Latest news with #Mountainhead
The Age
33 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
All US television is Trumpy now, even when it's not
In the original SATC era we wanted to join the wealthy and aspirational foursome for a drink, but now the zeitgeist has turned. The television shows that feel most relevant to the moment, and which are the most engaging, are all about the suffering and the immorality of the super-rich. It feels more comfortable, now, to reassure ourselves that while billionaires and tech-bro oligarchs appear to be running the world, they're living lives of miserable inauthenticity. It started with Succession, a brilliant and darkly funny exposition of the ways in which inherited wealth can corrupt family relationships. The creator of Succession, Jesse Armstrong, has just released a movie, Mountainhead, about a foursome of tech billionaires who hole up in a mountain mansion in Utah as the world seems to be ending. More recently we have Your Friends & Neighbours, starring Mad Men's Jon Hamm, a square-jawed hero of all-American good looks but with just enough despair in his face to hint at inner spiritual desolation. Hamm plays Coop, a one-percenter hedge fund manager enraged by his divorce (his wife left him for his good friend), who loses his job after a low-level sexual indiscretion at work. In order to maintain his lifestyle (which includes $4500 skin treatments for his daughter and $30,000 tables at charity galas), he resorts to stealing from his friends and neighbours. These people, who live in a fictional, highly manicured wealth conclave outside New York City, are so obscenely rich that they have $200,000 watches and rolls of cash lying around in drawers. Hamm does what he has to do – he becomes a cat burglar with a cynical philosophy. Loading Coop is just a man trying to get by, and if that doesn't involve selling his Maserati, or getting a new (albeit less well paid) job, then it is a testament to the show's good writing that we are still with him, even when we question his attachment to a lifestyle he purports to disdain. Another new American show, Sirens, stars Julianne Moore as the beautiful philanthropist wife of a billionaire hedge-fund manager, who is summering in her uber-mansion (it has a turret) on an unnamed east-coast big-money island similar to Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. She has a creepy, co-dependent relationship with her young personal assistant, who comes from poverty and dysfunction but who is loved in a way her wealthy boss never will be. Of course, these shows have a buck each way – they seek to satirise the super-rich and expose the underlying emptiness of their lives, while allowing us the vicarious experience of living in their luxury for an hour or so. The Hollywood Reporter calls it 'affluence porn'. We get access to the calfskin-lined interior of the private jet. We get to enjoy the week-long wedding festivities in Tuscany and gawp at the marvellous outfits, all while judging the protagonists for their materialism. In AJLT the materialism is not there to be judged; it is an integral part of the fun. Perhaps AJLT feels off because the writing is bad, and the plot lines so tired that dogs must be enlisted to prop up the action. Or maybe it is because in the second Trump administration the US political environment has become so oppressive and so inescapable that no story feels true unless it references it, however obliquely.
Sydney Morning Herald
34 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
All US television is Trumpy now, even when it's not
In the original SATC era we wanted to join the wealthy and aspirational foursome for a drink, but now the zeitgeist has turned. The television shows that feel most relevant to the moment, and which are the most engaging, are all about the suffering and the immorality of the super-rich. It feels more comfortable, now, to reassure ourselves that while billionaires and tech-bro oligarchs appear to be running the world, they're living lives of miserable inauthenticity. It started with Succession, a brilliant and darkly funny exposition of the ways in which inherited wealth can corrupt family relationships. The creator of Succession, Jesse Armstrong, has just released a movie, Mountainhead, about a foursome of tech billionaires who hole up in a mountain mansion in Utah as the world seems to be ending. More recently we have Your Friends & Neighbours, starring Mad Men's Jon Hamm, a square-jawed hero of all-American good looks but with just enough despair in his face to hint at inner spiritual desolation. Hamm plays Coop, a one-percenter hedge fund manager enraged by his divorce (his wife left him for his good friend), who loses his job after a low-level sexual indiscretion at work. In order to maintain his lifestyle (which includes $4500 skin treatments for his daughter and $30,000 tables at charity galas), he resorts to stealing from his friends and neighbours. These people, who live in a fictional, highly manicured wealth conclave outside New York City, are so obscenely rich that they have $200,000 watches and rolls of cash lying around in drawers. Hamm does what he has to do – he becomes a cat burglar with a cynical philosophy. Loading Coop is just a man trying to get by, and if that doesn't involve selling his Maserati, or getting a new (albeit less well paid) job, then it is a testament to the show's good writing that we are still with him, even when we question his attachment to a lifestyle he purports to disdain. Another new American show, Sirens, stars Julianne Moore as the beautiful philanthropist wife of a billionaire hedge-fund manager, who is summering in her uber-mansion (it has a turret) on an unnamed east-coast big-money island similar to Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. She has a creepy, co-dependent relationship with her young personal assistant, who comes from poverty and dysfunction but who is loved in a way her wealthy boss never will be. Of course, these shows have a buck each way – they seek to satirise the super-rich and expose the underlying emptiness of their lives, while allowing us the vicarious experience of living in their luxury for an hour or so. The Hollywood Reporter calls it 'affluence porn'. We get access to the calfskin-lined interior of the private jet. We get to enjoy the week-long wedding festivities in Tuscany and gawp at the marvellous outfits, all while judging the protagonists for their materialism. In AJLT the materialism is not there to be judged; it is an integral part of the fun. Perhaps AJLT feels off because the writing is bad, and the plot lines so tired that dogs must be enlisted to prop up the action. Or maybe it is because in the second Trump administration the US political environment has become so oppressive and so inescapable that no story feels true unless it references it, however obliquely.
