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Steve Wozniak turned down offer to work on 'Jobs' after reading early script: 'I felt it was crap'

Steve Wozniak turned down offer to work on 'Jobs' after reading early script: 'I felt it was crap'

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Photo by Adam Luckow"
Photo by Adam Luckow"

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak hasn't been mincing words with the new JOBS biopic, which debuted at Sundance Film Festival last night. We reached out to Woz with descriptions of key scenes we saw and some quotes from his character (played by Josh Gad) to see if he had other thoughts. We've heard from others that Woz did not have any contribution to the Kutcher-helmed film, but that isn't the entire story.

"I read a script as far as I could stomach it and felt it was crap."

It turns out he received an early draft of the JOBS script, but after reading it, he opted to not contribute. Instead, Woz was hired to help with the "other" Steve Jobs movie from Sony Pictures and writer Aaron Sorkin.

"I was approached early on [for JOBS]," Woz tells us. "I read a script as far as I could stomach it and felt it was crap. The Sony people got in contact with me too and in the end I went with them. You can't do both [films] and be paid." In a follow-up, Woz offers more details about what that early script entails. It's worth noting that the described interaction between Jobs and Woz does not occur in the version we saw last night:

"The early script did things like promote drugs in ways that were as foreign as the clip I saw. For example, it would have Jobs offering me drugs. I never saw Jobs do drugs nor had any offers from him. If we ever discussed drugs, he would have known that I didn't do them but that I basically approved of them and hung around with friends who did them (in college) so he wouldn't have felt awkward talking about them with me. Frankly, we talked about our jobs and technology and things."

As he has in the past, Woz does offer some praise outside of the script itself: "I still told everyone that I thought the Jobs movie would be a big hit and I looked forward to it. I felt they did a very good job of casting, looking for good actors who could play the roles."

Earlier this week, Woz spoke out against the first promotional clip from the movie, telling Gizmodo that the "personalities are very wrong, although mine is closer... our relationship was so different than what was portrayed."

As for the Sony Pictures version that Woz is helping with, Sorkin said back in November that there will be "three scenes and three scenes only that all take place in realtime." Those three moments will be the original Macintosh, the debut of NeXT, and the first-ever iPod in 2001, which more or less covers the same time period as JOBS but in a much, much different way.

Sean Hollister and TC Sottek contributed to this report