Wise guy

‘I think of myself as an intellectual leader. Can you imagine Albert Einstein being asked by someone in the press to explain E=mc2 in seven seconds? This stuff is complicated.’—Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio, May 1997

‘We’d bring a bunch of .22 pistols, .45s and an assortment of .357 Magnums into the woods, a gun for every kid. We would go blazing around, shooting everything in sight.’—Bill Sweet, of his childhood with Amelio, in the San Jose Mercury News, May 1997

‘Amelio’s salary was nearly $3 million… against a background of $1.6 billion losses for Apple over the past six quarters, and the loss of one third of its workforce’—MacUser, 27 June 1997

A clearing in the woods. Twilight. Apple CEO GIL AMELIO is shooting at pinecones with a .357 Magnum. The following dialogue takes place inside his head.

GIL: Three million lousy dollars. Did anyone ask Einstein what he made? Did anyone ever interview Einstein and when he started talking about E equals mc squared, say, ‘Screw all that, Al, what we really wanna know is, whaddya pull down in a year?’

He blows away a pinecone carved to resemble the editor of the San Jose Mercury News.

GIL: And then there’s the Mac cloners…

ROBERT DE NIRO AS TRAVIS BICKLE: Are you talkin’ to me?

GIL: No, I’m talking to myself.

TRAVIS: No fockin’ change there. One of these days you gotta get yourself organised. You gotta go out and tell them, listen, you fockers, you screwheads. Here is a man who stood up against the scum, the dogs, the filth, the… I don’t know, whatever shit CEOs stand up against.

GIL: Fockin’ Mac cloners!

TRAVIS: Someone should take those cloners and just… just flush them down the fockin’ toilet.

GIL: Fockin’ wise-ass journalists!

He shoots up some more pinecones.

GIL: That’s why I come out here, man. I gotta get them outta my head. I gotta be alone.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: If a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.

GIL AND TRAVIS: What the fock?

EMERSON: The rays that come from those heavenly worlds give man the perpetual presence of the sublime. My head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

GIL: That’s it! Now I see everything clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. From now on it will be total organisation. No longer will the wrong roads be taken. I got some good ideas in my head.

EMERSON: Let’s hear ’em, baby!

GIL: OK, first we go to all the clone makers and say…

COP: Hey, do you have a licence for that?

GIL: Awoken from his reverie What? Oh, yes, officer. I was just doing some thinking. I get all my best ideas this way. Only… I can’t seem to remember them now.

COP: Come on, Mr Amelio, it’s time to go home.

The COP escorts GIL back to his jet. Fade.

First published in MacUser, 27 June 1997

Tagged as: Apple, Business, Film, MacUser