‘Mountainhead': Jesse Armstrong Discusses the DOGE-Inspired Dark Second Act Turn and Surprising Final Scene
[Editor's note: The following interview contains spoilers for the HBO movie 'Mountainhead.']
In 'Succession,' the cutthroat Roy family proved capable of covering up even manslaughter to protect their business, but Logan Roy (Brian Cox) himself might blush at the extremes of his tech-mogul counterparts in creator Jesse Armstrong's HBO follow-up 'Mountainhead.'
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While Armstrong was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, he talked about not wanting to do another story of the uber-rich and powerful following 'Succession,' but after reviewing Michael Lewis' book about crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried, and then listening to tech moguls on the 'All In' and Lex Fridman podcasts, he couldn't get the Silicon Valley voices shaping our world out of his head.
But it was more than the way tech moguls talked, it was the way they saw the world and justified their increasingly powerful place in it that led Armstrong to the 'Mountainhead' story of four tech bros' weekend getaway and its surprising (murderous) plot twist.
'What I like about it is taking things to their logical conclusion — you know, zero-basing Elon [Musk's] philosophy with DOGE, 'Let's cut everything else away and rebuild,'' said Armstrong of his latest project's dark second act turn. 'Following premises to their logical conclusions is funny and interesting to me, and I think very appropriate for this world. Because like how do you end up taking away HIV drugs from children who are going to die? How the fuck do you get there? Will you get there because you convince yourself that you're following some perfectly logical process? That is terrifying. So I knew that I needed it to go into [another space] morally.'
In 'Mountainhead,' the tangible, real-world effects of this thinking are the escalating global eruption of violence and chaos resulting from the generative AI video tools Venis (Cory Michael Smith) has added to his social media platform Traam which, with its four billion users, has made him the world's richest man. While there are visible signs of cognitive dissonance as the four friends take in each new horrific news alert coming across their phones, the group convinces themselves this chaos is ultimately a good thing, akin to a forest fire accelerating the new growth process.
On the podcast, Armstrong indicated he couldn't know for sure if the tech bros he's lampooning believe what they say, or if it is something they tell themselves so they can sleep at night, but it almost doesn't matter, as his interest was following their logic in justifying the havoc their tech was now wreaked.
'They often say, 'From first principles, what are the first principles? What we are trying to achieve here?' And if you start taking that approach and looking at it from a comic perspective, you can get to some funny and dark places,' said Armstrong.
The dark place Armstrong is referring to is Venis, Randall (Steve Carell), and Souper (Jason Schwartzman) trying to murder the fourth member of their crew, Jeff (Ramy Youssef) after he dares to suggest steps be taken to slow the unhinged Venis and the chaos brought by Traam's new GenAI tools. Armstrong said the murder plot twist was one he came to early, as it was the inevitable result of his 'following premises to its logical conclusions' exercise: Killing Jeff, a threat to a AI utopia (and the tech oligarchs' best opportunity to fix the world's problems) would be for the greater good.
Armstrong had a blast writing the three men debating the morality of the proposed murder, including incorporating the philosophies of history's great thinkers into their argument.
'I think one of the things that happens in that world is pulling on the mantle,' said Armstrong of the murder-debate scene. 'They like the stoics and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, but I think a thing people, especially men, do is reach for some of that appealing-looking scent from the highest cultural shelf.'
Even girded by their moral justifications for murder, the three men repeatedly fail in slapstick fashion before Jeff convinces them of a less-violent means to achieve their goal, saving himself by agreeing to sell Venis the AI-anecdote he desperately needs.
The biggest surprise comes the next morning. Jeff had been the audience's sliver of hope that at least one of these masters of the universe had the guts to try to stop the world from burning. The audience would naturally assume that after surviving a night of his oldest friends trying to murder him, Jeff's eyes were now fully open. And it's here Armstrong delivers his final gut punch — the final scene of Jeff laughing it all off and striking a Machiavellian deal to partner with Venis.
'Tonally, I knew that was where we would be soon after I had a green light to [make 'Mountainhead'],' said Armstrong of Venis and Jeff's final scene in the driveway.
Armstrong admits he was nervous his initial ideas for the film's dark turns had the potential to be problematic, which is why before sitting down to write the script, he gathered four of his 'Succession' writers and producers — Jon Brown, Tony Roche, Will Tracy and Lucy Prebble (all of whom received executive producer credits on 'Mountainhead') — for a one-week writers' room to find potential holes and explore alternate narrative paths.
'I did a one week super-accelerated 'Is this gonna work? Am I crazy? What do you think?' [writers' room],' said Armstrong of his mini-'Succession' reunion. 'We did some thought experiments with what could the worst thing [that could] happen when [Jeff is in the sauna]. So I tried to entertain the different possibilities, but I came out of that room with the same idea that I went in with and that was the ending of the movie. That tone of an accommodation being made was what I wanted.'
'Mountainhead' is now streaming on HBO Max.
To hear Jesse Armstrong's full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
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