This Friday, Columbia Pictures will release The Social Network, a film that is already being heralded as the film of the year by many major news outlets. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, and chronicles his meteoric rise from Harvard student geek, to founder of a 27 billion-dollar company.

Eisenberg, along with co-star Armie Hammer and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, took part in a nationwide press tour earlier this month, and answered questions about everything from the film’s authenticity, to the difficult process of bringing the story to the screen. The tour’s second stop was here in the Triangle, where the cast visited local universities to screen the film.

The Social Network, which was directed by David Fincher, has been the subject of controversy recently due to claims that the filmmakers took extreme creative liberties with Zuckerberg’s story. During a visit to Oprah this past week to announce a 100-million dollar donation to a school in Newark, Zuckerberg made his first public statement about the film.

“This is my life,” Zuckerberg said, “I know it isn’t that dramatic,”

The film’s creators, however, have never stated that the film was 100-percent factual.

“I’m not a journalist or documentarian,” Sorkin said, “But I’m very aware that more people will get their opinion on this subject from the film than from anywhere else.”

Sorkin compared the task of writing this film to the work of Truman Capote in writing In True Blood, or Tom Wolfe in writing The Right Stuff.

“I like to think of this (film) as a painting, not a photograph,” Sorkin said.

On the issue of Zuckerberg’s choice to not be involved with the making of the film, Sorkin says that he doesn’t fault him for his decision.  But Sorkin does take issue with Facebook’s official statement that the film is “fiction.”

“We disagree that it is fiction,” Sorkin said. “I think that Facebook’s PR team is just as good as our PR team, and they’re doing exactly what you’d expect. First they were ignoring this movie, hoping that it’d be bad.”

If early reviews are any indication, Facebook PR did not get their wish. But turning the Facebook story into a film that is enjoyable to watch, as well as fair and balanced, posed quite a challenge for its filmmakers.

In court during the various lawsuits brought against Facebook, each person involved swore an oath to tell the truth, and proceeded to tell a completely different story. Therefore, Sorkin decided to tell the story from each different perspective, framing the film with courtroom scenes.

“There are disputed facts,” Sorkin said. “What I do is connect those dots in the characters.”

Helping him connect those dots in the film is Jesse Eisenberg, a young actor who had primarily appeared in independent films before Network. To create the character viewers see on screen, Eisenberg studied every clip of footage of Zuckerberg that he could find. He also found a unique way of carrying Zuckerberg with him.

“I’d carry an iPod around with me with Mark’s voice on it,” Eisenberg said. “It helped me stay connected with the character.”

Eisenberg said that this obsessive attention to detail was mirrored on every level of production as well.

“The costume designer found the exact pair of shoes Mark wore in this one picture,” Eisenberg said. “There was one pair available online of these really rare shoes and [the costume designer] found them. And they were in my size! I only wore them for one scene and you couldn’t even see them in the shot.”

Another technique Eisenberg employed in creating his authentic version of Mark was method acting.

“I tried in preparation to equate success I’ve had [in Hollywood] with Mark’s success,” Eisenberg said.

But although Zuckerberg has been successful beyond most people’s wildest dreams, the film doesn’t depict him as a particularly happy person.

“I can only speak for the character in the film,” Sorkin said, “‘Cause I don’t know Mark personally. But [Zuckerberg] was a guy with his nose up against the glass of social life, and social life reflects back on you—tells you who you are. The world told him he was a loser.”

Zuckerberg’s social alienation is clear in every frame of the film, but so is his fervent dedication to his craft.

“Mark is part of this small subset of angry tech-geniuses,” Sorkin said, “who don’t understand cheerleaders, and wonder why [cheerleaders] don’t like them, even though they’re running the world.”

Eisenberg’s view of Mark’s character is a bit different, however.

“[Mark] is so singularly focused on the creation of Facebook that the other aspects of his life become meaningless or irrelevant,” Eisenberg said.

Eisenberg’s ability to empathize with Zuckerberg is understandable due to the amount of time he spent with the character. But surprisingly, Hammer, who plays the twin brothers who sued the real-life Mark, doesn’t see him as a bad guy either.

“It’s easy to see a villain in Mark,” said Hammer. “But it’s more fair to characterize him as an anti-hero.”

Hammer faced a challenge of his own in portraying two twin brothers in the film, a feat that was achieved through the magic of special effects. Throughout the process, he gained a great deal of respect for the pair.

“These twins are really interesting characters,” Hammer said. “I mean, they’ve been to the Olympics for rowing, and started all of these other start-up companies. They have these whole lives outside of Facebook.”

Network‘s cast also includes Rooney Mara as Zuckerberg’s short-lived love interest Erica, Justin Timberlake as Napster inventor Sean Parker, and Andrew Garfield as Zuckerberg’s ex-best friend and Facebook’s original CFO Eduardo Saverin.

These young actors are all are at the top of their game in Hollywood at the present moment. Mara was recently chosen to play Lisbeth Salander in the American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its two sequels which are shooting now in Sweden, Justin Timberlake is a pop music star who needs no introduction, and Garfield was recently chosen to play Spiderman in the forthcoming series reboot.

The Social Network, believe it or not, represents the calm before the storm of success that is waiting just ahead for these actors. On Friday, moviegoers will be able to decide if all their hard work on this film has paid off.