YouSaid · the spoken record

Jesse Armstrong

lines on the record: 52
first: 2025-06-05
most recent: 2025-06-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Going back to the things I was trying to write before this sort of sideswiped me. So, bit of prose and a movie that I promise 90% won't be about rich people.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Am yeah, I'm sort of wary of looking at the response. I'll be interested once it cools down and I feel able to check it all out. I'll be really interested to see what timing you make of it, but the way you talk about the movie is how I hope people would think and talk about the movie and you know this world as well as anyone. So I'm very that's nice and lovely to chat to you.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I guess that's the, it feels like the economy is a winner-take-all economy, right? And that's part of the reason for the waiver populism we got all over the world. And it is right. I mean, probably one of the AI firms or AI arms within a tech firm is going to do it and is going to come up with a model which is world beating and they probably will be the monopolist, don't you think?”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've got the liver printing, I've got the holding newborn over a B-day, hoping for it to poop. And I've got inviting people to do a wedding you've never met. Take it off. I've got another episode. Let's take it to Casey.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They need each other because who do you call and have a drink with? Who do you invite to your fucking barbecue? You need a list. Right, right. Often people”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The one thing that they have going for their friendships are and why I think there is something to this group is years. You just get those years accumulating a bit like in Mike White has his character say in the three women in the white lotus. And they sort of mean something. And even when everything else is a load of bullshit, the fact that they have known each other and have known each other when they were a little bit less successful, that is the one thing that is true about their relationship. True. And so that's something I have to them to play with.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if you meant it or not, yeah. I mean, and I think it is tough to form connections that I think rich kids of very rich people have particular problems, right, figuring out what their friendships mean, who they should be friends with and why and why people want connections with them. I think that's a particular form of insanity-inducing paranoia and double think that they're subject to. These guys, you know, they're”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can't get poor, and that's a bit of a challenge for a writer. So I really think it's power. I wouldn't care to write just a bunch of rich folks.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe I do. They look, they have a certain thing on camera and I don't know what to do about that. But I honestly, what I claim, and you tell me if you are calling bullshit on it, is I really don't think I particularly am interested in rich people. I'm just interested in power, I think. You know, writing about poor poorer people, you know, the stakes are actually much higher and easier to write in some ways. These people who we're portraying in some ways, they don't care about much, right? Everything is kind of going to be fine for them. And that was, I mean, some people felt that about succession when they came to it and some people continued to feel it and tuned out pretty fast. It is a challenge to make people care about them because the worst things, well, a bad thing happens in this film that could have impacted their lives. But most of them, nothing, they're going to be...”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I try to be honest about this because rich people have helicopters and fancy windows that you can shoot big mountains out of. So there is some attraction to it, maybe particularly for a director, even more than a writer.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have I got any? No, I mean, I did think forget AI, they were writing an extra season of succession for us out. In the desert in Nevada, the reporting out of that trial was, I get a bit bored of like, oh, you couldn't write it. I often feel like, hey, give us a try. I think I could write it. But the meetings that had gone on and the family movements behind the scenes were pretty extraordinary. I think it's going to be a mess, isn't it? And dynasties often crumble when there's a contest for power.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess there is no average tech billionaire, is there? But that's a really great question. I still think most Americans get their news from local news that the balance is going to go and Facebook is obviously unbelievably important in that Twitter less so, but culturally because of all this journalists on it and also less so. Right now I'd still plump for Fox Power over any other power, but in it where we're going and in its generality, yeah, we're in a tech age, we're in a social media age, aren't we? That's where it's happening. That's where everything's forming. But the twilight is still quite strong, I think, of the agenda setting of print and the viewing numbers of TV.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reluctant to do the same. He's very particular individual, isn't he, who, as you said, like seems to feed on it. So I think people will be wary about taking such sort of political slash cultural dominant position. You know, jobs obviously had a much, much, much, much, much different. Public persona. There may be people who deserve as much opprobrium. I don't think they'll draw it unless they go down the Musk route, but he's been probably pretty salutary to people who think about going into the public sphere, don't you think?”