There’s a scene in HBO’s Mountainhead where Jason Schwartzman cheerfully hops on a Zoom call with Argentinian leaders to discuss—quite literally—buying and taking over their country. “Who’s who of the coup?” his character, a tech CEO named Hugo Van Yalk, says with a grin.
The real Schwartzman takes this biting satire of billionaires a tad more seriously. “It’s definitely scary that four people could, maybe, buy the world,” the 44-year-old actor told Decider in a recent Zoom interview. “That scares the shit out of me.”
Written and directed by from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong in his feature film debut, Mountainhead—premiering on HBO and Max at 8 p.m. tonight—is a dark comedy about four fictional tech moguls who gather for a boys’ weekend while the outside world collapses. Cory Michael Smith stars as a social media CEO named Venis, the richest of the four, whose platform’s generative AI is causing countries to go to war over hyperrealistic, deep-fake images. Ramy Youssef stars as Jeff, Ven’s former partner who invented a program that can weed out the fake images from the real. (But he refuses to sell to Ven.) Steve Carell stars as Randall, one of Ven’s early investors, the father figure of the group, and a self-proclaimed genius dying of cancer. And Schwartzman is the eager-to-please host for the weekend, whose meditation app has made him rich enough to buy a mansion in Utah, but so far failed to make him a “b chunk.” His friends call him “Souper,” short for “Soup Kitchen,” for being the only non-billionaire in the group.
It’s timely, to say the least, and that’s by design. Armstrong rushed the production—getting the film green lit in January, cast in February, shot in March, and edited in April— in order to get the film out before the social commentary lost relevance. “We had to be totally prepared and ready to go, with such a short amount of time,” Schwartzman told Decider. “Everyone was working twice as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone working.”
Schwartzman spoke to Decider about working on such a rushed schedule, filming shirtless on a freezing cold mountain, and his take on billionaires.
Tell me how you got involved in the film, and what those early conversations with Jesse Armstrong were like.
It all happened so quickly that it’s going to almost seem like I’m truncating it. Literally on a Thursday night, before the Super Bowl weekend, I got an email saying, “Jesse Armstrong is making this film. Here are some pages from the script, and you need to put yourself on tape and send in by tomorrow at 3:30.”
Which scenes did you put on tape?
One is—there’s a truncated version in the movie, but it’s at the beginning, when I’m going over all the whiskey things. Then the other was me talking about, “Do you think that I’m stupid?” It kind of was amazing, because if someone had said to me, “You need to audition in five days for Jesse Armstrong,” it would have been a bit nerve-wracking. It’s very uncomfortable, any way, to audition. But there was something about, “It has to be done tomorrow at 3:30,” that was kind of like, [shrugs] “Okay!” I found out the next week that you know things were looking good, and then we were shooting like four weeks later. So super, super quick. That’s been the pace of it the whole time. It’s been like a centrifugal force.
None of these guys are particularly relatable at first glance, but I found myself relating to Souper’s desperation for friendship. How did you find that connection to him?
I have a bunch of, friends, let’s say, in my life—I won’t name names, but who I’ve known for a long time. And even though we are now the ages that we are now, and have families, I’m still treated like I’m that.
You? Jason Schwartzman?
Yeah, yeah! But it’s more like, “Really? I’m a father and you’ve known me, and you’re talking to me like that?” It’s funny, the roles that we fall into, and yet I’m still desperately trying to prove myself to them. You know what I mean? I want them to like the book I’m reading. And it’s so twisted that it’s because I love them. I could relate to that, with Souper.
There’s a crisis happening—terrible chaos and disruption. But I like this idea that he has another channel going the whole time, which is, “Is everyone happy? Are we hydrated? Are there snacks?” He has a version of how that weekend is supposed to go. He has it all planned out. I could relate to that idea of being proud to show something to someone, having a way that it’s supposed to go, and while it’s happening, stepping outside of yourself going, “This is exactly what I was talking about! This is what I wanted!” Then, when it’s not going the same way, you’re going like, “Man! This wasn’t part of the plan.” I could relate to that desire to want to make his friends happy.
The stress of hosting! Tell me more about that house in Utah. How many days were you guys out there? Were you guys staying in that house?
No, I would have liked to have stayed in the house. We didn’t stay in the house. It was a big house, seven stories. I forget the amount of days we were there, but when we first got there, day one, it was like, “Whoa,” like you’d think it would be to walk into that house. “Jeez Louise, look at this!” But by the end, I was like, “Ahhhh, I’m home.” That place was starting to feel comfortable. We shot some stuff on the mountain, and I remember coming back and being like, “Ahh, it’s so good to be back [home].”
Like you were mentioning, the process was very quick—green lit, cast, shot, and edited in just a few months’ time. How did that speed affect your process?
I always try to work as hard as I can, obviously, with anything, so it just kind of sped up the process. The way that Jesse wanted to shoot the film was, “We’re going do these scenes as one, giant take. It’s going to be like a filmed play.” Immediately, that tells you that we have to know these lines. We have to be totally prepared and ready to go, with such a short amount of time. It was so fun to have this challenge. I texted Cor [Cory Michael Smith], “How are you doing this?” He’s like, “I have a friend helping me four days a week for five hours a day.” I was like, “Really? I don’t.” [Laughs.]
No one wanted to be the one that let the other one down. You [might think that] if there’s a time crunch, that it would be more tense. But I think it really galvanized everyone. There was a real esprit de corps. Most of the people had worked with Jesse from Succession, and everyone loves Jesse. He’s a great person. Everyone was fighting hard to make it happen, for him. That was really special to see. Everyone’s working twice as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone working. It’s because they knew what it would take to have to make it happen in such a short amount of time. No one ever questioned it. It was like, “We’re going to do it. We will make it happen.”
Since it did just wrap a few months ago, and you’re normally being asked this question over a year after production wrapped: Any memorable moments from set?
There are a ton of memories, but oddly enough, my big memory is not even in the house. It’s on the top of this mountain, Snowbird, that was at like, 12,000 feet. We had these ski outfits on, but with no shirts underneath. We had to write our net worth [on their bare chests] in lipstick. I remember the morning before, I realized “Oh my gosh, I’m going have to write my net worth on my body, but it has to be backwards!” So I practiced writing backwards in the shower.
That was an example of—it’s cold, it’s windy, and we have to get this. We don’t have a lot of time up here. I remember we were freezing cold, just doing the scene, trying to survive, to get the scene right. I remember Jesse behind the camera, [saying], “Just wave!” And I remember Ramy [Youssef] saying, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m freezing.” Steve’s like, “Just hold on! We’re almost done!” It was amazing, that kind of camaraderie.
Has working on this movie made you more empathetic to billionaires, less empathetic to billionaires—or maybe more scared, or less scared—of these guys that Jesse modeled these characters after, who have so much power in the world?
That’s a great question. Scared and empathy… Yeah, I definitely think it’s scary. It’s definitely scary that four people could, maybe, buy the world. I don’t love that idea. That scares the shit out of me.
On the other hand, one cool thing that I did learn—I’m a fan of music and I love the Beatles. I’m always like, “What’s the next Beatles?” You start to realize that some of these codes, and these things that can be beautiful—aside from the billionaires—just, in terms of innovation and ideas. There was a different side of it that I came to see in terms of creating, trying to affect people. But no, I don’t like it. I don’t like the search for money.