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The Social Network · written by Aaron Sorkin · 2010
Scene 40 of 189 · ≈ 2 min on screen
Mark Zuckerberg wants status and belonging Harvard's final clubs won't give him, so he builds a website that gives the world both — and loses his best friend and co-founder to the company he built to prove he mattered.
Mark at the campus bar: brilliant, status-obsessed, unable to read the room he's sitting in.
Network administrator Cox is woken at 4AM by a call about the surge and heads in, telling his wife Harvard's network is about to crash.
A Harvard IT grad student tells Cox the traffic spike out of Kirkland is Super Bowl-sized for 4AM.
Mark's internet connection freezes and the group realizes Facemash has taken down the whole Harvard network.
This scene
It’s three years later and MARK is sitting with his LAWYERS at a large conference table. MARK is wearing a hoodie, sweatpants and Adidas flip-flops--a personal uniform that we’ll come to understand. And while it may take us a while to notice it, MARK’s a different person in these flash-forward scenes. Still tortured and complicated, but comfortable now with his own power.
His lawyer is SY, who’s accompanied by some junior associates, one of whom--a pleasant, pretty and professional young contemporary of Mark’s named MARYLIN, we’ll get to know.
On the other side are EDUARDO and his lawyer, GRETCHEN, also accompanied by some associates. A STENOGRAPHER is typing the record.
The room is glass on two sides and through the windows we can see the behemoths of Silicon Valley--Oracle, SunMicrosystems, Google, etc.
GRETCHEN is taking MARK’s deposition.
GRETCHEN
So you were called in front of the Ad
Board.
MARK
That’s not what happened.
GRETCHEN
You weren’t called in front of the
Administrative Board?
MARK
No, back, I mean--That’s--back at the bar
with Erica Albright. She said all that?
SY
Mark, I wouldn’t--
MARK
That I said that stuff to her?
GRETCHEN
I was reading from the transcript of her
deposition so--
MARK
Why would you even need to depose her?
GRETCHEN
That’s really for us to--
MARK
You think if I know she can make me look
like a jerk I’ll be more likely--
SY
Mark--
MARK
--to settle?
SY
Why don’t we stretch our legs for a
minute, can we do that? It’s been almost
three hours and frankly you did spend an
awful lot of time embarrassing Mr.
Zuckerberg with the girl’s testimony from
the bar.
MARK
I’m not embarrassed, she just made a lot
of that up.
GRETCHEN
She was under oath.
MARK
Then I guess that would be the first time
somebody’s lied under oath.
People are stretching and getting coffee and talking quietly. MARK stays in his seat.
MARYLIN, the attractive second year associate who’s on Mark’s legal team is still sitting too...about four seats down from Mark.
MARYLIN
The site got twenty-two hundred hits
within two hours?
MARK
(beat)
Thousand.
MARYLIN
What?
MARK
Twenty-two thousand.
MARYLIN
(pause--even)
Wow.
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