Bloomberg
4 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Jesse Armstrong: ‘I'm Interested in the Power, Not the Money'
In Mountainhead, the Succession creator's fictional tech titans illustrate 'what happens to people as they try to marry their egos with their moral impulses.' What's the best TV series of the last decade? A fair number of people would name Succession, the HBO drama that was widely seen as a take on the Murdochs and won 19 primetime Emmys over the course of its four seasons. Now creator Jesse Armstrong is back, this time directing as well as writing, and his lens is on tech-bro — rather than family — dynamics. Mountainhead, available globally from May 31 on Max and on June 1 on Sky and Now in the UK and Ireland, follows a group of fictional but fairly recognizable tech moguls getting together for a poker weekend. The atmosphere starts off chummy (albeit in a faux, menacing way) until unforeseen circumstances make everything... rather dark. I sat down with Jesse to talk about his inspiration and his first experience directing. No spoilers, I promise. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Jesse, many of us have been waiting to see what you would do after Succession. So why this particular subject, the tech titans, and why now? I couldn't stop thinking about them after starting to read a little bit in the area. I intended to do something else, and I was trying to write a film, trying to write some prose. And after writing a book review 1 in this area, I started reading more, just as a concerned citizen. And listening to podcasts — these people are quite available. Kudos to the literary editor who commissioned Armstrong to write this review, now that we know what it led to. The book was 2023's Going Infinite — a take on the rise and downfall of crypto-king Sam Bankman-Fried by Moneyball and Liar's Poker author Michael Lewis. They speak to people like yourself, but they also speak to each other a lot. 2 And that tone of voice, where you can feel the assumptions pressing in or forming, their sense of the world. It feels quite unusual to get that much access to a tone of voice, the vocabulary. Armstrong is referring to podcasts like Lex Fridman and All-In, whose hosts are tech industry insiders. These shows are big, and the conversations tend to be long, so it makes sense that they gave Armstrong a deep sense of tech executives' thought and speech. So it started to seem like almost an unmissable opportunity to try and write something and to hit it pretty quickly because the environment moves quite fast. Was it straight after the US election? I know you pitched this at the end of 2024, and I wondered whether you saw Elon Musk at Donald Trump's side and had a sense of this power moving way beyond tech? No, the impulse wasn't that. When I thought of the outline of the story, it was before the election. I pitched in December and wrote in January, so it was pre-inauguration. Then there was the sight of a lot of tech people at the inauguration, 3 which was salutary. And DOGE has kind of bubbled up and almost gone away again, culturally at least, in the lifespan of the project. It wasn't just the number of tech CEOs at Trump's inauguration, it was their placement directly behind the president. This Bloomberg story not only charts who sat where at the inauguration, but the intricacies of their relationships with the incoming administration — including newly high-profile figures such as the CEO of TikTok. So although it feels related, I think when people see the film, it's actually about a group of people who are rather separate from government. 'I just think it's interesting what happens to people as they try to marry their egos with their moral impulses, and in this case with an unbelievably large amount of money.' I'm interested in the idea that the vocabulary drew you in. I've had my own taste of tech titan speech recently when I interviewed Elon Musk and he called me an NPC, 4 a non-playable character. This exchange came when I asked Elon Musk whether DOGE was still aiming to save 'at least $2 trillion' from the federal budget, as he had said last October. He told me, 'I feel you're somewhat trapped in the NPC dialogue tree of a traditional journalist.' Yes. And that I was trapped in the dialogue tree of a traditional journalist. [Jesse laughs.] And you have brought that language into the way that your group of tech bros 5 talk to each other. Mountainhead chronicles a poker-weekend gathering of four men who call themselves 'The Brewsters' and are both cliquey and awkward with each other. Their conversations include references to entire countries as though they were extras on a film set; people are 'fungible human assets' and 'bust a B-nut' means to invest a billion dollars (as in, 'If you bust a B-nut into this app, it will give birth to a unicorn'). There's also a hierarchy in the group: One of the four is nicknamed 'Souper,' short for 'Soup Kitchen' because he's not as rich as the others (he's worth over $500 million). Yeah. I didn't even use NPC because it's such a direct version of the way that some of those people see the world, to think that there are non-playing characters and that you are one of them. Presumably me too. Pretty much everyone, probably. Apart from I guess Sam Altman and Donald Trump. I don't know how many people fit in the playing-character mode. Given Elon Musk's feud with Sam Altman, he might well say even Altman's an NPC. [Jesse laughs.] Yeah. That voice was my way in. Part of that is the terminology, part of that is the philosophical approach behind [it], and some is the characters themselves. Let's face it, you spent a lot of time after Succession with people saying to you, 'This is clearly the Murdochs.' But this group of people: One of them is described as the richest man in the world. It looks pretty obvious that one is modeled on Elon Musk. Another is probably Sam Altman, and one is probably Peter Thiel? 