Post By:Jose Antonio Vargas

Everything that's wrong about The Social Network is summed up by its title.

The movie, opening nationwide today, is not interested in the concept of social networking or the actual usage of Facebook. Aaron Sorkin, the film's writer, told me in my profile of Mark Zuckerberg for the New Yorker: "I've heard of Facebook, in the same way I've heard of a carburetor. But if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn't know how to find it." It's a movie full of fictionalized scenes and Sorkin's trademark rat-a-tat dialogue that -- save for one eerie, almost ripped-from-the-headlines exchange (more on that later) -- say little about our online lives beyond the perfunctory "Facebook-is-addicting" and "we're-sharing-too-much-information."

And it's a movie that, at its core, stands on one glaring false premise: Zuckerberg as a flat-eyed, borderline autistic, humorless guy, a consummate outsider who wanted badly to get into one of Harvard's "final" clubs, his considerable coding skills reduced to social awkwardness. In other words, the geek as the "other." The lonely nerd, sitting alone in front of his computer, seeking connection. The friendless Zuckerberg creating Facebook to make friends and get a girl. There's something that feels quite dated and very 1990s about all of this, like the filmmakers never bothered to meet some of the geeksters -- geeks and hipsters -- at Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. who fuel the social media renaissance in Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg is presented as an alien from a faraway computer programming space, instead of a leading member of an entrepreneurial generation who's grown up with the Internet and now tops Vanity Fair's ranking of the New Establishment, ahead of Steve Jobs, the Google guys and Rupert Murdoch. In the film, Zuckerberg's character lacks context. He just is.

Zuckerberg, mind you, is no saint. A string of instant messages he sent while he was in college has been embarrassing and damaging to his reputation. On the whole, his views on privacy and his goal of making the world "a more open place" push way too many buttons to count. But Hollywood's stereotypical portrait of the introverted uber-geek has already gotten some in the tech community -- even those critical of Zuckerberg -- all riled up.

Anil Dash, the blogging pioneer and frequent critic of the Facebook CEO, told me: "The movie is written in the abstract, based on what they feel Facebook, and the social Web, represent. It's exoticism. It's the 1940s, when you had a white actor in yellow-face play a Chinese character, you know? Those foreigners talk like this, and it's why they're inscrutable and evil."

Added Jeff Jarvis, a long-time chronicler of new media and author of What Would Google Do?: "This is all about snobbery, about dismissing all this Internet stuff. The filmmakers didn't give any value to what Zuckerberg made. How can they say that they understand him if they don't understand his creation? It's dismissive of the 500 million or so people who are on Facebook. It's intellectually lazy. It's insulting."

Neither Sorkin nor Ben Mezrich (whose unauthorized book The Accidental Billionaires inspired the film) had access to Zuckerberg. And as one of the few journalists who's interviewed Zuckerberg numerous times and is familiar with the history of Facebook's early founding and continued growth, seeing the movie is a jarring, disorienting experience. How much reality can one expect from Hollywood? Not much, of course. For one, Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Zuckerberg is far from the actual Zuckerberg. At any point during the two-hour movie, I can't recall seeing Eisenberg's Zuckerberg crack a big smile or display any outward emotion. Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is on autopilot. He's not evil, per se, but driven -- driven towards what, we're not sure. The filmmakers have absolutely no idea. The real Zuckerberg, on the other hand, has a much more varied personality. Though naturally shy and inherently a private person, he's a noted prankster among his family and friends and, at any given moment, can easily turn serious or comical. Insecure is not a word anyone would use to describe him. Friendless, he is not. He is driven towards creating and dominating a new kind of Internet based on our identities and relationships.

