General News
STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW Trailer; Magnolia Pictures Acquires US Rights
The Wagner/Cuban Company’s Magnolia Pictures announced today they have acquired US rights to STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW. This candid, in-depth interview with the late visionary was filmed in 1995 by Robert Cringely, and Jobs discusses at length his early days, career battles, and vision for the future. Small portions of the piece were used for a television series at the time, but the vast majority was shelved, and for 17 years thought to be lost. Recently unearthed, it is being presented in its unedited entirety, providing a fascinating look at Jobs at a particularly interesting, transitory moment in his career, two years before he would go on to retake control of Apple.
“STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW is a fascinating document that will be enlightening and entertaining for anyone that’s interested in Jobs’ legacy,” said Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles. “It’s a valuable piece of history that has thankfully been rescued from obscurity.”
The film had limited special screenings at select theaters in the Landmark circuit earlier this year that were very well received. Magnolia will open the film in select theaters on May 11th, with a DVD and VOD release to follow later this summer.
Said Robert Cringely: “We knew we were witnessing history being made back in 1995 but the Landmark audiences confirmed it: they were stunned by our unconventional documentary, making this broader release a no-brainer. This is Steve Jobs as never seen before.”
In 1995, during the making of his TV series Triumph of the Nerds about the birth of the PC, Bob Cringely did a memorable hour-long interview with Steve Jobs.
It was 10 years since Jobs had left Apple following a bruising struggle with John Sculley, the CEO he had brought into the company. At the time of the interview Jobs was running NeXT, the niche computer company he had founded after leaving Apple.
During the interview, Jobs was at his charismatic best — witty, outspoken, visionary. In the end, only a part of the interview was used in the series and the rest was thought lost. But recently a VHS copy was found in the series director’s garage. Now, cleaned up with modern technology, and put into context by Cringely, the entire interview will be screened in Landmark Theatres.
In the interview Jobs talks about his pioneering days with Steve Wozniak, when they built a Blue Box and phoned the Pope; how they — “two guys who didn’t know much” — assembled the first Apple computer and went on to found the Apple company. “I was worth around a million dollars when I was 23, over 10 million dollars when I was 24 and over 100 million dollars when I was 25 — and it wasn’t really important!” Jobs recalls the visits he made to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and how it inspired the making of the Macintosh, the world’s first modern PC, when he was “on a mission from God to save Apple.” He talks frankly and sadly about his enforced departure from Apple and explains what he is doing at NeXT (which he would soon sell to Apple and whose software would then be at the heart of the first iMac’s operating system). Finally in spell-binding terms, he offers his vision of a digital future — a world of wonderful products created by artists and poets.
It is an interview that reveals the burning passion of Steve Jobs, a passion that would go on to give us the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. As a tribute to an amazing man, Landmark is proud to be screening STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW.
0 comments