If I was Alex Gibney and I was filming this interview footage with Bob Belleville, former director of engineering at MacIntosh from 1982 to ’85 under Steve Jobs, I would stopped and said “cut” after he started to weep a little bit. I then would have said to him, “Look, I feel the same things about people and experiences from the past, things that I loved…we all do. But from a dramatic point of view it’s much better to muffle or suppress emotion. You can let it leak out a bit but only a bit. Okay? It’s very human of you to feel what you’re feeling and I totally respect your history with Jobs, but I need you to read this again without the whimpering. Fair enough?” I wouldn’t tell Belleville what I’m really thinking, which is that whimpering sounds awful. I hate it when people start to cry while trying to talk. Do one or the other, but not both. Suppression is the thing. Walter Cronkite as he officially announced the death of JFK at 2:38 pm Eastern…that’s what I’m talking about.
Gibney’s Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine is screening twice during SXSW, on 3.14 at and 3.19 at Austin’s Paramount Theatre.