Sweaty Harvard jocks pitch in on Facebook movie

A boat rows on the Charles River in Boston in the fall of 2006.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

Now, these are some guys you don't see at the average Silicon Valley hackathon: The Harvard heavyweight crew team is filming scenes for "The Social Network," according to a Boston Globe gossip column on Tuesday. Film crews have been on the Charles River in Boston recently, the column reports.

That's because two of the main characters in the juicy, David Fincher-directed tell-all about the origins of Facebook are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, would-be social-network entrepreneurs who claimed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the code and business plan for their project, ConnectU. The identical twin Winklevosses were also members of Harvard's crew team, they and ultimately wound up on the U.S. Olympic squad last summer in Beijing.

The Globe column also notes that one of the rowers had some red dots painted on his face so that ultimately, the face of an actor could be superimposed on it--which, though it sounds technologically complicated, is probably easier than trying to teach an actor how to row. Besides, "The Social Network" already has some smoke and mirrors to deal with: the Winklevoss twins are being played by a single actor, Armie Hammer.

(The Globe assumes that the face to be superimposed is that of pop star Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster co-founder Sean Parker in "The Social Network." But Parker, we're pretty sure, never rowed on Harvard's heavyweight crew team.)

Meanwhile, though the Charles River is apparently fair game, it looks like Harvard didn't let the film crew on campus: Johns Hopkins University in Maryland put out a release on Tuesday saying it will be standing in for Harvard, in some scenes shot in early November.

[gerickson1]

how many times can we say ultimately?

[caroline.mccarthy]

ultimately quite a few

[JigenIII]

Harvard has jocks?

[sdandrew75]

Technically, it is a "heavyweight crew" or a "rowing team". Ultimately was only used 4 out of 275 words, pretty much shows the article was thrown together while on a conference call or while waiting in the lobby of the dentist office, good use of free time.

[terminalblue]

I dont care about this movie.

[myles taylor]

I'm not seeing an appeal or story to this movie. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised but where is the appeal?