'Mountainhead': 'Succession' creator's film inspired by former crypto mogul convicted of fraud

Yahoo

2 days ago

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has moved from telling a story about a media dynasty, to a tech bro satire with the film Mountainhead (on Crave in Canada), written, directed and produced by Armstrong. Starring Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef and Cory Michael Smith, the movie begins as four tech tycoons gather for a weekend of fun, amid an international crisis and the potential downfall of civilization.
They're all staying at a mountain mansion owned by Hugo, who goes by "Souper" or "Soup" (Jason Schwartzman). Soup has a wellness app he's trying to make successful, and his net worth is also the lowest of the group, just a mere $521 million.
Randall (Steve Carell) is a venture capitalist who has received a terminal cancer prognosis, which he's refusing to accept and demands that there's a doctor who can cure him.
Venis (Cory Michael Smith) is described as "the richest man in the world," the social media titan of the company Traam. A new feature that can create deepfake videos, which has sparked global chaos from the spread of disinformation.
Conversely, Jeff (Ramy Youssef) has created AI technology that can be used as "guardrails" for disinformation online. As Jeff says in the movie, "I'm sitting on the cure to info-cancer while everybody dies."
As Armstrong described the characters in his film, they're "the four horsemen of the apocalypse."
"The film hopefully plays on a line of, when you look at it one way it feels like a comedy, in another way it's a tragedy," Armstrong said.
For Armstrong, he didn't necessarily set out to write another project about the rich and powerful. But the idea for Mountainhead came after he wrote a book review about Sam Bankman-Fried, the U.S. crypto mogul who's serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of stealing $8 billion from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
"Often, for a writer, the first thing that starts working for you is ... getting the voices. That was very important for Succession, the tone of voice of how that family interacted," Armstrong explained. "And I started to feel like, oh I can hear these guys, how they talk and how they see the world. And that was the thing that clicked and made me think, I think I want to write in this world."
"Succession was about old media, legacy media, and this is ... about the new media, the social media, which is the way that, increasingly, people get their sense of the world and information."But Armstrong, Smith and Youssef are all in agreement that there's one scene that's particularly critical for the whole movie.
Jeff is a unique character, because he does have an understanding how of Venis' company is sending the world into chaos, but boosting his net worth is still a priority for Jeff.
"It was a really fun thing to play because on a level, he kind of is able to see the larger issue with a bit of empathy, and at the same time he kind of wants to monetize that empathy," Youssef said. "I don't think that I could look at him as holistically better than the rest of the guys, even though he might feel like the moral conscience at times. He's just as driven by monetizing as they are."
Then we get to one moment in the film where Soup, Randall and Venis are all talking about possibly killing Jeff.
"He wants to stop a new world from being born," Randall says.
The three friends talk about how it could happen, and any possible "moral issues" are explain away by the thinking that the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people happens in the "absence" of Jeff. From conversations about how they'll actually do it, and how they'll get a "pre-pardon" from the president, the dialogue is quick, witty and absurd in a particularly interesting way.
"I loved writing it. It's a crucial moment," Armstrong said. "The tone has been somewhat heightened all the way through the movie, but that one is where an extraordinary idea gets introduced."
"So it was a technical challenge, which I really enjoyed. And I have to say it's one of one of the most exciting scenes I've ever been involved with shooting, because watching those three brilliant comic actors play off each other with quite a dramatic frame, but with some words that I was pleased with, and feeling like I'd given them good ammunition. ... And it worked on the day. ... And I was just in awe of the actors, watching them navigate their way through it."
Smith called working on this scene one of his "favourite experiences as an actor."
"It was like in real time ... knowing that this is just a great scene," he said. "Jesse wrote a great scene and doing it, we just didn't want to stop."
"I haven't done a lot of comedy and the way that scene uses comedy, but is so truly deadly serious, I just think is masterful from Jesse's position. But getting to play in that scene and watch Jason and Steve navigate that was the greatest lesson in comedy ... that I've ever had, and will probably ever have. I just really loved that day."
"I loved watching that day," Youssef added. "I was just sitting there ... watching them talking about killing me. Very fun."