In 1995, reporter Robert Cringely conducted a hour-long interview with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs for a TV special on nerds making good, essentially. Most of the chat wasn’t aired, of course, and for many years it was presumed lost, until a producer discovered a VHS copy in his garage.
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, then, is exactly what its forthright title suggests — the presentation of this sit-down interview in full, with the shaded knowledge of all of Apple’s innovation and market domination yet to come. At the time of the Q&A, Jobs, having been exiled from the company he founded, was running niche computer company NeXT. So there’s some talk about that, but, thankfully, lots of meaty, candid reflection on his various successes and failures.
The chat starts out with some grade-A anecdotes from Jobs about calling up Hewlett Packard co-founder Jim Hewlett on the phone (in the days before unlisted numbers) when he was 12 years old, to lob questions at him about computer parts and the like. (It led to a summer internship.) He also recounts hacking AT&T’s long distance program and building a so-called “blue box” to mimic its tones, at which point he and friend Steve Wozniak even phoned the Pope! (After progressing through several levels of papal bureaucracy, they cracked up laughing and hung up before Pope John Paul II got on the line.) The lesson, says Jobs, was that it was possible — just through intelligence and hard work — to harness a huge company’s infrastructure and make it work for you.
Jobs also talks about viewing computer science as a liberal art, and when it comes to discussing and dissecting Apple’s failures, he pulls no punches, noting that when there is a market success, big companies wrongheadedly try to institutionalize process. “Apple did not have the caliber of people that was necessary to seize this idea in many ways,” he says. “There was a core team that did, but a larger team that had come mostly from Hewlett Packard didn’t have a clue.”
Jobs also gets in what many might perceive as digs or jabs at Bill Gates and Microsoft (“They have absolutely no taste. I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way — they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their product”), but he does so in such a casual manner, vacuumed free of animosity, that even his biggest punches (“I’m not saddened by their success… I’m just saddened that they just make really third-rate products”) come off more as sincere sociocultural critiques than embittered rantings.
What’s most notable about Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, which is engaging throughout, is its subject’s commingled intelligence and passion. When he talks about humankind “building tools that can amplify our skills,” it makes one smile in realization at just how long the seeming impossibilities that some of Apple’s products would go on to achieve had likely danced around inside Jobs’ head.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview comes to DVD presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with an English language Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track, and optional Spanish subtitles. Obviously, given the nature of the source material from which this DVD is mastered, the picture clarity isn’t in line with the sort of pristine standards to which hardcore digital aficionados are accustomed, but that’s not the chief selling point of this title, given that it’s a static, straight-on interview.
The DVD’s bonus features, however, provide a nice bit of added value. First up, there’s an audio commentary track with producer-director Paul Sen and writer-presenter Robert Cringely, in which the pair discuss the program for which the Jobs interview was originally recorded, along with much more. There’s also a separate audio interview with Cringely, conducted by producer John Cau, and, best of all, a 60-minute interview with Andy Hertzfeld, the original Macintosh programmer at Apple. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase it via Half, click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)