6 The one they call Papa Bear. Thiel was Facebook's first outside investor, a co-founder of Paypal, and is known for many other investments as well as for political activity. He also remains a shareholder of Palantir Technologies, whose CEO and legal counsel recently published a book that champions the idea of a state run by a master engineering class, a notion that also appears in Mountainhead. That's Thiel? Yes. I mean look, one of them is the richest man in the world and Elon's the richest man in the world. Other people have felt that he was more Mark Zuckerberg. And who do you think was Sam Altman? Jeff. Ramy Youssef's character. He's Sam Altman because he's fallen out with the richest man in the world. 7 Musk and Altman were together at the founding of OpenAI, but now lawsuits are involved. You can dig into the backstory here. When I asked Musk about Altman directly, he compared OpenAI to a conservation nonprofit that became a lumber company, and confirmed that he plans to push ahead with his lawsuit. Well, listen, I steal from everywhere in terms of the story dynamics and although there's quite a lot of ideological similarity, there are also some very bitter personal rivalries, which is good for fiction. They really are amalgamations of a number of different people. I have played this game with other people and I don't mind playing it, but Succession really wasn't the Murdochs. And if you thought it was, who is Jeremy Strong's character Kendall, and who is Kieran Culkin's character Roman? They didn't really map onto the kids of Rupert Murdoch directly. Are those people the models? Yes. Is this a tech moment? Are those the leading figures? Yes. But I wouldn't have felt as free to write what I did if I felt that I was writing a version of Musk or Thiel. You are writing about that world of the super rich again. 8 If you look at the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, you can see exactly how tech is top of the league. The six wealthiest people (all men!) made their money that way: Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Sorry. [Laughs] I wondered why? Is it because you have a fascination with wealth? Perhaps we're all fascinated with that world to some extent— Yeah. You definitely get a lot of great visuals from it, right? In Mountainhead, they are on top of a mountain in this extraordinary but horrible house full of hard surfaces. In Mountainhead, the house in which the four Brewsters meet is named in tribute to the Ayn Rand novel The Fountainhead. This fits the movie's vibe, as Rand's work — featuring dogged, individualistic, egoistic characters — has become a lodestar in some business circles. I'm willing to take a follow-up where you don't believe my initial reaction or justification, but I believe I'm doing it because I'm interested in the power, not the money. So I hope I haven't become completely seduced by hanging around in nice houses. 9 Although, as you mentioned, they're not actually particularly nice places to be. They're like fancy hotels, quite beige, quite oatmeal, 10 often quite poorly finished, thrown up and sold off often as assets. The characters in Mountainhead, who take pride in their razor-sharp banter, have a great time mocking the mansion owned by 'Souper' (played by Jason Schwartzman). After walking into the house and finding out what it's called, Jeff (played by Ramy Youssef) asks if his interior decorator was 'Ayn Bland.' The visuals help the drama, don't they? There they are, on top of the world. There's a Mount Olympus feeling 11 to these four men gathering. It's also a very male world, of course. They look down, physically down, on the cars waiting for them, on their staff. The location is actually Park City, Utah, well known for its skiing and as a playground for the ultra-wealthy. It's also where the Sundance Film Festival takes place — at least until 2027 — and the city saw its resort offerings grow after nearby Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics. Yeah, and as a director — this is the first thing I've directed — is it nice to have Utah out of the windows? Yes. It's a considerable advantage visually, for this film takes place in constrained physical circumstances. I can't say that helicopters don't look good when you shoot them from another helicopter or a drone, I think people respond to that. 12 We did always try to remind ourselves not to be selling anyone anything. One fascinating detail on portraying the rich came from Kieran Culkin talking to fellow actor Dan Levy about how wealth consultants helped the Succession cast. They told the actors that they were getting out of helicopters wrong. The rich don't duck down, because they know instinctively where the blades are; they've been traveling this way all their lives. Are you in a world where you do get pitches for that, because companies want to see their products in your work? We've resisted product placement. Tell me about your relationship with the characters. You've spoken about your Succession characters and said that, at the moment you are writing, you have to like them to an extent, or at least suspend judgment of them. Yeah, I think that's true. This is a slightly different tone of a piece. I'd be interested whether you agree, but I think it's more of a dark comedy than Succession was. 13 I do agree. When the action turns from verbal to more deeply threatening I was taken aback, and Armstrong plays with the shifting tone. The way the world is, and tech's relationship to it, seems really troubling to me. 14 However, when we write the history of the world, maybe Elon Musk will have saved it, with what he has done with Tesla. Maybe Starlink is going to do extraordinary things. Overall, Armstrong is measured when talking about Mountainhead, but Bloomberg's own review zeroed in on this angst. 