Larry Summers Disses 'A**hole' Winklevoss Twins (VIDEO)

In The Social Network, a Hollywood portrayal of how Facebook got its start, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss enter then-Harvard President Larry Summers' office wearing matching suits and ties.

"From the looks of it they want to sell me a Brooks Brothers franchies," Summers' character says sarcastically of their intention. The brothers have another matter on their mind: they've come to tell Summers how they believe Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for an online social network.

In the movie, Summers wants little to do with their problem. "Since you're on the subject of right and wrong, this action, this meeting, the two of you being here is wrong. It's not worthy of Harvard, it's not what harvard saw in you."

The real Larry Summers sees some truth to the scene--and still does not seem sympathetic to the Winklevoss twins' claims.

At Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference, Summers discussed his depiction in The Social Network and dissed the Winklevoss twins.

"One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they're looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole," he said during an interview at the conference, according to a Fortune transcript. "This was the latter case. Rarely, have I encountered such swagger, and I tried to respond in kind."

In response to interviewer Walter Isaacson's question, "So was that scene in the social network true?," Summers simply responded, "I've heard it said that I can be arrogant," adding, "If that's true, I surely was on that occasion."

Summers previously told the Boston Globe that he viewed his scene in The Social Network as fairly true-to-life.

"I’ve been told that the Winklevii say that the movie is wrong,’’ Summers told the paper. “Making adjustments for cinematic license . . . I would say the movie was fairly accurate.’’

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss also agreed with aspects of the scene: "It definitely captured the tenor of Larry Summers and how he dealt with us, the lack of tact," Tyler Winklevoss told Businessweek. "We came into the office not feeling good about the situation, and we left feeling certainly a lot worse."

The Winklevoss twins have sued Facebook and its CEO, the twins' former Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg, on several occasions. Recently, they decided not to appeal a court ruling to the Supreme Court, as they had initially planned. The decision the twins had planned to contest was a ruling against their claim that in their 2008 settlement with Facebook, worth $65 million, the company had misled them about the value of its stock.

Read more about Summers' remarks at the Brainstorm Tech conference--including his take on the debt ceiling talks and concerns about a tech bubble--on Fortune here.

Comments

[StephenJK]

01:48 AM on 07/22/2011

Heyyyy, how ya doin, "pot"? Come over here, I'd like you to meet the "kettles".

[MichaelMcKLA]

01:17 AM on 07/22/2011

The Winklevii must be burning through a lot of cash.

[CaptainPicard]

12:52 AM on 07/22/2011

Takes one to know one, Larry!

[Mondayboy]

04:07 PM on 07/21/2011

who thought larry summers the word "swagger?"

[JohnnyTooBad]

07:30 AM on 07/21/2011

Wow. The president of Harvard making a complete generalization about students' personalities based on the clothes they wear. The fact that it would let Larry Summers be its president says a lot about that institution.

[mheister]

11:39 AM on 07/21/2011

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck....

[sensimilla]

01:42 PM on 07/21/2011

actually, i thought he was spot on! First statement i've ever agreed with from Summers.

[MichaelMcKLA]

02:50 AM on 07/21/2011

Way to go, Larry Summers! Love it.

[RGenie]

11:07 PM on 07/20/2011

Dude run a spell check. "franchies" what are those? harvard lowercase? hello?

[mistercrispyusa]

09:49 PM on 07/20/2011

Go away, spoiled rich kids.

[MyTake]

09:13 PM on 07/20/2011

Refresh my memory, but why was this guy kicked out of Harvard the first time.

And this from the man who along with Greenspan, Rubin and Clinton shepherded the unregulated DERIVATIVE scam that nearly brought down the U.S. economy and who has not spent a day in jail for it.

[natal plum]

10:46 AM on 09/14/2011

Unnnnnh, "nearly brought down the US economy"? It DID bring down the US economy.

[Monk2001]

07:09 PM on 07/20/2011

To be fair, everyone in this story could be described as such.

[Jeffersonian1]

06:03 PM on 07/20/2011

Definitely a case of it takes one to know one.

[FalstaffsMind]

05:19 PM on 07/20/2011

Increasingly, those that can do, those that can't Winklevoss.

[Ronaldus785]

05:17 PM on 07/20/2011

Stereotyping is a lot more pervasive than I ever could have imagined. Makes one wonder about the admissions interview.

[FreelanceWriter]

04:33 PM on 07/20/2011

>> MikeinNYC: "These two Harvard-ed­ucated nitwits with daddy's lawyers behind them are going to have a hard time convincing any court that they were taken advantage of and did not know what they were doing when they settled with facebook for a very substantia­l sum of money."

Nice spin, but that ISN'T the actual legal issue at hand.

Given all the interviews and comments made by people associated with Facebook behind the scenes -- including Zuckerberg himself -- the overwhelming majority of evidence points to the fact that when the Twins made their initial settlement deal, Zuckerberg and his attorneys were purposefully lying about the actual true worth of Facebook. Which means they legally negotiated in bad faith.

In terms of looking back at Facebook's early days, it's one thing to debate "who" had "what" idea when and where. But the cold hard truth is it was ultimately decided -- by essentially an admission of guilt -- that the twins WERE due money for the creation of the site.

Any way you spin it, if Zuckerberg and his attorneys lied about the Facebook's TRUE financials and worth, then THAT action obviously affected the amount of the settlement previously issued. Which means the Twins lawsuit to "up" that amount -- so its a true reflection of what they should have been compensated with -- is 100% valid.

[mheister]

11:43 AM on 07/21/2011

Read it as an admission of guilt if you like, it was more like 'go away' money.

This often happens with lawsuits that are more trouble than they're worth. And in Zuckerberg's case, arrogance is apparently not something he lacks. It's safer to settle than to place your fate in the hands of a dozen amateurs (we're talking Zuckerberg here; you think they'll find a jury of his peers???).

[Dieter Zerressen]

01:17 PM on 07/22/2011

No, an on line social network was not their "idea" alone; there were plenty of others coming to this same conclusion. There's a difference between having an idea and actually being able to create something. Plenty of folks begging for money on street corners have idea all the time, the difference is execution, skill, ability, intelligence, drive and in some cases pure luck who comes out first. In fact Facebook wasn't even the first. Just like Google wasn't the first. Hey, neither was Microsoft. Doesn't mean everybody owes everyone else something for an "idea". Please.

[lovesickbilly]

04:22 PM on 07/20/2011

Writer: typos undermine your credibility.

[natal plum]

10:48 AM on 09/14/2011

If you are one of the nitpickers who follows form over substance it does.

[lovesickbilly]

12:05 PM on 09/14/2011

Sloppiness is part of substance.