Wow.

I just finished reading Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network, an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, which David Fincher will be directing with Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake in the leads.

And it’s pretty amazing.

I mean, I was riveted. The man was writing about geeks who wanted revenge on hot girls and cool jocks, and I was riveted. Incredible.

The story follows Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s head honcho and the youngest billionaire in the world, and cuts frequently between the events in the past which led to the company’s success and two court cases in the present day (one in which he was sued by ConnectU’s Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra for stealing their idea, and the other in which he was sued by Eduardo Saverin, Facebook’s original co-founder, for screwing him out of his 30% share of the company) which threaten the company’s existence.

It’s interesting. I’m not a professional script analyst by any stretch of the imagination, but I always wonder how scripts like this would be explained by Syd Field’s three act structure.

I guess, first off, that this is a trajedy. Sure, Zuckerberg becomes a billionaire, but at what cost? He’s alone in the end. Next, I guess if we pretend the main story arc is about Zuckerberg and Saverin’s friendship, the first plot point would be Zuckerberg approaching Saverin to co-found Facebook, the second plot point would be Saverin trying to freeze Facebook’s bank account to “get Mark’s attention,” as the script says, and the midpoint would be the introduction of Sean Parker, the drug-addicted, hard-partying Napster founder that wedges Zuckerberg and Saverin’s friendship apart. And, when you look at the script in that light, it becomes a story of greed, power, betrayal, and, in a sense, abandonment, with Zuckerberg being the one who abandons throughout but is left abandoned at the end.

I don’t know how to rate scripts, but I have to give this one an amazing…out of…crazy amazing.

…seems scientific enough.

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