'The anger that spurred Mountainhead 's creation is also its best quality,' Esther Zuckerman writes. 'Armstrong is pissed off and has decided to channel that into brutal jokes. If we can't laugh at these people, what else can we do?' The achievements of these people are significant and real. And I'm not one of those people who thinks Musk just slaps his name on everything and takes the credit. I think he has got extraordinary talents. He seems to have taken a very dark turn in terms of his politics. 15 Musk hasn't just weighed in (verbally and financially) on US politics. He's also been supportive of Germany's far-right AfD party. 'It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,' Musk said in January, speaking during an AfD campaign event alongside the party's co-leader, Alice Weidel. I'm worried about all the parts of tech that everyone else is, especially AI. But I wouldn't want that to diminish a sense that these people — it sounds banal, but they're very important figures and very talented figures. I just think it's interesting what happens to people as they try to marry their egos with their moral impulses, and in this case with an unbelievably large amount of money. Tell me about the format, because I wondered about the choice to do a film versus the development that you had over successive, not only episodes, but seasons of Succession. Was it liberating to focus your energies on a single film, or did you miss the scope to develop this more? No, I feel it is a target that I've tried to hit, and it's a one-use thing. The things that happen in the film are relatively extreme. It'd be difficult — not completely uninteresting, but difficult — to come back, quote, 'next week' from the events. The relationships are thinner, they're not family, which is great for drama. They can break apart. It was liberating, just liberating on a human level, not to have to think about running a show, which is a big endeavor. I think the form fits the subject matter. And directing? And directing… Yes, I wanted to direct something. I think this was a good thing for me to direct because we wanted to make it really quickly. It's on TV six months from when it started being written and I was really keen for it to appear in the same bubble of culture or time as the audience are watching it in. 16 I like collaborating with directors, but it takes some time and it takes some adjustment to come to the same vision. And not having that I think was an advantage. Events are indeed moving fast: Since I spoke with Jesse earlier this week, Elon Musk has announced he's leaving the Trump administration. Mountainhead does retain ambiguity on links to real-world events; Armstrong even shelved an early idea of having the tech bros watch news on ATN, Logan Roy's TV channel in Succession. Did you think the moment might pass? Because I feel like the tech titans moment… This is our age. I think you could have taken your time with it. Yes, I take your point, and I hope that people will be able to watch it in a few years and it'll still feel interesting. And no, they're not going away. It's just a gut feeling. It's a creative feeling. And it may have been total miasma, and it may have been also, partly, a challenge to myself. I was scared of directing. [It was] a reason to run at it rather than read everything, watch everything I could about directing. And worry about it. Yeah. Did you love it, the directing? The control must be great. [Laughs] What you say happens. You don't give your script to someone else. I did like it. The four leads are exceptionally talented, but also really decent and nice people, and very collaborative. So that made it a pretty easy shoot. I surrounded myself with a lot of people I'd worked with on Succession, so it was relatively comfortable. And people like Steve Carell, on set, do they make suggestions? Do they say, 'This line doesn't really work, I'd really like to change this'? They didn't say that particular form of criticism much. There's room to improvise, there's room for people to dodge around bits which they feel are less expressive of the characters that they've come to. I think they trusted me about the characters I've created for them. I was scared that first morning of rehearsal, presenting myself as the director to people like Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman, and Ramy and Cory — who are not as storied as actors yet, but I think they will be, because they're both extraordinary. 17 So yeah, it was a moment of some anxiety: Am I really going to pretend to be the director here? But I did. Cory Michael Smith has been a stage and screen actor and has worked several times with critically acclaimed director Todd Haynes. In Mountainhead, he plays Venis, the 'richest man in the world' character. Ramy Youssef is best known for the comedy-drama Ramy, which he co-created (and in which, fun fact, his mother is played by Hiam Abbass, who was fictional patriarch Logan Roy's long-suffering wife in Succession). Jason Schwartzman has been in a number of Wes Anderson films and played Ringo Starr in the biopic spoof Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. And of Steve Carell's long career I will pick out just this, because it portrayed my industry: I thought his depiction of Mitch Kessler in ' The Morning Show ' was brilliant. But your work has spoken for itself, Jesse. They're there because they've seen what you've done and they trust you. Succession must have been life-changing. Yeah, it was. I think at least three