The internet is filled with facts, both true and otherwise. In Film Trivia Fact Check, we’ll browse the depths of the web’s most user-generated trivia boards and wikis and put them under the microscope. How true are the IMDb Trivia pages? You want the truth? Can you handle the truth? We’re about to find out.
Claim: “During one of the depositions, it is mentioned that the invention of Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg ‘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 as a junior and senior when Mark Zuckerberg was a freshman. She invited Aaron Sorkin to a dinner party with her Harvard friends to provide him insider information on the school’s social life at the time Facebook was created.” [IMDb]
Rating: True
Context: From the onset of The Social Network‘s national rollout, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin never shied from name-dropping. After the film’s first public screening at the Harvard Film Archive on September 22, 2010, Sorkin recounted the meticulous research he did for the film, including visiting the Phoenix S.K. Club, Harvard’s exclusive final club that ostracized Mark Zuckerberg (played in the film by Jesse Eisenberg). According to a September 2010 report in the Harvard Crimson, Sorkin received an invite to The Fly Club, another Harvard final club, too, which he declined, calling it “a burdensome and costly offer,” and he “got into the Phoenix for free.” Amid all the talk about final clubs, which laid the groundwork for the film’s exploration of exclusivity, Sorkin revealed he had an inside source, an ex-girlfriend of a former Porcellian Club president: Natalie Portman.
“Natalie Portman got in touch with me when she heard that I was doing this to say, ‘Listen, come over for dinner, and I’ll tell you some stories,'” Sorkin told the Film Archive. “I would’ve come over for dinner under any circumstances. But that was really helpful.”
Portman’s participation was one of the film’s most blogged-about elements ahead of The Social Network‘s release. Surprisingly, Sorkin didn’t divulge exactly what was said during those meetings, nor did any reporters ask her about it. But a couple of months later, Portman offered her own memories of the party. In January 2011, Portman joined Annette Bening, James Franco, Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, and Michelle Williams for Newsweek‘s Oscars Roundtable, where she confirmed Sorkin’s dinner party story.
The actress recalls telling Sorkin about partying with the Winklevoss twins and the Harvard “social scene” of “Men’s Clubs, where girls have to be friends with the guys to get in.” She debunks Social Network‘s depiction of throngs of women bussed onto campus for Phoenix parties—though Portman claims she was told, “You just weren’t invited to those parties.”
Most saliently to the plot of The Social Network, Portman offers some context for the “chicken story” with a dark-meat twist. In The Social Network, the rift between Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), one of Facebook’s co-founders, becomes irreparable after Mark supposedly plants the “chicken story” in the Crimson. The story, which also appears in the film’s source material, Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires, claims that as a Phoenix pledge, Eduardo was required to care for a chicken. During their time together, Eduardo supposedly and cannibalistically fed the fowl fried chicken, landing him with a charge of animal cruelty that hurt his reputation.
Portman, who is a few years older than the Facebook boys, remembers a much darker version of the chicken story. She says, “They had to carry the chickens around and they didn’t know what to do with the chickens afterwards and they killed, like, 400 chickens in the basement of one of these clubs.” It must’ve been a profound moment for Portman, who would later become an animal rights activist, but also a moment of reflection for the type of atmosphere Mark Zuckerberg—the famed smoked meats enthusiast, Sweet Baby Ray’s lover, and full-blown beef freak—came of age in. Nevertheless, Portman said she keeps “wanting to get credit for [the story], because [Sorkin’s] getting so much credit.” We’re happy to give it to her.
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