SAN FRANCISCO, CA—"I've never done work playing someone who lived before, and I was terrified at the notion of that," said actor Ashton Kutcher, on stage during the opening keynote of Macworld/iWorld 2013. He and Josh Gad, who plays Steve Wozniak across from Kutcher's Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic jOBS, opened the annual conference by talking about their experiences getting into the roles of Jobs and Wozniak for the silver screen. The team even addressed criticism from Woz himself about the film's authenticity: "If I had the chance to sit down with [Woz], I'd tell him it was done with the utmost love, admiration, and respect," Gad said.
Backing up a few steps, Kutcher started the talk by detailing his own experiences growing up with Apple products. He owned an Apple IIGS as a kid and went on to program in FORTRAN while in college for biochemical engineering. He eventually bought a PC to communicate with his professors in school but switched back to a Mac once the iPod came out in 2001. "You couldn't even integrate your iPod easily at the time with a PC; it was a little bit hacky," Kutcher said during the interview.
"Working with Ashton and seeing his technical savvy was mindblowing," said Gad.
Kutcher pointed out he had followed Jobs' career throughout his own life as a student, then an actor, and now a venture capitalist who invests in technology. "Steve was someone I try to emulate in my work, and somebody I've learned an immense amount from," Kutcher said. "When the screenplay popped up in the industry, we knew this movie was going to be made. I wanted it to get told in a way that honors my hero."
But the prospect of portraying a real person—instead of a fictional film character—was daunting for both Kutcher and Gad. Gad highlighted his relative lack of technical expertise compared to Kutcher going into the film, having only been familiar with Apple since the 1997 return of Steve Jobs. "I was as computer illiterate as Steve Wozniak was computer literate," said Gad, who took programming classes as part of his preparation for the role as Woz. "The fact of the matter is that acting, by its very nature, is faking," he said. "You don't really become that person unless you're psychotic, so [the classes] were about understanding what the hell I was saying."
But despite the team's focus on authenticity, there has been criticism of the film since its debut at the 2013 Sundance festival. Most notably, Wozniak himself nitpicked the accuracy of various parts of the film, telling Gizmodo certain elements of the personalities were wrong and that he himself never would have dressed the way Gad did in some scenes. "I never looked like a professional," Woz said.
"Sorry I didn't know what your exact wardrobe was during that particular week," Gad joked during the interview, "but there will always be debates about what we got right and what we got wrong. I really appreciate [Woz] and I hope that when he sees the movie in his entirety, he'll understand that we went to great lengths to capture the essence of his journey."
Kutcher added that the film isn't a documentary—it's a movie interpretation of events. "These are the first private conversations [between Woz and Jobs], and we weren't there. If you look at the extent of these two guys' journey together, there were a lot of moments when there was probably nobody else there," Kutcher pointed out. "You have to kind of ride the arch of the entertainment of the film and interpret who these people were and what their intent was. What was important to me was to capture the authenticity of the people involved."
The team also detailed how learning about Jobs and Woz affected their lives after the film. "To me, the second I delved into the research, it really is this story to a certain extent like John Lennon and Paul McCartney," Gad said. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime duo who is so mutually beneficial to each other. I am in awe of what Steve Wozniak created and his legacy, but I'm also in awe of the other side of him, which is his prankster fun-loving spirit."
"Steve [Jobs] had an ability to say no to everything except for the mission," Kutcher added. "The message I hope people take away is that Steve believed it was possible to do something impossible. Don't settle for what life gives you. Have that passion and understanding that you can be greater than what you are today, and you can make something to make people's lives greater."
It's clear that Kutcher and Gad felt connected to the characters despite Woz's criticism. And when asked whether Kutcher—now an entrepreneur with his hands in numerous technical companies—would have invested in Apple back in 1977, he gave a measured response. "When I look for companies to invest in [today], I look for people who are hacking a solution to a problem where there's a great density of people hacking that solution," he said. "At that time, there was a growing density of people putting together kits and motherboards and whatnot. They found a way to eliminate friction from that process by saying you can have the package all in one. I would hope I would be intelligent enough and wise enough to invest in that opportunity."
jOBS premiered at Sundance on January 27 and will open in US theaters in April.
Listing image by Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica
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