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I guess Musk has been very unusual and the people in my film are different, right, in that they don't have Doge kind of weirdly. I started, I pitched this in December, wrote it in January, and we've been making it. But Doge actually didn't exist when I pitched it and when I first started writing, it was before the inauguration. And now it's, or Elon's involvement in it, and effectively it feels like it's popped as a political moment. That's unusual. His visibility was unusual and it's had unusual level of effect, right? He's more famous than anyone, partly because of his Twitter usage, but he's put himself in the forefront of the popular imagination. And I think people will be”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Went anywhere, but I I think they only really wanted to invest in a power station, but yeah, they definitely give him that impression. Yeah, exactly.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's going to happen. I don't have a good answer to that. I think one thing is, you know, I already, with my fellow writers, I have like six alts for a funny line that... That we're going to throw in, and in the end, I need to choose which is the best and which fits with the rest of the show. I mean, an AI will be able to do that and make a choice. I think you... I hope the tone of this movie is of a piece. Everything I'm saying in AI will be able to do. But I guess the multiplicity of available options means that you might be interested in the taste of a human being. I don't know. I'm unwilling to offer anything.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think contractually now the WJ would still have my back and they wouldn't, or they offer me a new contract or the next thing. What do I think?”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd watch a Volkswagen ad by AI and I would watch a certain amount of CGI as you already do done by AI. I will read once every five years a short story or a poem by AI to see what they're doing and what they're thinking. I don't want to read more than one and I don't want to read more than a few pages. I want to know what you think and what my friend thinks and the friend who I imagine knowing who's the author of the book that I'm reading, I'm only interested in other humans. And I think most humans are. But we may, that may change. So I have no consolation to offer.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I've been asked this a bit a lot and I refer them to you because it's a sort of journalistic question, a tech question. It's a forefront of what's happening question. I inform myself enough to be able to make the movie. And partly I poured my anxieties into jokes and scenarios that I could play out, not the ones that I don't know how to answer. I have no answer. It's just going to get better and better and better and better and any limit you set on what it can't do I think will be surpassed. So there is no limit to the creative Material it'll be able to create. I suspect maybe something will break and the hallucinations will go out of control, but I think that even those kind of things will get fixed eventually as long as things are clearly labeled”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They have to because that's Yeah, and also the thing that most of us don't have, most men don't have, most people don't have, is the extraordinary excitement of feeling that this moment is, you know, like Sam Altman told the FT, I've got maybe the coolest, most important job in the history of the world. Most of us don't feel like that most days. And to feel it and for there to be a 4% chance that it's true is pretty remarkable. And therefore, if you feel like the hug that you give this guy, it's not just you hugging him. It's like this is Pompey and Julius Caesar. It's like it's world historical. That's pretty exciting for a mere mortal.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Men's failure oftentimes to connect. I think it's culturally being remarked on behalf, this sort of sadness that men have about sometimes not making good friends.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who would remain friends with the person who never asked them how they were doing, who never called them, who never invited them out for dinner? There is a transaction involved in that relationships. I guess most of us feel sad about that or would dream of the kind of a platonic version of friendship where you would be there for your best friend forever, whatever happened and whatever they did for you. I guess this is just a bit of a it's rather a tough version of friendship where the sort of contract is rather clear and rather near the surface and the bit of men, maybe all people, but you see it especially in men of competitiveness. Is just coded right into the very form of the relationship. So, I mean, I just find it funny and interesting and sad to a degree.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess part of that is, you know, I've written the thing that me and Sam, my old writing partner, wrote, Peep Show was two guys living in a flat in Croydon. And so I'm a bit of a connoisseur of male. Friendships and the complexities of them, all friendships, you get different things and they're not”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish I'd had print me a liver when I was doing the film, if only we'd spoken before I'd made the film. Print me a liver would be in there.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, I don't want to die. Don't make me die. And so something about philosophizing around it and also, you know, I think, right, you tell me, but so far biologically, no one is living forever, the idea of some kind of digital, you tell me whether you fancy it being, as they say, hung up on a stairmaster while your brain's on the grid, it doesn't. It doesn't strike me. It strikes me as much more Charlie Brooker than sort of.