Steve Jobs Interview Coming to a Theater Near You

Did Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography leave you hungry for more access to the Apple founder? Would you mind if that access came in the form of a 16-year-old interview transferred from a VHS tape onto a 70-foot movie screen? No? Good news! The Los Angeles Times reports that in mid-November, Landmark Theaters will be showing a "lost" interview with Jobs from 1995.

The interview was conducted with Robert Cringely for his 1996 miniseries Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. Cringely sat down with Jobs for 70 minutes, but he only used 10 minutes of the interview for his miniseries. The raw footage was lost, but Paul Sen, Triumph of the Nerds' director, had dubbed it onto a VHS and kept it in his garage for over a decade.

After Jobs died last month, Sen found the tape and "suggested that perhaps Cringely could put it on his technology blog...as a 'gift to the world.'" Rather than gift it to the world, Cringely contacted Landmark Theatres co-owner Mark Cuban (a.k.a. "Cubes") and asked if he would be interested. The two reached an agreement, and now you can catch Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview at a Landmark Theater near you on November 16th and 17th.

Cringely told the LA Times that it cost $6,000 to transfer the VHS tape to theater stock, and he's confident in recouping that small investment.

Go see Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, if only for the fact that Jobs would think updating a 16-year-old interview from a dead medium to a dying medium would be the dumbest thing in the world.

Here's a clip:

via CNET

Lost Steve Jobs interview headed to the big screen [LA Times]

[@nickgreene][ngreene@villagevoice.com]