Lifestyle
'Mountainhead' skewers the tech elite — and it's very satisfying
Cory Michael Smith, left, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman star in HBO’s Mountainhead.
Fred Hayes/HBO
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Fred Hayes/HBO
The new film Mountainhead, written and directed by Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, is about the super-rich, so people may expect something Succession-ish: a tragedy studded with dark humor. Instead, in the tradition of Armstrong’s work on the British series The Thick of It and the film In the Loop, Mountainhead is a comedy — a bleak, brutal comedy, but a comedy nonetheless.
The action unfolds at the titular mountain mansion newly built by Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), a millionaire hundreds of times over who is trying to figure out how to take his meditation app to the next level. Hugo — whose friends call him “Souper” for reasons that will be uncovered — has invited three billionaire buddies for what’s ostensibly a poker weekend: Venis (Cory Michael Smith), a social media titan casually referenced as the richest man in the world; Jeff (Ramy Youssef), a rival to Venis with a powerful AI company; and Randy (Steve Carell), a venture capitalist who has just received some bad health news that he has decided not to believe.
As the men arrive at Mountainhead, they see online that the new generative AI features in Venis’ social media app have led to global mass violence as fake videos bait people into conflict and panic. Economies are beginning to collapse. As all four men take in the potential downfall of civilization on their phones, they’re not sure how worried to be. Jeff is against all the death and suffering, but he also sees opportunity. See, Jeff’s AI technology has the ability to distinguish truth from fiction, meaning he has the cure to the disease Ven has unleashed. Ven wants to buy his company, but Jeff isn’t inclined to sell. After all, the more desperate the world grows, the more valuable Jeff’s product might become. For him, it makes sense to get as close to the apocalypse as possible before he cashes in.
While the four men at Mountainhead are targets of Armstrong’s withering stink-eye for their amoral, antisocial approaches to the world — less fiddling while Rome burns than doing molly and scheming to corner the market on fire extinguishers — the stake he drives through their hearts is how unremarkable they are in every way except that they are rich.
Hugo is a grasping coward. Venis is a vain, foolish, unloved dweeb who is probably also a sociopath. Randy is a bloviating, self-important tangle of resentments who fancies himself an intellectual but believes immortality is five years away and can’t boil an egg. Playing Jeff, Youssef is the only one of these actors whose natural charisma is allowed to fly free. Jeff is, if you will, the Roman Roy of this enterprise — the character who is obviously also a terrible person, but whose capacity for humor keeps making you wish he weren’t. And even he, in the end, is an insecure and awkward poser who couldn’t read a room with a book light and a magnifying glass.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that in the hands of a terrific writer of comedy, a terrible sense of humor marks characters as untrustworthy and dull. In the opening moments of the film, Ven is in a big SUV with a couple of his lead sycophants, and he chuckles at the fact that he posted about his product launch with one word — “F***” — but he accidentally spelled it with two u’s. He thinks it’s hilarious that he wrote it with two u’s, and the members of his team say they agree. He should leave it like that, they all say. It’s hilarious. Two u’s! Ven is blissfully unaware — and he probably wouldn’t care — that everyone is lying to him, just as he is later blissfully unaware that everyone at Mountainhead is talking behind his back about how weird he’s getting as the worldwide chaos expands and the pressure on him to stop it grows.
Ven, Randy and Hugo are all devoid of wit at an atomic level, greedily slurping up cursory chuckles at their shriveled one-liners. They sometimes take a smidgen of true pleasure in cruelty or vulgarity, or in the fact that being trapped with people who believe it’s financially advantageous to laugh at their jokes is the closest thing they experience to friendship. But they have no charm, only money. Armstrong is pitch-perfect at writing weak jokes for great comic actors so that, for instance, Steve Carell is very funny even though Randy is hopelessly, painfully not. More than once, you may find yourself thinking that Randy, minus his money, is a close relative of Michael Scott.