of the actors said yes to the project before there was a script. So yeah, it has changed the sort of things I can pitch and the sort of things people are willing to do. Is it too soon to ask what you'll do next? It's too soon for me to answer. [Laughs] But I'll go back to a screenplay and this fiction that I've been meddling with, and I just hope I won't get any other voices in my head. I can't believe that the idea of a Succession Season 5 is completely out of the question. Not only because it would definitely do well, but also because of the way that you left it. That scene at the end, with Kendall looking at the water, what's he thinking? He's going to do something next, right? I honestly don't think about those characters anymore. I think about the people a lot, and I really am very, very fond of them, but the characters to me are characters in that show. And it ended for me when it ended. And I think maybe to support my claim that I'm really interested in the power, not the money, that show in a way was quite a lot about mortality and about an older man facing the end. And Fox is still very important to the political climate in the US, but it wanes every day and so does print journalism. 18 So the vital interest in that world for me has gone. Ouch. While the old model of print has gone, there is a continuing market for magazines — or at least some magazines — across genres. The industry is also still ripe for fiction: Later this year, streaming service Peacock will debut a spinoff of The Office called The Paper, a mockumentary-style comedy about the staff of a declining midwestern newspaper called The Truth Teller. When the Murdochs were fighting in Nevada and some of the stuff that came out in the papers, I did feel it would be quite easy to write another season from the material that was coming out and also seeing Shari Redstone and how she's negotiating [at] CBS and that Paramount world. There are interesting things to write about, but it just doesn't have any vitality left for me. Personally, what did you think when you read that it was when Elisabeth Murdoch and her adviser saw the key scene — there might be people still out there who haven't seen Succession, so I'm not going to say exactly what — but the key denouement of Succession and then thought 'We better sort out our own succession.' That is life imitating art. 19 In a sweeping recounting of the Murdoch legal drama, the New York Times reported in February that Elisabeth Murdoch's representative to the family trust drafted a ' Succession memo' after seeing how poorly Logan Roy's children handled their situation. Rupert Murdoch's ultimate successor is still being decided in a Nevada court. You never know if these stories are true, there's lots of odd briefing that goes on in a big dynastic family like that, so I never put too much credence on what people say. Honestly, I just felt humanly sad if that was the case, in that it's hard to think about your parents' death. So if that's true, I feel sad to the degree it's a human reaction, and surprised it's a corporate reaction. They really had bought [the] Murdoch myth if they hadn't realized that at some point he will pass away. Can we talk about your observations on the changing nature of TV? Since you hit the big time in this world, quite a lot has changed for the streamers in that they're not growing as strongly as they were and YouTube is hoovering up more advertising. 20 Can you imagine making a show for YouTube? Google's video division now accounts for more TV viewing than any other network or streaming service, and YouTube (not including its own live-TV offering that bundles traditional channels) accounted for over 12% of TV viewing in April, more than all of Walt Disney Co.'s TV networks and streaming services combined, according to Nielsen. Last year, YouTube sold almost as much advertising as Disney, Paramount, Fox and NBCUniversal combined. Well I have a deal at HBO, so no. [Laughs] Not right now. Not right now. I don't know, anything's possible in the future. Personally, I grew up with the rhythm of a weekly release. I like the sense of a show growing that you get with that. I guess YouTube could do that too. I do worry – and this might seem ironic or even disingenuous coming from someone who's done such a lot in the US recently – but I do worry about British drama and drama that's particularly about British themes. At the moment it seems like there's space for [that]. Shows like Suspect, 21 the Jeff Pope piece on Jean Charles de Menezes, which was brilliant. And Adolescence, 22 which is also brilliant. But I worry about that, and I love what the BBC does for the British broadcasting environment, and I hope it thrives. A four-part series on Disney+, Suspect tells the story of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead by police in London in 2005 after he was mistakenly identified as a terrorist. Adolescence, which follows the aftermath of a 13-year-old being arrested for murdering a schoolmate, has been a global hit for Netflix despite its very British setting. The show explores universal themes having to do with children and social media. 'Why can't we look at phones and social media as [we do cigarettes and alcohol]? Why can't it be a public-health issue?' co-creator Jack Thorne said in an interview with Bloomberg. 