To be fair, The Social Network has never pretended to be a documentary. It's got a story to sell and sticks to it, and that translates to sensationalized scenes of drugs and sex and made-up and heightened friendships and allegiances. Though Zuckerberg is the film's center, its heart belongs to Eduardo Saverin. In the film, Saverin is Zuckerberg's best friend who ends up suing him; furthermore, Saverin's acceptance to a final club that Zuckerberg couldn't get into hangs like a cloud. In real life, Saverin was less a friend of Zuckerberg and more a business partner. But this being a Hollywood movie (and since Saverin provided Mezrich, and in turn, Sorkin, with much of their material), the narrative arc of a betrayed best friend is a much juicier, more tragic Greek story. "Creation myths need a devil," one of the characters in the film tells the Facebook CEO. In some ways, the use of Zuckerberg and Facebook feel almost incidental, as if they're nothing but timely, movable props simply designed to lure viewers in and ride the social networking wave. Never mind that viewers will leave theaters with an inaccurate history of Facebook or a one-sided view of Zuckerberg. The movie is the thing. As Sorkin told Mark Harris in New York magazine: "I don't want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling."

Because whatever else The Social Network is -- a darkly (and darkly-lit) movie, well-acted throughout (kudos to dynamic Justin Timberlake), at times fun, witty and entertaining (the mere mention of the Facebook "wall" drew snickers from the audience) -- the film represents the biggest culmination yet of old media's disdain and misreading of new media. Its title notwithstanding, it's a movie about social networking born out of a fundamental disconnect.

It's no surprise, then, that The Social Network turns out to be simplistic take on a complex character masquerading as an important film. I saw the movie at a Thursday midnight screening surrounded by an almost packed house of mostly college-age students. They've been using Facebook for most of their high school and college lives; Zuckerberg is a curiosity and, to some I spoke to, an inspiration. To be 26 and a billionaire and the CEO of Facebook -- well, what have you done?

As the movie ended and the credits rolled, I kept trying to figure out what Peter Travers of Rolling Stone meant when -- in a rave review that's been followed by other rave reviews -- he dubbed the film "the movie of the year" that also defines "the dark irony of the past decade." Which decade? Defined by whom? By those who don't use Facebook and social media and deride it as a waste of time and energy, as nothing but narcissism and vanity gone amok?

Facebook is many things to many people -- you make it what it is -- but it's a way for users to present themselves and manage their relationships with other people. It's a bar, a church, a town hall, a borderless, multilingual country -- with all the requisite social complications. Of course it feeds the ego. You won't get more birthday wishes than on Facebook, for example. And there's always something intrinsically theatrical about it, like watching a reality TV show knowing that the very presence of a camera alters the definition of "reality."

It's not merely superficium, not all trivial, however. While riding a cab in Washington, D.C. recently, a 37-year-old Ethiopian driver named Berhanu Bekele got visibly emotional when describing how he was able to find long-lost friends on Facebook whom he had lost touch with during Eriterean-Ethipioan War in the late 1990s. He's found two while typing their names on Facebook's search box -- one is in Lebanon, he says -- and hopes to find more. "The world is getting smaller, you know," Bekele told me. When it comes to social activism and organizing, Facebook can be used for good or bad, its users ultimately driving its meaning.

The truth is, Facebook is as much a creature of the showboat Andy Warhol -- everyone gets more than their share of 15 of minutes fame -- as it is of the humanist E.M. Forster: "Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

I'm a digital native, a part of the "millennial" generation who, like Zuckerberg, has grown up with Google, Wikipedia and AOL Instant Messenger -- instant, immediate connection, where every private citizen has an online identity. I don't have a utopian or dystopian view of the Internet; it's just a reality I personally am still adjusting to. To others like me, what happens online translates offline; increasingly, there's a fluidity between our online and offline identities. As I walked out of the theater at 2:30 a.m Friday, I was reminded of one moment in the movie. It's a made-up scene between Zuckerberg and his ex-girlfriend Erica, who becomes a victim of Zuckerberg's drive-by-blogging -- he calls her a "bitch" and posts her bra size for the online world to see. The confrontation between the two would have been much more effective without Zuckerberg being told that he writes from "a dark room" because he's a "failure at human contact." The heavy-handedness aside, the ugly consequences of violating someone's privacy easily speaks for itself.

The scene reminded me of the truly tragic story of Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University who took his own life after his roommate, 18-year-old Dharum Ravi, recorded his private sexual encounter with another man and shared it online, via Twitter and iChat. Before he jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River, he signed onto his Facebook account and wrote "sorry." A Facebook group memorializing his death, created after the news broke on Wednesday, has some 75,000 members.

Social networking -- a flattening online world built on people and their real identities -- is here to stay, and it's not just about Facebook. At a time when we need to have deeper, more serious conversations across the country -- especially in middle schools, high schools and colleges -- about the irrevocable impact of social networking in our lives, we have a movie that purports to be about social networking but ultimately proves to be a mostly fleeting distraction. See it; you probably will. Just don't expect any real insight about our evolving online reality, or about the 26-year-old CEO that's helping shape it.

Then again, The Social Network is a Hollywood movie about a topic that Hollywood fails to understand.

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In a shocking new audiotape, Mel tells Oksana, the mother of his daughter, tells her she “f***** deserved” to get punched in the face and — most shockingly of all — that he wants to kill her.

In another disturbing leaked audiotape of Mel Gibson, the 54-year-old actor threatens to kill his now ex-girlfriend Oksana Girgorieva twice AND admits to punching her in the face.

The eight-minute rant is more shocking and offensive than the last — Mel is breathing heavily and is so frustrated he can barely talk. He truly sounds like a mad man.

“You need a f*cking bat in the side of the head. Alright, how about that?” the Braveheart actor says at one point.

Oksana remains fairly calm and and threatens, “You’re gonna answer one day, boy, you’re gonna answer.”

Later, Mel threatens to kill the mother of his 10-month-old daughter, Lucia, again, yelling, “Threaten ya? I’ll put you in a f *ckin rose garden you c*nt! You understand that? Because I’m capable of it. You understand that?”

When Oksana questions him about punching her in the face and knocking out her teeth, Mel admits he did it, screaming, “Oh, you’re all angry now! You know what, you f* cking deserved it!”

Mel is currently under investigation by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Dept. for child endangerment, domestic abuse and gun charges. Could this new tape lead to criminal assault charges?

Dennis Hopper, the high-flying Hollywood wild man whose memorable and erratic career included an early turn in "Rebel Without a Cause," an improbable smash with "Easy Rider" and a classic character role in "Blue Velvet," has died. He was 74.

Hopper died Saturday at his home in the Los Angeles beach community of Venice, surrounded by family and friends, family friend Alex Hitz said. Hopper's manager announced in October 2009 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The success of "Easy Rider," and the spectacular failure of his next film, "The Last Movie," fit the pattern for the talented but sometimes uncontrollable actor-director, who also had parts in such favorites as "Apocalypse Now" and "Hoosiers." He was a two-time Academy Award nominee, and in March 2010, was honored with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame .

After a promising start that included roles in two James Dean films, Hopper's acting career had languished as he developed a reputation for throwing tantrums and abusing alcohol and drugs. On the set of "True Grit," Hopper so angered John Wayne that the star reportedly chased Hopper with a loaded gun.

He married five times and led a dramatic life right to the end. In January 2010, Hopper filed to end his 14-year marriage to Victoria Hopper, who stated in court filings that the actor was seeking to cut her out of her inheritance, a claim Hopper denied.

"Much of Hollywood," wrote critic-historian David Thomson, "found Hopper a pain in the neck."

All was forgiven, at least for a moment, when he collaborated with another struggling actor, Peter Fonda, on a script about two pot-smoking, drug-dealing hippies on a motorcycle trip through the Southwest and South to take in the New Orleans Mardi Gras.

On the way, Hopper and Fonda befriend a drunken young lawyer ( Jack Nicholson , whom Hopper had resisted casting, in a breakout role), but arouse the enmity of Southern rednecks and are murdered before they can return home.

"'Easy Rider' was never a motorcycle movie to me," Hopper said in 2009. "A lot of it was about politically what was going on in the country."

Fonda produced "Easy Rider" and Hopper directed it for a meager $380,000. It went on to gross $40 million worldwide, a substantial sum for its time. The film caught on despite tension between Hopper and Fonda and between Hopper and the original choice for Nicholson's part, Rip Torn , who quit after a bitter argument with the director.

