PARK CITY, Utah, Jan 26, (Agencies): The first movie about Apple’s legendary co-founder got its world premiere on Friday, just 15 months after Steve Jobs’ death.
“jOBS,” starring “Two and a Half Men” actor Ashton Kutcher as the tech and computer entrepreneur who revolutionized the way people listen to music and built Apple Inc into an international powerhouse, got a red carpet roll-out at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of a US national release in April.
“jOBS’ chronicles 30 defining years of the late Apple chairman, from an experimental youth to the man in charge of one of the world’s most recognized brands. It is the first of two US feature films about Jobs, who died in 2011 at age 56.
“Everybody has their own opinion about Steve Jobs, and they have something invested in a different part of his story. So the challenge is to decide what part of his story to tell, and not disenfranchise anybody,” director Josh Stern told Reuters ahead of the screening.

Guess
“Hazarding a guess and venturing into too much speculation is always dangerous, especially with a character who is so well-known...,” Stern added.
Kutcher, 34, said on Friday he was honored to play Jobs but also terrified because of the former Apple chairman’s iconic status.
“To be playing a guy who so freshly is in people’s minds, where everywhere you go you can run into people who met him or knew him or had seen a video of him ... that’s terrifying because everyone is an appropriate critic,” Kutcher told Reuters.
“Everyone can tear you apart. Everyone can look at any detail, a piece of clothing or a speech pattern and go ‘No, no, this is not what it was,’ and that’s really scary,” the actor said.
Hours before the screening, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said the movie appeared to misrepresent aspects of both his own and Jobs’ personalities and their early vision for the company. Wozniak was commenting after seeing a brief clip of an early scene that was released online on Thursday.
“Totally wrong.… The ideas of computers affecting society, did not come from Jobs,” Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs and Ronald Wayne in a California garage in 1976, told technology blog Gizmodo.com. “The lofty talk came much further down the line,” Wozniak said in a series of emails.

Wrong
Wozniak, who is played in the movie by “Book of Mormon” musical star Josh Gad, said that, based on the clip, “personalities are very wrong, although mine is closer.” He also said he never wore a tie in the early days. But Wozniak added that “the movie should be very popular and I hope it’s entertaining. It may be very correct, as well. This is only one clip.”
Kutcher said he hoped Wozniak would look more kindly on the movie when he had seen the whole two hours. “I hope that when he sees the film, he feels that he was portrayed accurately, that the film accurately represents who he was and how he was, and more importantly, inspires people to go and build things,” he said.
“jOBS” will be released in US movie theaters on April 19.
A second movie, based on Walter Isaacson’s official biography “Steve Jobs,” is being developed by screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin of “The West Wing” and “The Social Network” fame. No release date or casting has been announced.
Wozniak said that film is factually “wrong,” while the movie’s makers countered it is meant as entertainment — not a literal retelling of the computer pioneer’s life.
Wozniak said the movie “jOBS — erred in its depiction of the characters as well as the relationships between them — especially the one between him and Jobs.
“We never had such interaction and roles,” Wozniak, who quit Apple in 1987 after 12 years, told the tech blog Gizmodo.
“I’m not even sure what it’s getting at,” he said, adding that the “personalities are very wrong — although mine is closer.”
“The ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs. They inspired me and were widely spoken at the Homebrew Computer Club,” he said, referring to a hobby group to which they belonged.
The film, one of two about the iconic Apple founder who died in 2011, is due for release in the United States in April.
“Steve came back from Oregon and came to a club meeting and didn’t start talking about this great social impact,” said Wozniak, referring to the period in the 1970s before Silicon Valley took off.
“His idea was to make a $20 PC board and sell it for $40 to help people at the club build the computer I’d given away. Steve came from selling surplus parts at HalTed — he always saw a way to make a quick buck off my designs,” said the famously geek-casual-looking Wozniak.
“The lofty talk came much further down the line... I never looked like a professional. We were both kids,” he said.
The film’s producers responded to Wozniak’s comments in a statement cited by Entertainment Weekly.
“The film is not a documentary, nor is it meant to be a blow-by-blow, word-for-word account of all conversations and events,” it said.
“The filmmakers have tremendous admiration and respect for Wozniak and all those that are portrayed in the film, and did extensive research in an effort to make an entertaining accurate film that captures the essence and story of Steve Jobs and those that built Apple with him,” the statement said.
But the filmmakers acknowledged “that not every single thing in the film is a precise representation of what took place.”
The movie “is feature film entertainment about one of the most important, creative and impactful people [in] our culture’s history taking place over three decades compressed into a two hour film,” their statement added.
Wozniak, who made his criticism after seeing jus one short movie clip, conceded that inaccuracies did not necessarily mean the film was bad.
“The movie should be very popular and I hope it’s entertaining. It may be very correct, as well. This is only one clip,” he said.
“But you’ll see the direction they are slanting the movie in, just by the dialogue style of this script,” he said.
He added: “Our relationship was so different than what was portrayed. I’m embarrassed. but if the movie is fun and entertaining, all the better. Anyone who reads my book ‘iWoz’ can get a clearer picture.”