I saw the movie last week. Let me say at the outset. I loved the movie. I loved the arrogance of the principals. The self-confidence was really entertaining, especially when they tried to "inspire" others (the "refuse to lose" speech was doubly ironic in that the slogan was trademarked by UMass sports teams--the founders of Govworks.com met at Amherst (Ma.) High. I thought the movie was a great critique of capitalism as it showed the incongruity of any basic human emotion and the pursuit of profit ("sorry buddy, I love you, but you're fired").
[I also loved the great Australian documentary "Rats in the Ranks" that had a similar feel (although that was about a mayoral election). But that is a different story.]
At 02:44 PM 6/1/01, you wrote:
>I saw startup.com last night. As you might have gathered from the reviews,
>it is a documentary, soap-opera take on two friends who start
>govWorks.com, raise 60 million, and have some kind of conflict that
>results in the tecchie founder being fired. The company fails and
>everybody has regrets.
Actually, the company was started by 3 friends and getting rid of the 3rd founder early in the film provided the entertainment early in the film. All the pompous corporate-speak while they are freezing out a "friend" (and he countered with extorting them while talking about higher "principals") was wonderful.
>The movie was remarkable in its inability/unwillingness to position this
>story in a larger context, be that social, historical, economic, whatever.
>No one else in the company gets any attention except the founding duo; no
>technical issues are examined, no employees are interviewed.
I thought the lack of actual technical issues while doing a documentary on a internet start-up was the strength of the film. Refreshing compared to the similar documentary PBS did. I mean they are never going to adequately address the technical issues anyway, so why not focus on the human relations.
I saw the film with one of the directors present. She was a roommate of the guy with the beard, Tom. That is why the focus is on the two founders. She just starting shooting her roommate's start-up as a school project. Then the story wrote itself (this is why "Rats in the Ranks" is so incredibly powerful--although it does bring up issues with Hawthorne effects of the camera's presence).
>That was mostly it. Interesting to sociologists and anthropologists,
>maybe. The people featured in the movie were not very likeable; they spoke
>a weird corporate psychobabble even when having personal conversations.
I thought the unlikability was the strength of the film. Especially when they were trying to make them likable (I thought). The audience I saw it were audibly rooting against both principals (especially the financial guy and his creepy girlfriend). Although I think a lot of people are going to find the two likable (especially Tom). Tom seemed to be constantly aware of the camera and continued to act as if he was in some great drama play. My favorite scene was with his daughter and she says something goofy and he addresses the camera as if to explain his daughter's actions (she's a little kid!). He was a total control freak and living where I do I know lots of people like him.
> The only thing that stood out was the enormously privileged background
> of the founding duo who were able to parely an idea into 60 million
> dollars on the strength of the speculative mania and their class background.
They had the self-absorption of privilege and probably came from at least reasonably high income families but they undoubtedly saw themselves as underdogs. That was entertaining to me and pretty normal when I meet people in the Happy Valley in Mass. The financial guy seemed particularly motivated by the "whole world is against me" mentality and I have to fight for everything I got (when that is untrue).
The money was the real star of the movie. I was with a friend who kept asking what they were getting money for--they had not delivered anything for the bulk of the movie. They kept pissing money away and made a few critical mistakes. Oh well.
Once again, a great movie (but I love documentaries like this).
Peace,
Jim
Tempter for Satan: "We shall encourage [humans] mentally to alienate himself from reality. I propose that we contrive a systematic substitution of abstractions, diagrams, and spiritualizations for actual things, actual beings. Man (sic) must be taught to see things as symbols--must be trained to use them for effect, and never for themselves. Above all, the door to delight must remain firmly closed."
--Robert Farrar Capon, *The Supper of the Lamb* (1969)