Pop Culture Happy Hour - Watch This: Mountainhead

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is back with Mountainhead, a new movie with characters who are just as wealthy, powerful, and insecure as the Roy family. Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef and Cory Michael Smith star as four tech moguls gathering for a low-key guys' weekend of poker. But business and unchecked, overinflated egos quickly lead them all down a very dark path. To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Perhaps you're still going through succession withdrawal two years after that hit HBO show concluded. You're in luck because creator Jesse Armstrong is back with Mountainhead, a new movie with new characters who are just as insanely wealthy, insanely powerful, and deeply insecure as the Royette family was. Four tech moguls gather for what's supposed to be a low-key guy's weekend of poker, and among them are Steve Correll and Jason Schwartzman. But business and unchecked, overinflated, Egos quickly lead them all down a very dark path.

I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Aisha Harris. And today we're talking about Mountain Head on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby. Welcome back, Gene. What's good, y'all? Oh, my God. I'm so excited to talk about this with you.

I know. This is going to be very fun. But as we were lamenting right before we started taping this, we will unfortunately not be able to drop any swear words in here. Yeah, it's true. Oh, man. This is a very, very swear-heavy movie to be expected from Jesse Armstrong. So, Mountainhead, it's about a group of very rich frenemies who get together for a snowy mountain weekend hang. Hugo, aka Super, plays host in his newly built mansion.

He's played by Jason Schwartzman. Have these been prepitted? Yes. Which means that some little greasy monster from Whole Foods has had his little fingers in him. And I don't like that. Yes. Then there's Randall, played by Steve Correll. he's dealing with some health issues but is keeping it all under wraps.

Cancer was net net a big positive. Wisdom, 50% increase. Purpose, meaning, both way up. Rami Yusuf is Jeff. He amassed his wealth creating an AI he's convinced is for the good of humanity. I've got zero shot learning and the essence of justice in a box and you've got what, 4chan on acid. Awesome. I'm selling a filter for nightmares.

That's not the kind of business that slows down. Ah, delusions. Delusions of grandeur. And then there's Venice, played by Corey Michael Smith. He's another tech creator, and his platform just launched a new upgrade to its generative AI, which has directly led to mass chaos and violence across the globe. We're going to show users as much as possible until everyone realizes nothing's that serious.

Yeah. Nothing means anything. And everything's funny and cool. Precisely. Funny. As the rest of the world burns and the White House starts a calling, they conspire to seize the moment and profit off the turmoil as one does. But cracks in their friendship begin to show and the vibes take quite a turn. Mountainhead is streaming on Max now.

Linda, I hear tell that you really, really loved this. Tell us more. Tell us more. I did. I really, really like this. In fact, I've watched it twice. The first time I really liked it, the second time I really loved it. for essentially two independent reasons, one of which is, as you could hear in some of those clips, I think it's very, very funny.

Jesse Armstrong, you know, before he was making Succession, has a long history in the Armando Ionucci arm of British comedy. And so he was comedy writer first. And this is much more of a dark comedy. Much more purely that than Succession, which was sort of a mix of this really affecting drama with a lot of dark comedy. But I also think it is so insightful about why these guys are so useless. And the first thing you see is Venice in his car with some of his like whatever hangers on, his team. And he does something that is not funny at all. And they all tell him how funny it is.

And you realize that Armstrong's point about these guys is how, other than being rich, how full, unremarkable they are. Shall I put that? We want to full fat product globally and just be like with two years. What about with like three U's? I don't know. I like two.

Yeah, no, two is genius. Other than the Rami Yusuf character, who we can talk about a little bit, he's a little bit differently pitched than some of these guys. None of them are capable of being funny on purpose or witty on purpose. Everything they say sounds foolish.

they are completely devoid of wisdom. They are utterly unremarkable except for how much money they have. And I think in that sense, this is a bleak and brutal and unfortunately kind of feels horrible because it's true kind of movie to me. But I sort of loved the pain of it and the writing of it, which I just, oh my gosh, I do really, really love Jesse Armstrong's writing. Yeah, love to the pain. Put that, slap that on the poster for this movie. It hurts so good. It hurts so good. Gene, give me a vibe check here. How are you feeling about this? Oh, man, I really, really dug it.

