While most of these details had to be entirely re-created in studios, select scenes were in fact shot in Harvard Square. The film includes an establishing shot panning over the Pit, as well as several exterior shots of the Spee Club, a stand-in for the Phoenix Club in the film. According to Mark S. Hruby ’78, a Spee graduate member who helped arrange the shoot, the primary reason the production sought to film there was because its corner location allowed for more dynamic shots, and because the production staff felt it would best establish what a final club was.
Isabel Q. Carey ’12, hired as an extra for the shots in Harvard Square, characterized her filming experience as an exhausting one. Carey—who learned of the casting opportunity through another Harvard undergraduate—was one of roughly 10 Harvard students hired to be extras in the film. As many people involved with the film emphasized, David Fincher is a perfectionist on the set, and is known for filming shots a remarkable number of times—according to Eisenberg, the opening scene of the movie was shot ninety-nine times, and Carey says she had a fourteen-hour day just doing extra work in a few shots. She does not feel that her presence as an actual Harvard student added anything to the film, characterizing her role in the shots as relatively mundane. “The work of an extra in this particular film was to walk from one location to the other,” she says.
Eisenberg, however, spoke highly of Fincher’s rigor during the filming process, and greatly appreciated the experience of shooting in Harvard Square. “It absolutely added something to the film,” he said, “I was disappointed that we weren’t able to film more at Harvard.” Eisenberg particularly found his experience of the atmosphere and culture of Harvard to be informative as an actor. However, such authenticity in recreating the environment of Harvard does not necessarily ensure that Harvard was depicted with complete verisimilitude in the final product.
INSIDE OUT
Given its carefully crafted portrayal of campus culture, Harvard students may view “The Social Network” with more scrutiny than the general public. Students had their first chance to see the film at an advance screening on September 22 at the Harvard Film Archive. Sorkin, Eisenberg, and Hammer were all in attendance and spoke briefly about the film at the event.
Benjamin J. Nelson ’11, a self-described “film buff,” was highly complimentary of the film on the whole. “The screenplay is well crafted, approachable, funny,” he says. “I thoroughly enjoyed it.” In spite of all the Harvard-specific information presented in the film, Nelson thought that a public audience would be able to fully appreciate the film. However, he expressed doubts that the average moviegoer would be able to distinguish fact and dramatization.
“I think they’ll be able to give themselves over to the conceit that’s presented in the movie a little more than we are,” Nelson says. He specifically referenced one scene in the film depicting a party at the Phoenix, where a bus full of women arrive at the club’s front door. They join an extravagant party replete with partial nudity and designer drugs. “I think if I had no idea, I would totally buy that the Phoenix does bring in buses of extremely attractive girls,” Nelson says. “I’d believe that if I weren’t a Harvard student.”
Nevertheless, Nelson thought the movie generally captured the feeling and atmosphere of Harvard accurately. “It got a lot of the basics right… Some things are taken a little bit too extreme, but not in a way that was blatantly unrealistic.” He also appreciated the authenticity of seeing familiar Harvard Square locales in the film: “Those places wound up having a bit more of a realistic feeling.”
Nelson’s concerns about the film lead back to an interesting set of questions about the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. The story of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and its origins is one that is still evolving every day. It’s a story that has reached remarkable heights of cultural prominence in a remarkably short amount of time. Multiple versions of this story have already been told at this point. “The Social Network” will be yet another. For Sorkin, it isn’t necessarily definitive: “We want those kinds of arguments—what’s true, what’s not, who’s good, who’s bad… We want those arguments to happen in the parking lot.”
—Staff writer Matthew C. Stone can be reached at mcstone@fas.harvard.edu.