This ‘Mountainhead' Star Only Looks Like a Nihilist

New York Times

2 days ago

Cory Michael Smith was disappointed. 'I'm a big fan of pepperoni with a little more constitution,' he said, looking down at the slice of pizza on his plate. 'These are tired. They're tired cups.'
This was the day after the premiere party for 'Mountainhead,' the Jesse Armstrong movie that premieres Saturday on HBO. A Vantablack comedy of wealth, power and moral negligence, it evokes Armstrong's earlier fable of the megarich, 'Succession,' but is more explicitly attuned to current anxieties about Silicon Valley oligarchs.
Smith stars as a social media mogul named Venis (rhymes with menace), a pampered edgelord holed up in a cartoonishly swank chalet (the Mountainhead of the title) with other tech machers, played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman and Ramy Youssef. Venis's content creation tools have destabilized much of the global South, but he remains mostly unbothered.
'Nothing means anything, and everything is funny and cool,' he tells his fellow founders, as they swipe past scenes of chaos.
In person, Smith, 38, was not quite so nihilistic, though he had dressed the part, a man in black on black on black — pants, coat, shirt, tie, shoes. Offscreen, Smith is abidingly polite, with a wide smile that narrows his eyes to slits.
He lives in the West Village, though increasingly work keeps him away. He had flown in for the premiere and soon he would fly out again, to Alaska where he is shooting a film that he was forbidden to discuss. Smith ('Gotham,' 'Carol,' 'May December') is suddenly so in demand that he had to miss Cannes, at which 'Sentimental Value,' a movie in which he co-stars, was awarded the Grand Prix.
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