Eventually, a divide between Jeff and the other three men forms and then deepens, mostly because Ven is angry at Jeff for not selling to him, and Randy and Hugo are attached to Ven like parasites desperate to get promoted from barnacle to tapeworm. This divide takes a dark turn that sends the whole thing into farce and slapstick, as it turns out that these particular masters of the universe, for all their bravado, wouldn’t have the fortitude to push over a trash can without outsourcing it to an underpaid permatemp.
At times, Mountainhead‘s bleakness will take your breath away. The dangers of losing our hold on reality come to the forefront both because of the central storyline about AI and because these men are so fully cleaved from the rest of humanity that they might as well already be living on Mars the way they dream of doing.
During one conversation, Ven asks Randy, “Do you believe in other people?” He isn’t asking whether Randy believes in the goodness of other people, or whether he trusts other people. He’s asking whether Randy believes in other people — skeptically questioning that there can really be “eight billion people as real as us.” The tentacles of a quasi-spiritual denial of reality already are wrapped around Ven’s ankles, and that’s part of why he takes in scenes of death and destruction on the internet with a shrug. When he says those scenes on his app aren’t real, he means the videos might be AI. But he also seems to mean that those things aren’t real, because they aren’t happening to him. They’re happening to 8 billion other human beings who are such abstractions that he’s beginning to think they don’t exist, or at least they don’t exist in the same way he does.
There might be hope that Ven will get better at some point, but the keenest observation in Mountainhead is that all of these men pose the same threat, which is that as the world changes rapidly and their power expands exponentially, they never learn anything. They can’t. They can’t learn from experiencing consequences, because their money means they never do. They can’t learn from other people, because nobody they listen to is willing to tell them the truth. They can’t learn from history, because they believe they belong to a special class of superhumans to whom the rules of history do not apply. And traditional learning has been a bust: Even though they are superficially educated, these guys possess no insight. Randy loves to cite tidbits of history and philosophy, but he doesn’t understand any of them.
On the one hand, Mountainhead is just a despairing wail into the sky. After all, however foolish they may be, however little they know, these guys have the power they have and the money they have and the attendant ability to do harm, and there are no obvious solutions to that (other than perhaps a well-timed avalanche). Their world is stuck with them.
On the other, watching a writer as skilled as Armstrong create these characters with such queasy believability and then poke them in the eye over and over again for almost two hours is profoundly pleasurable. After all, the point of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was less that it’s shameful to be naked and more that it’s shameful — and funny — to be a dope. It may not be obvious how to take power back from people who shouldn’t have it, but the least we can do, Armstrong demonstrates, is to see them for what they are with clear eyes, and to refuse to pretend they are anything else.
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The Kennedy Center on June 28, with its facade signage still covered by a tarp and scaffolding.
Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
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Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
On Wednesday, a federal appeals court denied President Trump’s request to stop the removal of his name from Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. The signage on the building has been covered with tarp and scaffolding since June 13, but in a court filing last month, the center’s current executive director said that Trump’s name has been removed.
In their decision, three judges from the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the president had failed to prove that the arts center would be “irreparably injured” without Trump’s name attached to it.
NPR requested comment from the Kennedy Center, but did not receive an immediate reply.
This latest round of court decisions is part of the ongoing litigation filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, against President Trump and the board of the Kennedy Center. In a statement emailed Wednesday to NPR, Beatty said: “Today’s ruling again affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename the Kennedy Center were unlawful. His name no longer desecrates this sacred memorial, which belongs to the American people. Now it is time for the Trump administration to accept this, comply with the law, and take the tarps down.”
In previous court filings, Trump’s legal team had asserted that removing the president’s name from the arts complex, both on the physical building and in its digital materials, would inflict irreparable harm in both time and money already spent. In the denial, the three judges — Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Gregory Katsas — wrote that since Trump’s name has already been removed, “a stay would not avert those harms.”
Furthermore, Trump had claimed that without his name attached, future fundraising would be threatened “and [will] contribute to the financial decline of the Center.” In response, the appeals judges wrote: “Appellants, however, have failed to support this assertion with any specific facts or evidence. They offer only the conclusory assertions of the Kennedy Center’s Executive Director that were made in a factually unsupported declaration.” The center’s current executive director, Matt Floca, specializes in physical plant management.
