Film preview: ‘The Social Network'

He was not driving the bus alone, however. Jesse Eisenberg (“Zombieland”) in the lead role delivers an outstanding performance as the Harvard pariah-cum-Silicon Valley-boy wonder that will surely garner a nomination or two this awards season. You can almost see Eisenberg’s brain working as his lips are moving in a desperate attempt to keep up; the anticipation of the resulting train wreck is palatable. One minute you want to indulge him, the next to slap him. Supporting his spot-on efforts are Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer as the real-life tragic figures caught up in the tangle of Zuckerberg’s World Wide Web.

“I see Jesse's career going wherever he wants it to,” Sorkin told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He's an extraordinary, unique and extremely smart young actor and I loved every minute working with him.”

Sorkin admitted that he was initially reticent. One can practically hear his eyes roll over the phone when asked about social networking. A self-professed Luddite, he does not have a Facebook page and waxes nostalgic for the days when people actually wrote letters, put them in envelopes, sealed and stamped them and then waited three days or more for a reply.

“One of the things that was particularly challenging for us ... was that it is not what anyone expected since the moment it was announced that we were doing this movie,” Sorkin said. “It was kind of met with a collective, ‘ugh!’ because I think when people hear that someone’s doing a movie about Facebook that it must be Bradley Cooper and Drew Barrymore falling in love on the Internet. Obviously it’s not that.”

Sorkin signed on after reading excerpts from “Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich, the non-fiction account of Zuckerberg’s ascendancy. Mezrich’s “Bringing Down the House,” a card-counting tale of how a group of M.I.T. students took Las Vegas casinos to the cleaners, begat “21” starring Kevin Spacey, who also acted as executive producer on the current project.

“I read the first three pages and I was hooked," Sorkin said. "It’s the fastest I’ve ever said yes to anything. I assumed because the book hadn’t even been written yet, that the studio was going to want me to hold off and wait... . They didn’t; they wanted me to start right away.”

What grabbed him was that even though the whole center of attention is on an invention that’s as contemporary as it gets, the themes are as old as storytelling – themes of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, power and class.

“It’s the kind of story that Aeschylus would’ve written or Shakespeare or Paddy Chayefsky (“Network”). Luckily for me, none of those guys were available, so I got to write it,” he said.

Eisenberg professes that he, too, feels no need to share his random thoughts via the Web, doesn’t maintain a Facebook page and doesn’t even own a television. Growing up in New York the son of a professor and a birthday clown (yes, seriously), he is the middle child between two sisters, an upbringing that he said keeps him grounded. The baby-faced and soft-spoken Manhattanite enjoys musical theater and rides his bike for transportation. So, it’s highly unlikely we’ll hear of him getting a DUI or busted for drugs like his Tinseltown peers.

“Social networking can be abused just like any other communication tool, but it has its good points as well,” Eisenberg told the AJC. “My mother found friends that just three or four years ago she would’ve never found had it not been for Facebook. I myself don’t feel the need to Twitter.”

While Eisenberg is a little more diplomatic on the topic of online networking, Sorkin is a bit more outspoken, saying that people aren’t talking to each other anymore; they’re writing at each other.

“They’re not just writing at each other, they’re writing to however many people are out there. People are communicating or breaking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend via e-mail! That is a complete recipe for disaster," Sorkin said. "It doesn’t have the natural rhythm of a conversation, there’s no place for nuance, you’re not looking into someone’s eyes, there’s no voice to it. It just feels like everyone is in costumes and they’re acting out parts and they’re doing a play.”

Sorkin counts William Goldman as his screenwriting hero. Goldman took home Academy Awards for “All the President’s Men” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” two films Sorkin always screens prior to starting a writing project.

“To take the somewhat mundane topic of two cub reporters bringing down a president, which ultimately led to the impeachment of Nixon, and make it into a thriller is absolute genius,” he said.

We rest our case.