Director Danny Boyle on Why “Steve Jobs” Is Not a Biopic

I'm Danny Boyle, director of Steve Jobs.

(inspirational music)

It isn't a bio-pic, because it takes a very deliberate,

and almost formal, almost abstract

way of looking at this extraordinary man.

To deal with him, you don't use

a traditional format, like a bio-pic,

because it's, I don't think you could capture him really,

and he deserves something a bit bolder.

So what we do is, we take three real-time 40 minute scenes,

which are just before he steps out front,

to launch a product.

It's a portrait, not a photograph.

And we decided to try and make each one

as different as possible.

Alwin Küchler, our cinematographer

said, why don't we do it on different formats?

16 mil, 35, and digital, and it was like one of those,

light bulb moments where you just go, wow.

Well, it's obvious,

we should do it on three different formats.

Because, in the first one, 1984,

Jobs saw himself as a pirate, as a rebel, as a punk.

So this format, which is, rough,

16 mil is very soft, and it feels homemade,

like the garage that they're working in, you know?

And then the second part is set in the opera house

in San Francisco, and it's a very ornate

bow arts theater, it's very gilded,

and red velvet everywhere, and

he is actually in exile from Apple,

and he wants to win Apple back.

So we used 35 for that.

It's rich and liquidy, so that felt lovely for that.

And then we move into the third part,

which is 1998 and the launch of the iMac and that was the,

the machine that introduced the internet

into everyone's home and more importantly,

it was the computer that made everybody feel,

these devices were sexy, and so

we thought we'd do it on digital.

It felt right that we should use a format

for his final, the final part of the story,

that reflected his, the arrival of the future,

which he had fought for so much, you know.

So that was the principal of the three, yeah.

I was very adamant that we shot in San Francisco,

because it felt like this place,

is revolutionizing the world, and that you

needed to make it there because there'll be advantages

that come to you because of that, that you cannot price.

People turned up, we had these crowds scenes

we couldn't afford to pay to fill the theaters.

But, thousands of people turned up, cause some of them

were there, were at the original launches.

I felt the script was very much in a lineage

from Social Network, which is about these companies,

all the people who made these companies,

and it is really important that the the artists

out there make films about them, write books about them,

do paintings about them, make musicals about them,

because these people are shaping the world.