The first scene for 2010’s “The Social Network" is ~6 minutes.
It shows Mark Zuckerberg getting dumped in a Harvard bar (and with some creative licenses, how that leads to Facebook).
Director David Fincher did 99 takes of the scene (yes, 99).
For some, that's Fincher being a perfectionist.
For others, it's Fincher wasting people's time.
Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay and has a fascinating recollection of the scene:
➡️ "An average screenplay is about 120 pages long. My screenplays have higher page counts because there’s more dialogue and less action. By the rules of screenplay format, dialogue takes up more room on the page and less time on the screen than action (which takes up less room on the page and more time on the screen).
"The Social Network" was 178 pages. And the studio said, “OK, the first thing you’ve got to do is figure out a way to cut 30 pages from this.”
And David said, “I don’t think so.” […]
He came over to my house with his iPhone set on stopwatch mode, and he said, “I want you to read the entire script out loud for me, at the pace you heard it in your head when you were writing it, and I’m going to write down the timing of each scene.”
So that opening scene...with Jesse Eisenberg (Zuck) and Rooney Mara. I read it and it was 7 minutes and 22 seconds.
In rehearsal, Jesse and Rooney would rehearse the scene, David would say great, and he would give them a couple of notes and always end with, “But this scene is 7 minutes and 22 seconds long, and you’re doing it at 7 minutes and 40 seconds. So I don’t care how, but you’re going to have to talk faster somewhere, because I promise you, this scene plays best at 7 minutes and 22 seconds.” ⬅️
With that context, the 99 takes is very understandable. It’s a combo of perfectionism and managing the shooting budget.
The final cut was shorter than 7 minutes and 22 seconds. But one thing stayed consistent throughout the shoot: Fincher told dozens of extras in the bar scene to keep the volume of their chatter high, as they would on any night out.
This forced Eisenberg and Mara not only to speak faster. But also louder, increasing the scene’s intensity.
It worked.
I love a good first scene and have written about how Ted Lasso’s pilot nailed his 157-second intro:
Actors talking Fincher doing 50+ takes for a scene.
Eisenberg says it’s terrifying because lots of the takes he acted poorly and felt it.
Legend Robert Duvall doesn’t get so many takes (how can you know difference between 50th or 70th take).
Full vid:
To clarify on “The Social Network” creative licenses. Zuck didn’t actually start Facebook (or Facemash) because he got dumped — which is how Sorkin writes it.
Another detail related to opening scene. The music was co-scored by Trent Reznor, who I’ve def been writing about:
According to (unverified) urban legend, Fincher took 1000 takes of the scene where Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) confronts Zuck (Eisenberg) and spent $1,000,000 on broken laptops.
Can’t decide which Larry Summers zinger from “The Social Network” Sorkin wrote best:
▫️ “Some undergrads are here to see me and by the looks of it, they want to sell me a Brookes Brother franchise”
▫️ “I was the US Treasury Secretary, I am in some position to make the call”
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The Economist latest cover story on solar energy is packed with interesting stats.
▫️Solar energy will be the primary source of human energy use by 2040
▫️$500B spent on buying and installing solar panels in 2024 (nearly same “sum being put into upstream oil and gas”)
▫️Solar on track to produce “more electricity than all the world’s nuclear power plants in 2026, than its wind turbines in 2027, than its dams in 2028, its gas-fired power plants in 2030 and its coal-fired ones in 2032”
▫️Since the 1960s…the levelised cost of solar energy—the break-even price a project needs to get paid in order to recoup its financing for a fixed rate of return—has dropped by a factor of more than 1,000
▫️From the mid-1970s to the early 2020s cumulative shipments of photovoltaics increased by a factor of a million, which is 20 doublings.
▫️Over the same span, the “prices dropped by a factor of 500. That is a 27% decrease in costs for each doubling of installed capacity, which means a halving of costs every time installed capacity increases by 360%.”
▫️The cost of a kilowatt-hour of battery storage has fallen by 99% over the past 30 years.
The chart below — which they made vertical (kind of weird) — shows global useful energy consumption over the past century.
I’ll add two more posts after this one with excerpts on obstacles and opportunities.
— A lot of A/C for Sub-Saharan African (need 2TW of new solar just for Africa to reach India level of electricity use)
— Filter air continuously (reduce spread of airborne diseases)
— Carbon removal
— Water desalination
— AI/Data energy needs
Details from Red Lobster’s bankruptcy filing are wild and so much mismanagement:
▫️$1B in debt, $30m in cash
▫️Previous PE owner sold land and leased it back to Red Lobster at “above market rates”
▫️$20 Endless Shrimp cost it $11m but the interesting part is that one of the chain’s owners is Thai seafood firm Thai Union (which also owns Chicken By The Sea) and it may have used Endless shrimp to dump its own shrimp supply through the 578 restaurants in North America
▫️Thai Union became the only Red Lobster shrimp vendor, overcharging for shrimp and skipping quality reviews (Thai Union has written off its $500m+ investment)
▫️Red Lobster has had 5 CEO in the last 5 years (!!!)
