DVD

Average customer rating:

Essential history
Great movie
Insanely great!
Decent TNT original movie, nice brief stroll through computer history.
good but not accurate

Pirates of Silicon Valley
Starring: Noah Wyle , Joey Slotnick , J.G. Hertzler , Anthony Michael Hall , and Wayne Pére
Director: Martyn Burke
Manufacturer: Turner Home Ent
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0009NSCS0
Release Date: 2005-08-30

Product Description

The revolution came when we weren't looking. It happened in a garage. In a dorm room. In countless hours of effort, imagining and intrigue. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates were changing the way the world works, lives and communicates.

The event-packed saga of the quirky visionaries who jump-started the future unfolds with exhilarating, cutting-edge style in Pirates of Silicon Valley. Noah Wyle (ER) portrays Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall (The Dead Zone) portrays Gates in this chronicle of the fierce and often humorous battle to rule the fledgling personal computer empire. "The story is almost Shakespearean... it's a tale of lust, greed, ambition, love and hate," writer/director Martyn Burke reflects. And it's a success story unlike any other.

Running Time: 97 min.

Format: DVD MOVIE

Amazon.com

This dramatization of the tangled history of Apple Computer and Microsoft, based on a book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, hits enough of the right notes to make its failures all the more frustrating. The script follows the entwined paths of Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates with a pointed sense of the cultural divide between the hip, self-absorbed Apple cofounder and the brilliant alpha geek behind Microsoft's eventual software empire, contrasting the Mac's countercultural underpinnings with the PC's more strait-laced origins. But Pirates of Silicon Valley seemingly can't decide whether it wants to be a serious-minded history of these key figures in the personal computer revolution or a trashy wallow in the more ignoble foibles of its principals. As a result, it falls short of exacting history while never achieving the guilty pleasure it might have.

If Gates has become synonymous with corporate conquest at its most striking, Pirates' interest lies more with Jobs, given a nervous energy and flashes of adolescent selfishness by Noah Wyle, who benefits from a reasonable physical resemblance to the Apple chief. Eyewear and a comb-over do nearly as well for Anthony Michael Hall, who also grafts some of Bill Gates's better-known mannerisms onto his performance and renders Gates as a smart if socially maladroit entrepreneur who, like Jobs, provides the ambition and business savvy to exploit his partner's computing talents. There are a few fanciful touches (Ballmer and Wozniak become Greek choruses, addressing the viewer as they comment on the principals), but the story plays out in straightforward fashion. It's tantalizing to consider how the Apple/PC melodrama might have fared with an edgier, more openly satirical script. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews:

Essential history.......2007-07-05

This made-for-TV movie doesn't deserve the negative, 2nd class stigma that is often associated with previous "MFTV" films.
The story is portrayed and dramatized excellently as the two main characters, played by Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall perform spot-on impressions of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, respectively.
Based on Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine's book "Fire in the Valley", this film really should be, as actually cleverly stated in one particular scene of the movie, an ESSENTIAL history lesson for any and all students pursuing career goals in information technology.
John C. Bloomington MN

Great movie.......2007-06-29

This movie was very inetersting. It shows how the modern personal computer industry started.

Insanely great!.......2007-06-04

Hugely enjoyable and quite accurate (by most accounts) telling of the rise and ultimate clash of two modern tech titans, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Canadian Martyn Burke deserves great credit for both writing and directing this gem. While made for television, this is better by far than most made-for-theater Hollywood productions. The 70's and 80's music fits especially well; tremendously appropriate songs and soundtrack for the story. And the use of the famous Apple "1984" commercial, compared with the vision of a huge, televised Bill Gates hovering over a humbled Steve Jobs is absolutely brilliant.

The dual narration is brilliant too, using the Steve Wozniak character to narrate the Apple story, while the Steve Ballmer character narrates the Microsoft side of things. Sure, there are major oversimplifications of many characters, and while a Paul Allen character is an active presence here - we learn virtually nothing about him as a person. But so what? As the commentary on the DVD points out, there's an almost Shakespearean feel to much of this. The focus is on the events surrounding the ultimate clash for PC superiority between Apple and Microsoft, and on Jobs himself, to a lesser extent on Gates. With no attempt to fully flesh out the other players (and none needed, in the particular story that's being told/dramatized). A few weakish scenes are included, but not many; virtually every scene adds a dimension to the plot and to the ultimate conclusion. The pace is very good, very strong. Noah Wyle gives a terrific performance as Steve Jobs; Anthony Michael Hall is also excellent as Bill Gates. And the DVD has a brief but interesting and entertaining introduction by Wyle; be sure to view it.

As to any "inaccuracies", from what I can tell those are very, very minor. Those interested may want to check Steve Wozniak's website, a section (in "letters") discusses his take on this movie. In a nutshell, Woz was not consulted for the movie, and was flattered by the way he was portrayed. He seemed to feel the movie was accurate or portrayed accuracies; he mentions a few things such as they weren't allowed to wear the "Alice in Wonderland" costumes home, but changed out of them before leaving the performance - personally I thought it was a nice touch to have them walking home while still in costume. Also there's some obvious dialog added for humorous or dramatic purposes; for example, in one scene the Gates character tries to connect socially with women by complimenting their "bandwidth" and by attempting to imitate John Travolta's disco moves while on rollerskates - funny, almost believable, but not likely strict reality. Or when both Jobs and Gates quote the Picasso line about "...great artists steal", but Gates (unlike Jobs) doesn't really care which artist said it. Minor stuff like that should be treated as artistic/dramatic license, not absolute reality. It's a movie (or docudrama), not a strict documentary, yet still manages to make a great story while still being essentially true to the reality of the events. (By the way, "Insanely Great" was of course an Apple marketing phrase for the Mac, created by Steve Jobs himself; so I'm not meaning to infringe on any copyright there!).

Decent TNT original movie, nice brief stroll through computer history........2007-05-31

The computer revolution has change everything over the past 30. I hope someday a good documentary will be available. This film is so far the only thing I have noted along the way that even tried to touch on the computer wars at the beginning. TNT produced this film back in 1999 as one of its first original movie shows. Its good drama, and really got me interested in looking at the interesting history of computer development. Yes it's kinda nerdy, but hey, I think everybody has to admit it, Apple/Macintosh has always been a more reliable/stable system, very hard to crash. Why the heck then did the IBM/microsoft platform take off as it did? Well, this movie only touches on it. Noah Wyle plays the outlandish Steve Jobes, who was co founder of Apple with Steve Woznyack. This movie illistrates his control in the company, but only touches how Apple's priprietary protection/isolation killed its strong foothold on the market, while the IBM/IBM clone market skyrocketed secondary to competition keeping computer price and software down while Microsoft, the little program maker, rake in the money from lisencing it's software. Is this really how Steve Jobes and Bill gates (anthony michael hall) are in real life, I don't think so, but hey, its still a decent movie. Check it out if you like this kind of history.

good but not accurate.......2007-05-21

the movie paints a good picture of the people in the movie, and touches on a lot of realistic events, but is not totally accurate

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