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Pirates of Silicon Valley: Difference between revisions
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'''''Pirates of Silicon Valley''''' is a 1999 made-for-TV docudrama. Based off of the book ''Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer'' by Paul Freiberger, it documents the creation and rise of Apple Computers (later Apple Inc.) and Microsoft through the lives of each company's co-founder, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The story is told [[In Medias Res]] and narrated by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (when focusing on Jobs and Apple) and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer (when focusing on Gates and Microsoft).
The film made its debut on television on June 20, 1999 on [[Turner Network Television|TNT]] and was later released on VHS and DVD.
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* [[A Man Is Not a Virgin]]: Jobs seems to be pulling something like this with a interviewee when he asks him if he was a virgin (he wasn't), but the movie was misinterpreting an actual event. While Jobs in reality did inquire about a man's sex life, he was probably also referring to "Code Virgins", people who had never seen copyrighted IBM code before while working for them. While it is legal to reverse-engineer code, copying code is not, and a fast-talking IBM lawyer could argue that this was the case if a former IBM employee worked for Apple and made a product similar to an IBM one.
** Played straight in Gates segments, where Ballmer is portrayed as a younger [[Dirty Old Man]] and is regularly giving Gates flak for focusing on business over interacting with females.
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* [[Documentary]]: The movie will cut away to have either the actual people the movie was based on, or the actors themselves give exposition on a scene.
* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: During a pivotal meeting between Bill Gates and IBM, the scene freezes and Steve Ballmer gets up and directly addresses the audiences to deliver an exposition.
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* [[Fourth Wall Psych]]: The movie begins with Steve Jobs talking about changing the world. It seems like he's talking to the viewer about the film, but then the camera zooms out to reveal he's talking to Ridley Scott, the director of Apple's famous "1984" Super Bowl commercial.
* [[George Jetson Job Security]]: Becomes more and more prominent at Apple as Jobs' jerkass nature comes through more and more.
* [[Glorified Sperm Donor]]: {{spoiler|Jobs with his daughter Lisa. He claims to be sterile and unable to get anyone pregnant, denying that he is the father. He seems to regret it after awhile though, with one scene showing him interacting with Lisa, and the speculation that the Apple Lisa was named after her.}}
* [[Granola Girl]]: Steve Jobs' girlfriend Arlene.
* [[Hair
* [[Hollywood Nerd]]: Gates is definitely portrayed as one, but [[You Should Know This Already|comes out on top at the end.]]
* [[How We Got Here]]: After the introductory scene during the creation of Apple's "1984" ad, the film jumps to the famous 1997 Macworld conference where Steve Jobs announces Microsoft investing in Apple. Steve Wozniak's narration asks how the two companies went from hating each other to partnering up, and then the film jumps back to the 70s to tell the main story.
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* [[Mushroom Samba]]: Jobs goes through one when he takes acid in his hippie days.
* [[Not So Stoic]]: Though Bill Gates is shown at times yelling during business matters, Ballmer notes during a flashback of a meeting between Gates and Jobs that Jobs would be the one person Gates ''never'' yelled at. This is finally breached toward the end of the movie, when Jobs again confronts Gates about the similarities between Mac OS and Windows:
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* [[One Steve Limit]]: Enforced. Though three majors characters would include Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as well as early Microsoft employee Steve Ballmer, only Jobs is ever addressed as Steve in the film - Wozniak goes by his nickname "Woz" while Ballmer goes [[Last
* [[Pride Before a Fall]]: Jobs and his company. At the end of the movie, he {{spoiler|has his friend walk out on him and his company, is eventually fired (although he eventually comes back between then and the final scene), and has to rely on his ''main competitor'' in order to stay afloat.}} Before this, he owned the hottest company in Silicon Valley, with only the sky as the limit.
* [[Proud to Be
* [[Shown Their Work]]: Despite a research workload that avoided official statements or interviews from either Apple or Microsoft, the film manages to capture most of the events it covers accurately (albeit with occasional goofs). Even the real Steve Wozniak was impressed by the producers' accuracy and said as much in an interview:
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[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Films Based on Books]]
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