▫️Sales down 30% since 2019
Red Lobster needed Yukitaka Yamaguchi — aka Japan’s Tuna King (sleeps 3 hours a day and knows where any fish is from on a single bite) — to run quality control.
Also, never forget Beyoncé name dropped Red Lobster with some R-rated verses in 2016 (“Formation”) and Red Lobster social responded and there was actually a brief sales surge.
Francis Ford Coppola’s new film “Megalopolis” cost $120m and he self-financed it (including money from selling his winery).
Coppola is a legend of “going all in” and “putting skin in the game”.
The GOAT example is “Apocalypse Now”, his classic 1979 war film with arguably the most insane production story ever.
Let’s rewind to 1975, the year Copolla turned 36: he is on top of Hollywood after directing “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather II” (1974).
What does Coppola choose to do next? Make a film about the Vietnam War. The script was based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, the 1889 novel about the horrors of colonialism in the Belgian Congo.
The major studios all said “no” to Coppola’s pitch for three major reasons:
1️⃣ He wanted full creative control
2️⃣ He wanted to own all of the film rights
3️⃣ The Fall of Saigon happened in April 1975 and the American audience wasn’t exactly asking for a Vietnam War film (the studios wanted Coppola to make another Mafia flick)
Coppola was undeterred and made a huge bet.
“The Godfather II” cost $14m and the director estimated that “Apocalypse Now” would be the same budget.
He put up $7m (mostly from those sweet Godfather checks) and raised another $7m from United Artists (which bought domestic distribution rights for ~7 years).
But the project was a disaster from the start.
Filming started in The Philippines in March 1976 and was supposed to last 3-4 months…it would take 16 months:
▫️Harvey Keitel was the initial lead but Coppola fired him after one week.
▫️Martin Sheen (Captain Willard) took the lead role but drank so much on set that he gave himself a stress-induced heart attack and almost died.
▫️Dennis Hopper was doing 3g of coke and 20+ drinks a day while on set (him and Marlon Brandon also hated each other).
▫️A typhoon destroyed 80% of the set and delayed filming for 2-3 months.
▫️Actual dead bodies — stolen from a local grave — were used on set and the Filipino government and its strongman leader Ferdinand Marcos threatened to shut down production after finding out.
▫️Marlon Brando (Col. Kurtz) demanded a huge fee ($3m+ for 3 weeks of work and 10% of the film’s gross). He then showed up late, asked for rewrites, declined to read Conrad’s book and was so overweight that the costumes wouldn’t fit (to obscure his heft, Copolla filmed Brando in the shadows and had him wear oversized dark clothing).
The budget ballooned to over $30m.
To maintain creative control and maintain all the film rights, Coppola mortgaged his home and borrowed money against his ownership in The Godfather.
After the success of “Star Wars” (1977), Coppola even asked his friend and business partner George Lucas — who was originally tapped to direct Apocalypse — for some funds.
I repeat: Coppola went ALL THE WAY IN and had SKIN IN THE GAME.
His wife Eleanor took recorded video of all the insanity and the footage was turned into a 1991 documentary (“Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse”).
The total cost for the film — including marketing spend — reached $45m.
Against all odds, Coppola finished the project and the film was released in August 1979. It grossed $105m and Coppola would make a fortune on future DVD, Home Video and other ancillary revenue streams (below is a trailer for a re-mastered cut from 2019).
During the Cannes Festival in May 1979, Coppola famously said of the film: “The way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.”
Coppola also said at Cannes that “My movie is not *about* Vietnam. My movie *is* Vietnam”.
It’s def one of the best films ever but that is … a stretch of a comparison.
If you want more on Apocalypse Now, I went on Jim O'Shaughnessy’s “Infinite Loops” podcast with Rob Henderson to talk about the making and psychology of the film. open.spotify.com/episode/38OYIn…
When Iron Man came out in 2008, Robert Downey Jr. was *not* a marquee star.
He was rebuilding his career and paid a below market rate of $500k.
But the deal terms set him up for one of the great acting comebacks ever (while earnings $450m+ as Tony Stark).
Here’s the story 🧵
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) we know today was a long shot in the early 2000s.
Marvel was a public co. coming off bankruptcy in 1996 and had sold rights to its best IP (Spiderman, X-Men, Fantastic 4)
From 2000-07, films based on the IP minted cash but Marvel made little:
In the early-90s, Downey Jr. was one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood, receiving a Best Actor nomination for "Charlie Chaplin" in 1992 (@ 27yrs old).
In the 2nd half of the decade, though, he dealt with drug addiction, arrests and jail stints before going clean in 2003.