Director of Steve Jobs documentary calls Apple 'rude and callous'

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Apple is not interested in participating in a new documentary about Steve Jobs, directed by Alex Gibney, which offers a "scathing" and "deeply disrespectful" portrayal of the late Apple CEO.

“They didn’t offer us any help,” Gibney told Variety about Apple’s reluctance to participate in the film. “When we contacted them, they were hostile and rude. People love Apple’s products, but they are a cold company.”

Gibney said Apple's board refused to participate in the film and told him, "We have no resources to help on this project."

The documentary, titled "Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine," takes a critical attitude towards Jobs' personality and private life, including his repeated denials that he was the father of his daughter Lisa and his harsh treatment of many Apple employees.

Former Apple engineer Bob Belleville, who had a "love-hate" relationship with Jobs, appears in the documentary, reading an essay he wrote after Jobs' death. Gibney interviewed more than 50 people who knew Jobs for the film.

But many former and current Apple employees are reluctant to participate in the film. When the documentary premiered at the SXSW event last weekend, many Apple employees left early. Eddy Cue, Apple's software and services executive, tweeted after watching the documentary: "Very disappointed with the film Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine. It's inaccurate and ungenerous about my friend. This is not the Steve Jobs I knew."

Jobs' widow Laurene Powell was not involved in the filming of the documentary. According to Hollywood media reports, Gibney revealed in an interview after the SXSW premiere that he had contacted Powell very early and she agreed to be interviewed, but later decided to withdraw.

Previously, Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher starred in the film "Jobs" in 2013, and the biographical film "Steve Jobs" starring Michael Fassbender is about to be released, but only Gibney's documentary is critical of Jobs.

Gibney himself was not a fan of past movies about Jobs. He told Variety magazine: "After the publication of Walter Isaacson's biography on Jobs and the release of many movies, I really didn't want to do any more work looking at pictures. I think Ashton Kutcher is indeed similar to the young Jobs, but other than that, I thought the movie was silly and not interesting at all."

But Gibney's point is very interesting. The director's narration at the beginning of the documentary says: "Behind the scenes, Jobs is a cold, cunning and cruel person." Obviously, this sentiment does not stop there.

After the film premiered at SXSW last Saturday, The Daily Beast called it a "scathing dissection" and "all-around character assassination" of Jobs, while Variety called the film's portrayal "extremely fascinating, if deeply disrespectful." Just one day after the premiere, Magnolia Pictures acquired the film's North American theatrical, on-demand, and home entertainment rights.

Gibney spent nearly three years filming "Steve Jobs: The Man Inside the Machine" with funding from CNN Films. Gibney said that when the filming was over, he felt that he had finally "woke up."

“In the beginning, I thought of Jobs as an inventor,” Gibney told Variety. “Now I don’t think of him as an inventor anymore. I think he was a man who knew how to move people and was a great storyteller. He became the storyteller of the computer age, but not all of the stories he told were true.”

Gibney said that filming the documentary even affected his once-loved iPhone. "I would say I'm no longer in love with my iPhone, no longer blindly obsessed with it," he said.

Gibney's Steve Jobs documentary has not yet been released, but his other documentary, Going Clear, will premiere on HBO next weekend.