'If a government takes a stand, it might have a real impact.' It can't compete, can it, with the budget of Netflix. Not on its own, not on the current license fee, no. 23 Armstrong is referring to the UK's system of funding television through an annual payment by households. Can it do interesting stuff? I'm always very aware of what Armando [Iannucci] did with the small budget he was given on The Thick of It. You don't necessarily need a huge budget to do interesting work. 24 Armando Iannucci's scathing, expletive-ridden, laser-like take on British politics is cult comedy. And his distinct brand of satire has also proven popular in the US; Iannucci went on to create HBO's Veep. The Thick of It, which you worked on. I guess that the world has really changed since then, right? The success of the streamers has inflated prices for everyone. Well, we didn't need any helicopters in this. It was written as a sort of play. It was a pitch to HBO [that] I could do this for almost nothing, and I would, but we could do it with a bit more scope and scale if we can find an amazing place. You have to pay a crew and you have to employ people and they have to be able to live, but you can make smaller-scale pieces. And I want there to be both. I want there to be Wolf Hall and The Thick of It. I'm saying I hope that lots of money continues to go into British drama and sometimes makers might have to be inventive as well. You're right that public service broadcasters can't afford to make tons and tons of those kinds of shows in the way that Netflix, Disney and YouTube can. When you get used to the more comfortable budgets, it's probably very hard to imagine doing something on a shoestring. You've had the Utah mountaintop now. I don't know. I hope I could go and make another season of Peep Show, 25 which had a perfectly decent budget, but unbelievably smaller level of magnitude. That doesn't scare me. Armstrong co-created this British comedy series, which ran for nine seasons from 2003 and was about two young men sharing an apartment. It did indeed happen on a much smaller scale than a mountaintop — the show was filmed in just a few rooms. As a creative person, how do you clear your head? How do you block your time out and really immerse yourself in something? I like going to my office — it's important for me to have a regime of going there, even when I'm in a more fallow period and I might be reading more than writing. I might be staring out of the window even more than writing, but importantly not looking at my phone or the internet, because I don't take it or have it there. So from a purely creative point of view, the most important thing for me is to go out of the house without my phone and without Wi-Fi. Leave your phone at home? 26 There was a note of horror in my voice here, but of course — unless you have the willpower to leave the phone in a drawer or avoid reaching for it — he's right. One study published in Nature in 2023 found that the mere presence of a smartphone, even if you're not interacting with it, affects attention. TLDR: When a smartphone is around, we work more slowly. Yeah. Wow. That's a lesson we can all take away. Do you have a notebook where you save ideas or do you not need to, because it's there in your head when you need it? I do have a running notebook of ideas, but it's only briefly on paper and then gets transcribed digitally quite fast. And will you be going back to one of your old — well not old, but yet unused works next? Yes! I'm quite close to the end of the screenplay and I'm quite well into the prose I'm writing. So yeah, I hope that both of those will come to fruition. We look forward to that. Jesse Armstrong, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much. It's lovely to chat. Mishal Husain is Editor at Large for Bloomberg Weekend. She joined Bloomberg from the BBC, where she presented its leading news program Today on BBC Radio 4 for over a decade. More On Bloomberg Terms of Service Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information Trademarks Privacy Policy Careers Made in NYC Advertise Ad Choices Help ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
News18
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- News18
Jason Schwartzman Recalls Working With ‘Real Legend' Irrfan: ‘It's So Sad...'
Last Updated: Jason Schwartzman gets emotional talking about his The Darjeeling Limited co-star Irrfan. He further recalls catching a show of Quantum Of Solace at a theatre in India. Jason Schwartzman's association with India dates back to the mid-2000s. A large portion of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited were shot in Rajasthan's Jodhpur and Udaipur. The film starring Jason, Owen Wilson and Adrian Brody also had prominent Indian influences. For instance, most of the album had film score music composed by late auteur Satyajit Ray. Wes, in fact, had said that it was the legend's works like Charulata, among others, that made him want to come to India. Interestingly, The Darjeeling Limited also had Irrfan in a cameo appearance. Speaking to News18 exclusively, Jason says he vividly and fondly remembers Irrfan. Jason, in fact, gets emotional as he talks about the late actor, grieving his loss even today. 'I don't watch a lot of [Indian] movies. I won't say that I'm totally well-versed and aware [with Indian actors]. In The Darjeeling Limited, I got to work with a real legend. It's so sad that he passed away. Just to see the way he was… never mind! If I talk about him, I'll get too sad," he tells us. The other thing he remembers from his India trip is the love Indians hold in their heart for movies. During the shoot, Jason along with the team of The Darjeeling Limited went to catch a show of Quantum Of Solace on the big screen. 'There's so much love for movies and cinema in India. One of the best experiences that I've had in my life was going to watch a new James Bond film [in India] when it had come out. The whole group went to watch it. It was like heaven! I saw a bunch of non-James Bond films as well," Jason recalls. Jason is now gearing up for the release of HBO's Mountainhead created by Jesse Armstrong of Succession fame. Talking about it, he says, 'In my opinion, there are definitely parts that are physical and funny and bonkers that I didn't see in Succession. I always use this analogy about a band. If you like a band or a musician and they release something new and you listen to it, you know that it's their style and only they could've written it and yet, there's a new quality." The Asteroid City and The Grand Budapest Hotel actor continues, 'Maybe they used a new instrument or they worked with a new producer or they've a new guitar player. And this new flavour adds so much to the shelf of what they do. Mountainhead is clearly a Jesse Armstrong piece in style but it's also him with all of us." Mountainhead also stars Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef. First Published: May 31, 2025, 05:05 IST
