The Steve Jobs Monograph

BC Wallin (Ben) has finally done what he has threatened to do for years and that is write THE book on the film STEVE JOBS. Bringing together a group of great writers he has taken the film by Danny Boyle and pulled it apart and layed it at your feet in ways you probably never thought of.

Okay- full disclosure- I know Ben. I have known him for almost two decades ,since we met in the Tribeca screening room over Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Grill. We have seen countless movies together, watched Spike Lee and his brother talk for several hours about his old neighborhood and we've had hours of discussion about movies. Ben, whether he likes it or not, is a card-carrying friend and member of the Unseen Films family. He is also a man with knowledge of movies that will blow your mind when you sit down to talk to him. That said, there is zero bias in this review and other than the fact that I read it as soon as my copy arrived from Amazon, I have not spared any slings or arrows (I simply didn't need to use them). I reviewed the book as I would any other piece of art that appears here at Unseen Films.

Knowing him for so long means that I have been kidding him about his obsession with STEVE JOBS since he first saw the film. I had thought that  he was at the press screening of it at the New York Film Festival, but his second piece in the monograph said that wasn't the case. I know he saw it soon after the festival, and it has been downhill ever since his obsession with the film became a running way to gently pick on him for a decade.  (That was until SPEED RACER became a second obsession- but that's another film and another monograph that is coming soon to a bookstore near you). 

Ben knows everything you can know about STEVE JOBS short of personally interviewing every member of the cast and crew. I seriously think that short of putting everyone who ever had anything to do with the film into a trash compactor and making a single being, Ben knows more about the film than anyone else on earth. As a result, it isn't surprising that Ben would not only write a book on the film but also find likeminded people to go with him on this journey. 

THE STEVE JOBS MONOGRAPH is an excellent book. It's as a great look at the making of the film, the man its about, as well as the ideas the film is trying to express. It's everything you wanted to know (and possibly didn't want to know) but were afraid to ask.

And I am deadly serious about it being everything. For example, there is a long discussion about Jobs signature look and where it came from. The discussion also wanders through a long discussion of Indian fabric and Gandhi's call for people to make their own cloth. (its way more interesting than that sentence reads). There are side discussions of things that you genuinely are not expecting to appear in a film about a business giant on three dates when he presents his latest product.

The monograph also wanders a bit far afield with a chunk of the Camera section talking about the different cameras used in all his films, with a longish digression into how he shot 28 DAYS LATER. It's interesting, but it also makes you wonder if Devan Scott, who wrote that section, is working on a book on Boyle and his films since it seems to  belong in a work on all of Boyle's films and not on one just on STEVE JOBS. The section is quite good, it just seems out of place.

The one section of the book that didn't really work for me is Scout Tafoya's section on Danny Boyle. Written in the style of one of his excellent Unloved films (he looks at underappreciated films) the section frequently reads like he is a hipster film fan arguing about esoteric points that you find in a short video essay that you let wash over you but which you don't fully engage with. On the page, where you are reading actual words, we are more engaged and we want more meat than in a video essay. Tayfoya is capable of doing that and his piece has moments of that in the first half but at the same time, in the second I was feeling that his points were something he was coming up with because they sounded good at the time rather than they was fully thought out. The case in point is repeated discussion/comparrison of "niche" director Peter Greenaway to the works of Boyle. Having lived in the world of Greenaway for almost four decades I'm kind of left wondering why, of all the filmmakers out there, Tafoya would have chosen Greenaway, Partly because intodays world I doubt most people are going to have any sort of working knowledge of the Welsh director. Worse, I just don't see the connections he's trying to make. (With apologies to Mr. Tafoya I'm going to leave it there because this piece is not on his piece but on the monograph as a whole, though some of his questions about Greenaway can be answered in his various lectures about cinema being dead)

But lest you think I'm nitpicking the book, I'm not. Most of the sections soar and speak volumes beyond just STEVE JOBS. I have no notes. Sarah Jae Lieber's section on Performance is masterful. Her discussion of the performances made me say "wow" several times as I finally understood certain actor's tricks. It opened up my understanding to film Performance on a larger level. Charlie Brigden's section on Music is outstanding. Its a section that explains how film scoring is done and how songs are chosen. The long discussion of the versions of Both Sides Now reveals how picking the right version can alter how your film plays. Alexander B Joy's discussion on how the film was editted and mimiced RAGING BULL is another knock out that will make you aware of what good editing can do for a film. 

Despite some bumps this is a great book and is highly recommended and will make you look forward to Ben's next monograph.