Start-ups are the strange showbiz of our times. Among others, The Playlist topped my series’ playlist, reflecting that, this year!
A still from The Playlist, Super Pumped, WeCrashed, and The Offer
Of course, 72 years later is no time to diss a Kurosawa classic! But, really, Rashomon (1950), is an absolutely random movie—about abduction and potential rape. Which, I’m quite sure, most people haven’t watched. But everyone’s heard of—for ‘Rashomon Effect’, that the film introduced to storytelling.
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Which is? The same story, told by separate narrators, as events change thereof, each time— while the eventual outcome (that is, a death in Rashomon) remains the same. What’s the finest example of ‘Rashomon Effect’ since Gone Girl (2014), maybe?
Undoubtedly, the Netflix series, The Playlist (2022). Which is probably the coolest thing to come out of Sweden, after Spotify. The hugely entertaining, semi-fictional show is on the founding of the cutting-edge, clutter-bombing music-app Spotify itself.
Only that most such biopics/series, wedded to the ‘great man theory’, focus on a persistent genius at the centre—Daniel Ek (spot-on, Edvin Endre), founder-CEO of Spotify here. Which is simplistically enjoyable and saleable enough.
Except, nothing of great significance—outside of personal expression/invention at most (often, not even that)—is ever the work of an individual alone. Yup, failures are orphans. But success stories, too, change, in a fair/legit way, depending on who’s telling it.
There is an episode each in The Playlist, dedicated to multiple protagonists—the investor, lawyer, coder, artiste, beyond the founder—who parented Spotify.
As it is, if you’ve spent most of your adult life, socialising with tall-talkers, over tall glasses of beers, regaling you with the great money-spinning plans/schemes in their heads—you’d know that ideas count for absolutely nothing.
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Only execution does. Besides personal courage, conviction, a life with fewer strings attached, etc—what’s the most likely impediment to the execution (of a big idea)? Money, of course.
Where does big money come from, if you don’t have it already? Now, that’s the multi-billion-dollar, over-leveraged/under-estimated, evaluation question, with start-ups in the 21st Century’s tech-space, isn’t it?
There’s a telling scene at a restaurant in The Playlist, where the platform’s phenomenally nutso investor Christian Hillborg (Martin Lorentzon) explains how all this works. We should be listening!
Basically, a restaurant makes simple profit from that average Joe, who orders the same stuff for himself every time. But do they care? No. Their attention is on the table piling up the entire menu, starting with the dessert! Obviously, someone has to pay the bill? Sure.
But by the time the bill comes, it’s time to order dessert, again—those on the table have moved to another level! The public, too, wants to be only on the table with goodies piled up. Ultimately, I suspect, someday into the future, they pay for what was ordered! Call that the IPO, or ‘going public’. Makes sense?
Along the way, with cash and its merciless burn-rate, and the incessant megalomania/greed that follows, whatever happens to ethics, original purpose/idea? They’re all there.
It’s just that cannibalism appears to be capitalism’s default position. No matter how much of a do-gooder you start out as, you’ll end up in a similar place: ‘take the money, or keep the company’!
Playlist is set in Stockholm. Take this universal story, about ideas, investors, and their expectations, raise it to the power ‘x’, it becomes Silicon Valley, doesn’t it—where Amazon is North Star; Apple, the ultimate fruit of success.
Google is the guiding light, and Zuckerberg, just Zeus, I guess. In fact, if you bring Spotify’s primary investor Christian Hillborg from Playlist, over to NYC, he could easily replace the magical, maverick Jared Leto as the WeWork founder, Adam Neumann, in Apple TV’s stellar biographical series, WeCrashed (2022).
Travis Kalanick, the Uber founder, features prominently in WeCrashed. Both WeWork and Uber share the same VC fund, Benchmark, while we hear of other biggies, Sequoia, Google Ventures, Soft Bank (so much to learn from shows!).
Likewise, Spotify founder Daniel Ek (from Playlist) is mentioned in the similarly stunning series, Super Pumped (2022), on Voot—on the life of Uber’s Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This is where you take a ride through Silicon Valley, witnessing its superstars: Sergey Brin, Larry Page (Google) Tim Cook (Apple), Ariana Huffington (Huffington Post)…
The eco-system is complete. What’s common to the three kinetically engaging TV dramas? They reflect the spirit of the times—of super-young, focussed tech-bros, with ‘saviour complex’, and slightly sociopathic tendencies, cloaked in laudable ambition. They go from superstardom, to villainy, even irrelevance, in a few years flat.
It’s bust, or boom! Uber, Spotify, WeWork are success stories, on the face of it. What did their founders have in common: fortitude. How long does that last?
I suppose the only other start-ups on steroids, where technology and talents have traditionally combined for seemingly short-term results, is the movies. Over there, the actual rockstar/entrepreneur is the producer, who nobody knows.
Not even if you’ve literally shed blood, sweat, and tears to make The Godfather (1972), for God’s sake! That’s what The Offer (2022), on Voot—finest series on the making of a film—shows us about the unsung hero, Albert S Ruddy (Miles Teller).
Here you go then, do yourself a favour, if you haven’t already: Playlist, WeCrashed, Super Pumped, The Offer. Binge them back-to-back (from the same year).
Thank me later.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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