Facebook movie packs Union

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin doesn’t have a Facebook.

And among the audience packed into the Student Union auditorium Monday night for the advanced screening of “The Social Network” — the story of the rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — Sorkin might have been the only one.

“I’ve heard of Facebook like I’ve heard of a carburetor — I can point it out to you, but I can’t fix it,” Sorkin said in an interview.

Sorkin and actors Jesse Eisenberg and Armie Hammer brought the film to campus as part of an international promotional tour. The movie opens Oct. 1.

“There’s this narcissistic part of social networking,” Sorkin said. “This, ‘I’m doing something and I need to tell everybody that I’m doing it right now’.”

Hundreds of students lined up outside the Union auditorium for hours to get seats to the film and question session with the actors and screenwriter.

Sorkin, best known as the award-winning writer of the television show “The West Wing,” said that his decision to take on “The Social Network” was one of the easiest of his creative life.

The movie, a complex and creative look at the personal and legal disputes that went into the creation of Facebook, is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

“There were two lawsuits at the same time, two separate depositions — so I embraced the idea that everyone was telling a story.”

Zuckerberg was sued by several of his former Harvard classmates, who accused him of co-opting the idea for Facebook for himself. Both suits were settled in multi-million dollar out-of-court settlements.

“Mark’s a really complicated character,” said Eisenberg, who plays the prickly internet entrepreneur in the film.

“He’s just so singularly focused on the creation of Facebook that all other aspects of his life become meaningless.”

Both Sorkin and the actors were quick to point out that the film, while based on fact, is not a singular version of the true story.

The real Zuckerberg has come out strongly against the movie, claiming that the entire film is fictitious.

“Each fact that is in dispute is a dot, and I connected the dots,” Sorkin said.

Sorkin spent months researching the story, reading legal documents and interviewing people involved.

A voice-over in the beginning of the film, in which the Zuckerberg character angrily blogs about an ex-girlfriend the night she breaks up with him, comes directly from Zuckerberg’s actual blog, Sorkin said.

“Those are Mark’s words,” Sorkin said.

And even though Zuckerberg declined to participate in the film, an early draft of the script sent to Facebook was returned marked up with suggestions, Sorkin said.

“The notes were all about the proper way to hack a computer,” Sorkin said.

“They gave me a lesson in computer programming.”

Hammer said he found the indefinite nature of the story — both real and fictional — to be a strong point of the film.

“Everyone was under oath, and yet they all told a different story,” Hammer said. “And all of it seems like it could be validated.”

Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.