New European
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New European
Matthew d'Ancona's culture: Mountainhead is a whip-smart dystopian comedy
For those of us who have been in mourning since the finale of Succession in May 2023, travelling the world to watch its stars on stage as a form of grief management (reader, I went to New York), Jesse Armstrong's return as writer and director of this feature-length drama has been giddily anticipated. And it does not disappoint. In contrast to the international grandeur of the Roy family saga, with its debt to Lear and Greek mythology, Mountainhead is a bottle drama about four super-rich tech bros – claustrophobically confined for the weekend to the palatial mountain lair built in the Rockies by Hugo (Jason Schwarzmann); known to the other three as 'Soups', for 'Soup Kitchen', because he is worth a mere $521 million ('Like Fountainhead 'Mountainhead'? Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?'). Like a younger Elon Musk, Venis (Cory Michael Smith) is the richest man alive and has just released a new version of his social media app, Traam, which has four billion users. Though its unfalsifiable deepfakes are causing riots and bloodshed all over the world, the tech titan is unmoved: 'We're going to show users as much shit as possible, until everyone realises… nothing means anything, and everything is funny – and cool.' His less wealthy but (slightly) more ethical friend and rival Jeff (Ramy Youssef) needles him for launching '4Chan on fucking acid' and does so knowing that – for all his bravado – Venis covets his own company's AI capacity that can bring a measure of order to the mayhem sown by Traam. Completing the quartet is the older Randall (Steve Carell), known as 'Papa Bear' and 'Dark Money Gandalf', who bears a striking resemblance to Donald Trump's first powerful Silicon Valley cheerleader, Peter Thiel. Inclined to quote Hegel, Kant and Plato, Randall – who has terminal cancer – is privately hoping to exploit Venis's deranged tech research in order to upload his own consciousness to the grid. Naturally, Venis loves the idea of a 'transhumanist' future: 'Tron-biking around, digital milkshakes, robot hand jobs!' Thanks to Armstrong's whip-smart dialogue, Mountainhead succeeds primarily as a dystopian screwball comedy; founded on the bathos of four men at a poker weekend casually discussing the means by which they might turn the chaos unleashed by Venis to their advantage. 'Maybe we do look at El Salvador as a dry run,' he suggests. But then again, why not 'coup out the US?' Even Hugo, the poorest of the four, dares to dream: 'If we take down China and the nation-state… now we're making memories!' Again, it is left to Jeff to offer a measure of perspective. Are they sure that dissolving the nation-state and seeking global tech domination is a good idea? 'Because Randall, I do think you're boiling an egg with no water.' None of which endears him to the group's elder ('he is a decelerationist and a snake!') If Succession was a bleak elegy to legacy media, Mountainhead is an even darker satire about the age that has followed, as Logan Roy knew it would. To adapt the grouchy patriarch's most famous line, such men may now rule the world; but they are not serious people. THEATRE Stereophonic (Duke of York's Theatre, London, until October 11) 'You need to show up; you need to pay attention; you need to tell the truth; and you need to deal with the consequences. Right?' Such is the advice of studio engineer Grover (Eli Gelb) to his assistant Charlie (Andrew R. Butler), as the two men seek to oversee a chaotic album recording that begins in June-July 1977 in Sausalito and ends a year later in Los Angeles. Though assumed to be a thinly-veiled account of the making of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (1977), David Adjmi's extraordinary play – transferred from Broadway, having scooped up a record number of Tony nominations – has its distant roots in Led Zeppelin's cover of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. When Adjmi heard the track on a flight, he knew he had to write something about music. It took him a decade to develop and stage Stereophonic, with the help of former Arcade Fire member, Will Butler. The fruit of all that painstaking work is a drama of many layers and great subtlety, that uses the intense setting of all-night sessions in the studio – a glass screen dividing the engineers from the band – to drill deep into what makes the five performers tick, create music, and love and loathe one another. There is Peter (Jack Riddiford), the increasingly monomaniacal vocalist and guitarist, his relationship with star vocalist and songwriter Diana (Lucy Karczewski) in sharp decline. Bass player Reg (Zachary Hart), ill from booze and cocaine, wraps himself in a blanket of wretchedness, squandering the love of vocalist and keyboard player Holly (Nia Towle). Simon (Chris Stack) is the British-American band's de facto manager, as well as its drummer. Beyond the walls of the studio, their fame is surging; within, they are a portrait of familial dysfunction. Though Stereophonic brilliantly captures the golden age of the seventies album – and is studded with allusions to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), the Eagles and the Watergate scandal – its power flows from the universality of the pressure-cooker conversations, rows and banter in which the characters reveal themselves. 