That scene that Linda just pointed to were there in the car, and I guess it's like his chief of staff or, you know, his handlers. Sick of fans, though. It reminded me of that detail in the new book, Careless People, which is from a former Facebook insider's perspective of what it was like to work with Zuckerberg and some of the other high-ups there. And she had this, like, detail about how Mark Zuckerberg, like, everybody around him just let him win at board games all this all.

Just to make him, you know, feel good about himself. You know, they never wanted to make him, you know, not think that he was, like, the smartest dude in the room. And that's clearly, like, where all these people are. Like, they've been, it's gone to the cocoon and then sniffing their own farts. And so all four of them, this quartet sort of kiss together, you know, for this boy's trip. And then there's this scene, it just feels very succession. But, like, of course, in succession, it would be, like, a whole bunch of stuff leading up

to it. But there's a scene like in the first maybe 20, 25 minutes of movie in which this quartet is at the top of this mountain. They're comparing each other's net worse by like writing that number in lipstick on their chest. And so it's kind of like a pissing contest, but also like it's giving like manifestation practice. It's given like a little vision board energy. Like they're shouting out the stuff they really want. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Gentlemen, let us shout. Mountain God Accelerator legacy manifestation. Mountain God Accelerator Legacy Manifestation!

It just was like so ridiculous in cartoonage. It was so funny. There's like light woo to how they talk, which is, I think, true to life. Exactly, right. Yeah, the light woo is a great description. It's also just like trying to convince yourselves of something that you don't even really believe in, right? Like there is so much, this is a net positive. We're doing this for the good of the world.

and like we're not really bad people. Like, even though we know that these people don't really care about anyone else, the fact that they feel like they need to seem as if they care or that they are actually contributing something good into the world is a really fascinating thing to sort of latch on to. I think I found myself both very entertained by this and very much enjoying it and very much especially appreciating how kind of off the deep end it goes because it does make a very sharp turn later in the movie.

But at the end of it, I also felt like, I think I know how I feel about it as just like pure entertainment. I was entertained. Again, it did scratch that succession itch for me. And as far as this entire genre of we're going to watch extremely rich people show the worst of themselves in this moment, that is a genre now from everything from Knives Out to pick your Nicole Kidman starring movie or TV show. Like it's its own genre now.

I think this is one of the better versions of it. But I also still felt like left it feeling like. And what? Like, was there anything new revealed that, like, hadn't been revealed to me over the course of, you know, four seasons of Succession or any other show? Or, like, walking around the world. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, oh, this is just also the news. There's value in that.

But I also struggle with whether or not I actually, if I go back and watch this in five years, am I going to be as entertained? I don't know. And that's what I'm struggling with personally. I will say, I don't think Succession really ever got into the question of, why are these people so foolish? Because the people in succession, particularly some of them, right? Shiv is not a foolish person. She's not a not smart person.

She's just an amoral person. Yeah, that's right. It's the same thing with at least Logan, I would say. There's a lot of Roman, I think, in the Rami Youssef character, Jeff. So much Roman, yeah. In that he really is funny. and it's the thing that kind of keeps bringing you back and thinking maybe he's not quite so wicked because he is funny. He's not irredeemable, yeah.

