Are you excited for today’s release of The Social Network? Probably not as much as Harvey Weinstein: Early speculation has the movie in a two-horse race with the Weinstein Company’s The King’s Speech for Best Picture, and lucky for Harvey, Network is controversial, factually suspect, and seemingly tailor-made for the kind of dirty campaign he’s not not admitted to specializing in (bonus: It’s also produced by his dear friend Scott Rudin). So what kind of trickery can we expect this awards season? In this slideshow, we humbly offer Weinstein these ten suggestions.
That $100 million donation to New Jersey schools was a good start, but if Mark Zuckerberg really wants to counteract Social Network’s negative publicity, he can’t stop there. Maybe Harvey can plant a kitten in a tree for him to save the week of the SAG Awards, or pretend to mug an old lady at the Golden Globes so Zuckerberg can thwart him.
Will Harvard students like the way Social Network depicts them as horny, hard-partying, status-obsessed intellectual-property thieves? Not if Harvey can help it, we bet! If he can make slumdogs protest Slumdog in India, surely he can get an editorial in the Crimson and a couple of sign carriers on Cambridge Common.
The King’s Speech’s Geoffrey Rush shouldn’t have too much trouble edging out Social Network’s Justin Timberlake for Best Supporting Actor. Especially if ads like this one, touting Timberlake’s other big fall movie, mysteriously appear in Variety the week ballots are due.
Look at this guy — he’s a teddy bear! But remember two years ago when David Fincher reportedly smacked a studio boss and said these hilarious things while he was trying to win an Oscar for Benjamin Button? That kind of awesome, Vulture-approved behavior doesn’t usually sit well with Academy members. And just one slip-up this awards season might make them remember Fincher’s previous high jinks and tilt the odds in favor of King’s Speech helmer Tom Hooper, who we don’t think has ever smacked anybody.
In recent interviews, The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg — competition for King’s Speech’s Colin Firth for Best Actor — has hinted that he’s slightly uncomfortable with all the attention the role is getting him. Does he even want an Oscar? Is he the next Mo’Nique? Questions that must be asked! Preferably by complicit Oscar bloggers!
Remember when nerds threw a fit because YouTube and an Xbox 360 turned up in The Hurt Locker, even though neither existed in 2004, when the movie was supposed to have taken place? How many nitpicky anachronisms are there in The Social Network? Had this web browser been invented yet? Was CatsThatLookLikeHitler.com, which is mentioned in passing, really around in 2003? (We’re pretty sure it wasn’t until 2006.) Harvey — call Gizmodo!
Even though Social Network’s opening credits say “Based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich,” some wonder if the movie still might be eligible for Best Original Screenplay (Sorkin told New York’s Mark Harris that his script and Billionaires were written simultaneously: “[I] didn’t get a look at any of the book until the screenplay was almost finished”) — meaning it could beat David Seidler’s script for King’s Speech, the presumable front-runner in that category. This is unlikely, but just to be safe, Weinstein should probably start a rumor that Network was also loosely adapted from the thematically similar-ish Citizen Kane.
Despite the controversy over Social Network’s dramatized versions of actual events, none of the movie’s primary real-life subjects have sued yet for defamation. Assuming they’re not just waiting until Oscar week to file their suits (which they presumably are), maybe Harvey could make a date to see the movie with Mark Zuckerberg’s former operating-systems professor, who comes in the movie off as a total jerk.
If there are two things the Academy’s music branch hates, it’s excellent scores by rock stars (see Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood) and ones that were collaboratively written (see Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, The Dark Knight) — potentially bad news for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s terrific droney, ambient Social Network soundtrack (and good news for Alexandre Desplat’s King’s Speech score!). If it is ruled eligible in the Best Original Score category, though, maybe Harvey can start a whisper campaign that it sounds too similar to NIN’s recent droney, ambient 2008 album Ghosts.
Are the Olympic-rowing Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, really the superior athletes that The Social Network wants us to believe? One simple way for Harvey and Bob Weinstein to undermine the film’s credibility would be to defeat them in a race.