'I guess I believe we're here to suffer,' Grover tells Reg. In contrast, each of the band members – to a greater or lesser extent – is a dreamer: hence, all the disasters, and all the magic. FILM The Ballad of Wallis Island (Selected cinemas) It cannot be emphasised enough that this wonderful movie is not one of those twee British romcoms in which middle-class people retreat to a remote landscape to discuss their difficult feelings. Directed by James Griffiths and written by longtime collaborators, Tim Key and Tom Basden, The Ballad of Wallis Island is a film of much greater power, wit and poignancy. Wading ashore on a tiny Welsh island, indie-folk singer Herb McGwyer (Basden) is welcomed by Charles Heath (Key), a reclusive millionaire who is paying him £500,000 to play a private gig for an audience of 'less than 100'. From the start, Charles's remorseless banter and quips drive Herb to distraction: he calls him 'Dame Judi Drenched' after he falls in the water; describes his 'rider' of Monster Munch, Braeburn apples and Johnnie Walker Blue Label as his 'Winona'; and says of his own travels: 'Kathmandu? More like Kathman-did!' Though Herb badly needs the money to pay for his next album, he is increasingly alarmed by Charles's manic eccentricity; by the lack of facilities on the island and its lone, under-stocked shop, overseen by the amiable Amanda (Sian Clifford); and by the dawning realisation that, in this case, 'less than 100' means 'one'. His host is an obsessive fan of McGwyer Mortimer, the folk duo of which Herb used to be half – until, nine years before, he parted ways with his partner in music and life, Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan). 'I'm in Misery,' he says to his manager from the island's payphone. 'I'm going to wake up with no ankles!' But a greater shock lies in store when Nell arrives on the island, accompanied by her husband Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen). Charles's dream is to use the power of surprise to encourage a musical reunion. At this point – if it were called Folk Actually – the movie might have descended into intolerable schmaltz. But it does no such thing. Nell, who now lives in Portland, Oregon, and makes chutney to sell at farmers' markets, is distinctly unimpressed by Herb's desperate efforts to remain musically credible – including the acquisition of a large back tattoo and a series of 'collabs' with younger artists. For his part, Herb is completely thrown by Nell's sudden presence and initially coils up like a scorpion. In this respect, we see unexpected parallels with Charles, a widower whose logorrhoea, it becomes clear, is a symptom of quiet desperation. To watch him play Swingball furiously on his own is to behold a man wracked by grief, anger and loneliness; just as Herb is a tight knot of pain and loss. If there is a saving power in all this, it is Charles's passion for the music which reminds him of a happier time. And it is his total enchantment as they finally rehearse that helps Herb and Nell to remember why they were so good together, why the songs meant so much, and why they still do. The catharsis they experience does not reflect mawkish nostalgia but a gentle peace treaty with the past and a coming to terms with its place in their respective histories. For Charles, too, there is tentative hope that his frozen emotions may now thaw. A movie full of heart, in the best possible sense. STREAMING Dept. Q (Netflix, all episodes) Four months after he is shot in an ambush that kills a police constable and paralyses his partner DCI James Hardy (Jamie Sives) from the waist down, DCI Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) returns to work – and is reassigned to run a new cold case unit in the station's shabby basement. Based on the best-selling Scandi-noir thrillers by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, Dept. Q transposes the drama to Edinburgh, where Morck is respected for his talents as a cop but is a constant source of aggravation to his boss DCS Moira Jacobson (Kate Dickie), under pressure from Holyrood to deliver results. Created by Scott Frank (who was also behind The Queen's Gambit) and Chandni Lakhani, the nine-episode series spreads its wings and takes its time – to compelling effect. The through line is the unsolved case of lawyer Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie); missing, presumed dead, for four years. Along the way, in a manner that recalls the early seasons of The Wire, the spectacularly anti-social Morck builds a team that includes Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov), ostensibly an IT expert whose past in Syria is shrouded in secrecy, and Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne), a talented detective afflicted by PTSD. Morck himself is assigned a course of therapy with Dr. Rachel Irving (the always excellent Kelly Macdonald): help which he knows that he needs but is characteristically reluctant to accept. There is also a debt to The Silence of the Lambs, which I will not spoil. The plot is twisty, complex and absorbing. Goode, playing completely against type, has never been better, matching all the darkness with profane gallows humour. Dept. Q is one of the best television dramas of 2025 and richly deserves a second season.