But I think what they do that Succession didn't do is they are kind of poking at what are some of the kind of toxic things that they've begun to believe? There's actually a moment where Venice asks Randall, the Steve Carell character, do you believe in other people? And he's not saying, do you believe in the goodness of other people? or do you think you can trust other people? He's really gotten to the point where he's saying, do you really think it's possible that there are billions of other people who are just as real as we are? He's genuinely starting to say, do you believe in other people? So I think exploring some of that's interesting. But even more than that, I watched this and I came away thinking about, okay, so this is why these guys are fools. Because how do you learn? If you are these guys,

You can't learn from consequences because for the most part, you don't experience any. Yeah, they have the White House on speed dial. Exactly. You can't learn from other people because nobody will tell you the truth. You can't learn from history because your exceptionalism about yourself makes you believe that what has happened historically doesn't have anything to do with you because there's never been anybody like you. And if you can't learn from consequences and you can't learn from other people and you can't learn from history, that's how you become. become a fool and stay a fool. And it's interesting because the Steve Carell character clearly has some actual, like, he's

studied, he knows about certain things. He's interested in philosophy and ancient history and stuff like that. He's only cares about certain things. Like, he's kind of studied it to kind of pull out morsels about greatness in a way. My view, and it's essentially a Galian, is that the whole of history, operates on the what cool principle. Bronze. What, oh, cool.

Civilization. Iron. What? Oh, cool. Empire. He's the wooiest of them. He's the wooiest of them. But the rest of them, you just get the sense that their worlds are limited to what they're doing in these businesses.

And that's why they're fools. And I did find that to be an interesting insight that I don't think you got as much from succession because that was more about morality than it was about people just being absolutely devoid of insight about anything. Yeah, that's fair. And I think it also makes a difference that Cuell is the oldest out of all of those characters, you know, and the fact that this dramatic license to confine them to this mansion. Like, for the most part, this movie takes place almost entirely in the mansion. It's like a bottle episode, sort of. It's basically a bottle episode. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Also, just to Linda's point about the wooiness of Steve Carell's character, like, Steve Carell is also sort of running up against something that he can't sort of like will him Salvador just like his money and his wealth. A big part of his motivation in this movie is like, I can just warp reality around me all the time because I'm so rich and have so much power. But I can't do it in this case. And someone is telling him something that he can't do anything about. And he's like, you're a stupid person. Right. Yes, yes. You're looking at certainly five, probably 10, maybe 15 years before.

You're not a very intelligent person, are you, Dr. Phipps? I do get a little bit of consolation out of watching characters like this, like watching Randall who thinks like he's invincible and that he can work around his mortality. I get pleasure out of saying, like, well, they seem very miserable. Like, at least I have that. At least they seem deeply unhappy. Yeah, yeah. Now, let's get into like this sort of third act twist here.

Yes, we are going to get into spoilers. for the last part of the movie. So you have been warned. The basic gist of this is that Jeff, played by Ramiusuf and Venice, played by Corey Michael Smith, they are the biggest frenemies. They are the sort of the most at each other's throats, shall we say. Jeff suggests to Randall, the Steve Corral character,

that he needs to, like, get him off the board of his company because he's ruining everything. And then Randall is not happy about that because Randall has already asked Venice, like, hey, this, like, AI thing, I want you to work on something to make me make it so that, like, I could live forever, you know? Make me immortal. Which turns into Randall, Venice, and Super all conspiring to try and kill Jeff. And at first, when Randall first suggests killing Jeff, because as Aisha said, like, you know, Jeff is threatening to interfere with Randall's plans for immortality. So when he first starts to suggest killing Jeff, he's like, I'm not literally saying we should kill Jeff, but he clearly is from the beginning.

And I very much like that whole. I think that whole exchange is really funny. That's just a galaxy brain move is to kill Jeff. No, we should work back from there and find a solution that has the same outcome as killing Jeff. That obviously doesn't involve the killing of Jeff. I'm not saying we should kill him. I'm saying I have no priors. about what the other options might be.

Oh, my God. One of the things I love about this film is the way that it's written so that it includes the way these guys talk where they don't say anything, but they're constantly talking. It is very, very funny. And you do get, I think in this section, you get one of the things I appreciate about this, which is Steve Carole has done a lot of things in the last several years, some of which I've enjoyed really a lot, that are not Michael Scott. However, in this movie, from time to time, you get, what if Michael Scott had billions of dollars?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I just feel like the universe is like taking a grip and it's easing me apart. Like my torso is being levered apart with tremendous force. And like the emptiness of the galaxies is just like rushing it. Mm, not good. When Randall says, not good, that is Michael Scott through and through.

