HBO’s Bleak Tech-Bro Comedy Explained

[This story contains spoilers from HBO‘s movie Mountainhead.]

For much of HBO’s movie Mountainhead, the comedy in writer-director Jesse Armstrong’s script is particularly dark. Four tech moguls gathered for a bros’ weekend at a Rocky Mountain retreat owned by one of them watch on TV and their phones as the world descends into chaos, thanks in no small part to the social media app one of them controls. As the unrest grows, the four … see it mostly as an opportunity to grab more wealth and power.

Then the elder statesman of the group, venture capitalist Randall (Steve Carell), decides that another member of the quartet, Jeff (Ramy Youssef), needs to die for not being sufficiently aligned with the group’s principles — i.e., Jeff is a “decelerationist” who doesn’t think that achieving transhumanism in five years is a realistic goal. Randall, who has a possibly terminal medical condition, has a strongly vested interest in seeing that happen.

He enlists the other two members of the group, Venis (Cory Michael Smith) — he of the destructive social media app — and Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the host, into the plot. From there, Mountainhead becomes a farce as the three plotters take increasingly silly steps to off Jeff, who in turn becomes ever more desperate to stop them.

“It’s such a genius turn in the script,” Youssef told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think the entire time you are kind of thinking, ‘Man, these are a bunch of little boys,’ and then they truly act the way that little boys would, because it turns into this physical farce. It was really fun to play.”

Succession creator Armstrong — who also told THR about bringing the movie together in under six months — and the cast broke down the extremely insular world the Mountainhead characters inhabit, trying to understand the mindset of people with essentially unlimited wealth and playing the physical comedy of the murder plot. Mountainhead began streaming on Max early Saturday ahead of its on-air premiere on HBO.

Frenemies, A Love/Hate Story

While there’s not much backstory about the four central characters in the finished film, Armstrong told THR that a scene cut for length had a little more about how Jeff, Hugo and Venis became friends: They were part of a Silicon Valley accelerator that Randall funded, and they remained close as their careers took off and three of the four became multi-billionaires. Hugo has (ahem) only $521 million to his name, which saddles him with the nickname “Souper.” After a snowmobile outing, the four write their net worths on their chests, donning headgear to signify their relative position — or in Hugo’s case, a necklace made from a soup ladle to signify that of the four, he’s closest to being poor and thereby needing a soup kitchen to help him survive.

“One of my favorite things about the movie is that he thinks of himself as the common man, the grounding presence,” Schwartzman said of Hugo. “In his mind, he’s the man of the streets. What I love is that Jesse changes where the floor is. So I’m at the lowest [point], but it’s 521 million stories up there.”

Although the four guys clearly have shared history and a closeness, there’s also a palpable sense that they might not like each other all that much. Jeff, whose AI company could offer an antidote to the deepfake tools on Venis’ app that are causing the worldwide meltdown, challenges Venis repeatedly in the early going, while also seeing his on-paper wealth skyrocket in the wake of the crisis.

“I think they respect each other as the forces that they are. These are guys who have manifested and created these monstrosities that have incredible power over society,” said Smith. “However, at the end of the day, [the character’s view is] we are responsible for our intellectual property, and if you do anything to diminish my ability to succeed, or you intentionally target my entity, I’ll take you down. I like you because you have the power to do that. If you do it, I will come after you. But let’s go skiing, bro.”

“They’re friends as much as they can show friendship,” added Youssef. “This is probably the deepest relationship in each of their respective lives, and that says a lot.”

Risk Assessment

As the chaos in the world unfolds, political leaders including the (unseen) president start calling members of the group and asking them to get a handle on the situation they largely created. The quartet reacts in a “wow, did you see this” kind of way, but they are so far removed from consequences that rather than discussing how to help, they get out a Risk game board and literally start to divide up parts of the world they can buy and bring under their control.

Jeff largely stays out of those conversations, which is one of the reasons Randall turns his ire toward him. But even as he projects the most concern for the state of the world, Jeff doesn’t take any real steps to solve the problem.

“When we first started crafting the character, Jesse left it as an open question with me, which was, Is Jeff’s empathy just strategic, or is it really what’s going on with him?” Youssef said. “The choice I made was that his empathy was sincere, and I think that makes him a more dangerous character, because he’s actually aware. … Jeff actually does see the pain that’s being inflicted, and he still chooses his own pockets. That, to me, makes him the most dangerous character in a way.”

Worst Assassins Ever

For as much power as they have — and the inflated senses of self that come with it — it’s clear throughout Mountainhead that the four central characters have very poor interpersonal skills and don’t know how to do basic things. Carell’s Randall decides to boil an egg at one point, for instance, but doesn’t put any water in the pot.

Their lack of contact with the regular human world comes to a head after Randall convinces Venis and Hugo that Jeff has to be killed. They first decide to push him over a railing, making his death seem like an accident — but Randall and Venis pull up at the last moment and Hugo only gives a couple of half-hearted shoves. Plan B involves smothering Jeff while he sleeps, which also goes badly sideways and somehow involves Randall trying to drop a bowling ball on Jeff’s body, which he does very gingerly, in one of the comedic highlights of the film.

“We couldn’t wait to get into that stuff. When I first read it, when it took that turn [it was] completely unexpected,” Carell said with a laugh. “It’s one of the things I loved about Succession too. You just didn’t know where any of it was going. I’ve been likening [Mountainhead] to Dr. Strangelove, in the sense that it’s incredibly dark and very relevant for the time, but at the same time, Jesse’s able to weave in this satire, some farce, some broad moments. He never wanted us to play them for their broadness. He wanted us to play them as honestly as we could and allow the comedy to just come out of that, as opposed to play it for the comedy, which I think is a really smart move.”

After locking Jeff inside a sauna and (ineptly) trying to fill it with gasoline, Jeff agrees to sell his AI company to Venis and calm the situation in the world. Hugo also gets his desperately wanted first billion, and Randall believes he’s found a way to transcend his body with Venis and Jeff’s help. Jeff, however, leaves Hugo’s compound after convincing Venis to cut Randall out of whatever deal they make, and they part as (seemingly) friends once more.

“I think they are friends, whatever friendship means, particularly for men,” Armstrong said of the four characters. “We don’t like to think about it, but there’s something transactional in friendship, right? You’re friends with your friends as long as there’s an unwritten contract that you keep on giving each other something. What these men need is to feel that they do have some friends. There’s a high bar for the friendship to break, because I think they really like the feeling that they are like normal guys who go and hang out, drink beer and have a poker weekend. There’s something performative about their friendship, which I think maybe is the false note that you can hear ring through the movie.”