proposal and conducted the research and writing processes in parallel with the development of the book.

Unsympathetic protagonist

“…I was telling a true story, but very quickly the people became characters to me and not historical figures.” Sorkin

To put it bluntly, the fictionalised Zuckerberg is a jerk. Or, more accurately, as pointed out by one of the characters, he’s trying very hard to be one. This is a problem, given that he his central to the plot. Sorkin gets around this in the same way as many other writers faced with a similar problem – he makes Zuckerberg relatable.

Right from the start, we understand that Zuckerberg may be a computer genius and a grade-A smart-ass, but he’s also socially awkward and wants to belong. He’s not one of the cool kids. He has trouble holding on to a girl and yearns to become part of Harvard’s most exclusive student club. It is these factors that drive his actions and allow us to find something sympathetic about this character, who acts in some pretty unsympathetic ways as the story progresses.

It also helps that while Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook and therefore the central character, much of the narrative burden is shouldered by Saverin, a more sympathetic everyman who sees through Sean Parker’s superficial bravado and gets screwed over by his best friend.

Elongated timeline

“…life doesn’t play itself out in a series of connected scenes that form a narrative.” Sorkin

The real-life events played out over a few years, which, if structured in a linear way, can lead to a flabby narrative and a loss of dramatic focus. However, Sorkin gets around this by anchoring the story in the two depositions. This serves to give the effect of condensing the events down to a single day.

This then runs the risk of creating an overly talky and static piece involving lawyers firing questions. Again, Sorkin uses this to his advantage, as the screenplay (and film) effectively blends scenes of the static depositions and flashbacks to the dramatized events unfolding to create the idea that the story occurred within a short timeline. The depositions are presented as happening simultaneously with different participants, rather than occurring over several days. While this sounds like the recipe for a muddled and hard-to-follow narrative, in fact the opposite is true. As Deutelbaum notes:

“By reframing the events detailing the creation of Facebook as depositions given over a single day, Sorkin condenses the novel’s two years’ events into an easily understood narrative spanning a single day.”

(Note, by the way, how Deutelbaum describes the source text as a ‘novel’. Mezrich has disputed that it’s a fictionalised work, highlighting that he used both on-the-record court documents and conversations with Eduardo in putting the book together.)

Two crucial words that Deutelbaum uses to describe Sorkin’s work to develop the source material are ‘shape’ and ‘coherence’. He also describes how Sorkin invented: “entirely new actions to fill out logical gaps of causation in Mezrich’s text” (italics added).

Causation is a term that usually makes an appearance early on in screenwriting manuals and lessons. It simply means that events don’t happen in a vacuum; they happen because something causes them to happen. For example, if you leave the house without an umbrella and it rains, you’ll likely get wet. If you remember your umbrella or it doesn’t rain, you’ll stay dry.

Events or actions in screenplays need to maintain this cause-and-effect principle. In TSN, Sorkin fills in the book’s causative gaps, such as writing a scene in which a classmate grills a disinterested Zuckerberg about whether a girl in his class has a boyfriend. The questions trigger a lightbulb moment for Zuckerberg, who realises his site needs a ‘relationship status’ option, so people can find out for themselves if someone is single.

Non-cinematic ending

“…there is a difference between a non-fiction movie and a documentary. There’s a difference between a non-fiction movie and journalism.” Sorkin

The legal disputes in TSN do not culminate in an electric ‘you can’t handle the truth!’ courtroom climax in the style of A Few Good Men (1992). Instead, we learn by way of text inserts that the wronged parties were paid off and the matter was quietly resolved, with non-disclosure agreements all around.

So, instead, we essentially leave the now billionaire Zuckerberg where we found him, trying to connect with the girl who dumped him. Only this time, rather than annoying her at a bar, he’s constantly refreshing her Facebook page to see if she’s accepted his ‘friend’ request. Life has moved on professionally, but personally little has changed.

The lesson? A low-key ending can be just as powerful as an explosive climax, as long as it is complete, emotionally satisfying and in keeping with what’s come before.

In this case, the behemoth that is Facebook ultimately got started because a socially awkward but highly talented computer programmer got mad at a girl for dumping him. It’s by no means a flattering character portrait but it does bring the story full circle.

Final thoughts on TSN and the fact-based screenplay

One of the crucial distinctions to make when discussing the fact-based film is whether to treat the project as representing history in the form of a screen story or as a fictional film based on (or inspired by) historical events.

In the former, the driving force is maintaining factual accuracy, while in the latter, it’s shaping a dramatic narrative. One approach risks sacrificing drama; the other usually sacrifices historical fidelity.

In TSN, Sorkin presents us with overlapping ‘truths’ structured around two depositions. Each of the main characters gets a chance to ‘run with the ball’ and tell their own story. It’s a clever device that uses the potential problems outlined above to the advantage of the screenplay.

Rather than sticking to a traditional narrative, Sorkin plays with the ‘truth’ and allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

In his article, Deutelbaum discusses the process of ‘(re)interpretation and (re)creation’ as it applies to TSN. The essential idea is that the source story and material are not just adapted for the screen but broken down into parts, fleshed out, and reconstructed in a narrative form that puts the demands of cinema first.

Sorkin clearly approached TSN as a fictional project inspired by historical events, as he did his other fact-based projects, such as Moneyball (2011), Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) and Steve Jobs (2015).

This meant respecting the real-life counterparts and not doing anything to rile up the lawyers, but freely adapting the material and adding in scenes where necessary to serve the strongest dramatic story. For his efforts on TSN, Sorkin duly picked up the Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe.

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