And as they move into this, we should kill Jeff. There's a part where they talk about if Jeff can defend himself with a razor, like with a shaving razor that's very Michael Scott. I really loved all the performances in this film equally pretty much, which I really was surprised by. I'm not always a Jason Schwartzman guy, but I thought he was great in this. I thought he was really funny. And Soups is such a pitiful, you know, he's kind of the punching bag because he's only

worth $500 million. Well, I loved that reveal that the reason they call him soups or super is because he is the quote unquote poorest of them all. And they compare him to a soup kitchen. And I'm just like, oh my goodness. Yes, that is a great joke. That is a great joke with a payoff. The whole time he's kind of wanting to be like a cool guy who's in these conversations.

And once they decide to kill Jeff, he's kind of constantly doing like the, should we really kill Jeff? Can we step back from killing Jeff? Because it's his house. And so he's partly worried about killing Jeff in his house as he should be. And like the other, and there's a moment where they're going to kill Jeff and they don't. That's very funny because there's a couple moments where they try it. They kind of wind up hanging soups out to trial. little bit. And it's really

like I thought it was really funny. I get that in some ways it is preposterous. And I would also have watched a version of this movie where you're much more staying tethered to reality while they talk about what they're going to do about this meltdown of the world. But I was also fine with this

ultimately very slapsticky. Ultimately there's a squeegee. I thought it was very funny and it delighted me. Absolutely. These are not people who get their hands dirty at all. Right. Right. Even though they're like very cavalier about the sort of chaos that they're someone in the world. And taking over a country.

They're like, who's going to get this country? Let's just cool it out a little bit. Let's just cool it out. Let's go it out. How about a pre-parted? They all sound like Jesse Armstrong dialogue, but they all sound different. They all sound like themselves. And I feel like I could go through and identify a lot of lines and say, well,

this would only be this guy versus this guy. There's that moment in which they're all watching the chaos that Venice's app has unleashed into the world. Like on their phones? It's like, oh, these people are are sort of enslaved to the same technology, right? They're just all sort of like, it's on the nose, but that's fine, right? It's, like, one of the critiques of, like, concentrated wealth is always that it's inherently anti-democratic. Like, there's no amount of public support or public opposition to anything that really matters if, like, a bunch of people can say, like, I don't want that.

Or I do, you know, I want the opposite of that. Right. And these dudes very much live in that space. We're like, oh, well, my will is, I can get, we can get that that happen. Like, the part when they're planning a coup of a Latin American country from his theater is like, oh, this is. Yes. unhinged, but also, isn't that implausible? I truly don't know. No, it is not. No, it is not. You find yourself having that feeling, right? Like, how far are we from how some of this would go?

And I think fortunately, none of these guys map perfectly onto existing tech people. I don't think that's the game. I don't think it's this guy is this guy and this guy is this guy. And that gives them, I think, more freedom to kind of play with what these guys talk about doing. Well, let's be That's also because so many of those real-life guys are kind of the same person. Well, yeah. They all have a lot of overlapping qualities that could map. They have overlapping qualities, but I think it's like, it's smart that you don't look at it and be like, okay, so this is the Musk. This is the Zuckerberg.

This is the whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. It sounds like I've turned, I've turned my life around and come around a Mountain Head. We want to know what you think about Mountain Head. find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash pcch and on letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Gene Demby, Linda Holmes. Thanks so much for being here.

This was such a fun weekend hanging in the mountains. I'm glad they got to do this. Thank you. I hope that you both get your be nuts. Don't curse me with them. Be nuts for all of us. Just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. That's almost like having a be-nut. Yeah. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour

or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katzib and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.