Apple’s Eddy Cue calls new Steve Jobs documentary ‘inaccurate and mean-spirited’

Apple’s Eddy Cue fired a shot (in a tweet) at a new Steve Jobs documentary that debuted at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin.

The CNN-funded documentary by Alex Gibney, called Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, pulls no punches when describing Jobs’ management style and personal history.

Here’s Cue’s tweet from this morning:

Very disappointed in SJ:Man in the Machine. An inaccurate and mean-spirited view of my friend. It’s not a reflection of the Steve I knew.

— Eddy Cue (@cue) March 16, 2015

Gibney’s last documentary was an equally irreverent look at Scientology called Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, which airs on HBO this month.

The Jobs film was virtually unknown until debuting at SXSW, but now Magnolia Pictures says it will distribute the film in North America. CNN has the TV rights.

“Once again Alex Gibney takes on an iconic figure and masterfully reveals the complexities and motivations behind the Steve Jobs facade that has inspired the world,” Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles told Deadline.com.

Reviews are mixed.

Here’s what The Guardian had to say:

The film points out that Jobs’s genius was in personalising computers — Lisa being the first — but it also reveals that this impulse came from a pretty messed-up place. As well as being deeply ambivalent about being a father, Jobs also felt at once rejected and anointed by the fact that he was adopted. Jobs has somehow transmitted that mess to us too. Our iPhones connect us to faraway friends and family, yet we spend increasing amounts of time alone with them, seduced by machines that can never really fulfill us.

And here’s the Boston Herald with another angle:

On a certain level, “The Man in the Machine” functions as a corrective and a tribute to the many brilliant men and women Jobs surrounded himself with but didn’t necessarily give their due; many here attest to his sharp way with a jab and his monomaniacal need for control, particularly with regard to staff retention.

And:

Gibney duly acknowledges Jobs’s artistry, innovation and technological showmanship while making plain just how “ruthless, deceitful and cruel” the man could be.

Gibney pointed out after the SXSW showing that Apple chose not to participate in the film, citing the computer company’s “limited resources.”

Cue said that another forthcoming Jobs documentary called Becoming Steve Jobs — which Apple did bless — hits much closer to the mark, accuracy-wise.

Hat tips: 9to5Mac and Deadline.com