The presiding judge in the case, Christopher R. Cooper, has ordered that the center provide him a status report on the center’s operation and programming before the end of this month. As of Wednesday, the center’s calendar lists a small roster of programs, including outdoor free movie screenings, workshops for children, and five free live performances in July on its Millennium Stage. In the past, the Kennedy Center presented over 2,000 arts and education events each year, including free daily Millennium Stage performances.
Lifestyle
A meal with an animated Mona Lisa? Immersive dining goes high tech — but will L.A. eat it up?
My dinner course is served. It is a Campbell’s-inspired soup can, lightly angled so strands of broccoli are peeking out. I lift the can to uncover a slow-braised short rib and mashed potatoes. An American dish to represent an American artist, here Andy Warhol.
The room is overtaken with projections, scenes of bustling New York traffic paired with bachelor-pad-like guitar riffs. Shown on a wall above a dinner table is a selection of Warhol silkscreens. It’s a Friday night in West Hollywood, and I’m surrounded by a mix of out-of-towners and those celebrating an anniversary. And while this is a special occasion, we’re urged to get a little messy with our food — to use our hands, to paint with a salad, to draw on a cookie.
The main course: A tomato soup can? “7 Paintings” is an immersive event that occasionally hides dishes in artist-inspired presentations.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Play is the primary side dish at “7 Paintings,” a tech-infused dinner theater that aims to be a crash course in fine art. That selection of veggies paired with multiple mini cups of colorful dressings? Guests are encouraged to mix and match the vinaigrettes into a mess of hues, a nod to abstractionist Jackson Pollock. And yellowfin tuna with dashes of avocado and taro chips? That’s an edible tribute to Banksy, of course. What does raw fish have to do with stenciled street art? It’s bold, heavily angled and has a short shelf life? Maybe? Perhaps don’t overthink it.
Even the paper is edible.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“Have you ever eaten a painting before?” says Nadine Beshir, the Dubai-based creator of “7 Paintings.” “We try to get people out of their comfort zones and eating paper. I want to bring out the child in them.”
“7 Paintings,” held at Sunset House L.A. through the end of August, is the latest example of immersive dining to arrive in this city. These experiences often involve guest participation and are accentuated with advanced multimedia technology and sometimes theatrical elements.
Worldwide, there have been standouts. For instance, Eatrenalin at Germany’s Europa-Park, a dining room-meets-ride where participants are whisked around the space on trackless “floating chairs,” has just received a coveted Michelin star. Ibiza’s Sublimotion has similar haute ambitions, pairing 12 diners together in a room that will come alive with otherworldly projections and performers. At times, diners will win don virtual reality headgear.
But tech-driven immersive dining experiences have never quite taken off in Los Angeles as a trend. Last year, the Gallery, where fantastical cityscapes and projections surrounded downtown L.A. diners, stood just a couple months before the concept was abandoned.
“7 Paintings” pairs food with art and music. It’s “fun dining, not fine dining,” says its founder.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Bartender Luca Famulari shakes a cocktail at the immersive dining event.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“The economics of a restaurant are not the same as the economics of theater and the challenge of combining the two lies in thinking outside the box with respect to pricing and cost structure, such that the customer perceives high value from both the food and the experience,” says the Gallery co-founder Daren Ulmer.
Entrepreneurs keep aiming for that careful balance. “Le Petit Chef and Friends” is currently running at Tangier at downtown’s Hotel Figueroa, an event in which a fully animated film is projected on our plates and tables. Long-running pop-up event Fork N’ Film leans more dinner and movie, pairing dishes directly inspired by what is happening on screen. Upcoming films include “Ratatouille” and “Lilo and Stitch.”