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess it's almost too banal to say how much of a fear it is for all human beings, the sense of going and the Woody Allen joke, I don't want to achieve. They're that joke Real flesh and blood, and who wouldn't the moment you start considering that you might not have to die, I can see if you see a pathway, however small, there was a scene that we cut where Steve was talking to Corey's character about how it just seemed of overwhelming importance not to die. And I think I like the basic five-year-old”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's part of it, right? In the micro level of the plot, but maybe culturally on a wider level, he feels he hasn't been rewarded. So, yeah, there was that personal thing. There's that very precise, non-founder, but more VC kind of advisor, why combinator kind of... Accelerator guy. And then you get the brilliant thing if you cast Steve Carell and he brings his Steve Corellnus to it and the character shifts in another direction. So that was a director, that was an exciting part for me.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That which would be like a claim, or if it was in the UK a knight, a knighthood, or if it's in the US, maybe it's a wing of the Met or some other museum. And somewhere along the line, I don't exactly see when this happened, but he apparently feels that they stopped getting their dues. And that's a strong feeling for Randall. And it's expressed in the negative. Someone says to him, but you never got your flowers. And he demures. But I think you can see from Steve's performance that he strongly believes like somewhere he didn't get his due, that he's changed the world.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were a few things that were crucial for me. Some of them had drawn from life. And yeah, Andreessen and Teal, we thought about a thing which, as far as I know, doesn't apply to either of them, was I also wanted this flavor of mortality. And it's obviously a thing. Especially in the tech world, the hope that you might be able to defeat death. I just find that very, very funny and very, very human because, yeah. Great. Who wouldn't want to do that? So he's a vessel for that anxiety and it provides a plot motor in that he's trying to beat the clock. So there's that element to him. It was Andreessen, wasn't it, who talked about the deal going wrong and that there was a certain point between rich people and the culture, this kind of philanthropic, we give you this and we get.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's just a gift that they're acting, you know, they're taking a lot of my material for free. So, hey, fuck you. I take some of your material for free too.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great question. Practically speaking, from my point of view, the big difference is that Redstone and Murdoch and Rockefeller and JP Morgan did not go on each other's podcasts the whole time, giving me their whole vocabulary and sort of a pretty rough and ready version of their philosophy. So from my point of view as a writer satirist comedy guy,”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mad zealotry for the possibilities of the future and also, you know, a phrase that has been used for book title, you know, that vast carelessness, which feels very scary.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hypothetical, right? We know about Myanmar, we know about a number of other instances where social media has been implicated in inflaming bad situations. But what I paint hasn't happened and hopefully won't. So that in a way is a backdrop and it could have been replaced with a 2008 financial crisis or a different geopolitical crisis. I guess what I know is I really believe that this is how these people talk and this is how they see the world and this is their philosophical approach. We wrote for Rami's character for Jeff. He says, you know, he compares Venice's tech to 4chan on acid. And because he's a brilliant young actor and a totally imbibe the part, Corey let that hit and look to the side. Said awesome. And that to me spoke to him having fully imbibed these characters, which is that kind of bright-eyed.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like I can make a killer. Yeah. You know, I guess there's different spheres in the movie of stuff. The crisis in the world, the killing that's going on in the world is the most sort of black mirrory and”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The diadem, and that the ranking, the mixture of sort of high and low culture appealed to me as something which I didn't actually read about but seemed very plausible.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's craft. That's an exposition. You know, I needed to, I wanted to make sure because there's a sort of somewhat pivotal moment in the film where there's a reversal of fortunes and the sort of usurper takes over from the old king in financial terms, which, as you say, are really, really important or is a big measuring stick for these people. So that was just a craft job of how can I make this, how can I feed some medicine to the audience in a more palatable fashion? And I guess if you get a really successful version of that, you end up forgetting that you're giving any medicine at all and it becomes its own piece. And yeah, you know, as you've mentioned, there is a desire to have a relationship, especially to Imperial monarchies and, you know, Rome is often there, right? As you know, wearisome Lisa. And so...”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I guess I'm talking sympathy on the more general human level. I have human sympathy for them. I feel pity on both sides. I feel pity for the politicians who, well, the ones who might seek to create a framework that could help us manage these incredibly powerful technologies. And I feel a bit of pity for they make it increasingly hard, but they themselves, right, up until 18 months a year ago, seemed to be saying, regulate us like help us with this fucking stuff, which we know how potent it is. And so I do have a degree of pity. I think the money has become so available and the sense of your own abilities becomes so overweening that they stop maybe wanting those guardrails, which is a dangerous moment.