How real is Steve Jobs film?

LOS ANGELES - Anyone watching the new Steve Jobs film this weekend might wonder how true to life the portrayal is of the late Apple co-founder.

We reached out to the real-life folks portrayed in the film to find out.

Answer: sort of, but not really.

“Most of the events portrayed in the film had a fictional element to them as well as a factual basis,” says Andy Hertzfeld, one of the lead engineers on the original Macintosh computer, who is portrayed in the film by Michael Stuhlbarg.

Start with the basics: Jobs introduces new computers at public gatherings and has a child he initially refused to acknowledge as his, and then add language that Jobs and company might have said.

“It’s a movie, not a documentary,” says Andy Cunningham, who was the publicist for Jobs during the introduction of the Macintosh. "Everything that happens is a slightly fictional version of what happened.”

Cunningham is portrayed in the film, as are Hertzfeld, John Sculley, who ran Apple and eventually fired Jobs, co-founder Steve Wozniak and Joanna Hoffman, a former marketing exec at Apple.

In the film, Hoffman is played by Kate Winslet, and acts as Jobs’ conscience throughout the film, through the launch of the Mac, NeXt computer and the iMac.

But in fact, her character is a “compilation of 15 different people who worked for Steve,” Cunningham says. “It’s a better story when it’s one person.”

The Steve Jobs movie is just the latest in a string of productions about the beloved Apple co-founder. Ashton Kutcher played him in the 2013 Jobs, which bombed at the box office, and just last month a new documentary from filmmaker Alex Gibney, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine was released.

Steve Jobs was written by Oscar winners Aaron Sorkin, who also penned the history of Facebook, The Social Network, and directed by Danny Boyle, best known for Slumdog Millionaire.

Current Apple CEO Tim Cook has blasted the film, calling it “opportunistic,” while Jobs’ widow Laurene tried to block the release.

While the movie is based on the authorized biography of Jobs by Walter Issacson, on CBS This Morning Thursday, Sorkin insisted he was trying to do a “painting, not a photograph.” Added Boyle: “It’s based on facts, but it’s our version.”

Hertzfeld’s take: instead of realism, the film opts for a “sort of concentrated, heightened reality that resonates at a deeper level.”

Sculley calls it a “brilliant movie,” that’s “one facet in the life of a very complex man.”

Wozniak told the BBC that the movie conveys what his co-founder was like, “and what it was like to be around him.”

That said, his emotional dialogue scenes with his friend in the film are made up, he added. “Anybody who knows me will tell you I don’t say negative things to people and could not have said them.”

The Jobs portrayed in the film by actor Michael Fassbender is an ogre who barks at his staff and is cruel to his ex-girlfriend and daughter.

“The young Steve was a lot more than you see portrayed in the film,” says Sculley. “He was warm, passionate, driven, fun to hang out with. He was much more well rounded.”

Here’s how Hertzfeld describes him:

“He was often a blast to be around, with a fine, playful sense of humor and creativity and an irrepressible  passion for building something that's off the charts great, but he sometimes could be moody and extremely difficult as well.”

Cunningham, who runs Cunningham Collective, a San Francisco marketing firm, says people would ask her all the time, “How could you work with that monster? The answer is he could be tough, but so inspiring. He wanted to change the world. It was worth every minute of it.”

Hertzfeld, who went on to work at Google, calls himself a retired “computer hobbyist,” while Sculley still consults, and is a public speaker.

Steve Jobs is “an excellent film that's superbly written, with great performances from the entire cast, although the ending got a bit maudlin,” says Hertzfeld. “It doesn't try to be realistic, opting instead for a sort of concentrated, heightened reality that resonates at a deeper level.   Steve is portrayed as an incredibly passionate genius/madman, which, while exaggerated, isn't too far from the truth.”

The movie opens Friday.

Follow USA TODAY columnist and #TalkingTech host Jefferson Graham on Twitter, where he's @jeffersongraham, and listen to his daily audio tech reports on Stitcher, TuneIn and iTunes.