The film was a hit at Cannes, netted a best-screenplay Oscar nomination for Hopper, Fonda and Terry Southern, and has since been listed on the American Film Institute's ranking of the top 100 American films. The establishment gave official blessing in 1998 when "Easy Rider" was included in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Its success prompted studio heads to schedule a new kind of movie: low cost, with inventive photography and themes about a young, restive baby boom generation. With Hopper hailed as a brilliant filmmaker, Universal Pictures lavished $850,000 on his next project, "The Last Movie."

The title was prescient. Hopper took a large cast and crew to a village in Peru to film the tale of a Peruvian tribe corrupted by a movie company. Trouble on the set developed almost immediately, as Peruvian authorities pestered the company, drug-induced orgies were reported and Hopper seemed out of control.

When he finally completed filming, he retired to his home in Taos, N.M., to piece together the film, a process that took almost a year, in part because he was using psychedelic drugs for editing inspiration.

When it was released, "The Last Movie" was such a crashing failure that it made Hopper unwanted in Hollywood for a decade. At the same time, his drug and alcohol use was increasing to the point where he was said to be consuming as much as a gallon of rum a day.

Shunned by the Hollywood studios, he found work in European films that were rarely seen in the United States. But, again, he made a remarkable comeback, starting with a memorable performance as a drugged-out journalist in Francis Ford Coppola 's 1979 Vietnam War epic, "Apocalypse Now," a spectacularly long and troubled film to shoot. Hopper was drugged-out off camera, too, and his rambling chatter was worked into the final cut.

He went on to appear in several films in the early 1980s, including the well regarded "Rumblefish" and "The Osterman Weekend," as well as the campy "My Science Project" and " The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2."

But alcohol and drugs continued to interfere with his work. Treatment at a detox clinic helped him stop drinking but he still used cocaine, and at one point he became so hallucinatory that he was committed to the psychiatric ward of a Los Angeles hospital.

Upon his release, Hopper joined Alcoholics Anonymous , quit drugs and launched yet another comeback. It began in 1986 when he played an alcoholic ex-basketball star in "Hoosiers," which brought him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

His role as a wild druggie in "Blue Velvet," also in 1986, won him more acclaim, and years later the character wound up No. 36 on the AFI's list of top 50 movie villains.

He returned to directing, with " Colors ," "The Hot Spot" and "Chasers."

From that point on, Hopper maintained a frantic work pace, appearing in many forgettable movies and a few memorable ones, including the 1994 hit " Speed ," in which he played the maniacal plotter of a freeway disaster. In the 2000s, he was featured in the television series " Crash " and such films as " Elegy " and " Hell Ride ."

"Work is fun to me," he told a reporter in 1991. "All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job — two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be."

For years he lived in Los Angeles' bohemian beach community of Venice, in a house designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry.

In later years he picked up some income by becoming a pitchman for Ameriprise Financial, aiming ads at baby boomers looking ahead to retirement. His politics, like much of his life, were unpredictable. The old rebel contributed money to the Republican Party in recent years, but also voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008.

Dennis Lee Hopper was born in 1936, in Dodge City, Kan., and spent much of his youth on the nearby farm of his grandparents. He saw his first movie at 5 and became enthralled.

After moving to San Diego with his family, he played Shakespeare at the Old Globe Theater.

Scouted by the studios, Hopper was under contract to Columbia until he insulted the boss, Harry Cohn. From there he went to Warner Bros., where he made "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Giant" while in his late teens.

Later, he moved to New York to study at the Actors Studio, where Dean had learned his craft.

Hopper's first wife was Brooke Hayward, the daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan and agent Leland Hayward, and author of the best-selling memoir "Haywire." They had a daughter, Marin, before Hopper's drug-induced violence led to divorce after eight years.

His second marriage, to singer-actress Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, lasted only eight days.

A union with actress Daria Halprin also ended in divorce after they had a daughter, Ruthana. Hopper and his fourth wife, dancer Katherine LaNasa , had a son, Henry, before divorcing.

He married his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy, who was 32 years his junior, in 1996, and they had a daughter, Galen Grier.

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