The field comes with challenges. “The costs are very high,” says Joanna Garner, an immersive designer and former creative director with experiential art firm Meow Wolf. Garner has been experimenting herself with communal, immersive dinner events, and her next, the flirtatious “Please Open Your Mouth,” is set for July 11. (No tech there, as Garner is after a more sensual, adult-focused gathering.) Tickets for her event are $150 and a spot in the “7 Paintings” dining room runs $175, priced on par with a number of city’s most acclaimed restaurants.
There is also the reality that all public dining is in some fashion immersive, usually requiring varying combinations of engagement, communication and presentation. And then, are all these added elements distracting?
An animated Mona Lisa sits on the wall as guests enjoy their meals. Throughout the dinner, the painting provides factoids on various artists.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Throughout “7 Paintings,” for instance, an animated Mona Lisa, situated on the wall next to the main dinner table, will provide brief biographical details of each artist represented.
“Being able to nail the food, and nail the story, those are two very difficult threads to weave,” Garner says. “I do think, ultimately, people come to a dinner table to talk to the people at the table and to have intimate experiences. To have an experience where you’re constantly being taken away from the food, I’m not so sure if that’s what people are looking for.”
Food is framed as a star of “7 Paintings” but tasting it is just one component. At one point, we must uncover a cheese course in a tiny treasure chest, the code for the lock hidden in the projections (don’t stress, it’s not a hard puzzle). Beshir highlights the Pollock-inspired salad course, which is accentuated with a jazz soundtrack, as the thesis of the evening.
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1. A guest uses a silicon brush to apply sauces onto an entree, a nod to abstractionist Jackson Pollock. 2. Projections fill up the dining table during meals.
“This course is really about getting people to free their minds from preconceived ideas,” Beshir says. “Like, you have to eat with a fork and knife, or the salad comes and then the dressing. No, the dressing comes and then the salad, and it’s trying with big brushes to paint the way he did. A lot of people do not understand Abstract Expressionism, and they think it’s people just splashing colors around. But when you understand the link between the rhythm of the music and painting, you live it. We give you time to paint with your salad dressing.”
In L.A., Beshir has partnered with nightlife impresario Kim Kelly, who is plotting a “Sleep No More”-inspired walk-around theatrical show for the Sunset House venue later this year. “7 Paintings,” however, is fully seated, and purposefully a little silly. Beshir and Kelly have been evolving it during its L.A. run, recently adding a stronger painting component by giving guests their own canvas to work on throughout the evening. Each night crowns a winner.
“Everyone comes over to look at their art,” Kelly says. “It just kind of changed the whole thing, to be honest. People are now being creative throughout the entire evening. Instead of just watching and occasionally painting, you’re now painting the whole time.”
As for what, perhaps, soba noodles with edamame and mushrooms have to do with Pablo Picasso, or why Salvador Dali gets an unexpected dessert course of a white chocolate potato souffle, Beshir clarifies the goal of the evening. While the animated Mona Lisa will provide backstories on each painter, this isn’t an educational night. “It’s fun dining, not fine dining,” Beshir says.
And by the end of my night, strangers were socializing, showing off their painted cookie creations, sharing Banksy tidbits and asking for recommendations on various vinaigrette combinations. Ultimately, it’s an evening of discovery, packed with surprises like finding an entire course hidden under a canvas.
Darryl Mayes of Charlotte, N.C., left, and Taylor Smith of North Hollywood, right, uncover their course.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“We try not to have too much sophistication, like fried ants or something. I’m personally very adventurous in how I eat, but if I want to have this in 100 cities around the world, I cannot be too meticulous.”
And Beshir has big goals.
“I want this be your movie and dinner thing,” Beshir says. “I want people to be waiting for our next show, and to be able to afford to come every couple months.”
And to come home not with leftovers, but perhaps a painting of their own.
Matthew Rhys was nominated for his role in Widow’s Bay.
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The 2026 Emmy nominations are here. We’re unpacking the record-breaking nominations for Hacks, plus a big day for Widow’s Bay, The Pitt, and The Bear. We’ll also talk about the snubs and make some early predictions of who will win.
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