The Steve Jobs Interview
If you watch the 60 Minutes segment this Sunday with Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’ biographer, on the eve of his book being published, you are likely to see up to three clips from my show Triumph of the Nerds. My 1995 interview with Steve for that series is famous for his trashing of Microsoft and has been played over and over on TV for the last 16 years. But that’s not the case with the interview from which that clip came… until now.
The interview we shot that day at NeXT headquarters in Redwood City ran about an hour but we used only 10 minutes in the TV series. It was our second try to meet with Steve, who had felt too ill (I thought too nervous) on our first visit. We were relieved to finally get him.
We planned to use more from the Jobs interview in my followup show Nerds 2.01: A Brief History of the Internet, but the master tapes for TOTN — all of them — were somehow lost while being shipped from London to Portland, Oregon for that second series. The Steve Jobs interview was gone forever.
Then two weeks ago TOTN director Paul Sen found a VHS copy of the Jobs interview stored in his UK garage. This is undoubtedly the only surviving copy of the best TV interview Steve Jobs ever gave yet nobody ever saw.
The tape is PAL-VHS, dubbed on professional equipment from a D1 master, but VHS is still VHS, which is to say crappy. Yet video technology has come a long way since 1995, so we’ve been throwing resolution enhancement voodoo at that tape, trying to get it ready for, well, something, we’re not sure what.
This coming week all the processing will be done, we’ll add a short opener and a few guiding voice annotations to what’s essentially an unedited interview — definitely not the sort of thing you’d normally see on TV. It’s me coaxing Steve into a great performance.
This interview is a moment in time. NeXT was in trouble in 1995, though Steve would never admit it. Apple, too, was at a low point. And none of us could know that NeXT would be sold to Apple within a year and Steve would be back minding the store in Cupertino shortly after that. No iMac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad were envisioned at that time, or if they were Steve wasn’t telling. But that younger Steve of 1995 was very much like the older Steve of 2005 or even 2011 — his devotion to design, to the user, and to bluntly speaking his mind shining through.
What we’ll do with the 64-minute video depends on how good it looks this week. Maybe we’ll put it up on the Net, maybe we’ll do something more. I’m open to your ideas.
It’s a piece of history, that’s for sure, and there couldn’t have been a better time to find it.
[...] editing process and stowed it away in his garage. After Jobs died, Sen found the tape. As Cringely explains on his blog, that interview will now be presented to the public at special screenings at Landmark Theatres [...]
Any chance of bringing it Canadian audiences? Toronto specifically (home of many an International Film Festival each year!) I’d LOVE to be able to catch it north of the border sometime real soon! Loved the original Series on PBS so much I bought it way back when…. looking forward to seeing it a theater near ME!
Cheers
[...] editing process and stowed it away in his garage. After Jobs died, Sen found the tape. As Cringely explains on his blog, that interview will now be presented to the public at special screenings at Landmark Theatres [...]
More power to you, RC. Amazing how some people think unique content such as this falls from the sky and should be free. As a fan of AE and TOTN, I hope this project works out for you. I doubt it’s an accident that many of SJ’s best lines ever were in response to your questions. But longer term I hope all will also be widely available to us folks loving abroad.
Macedonian News…
[...]I, Cringely » Blog Archive » The Steve Jobs Interview – Cringely on technology[...]…
I just saw the Film on the last interview at the landmark theatre.
All i can say is what a great job.
I am a better person for seeing it.
Thanks Mr Cringley
Just saw the film in NYC and it was a gem. The crowd broke into an applause at the end and it was a truly emotional moment.
I would love to own this on DVD or watch it online and share with family and friends. I have friends in India who would give their left arm to watch this. Please make it available to the public.
I watched “Triumph of the Nerds” on YouTube as I had not been born when it first aired so it would make sense to see this on the site as well
Thanks for sharing this amazing piece of work with us.
Please produce a DVD of this interview and offer it on iTunes. It will be a big seller. I would love to see it, but unfortunately no theater showings are close by. Let me know when it will be available.
Thank you Bob! The entire interview was awesome!!! Saw it tonight at the Regent Theater in Westwood,
Hi Bob,
Saw the movie Sautday morning at the Violet Crown Theater in Austin, TX, and really enjoyed. There are a lot of great Jobs quotes that will come out of the new portions of it.
Jobs’ story about the bicycle in the Scientific American article now more fully explains the story on page 115 of Isaacson’s book on how Jobs wanted to rechristen the Macintosh as the Bicycle.
In fact, I’m struck by how many episodes and events from Jobs’ childhood and early adult life would later find their way into Apple products and brand names.
One final comment: The part where Jobs states that everyone should learn programming and you reply that APL didn’t do anything for you was priceless. He really didn’t know how to respond to that.
Joseph P
Austin, TX
Hi Bob
Thoughts about when it would be shown in Australia. A similar independent cinema in Australia would be Dendy
Mark Nicholls
Sydney
agentur fur arbeit…
[...]I, Cringely » Blog Archive » The Steve Jobs Interview – Cringely on technology[...]…
I saw the Steve Jobs Lost Interview in Austin and I want to add my voice to those who are eager for a DVD. I would love to be able to purchase it, not only for myself but as gifts for friends who are also fans. I hope you release it in that form!
The interview truly conveys so much of Steve Jobs’ unique mind and craft, his quest for perfection, and his belief in the potential for beautiful design to raise our spirits and our level of taste, to enliven us and inspire us. You did a great job in your questions and showed us a rich and complex portrait of a remarkable man.
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[...] also an interesting and geeky story behind the movie. The full interview was thought to be lost for many years, until a VHS copy surfaced. With [...]
where can i get a copy of the DVD???
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