Daily Dialogue — June 20, 2012

Gage: Mr. Zuckerberg, do I have your full attention?

Mark Zuckerberg: [stares out the window] No.

Gage: Do you think I deserve it?

Mark Zuckerberg: [looks at Gage] What?

Gage: Do you think I deserve your full attention?

Mark Zuckerberg: I had to swear an oath before we began this deposition, and I don’t want to perjure myself, so I have a legal obligation to say no.

Gage: Okay — no. You don’t think I deserve your attention.

Mark Zuckerberg: I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try — but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention — you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing. [pauses] Did I adequately answer your condescending question?

— Gage (David Selby), Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), The Social Network (2010), screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, based on a book by Ben Mezrich

http://static.movieclips.com/embedplayer.swf?shortid=Dtuvm

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is bragging suggested by churnage. Today’s suggestion by Paul Quade.

Trivia: During one of the depositions, it is mentioned that the invention of Facebook made Mark Zuckerburg “the biggest thing on a campus that included nineteen Nobel Laureates, fifteen Pulitzer Prize winners, two future Olympians, and a movie star.” One of the lawyers then asks, “Who was the movie star?” and the response is, “Does it matter?” This movie star was, in fact, Natalie Portman, who was enrolled at Harvard from 1999 to 2003 and helped screenwriter Aaron Sorkin by providing him insider information about goings-on at Harvard at the time Facebook first appeared there.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Is it bragging when the braggart is a full-on genius? I think so.

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