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What do you think about their moral impulses, which I do believe are in there? Do you see them as being completely hollowed out?”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Side book, right? And I guess I do think that although the effect of altruism became just some kind of Part of his, I think he was interested in it as a way through the world. And I do believe Sam Altman is scared about AI and that might have been his initial impulse and Elon too.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I'm going to end up defending these guys to you, Carrie. It seems like you're much more dyspeptic. I guess I'm curious to ask, I feel critical of them. I feel scared of the world which we live in with them having so much power over it and a lack of interest from the political sphere. I guess I would say, you know, one of my impulses. Initial impulses was reading the Michael Lewis Sam Bankman Fried book, which I enjoyed.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beach, no, no, not at all. The only thing I've ever used it for is writing, it's sometimes nice to write a resume in the third person because that can be a little bit embarrassing, right? Right, that's true. That's a suitable task for the AI.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I No, no, I don't think so. I don't think we have any AI in the film. And we, no, I mean, the visual effects, you'd have to talk to the studio what tools they use nowadays, but that's all people doing”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a bunch of the vocabulary I find fun to mess around with, but it was a particularly a tone of voice. And as you know, there's like bitter, bitter rivalries and different approaches, philosophical disagreements, as you know, but you do know so well. These people, there seems to be a philosophical kind of maybe pleasingly can do approach, but that can do confidence as I guess their cultural centrality and the amount of money that they control has, I would say moved into a kind of arrogance, cultural and political and financial arrogance that feels really palpable in the world increasingly to everyone, right?”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Saying No, no, I've got just a passing acquaintance with a little bit of tech personal knowledge, but very little. And almost everything from this is secondary reading. I'm a real secondary reader. Like a lot of writers, I'm scared of other people. So I prefer to encounter them through the page. And on podcasts, yeah, books were amazing, long-form journalism amazing. Podcasts Were the thing which meant I couldn't get these guys? And as you know, they're mostly guys' voices out of my head.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, I'm educated. A good book. Yeah, great. And it's good to hear your versions of them. And it's fun to figure out their different attributes and divide them up. And yeah, there's a lot of people, and I've read plenty, including your own work. In fact, I think there must be a pony and burn book. I think you've probably been a leading research font for two projects. So that's notable.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's called Mountain Head and References Made to Ayn Rand. We did a lot of location scouting. And Ayn Rand a little bit like NPCs felt almost too on the nose. But the amount of places that that was the only work of fiction on display was truly... So it's like Iron is busting her way in here, whether I want it or not. Yes, yes.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That scope I found thinking of it as a low budget movie took the pressure off me a little bit. And I just like by temperament a condensed time frame and a condensed geographical frame. It personally gets my kind of creative juices going to feel you're going to be in the space and see something develop there. So yeah, a bunch of things conspired. And also exactly as you said, which hasn't been mentioned that much as I've been chatting to people, it is sort of a horror movie. And the camera peeking around pine trees to see a gang and seeing who's going to survive is something you everyone will be familiar with, right, from other kinds of work. Right.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I grew up with those kind of TV plays in the 70s, 80s and 90s in the UK. That would be play for today. It was a venerable tradition and where a lot of great writers worked. So I admired it. I knew that I wanted to for the production requirements. I wanted to try and make it fast. I selfishly didn't want too much of a burden of budget on me, although we do have helicopters and some scale. So the budget grew.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Time schedule, it was kind of hard for me and the rest of the people making the film to believe it was going to happen until two things. One was us finding the location, which was tough to find somewhere that would have, you know, it's kind of like a play in that most of it, the action happens in one house. So I knew with a little bit of my developing director's brain that I needed a lot of different spaces to be able to shoot. And the other thing was when Steve Carell said yes, which was another moment when I was able to sort of convince myself and people who were trying to bring on as everything from caterers to cinematographers, but this is actually going to happen in like four weeks or whatever crazy timeframe you were suggesting.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, finding the location was an absolutely crucial part of the film. And until we got it, nothing really felt like it worked. Also, nothing could happen. We couldn't hire anyone. We made this on a really tight schedule because I kind of wanted the audience to be in the same bubble of time as I was when I wrote it, which is just earlier in the year in January. I started writing. And with this really tight.”
2025-06-05 · On with Kara Swisher · 'Mountainhead' Writer & Director Jesse Armstrong on Tech Bros, Murdoch and AI · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT