Alex Gibney’s forthcoming documentary, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” is a well done hatchet job. It is virtually impossible to leave the film without feeling that Steve Jobs was a massive jerk. A man who proclaimed himself enlightened at age 18 because he had built a circuit board, he was by his early 20’s ripping off his best friend and essential collaborator Woz for 1000’s of dollars. From there he proceeds to deny paternity of his daughter, Lisa, claiming he is sterile and making out Lisa’s mother in court documents to be a promiscuous woman who could have sired the child with any number of men. (A court ordered paternity test put an end to that.) Still he balks at paying child support even though he is worth 200 million dollars and Lisa’s mother is living on welfare; eventually he coughs up 500 a week.

Then it’s on to ruining the personal lives of those foolish enough to drink his Koolaid and dare to be “insanely great.” Then we hear his views on philanthropy: “giving money away is a waste of time.” Not only does he not do it, he thinks it’s stupid. Then — hey ho — he is back pricing stocks so he can get options at a cheaper price and sell them for a greater profit, and when this comes to light he lets an underling take the fall, lying about his involvement in the scheme. Next he’s trying to prosecute the Gizmodo reporter who dared to write a review of the iPhone 4 that a hapless Apple employee left in a bar.

And finally we visit FoxConn, the Chinese factory where iPhones are assembled, learning that workers are paid 20 dollars a day and work in hazardous conditions while Apple makes 300 dollars profit on each phone. Oh, and the factory has to put nets outside the dorm windows so that workers don’t kill themselves by jumping out. And we see Jobs arguing that while it is sad that so many workers have killed themselves, the sample isn’t any greater than the number of suicides per 100,000 Americans.

The only explanation for this appalling behavior, other than that Steve Jobs was a FLAMING asshole, is that he didn’t know how to connect with people, and that drove him to invent devices that connected the world. He was a cold fish who made cuddly products.

There are two annoying things about the film. One is that Gibney suggests at the beginning that the reason he got into the project was that he was interested in all the people who cried when Jobs died and wondered why they were crying. This seems pretty disingenuous. People cry when youngish extremely talented people who seem somewhat saintlike die. Gibney really seems to have taken on the project to prove that people shouldn’t be crying for this man, because he was a jerk. The film proves his point. Which is fine. But don’t pretend it all began with an innocent question.

The second thing is that, like Eric Schlosser at the beginning and end of Fast Food Nation, Gibney asks us to consider the real cost of buying an iPhone (instead of a burger and fries), but then, after showing us the costs, he informs us that he still uses an iPhone. Come on man! Either don’t use that as a narrative trope or have the decency to forego the iPhone. You aren’t allowed to have it both ways.

First Review of The Song Machine!

THE SONG MACHINE [STARRED REVIEW!]
Inside the Hit Factory
Author: John Seabrook

Review Issue Date: July 1, 2015
Online Publish Date: June 17, 2015
Publisher:Norton
Pages: 320
Price ( Hardcover ): $26.95
Publication Date: October 5, 2015
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-0-393-24192-1
Category: Nonfiction

New Yorker staff writer Seabrook (Flash of Genius: And Other True Stories of Invention, 2008, etc.) examines the seismic shifts in the music industry. There are plenty of good books that have shown how “hits are the source of hard dealings and dark deeds.” If it’s no surprise that the music industry can be a dirty business, the author shows just how radically the business has changed, with power shifting from the American-British axis to Sweden (and Korea and China on the horizon), with album-oriented rock eclipsed by contemporary hit pop and with streaming undermining not only the sales of CDs and downloads, but the future of the music business as we know it. Even those well-versed in the trade might be surprised to learn that a South African native named Clive Calder, through his Jive label, “is and for the foreseeable future will be the single richest man the music business ever produced.” Those riches accrued from his involvement with the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync, and Britney Spears but even more from his visionary focus on producers rather than performers and publishing rights rather than record sales. His story intersects with that of the notorious Lou Pearlman, now imprisoned for “a giant Ponzi scheme” but formerly involved in manufacturing those acts and more. But some of the freshest and most fascinating material concerns the way that Swedish musical masterminds whose names are little-known to American music consumers have been able to dominate over decades and genres by bridging pop hooks and dance-floor beats. Max Martin, for one, has enjoyed a string of Billboard chart-toppers extending from Spears’ breakthrough and Bon Jovi’s comeback through recent work with Taylor Swift. Seabrook goes deeper into the career developments of Rihanna and Katy Perry, but most of the artists hold insignificant power within the international behemoth that this industry has become and even less control over their own musical progression. A revelatory ear-opener, as the music business remains in a state of significant flux.

You can get more info on www.johnseabrook.com

Denniz PoP, a Swedish DJ and producer, who died in 1998 at the age of 35, is a major figure in The Song Machine. The central narrative of the book is the story of how the methods he and his friends pioneered in Sweden in the late 80’s went onto mainstream chart success in the UK and the US in the 90’s and aughts, and continue to dominate the charts today. Last night was the annual Denniz PoP awards in Stockholm, which I attended for the first time. Seeing his face projected on the big screen was a strange moment for me – it felt like a snapshot of the inside of my mind over the last couple of years as I’ve worked on the project. By making the interior exterior, this image made the project feel complete.

How Modern Pop Music Got Started

1) Show don’t say.
You’ve heard this one but it really is the most important.
Which of the four sentences is better?
Carol responded in the negative.
Carol said no.
Carol shook her head no.
Carol’s long bangs swayed from side to side as she disagreed.
Number four is better. Because we are visual creatures. Yes, we have recently learned to read. But we’ve been figuring stuff out with our eyes for a million years longer. As a writer, you may feel like a highly evolved being, but you are still talking to cavemen.
2) Typing is not Writing
Computers and keypads have joined thinking to typing to writing. You can write your thoughts almost at the speed at which they occur. Congratulations! But thinking is not writing.
Thinking is a private activity, and it’s mostly random. You are thankful you can think at all. Writing is a public act in which the order of thoughts is of paramount importance. The order – the story — may be as important as the thoughts themselves. That’s what makes it writing.
3) All writing is rewriting.
There is no “writing.” Any writing that’s any good has been rewritten extensively. We should just call it “rewriting” and be done with it.
4) All writers are readers.
It’s unfortunate that writing and reading are taught more or less at the same time. Reading is a better way to become a writer than writing, for the first ten years at least.
5) Writing shouldn’t sound like writing.
You hear a lot about “style” in writing. But here’s something odd. Three of the greatest New Yorker writers, E B White, Joseph Mitchell, and John McPhee, all seem to write with no style at all. Get rid of the marks of writing from your writing.
6) Take the time to make it shorter.
My number one favorite epigram is my boy Michel de Montaigne: “I apologize for writing such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.”
7) Avoid word balls.
Word balls are like dust balls. One word sticks to another, and when you pick one out, a bunch of others trail along. As in:
“It is interesting to note that.”
Note it, and if it’s interesting, let the reader decide.
“Due to the fact that…”
“Until such time as…”
Vacuum word balls from your texts!
8) Don’t use jargon to make yourself sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Here is an actual quote from Verizon CEO Lowell Dumbass McAdams, explaining Verizon’s recent purchase of AOL:
“Verizon’s vision is to provide customers with a premium digital experience based on a global multiscreen network platform. This acquisition supports our strategy to provide a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators to deliver that premium customer experience.”
Clearly Mr. McAdams doesn’t really know how this deal will play out for his customers, so he is reluctant to commit to a clear, meaningful comment about it. And, it turns out there are large swathes of public life in which the less clear you make yourself the better! No politician wants to stick his neck out with a clear statement about an issue that might come back to haunt him.
This is what makes writing different from most jobs. You have to say what you mean. That’s why you’re a writer.
9) Writing isn’t fun to do, but it has to be fun to read. Deal with it.
10) Trust your instincts as a researcher. Make the most of your search engines. Your luck in having them is beyond reckoning. If you think it looks interesting over there, head that way. Investigate further. Reward your curiosity.
11) Make an outline, but feel free to ignore it. Constantly revise your outline as you go along. Encourage accidental associations in your writing, ideas you never would have put together in an outline, but which turn out to go together naturally and give juice to your writing.
12) Don’t glorify yourself for being a writer. There’s nothing romantic about the actual job of writing. It’s messy and chaotic, like using your hands to plant rhododendrons. As in a Hollywood disaster movie, a lot of good people have to die to save one little family. But that family is your story.
13) Think of yourselves as decision-making and problem-solving machines. You make decisions about how to construct sentences — what nouns and verbs to use, the sentence structure, adjectives, when to end one sentence and start another. Dozens if not hundred of decisions for every sentence. After you’ve written a few sentences you encounter a problem. The writing isn’t heading in the direction you want it to go. So you go back, identify the spot where you went wrong, rewrite and move forward. Easy Peasy.
14) Develop good writing habits.
Start on your projects early. Don’t wait until the last minute to do your writing assignments. Writing needs time to breath and to sleep. Sleep is as important to a project as work. As writers you need and deserve sleep. Luxuriate in it.
15) Don’t neglect the ending. Just because the ending comes last, doesn’t mean it should get the least amount of work. It deserves the most! Because the ending is the most important part of all.
16) Finally (in the spirit of ending with the most important thing) always ask yourself, What Am I Trying to Say? If you do that honestly, ruthlessly, and constantly you will be writers.
And may the Force be with you.

Finished Thomas Kunkel’s biography of Joseph Mitchell, “Man in Profile.” It really should have been called “Joe Mitchell’s Secret.” Because it does seem like JM’s secret — that he was making shit up all along — is the explanation for his 36 year long writer’s block.

The story in brief: in the late 30s and 40’s Joe Mitchell writes a series of timeless profiles of unsung New York characters for the NYer, and the fact checkers let him slide when it comes to verifying the quotes or even the reality of the people he is profiling. In fact, it seems his classic profiles of these unsung New York heroes aren’t based on any one person in particular. Amazing! The greatest profile writer in the magazine’s history is actually a fabulist! But Kunkel, like most critics of his book, lets this slide.

The film about agriculturalist Cary Fowler opens this Memorial Day weekend in New York and the following weekend in LA. I’ll be appearing with the filmmaker Sandy McLeod after the 7pm Saturday showing at Cinema Village. Do come. And if you spot me in the film you get a prize. Well, a hug. Which depending on who you’re talking to is a minor prize. Here’s the info. Regardless you should see it. Not your next meal, but you meal 30 years from now, might depend on it.

http://www.seedsoftimemovie.com/?utm_campaign=20150517_ny_tix&utm_medium=email&utm_source=seedsoftime

There is a wonderful documentary that is soon going to start playing in theaters called Seeds of Time, by Sandy Mcleod. It’s about, among other things, the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, which I wrote about in the New Yorker in 2007.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/27/sowing-for-apocalypse

Here’s the trailer for the film.

I’m actually in the movie, briefly. There is a close up shot of me taking notes on a pad of New Yorker stationary. I’m in the Vavilov Institute with Cary Fowler, who is the hero of the piece and of the movie both. The movie kind of feels like it’s a documentary of my article, in a good way. Check it out.

So, Chuck Leavell. Ring a bell? Played piano with the Allman Brothers — that’s him on “Jessica” — and now tours with the Rolling Stones. But he also is an owner of a media website called Mother Nature Network, which is based in Atlanta and features environmental news.

At this year’s White House Correspondents Weekend, Chuck had the idea of inviting five bands, all made up partly or wholly of journalists, to play at a party in the Fairmont Hotel on Friday night. Our band, The Sequoias, was one of them. The band features three members of the New Yorker staff — me, John Colapinto, and the Big Man, David Remnick — along with four others of mixed media affiliation – LaChrisha Brown, Randy Harris, Charlie Foster, and Ben Dickinson.

Chuck announced he would play a song with each band. We, with spectacular hubris, chose Gimme Shelter.

Lena Dunham introduced us (long story) and then we played our first number, Drive My Car.

Gimme Shelter came about five songs in

And we closed with a somewhat unrehearsed encore, Sympathy for the Devil.

It was a great night. All hail Chuck. Go Sequoias!

16 cm sequoias-4

In the last chapter of The Song Machine, “Roar,” I take “The Girl” to a birthday party with a bunch of six-year-old girls, which takes place in a recording studio in Manhattan, where the girls record their version of “Roar.” Here’s the track they made!

Thanks Amelia LeBlanc!