"How Much of an Asshole Do You Have to Be, to Be Successful?"

"The most intriguing interviewee, though, and perhaps the most damning, is Jobs himself. Gibney obtained previously unseen footage of the deposition Jobs gave to the SEC in 2008 concerning Apple’s options-backdating scandal—and the footage, spliced between scenes, functions as a kind of refrain throughout the film. In it, Jobs, clearly annoyed at having to submit to such questioning, occasionally cooperates with the SEC lawyer, but mostly fidgets and sulks and glares. At one point, he tucks his jeans-clad legs up onto his chair, reconfiguring his body into an upright fetal position. At another, when asked why he would want Apple's board to offer him backdated stock options, he replies, 'It wasn't so much about the money. Everybody likes to be recognized by his peers.' He adds, 'I felt that the board wasn't really doing the same with me.'

"There is, in this SEC interview of the CEO of the one of the world's most powerful companies, a distinctly pouting petulance. And that somehow puts everything else—the betrayals, the bullying, the blithely self-centric worldview—into human perspective. Jobs was, maybe, a Great Man who was also, in many ways, a small child: self-absorbed and desperate to please, those two things not contradicting but instead, in ways productive and not, informing each other."

 

Megan Garber in The Atlantic ponders Steve Jobs.

And Andrew O'Hehir in Salon talks to Alex Gibney about Gibney's new documentary on Jobs.