The Social Network Film Premiere

The 48th New York Film Festival kicked off last night with the screening of “The Social Network,” the movie that chronicles the birth of Facebook and the machinations of its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The film, directed by David Fincher, debuted at a red carpet premiere held at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, with the glitzy post premiere party at the Harvard Club on W. 44th St.

Insiders have revealed to the Bureau that the film’s distributor, Sony Pictures, is reportedly so pleased with the film that they gave Fincher the director’s chair for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo even though Social Network has yet to hit theaters. Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Zuckerberg told us he does not have a Facebook page, “As you can imagine, I do interviews, and I don’t want to go home and write more about myself online,” Eisenberg said. Also on hand was an always fashionably forward, Justin Timberlake, who does an amazing job playing former Facebook President (and Napster founder) Sean Parker. Timberlake told us that the biggest misperception about the movie is “It’s not a film about Facebook.” Rather, he said, “This is a film about friendship, betrayal, trust and power and greed and specifically young people coming into their own.”

We also ran into Armie Hammer, who plays both Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, the identical twins and Olympic rowers and entrepreneurs who successfully challenged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in court and are now disputing his dismissal of “The Social Network” as a largely made-up Hollywood tale.

Hours after Zuckerberg appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show to proclaim that “a lot” of David Fincher’s movie is “fiction,” the Winklevoss brothers attended the movie’s premiere at the New York Film Festival and declared the New Media wunderkind dead wrong.
“The film is nonfiction,” Cameron Winklevoss, 29, told us after seeing The Social Network. “Mark Zuckerberg seems to be the only person in the world capable of commenting on the veracity of a film he has not seen. ‘Clairvoyant’ should be added to his business card.” (A Facebook spokesman responds that the creators of the film “do a wonderful job of telling a good story,” but adds: “the reality probably wouldn’t make for a very fun or interesting movie.”)

The twins, who are referred to in the movie as the “Winklevi” - a nickname they acquired in high school - figure prominently in the tangled tale of Facebook’s formation, both onscreen and in real life. In 2004, the brothers sued Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing the computer code from ConnectU, a Harvard-based social network they’d hired him to launch, and then using it to start Facebook. Zuckerberg reportedly paid the twins $65 million to settle the case.
Given their involvement in the real-life drama, the brothers proved popular at the party at the Harvard Club. At one point, Kevin Spacey, who’s an executive producer of the film, cornered Cameron to discuss his take on the movie.
With all of the pre-premiere buzz, we will all be watching the box office receipts to see if the rest of the world rushes out to take in the infamous “Facebook movie.”