Jesse Armstrong's Power Move

The Succession creator's next act? A farcical TV movie about four tech-bro billionaires he wrote, produced, and directed in less than a year.

- By Matt Zoller Seitz

MOUNTAINHEAD debuts on HBO May 31.

I'M IN A SEVEN-STORY mansion in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah that looks like a ski lodge commissioned by Tony Stark. It's late March, and actors Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith (Saturday Night), Ramy Youssef, and Jason Schwartzman are shooting an outrageous scene for Mountainhead, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong's directorial debut about four arrogant tech moguls who get together for a boys' weekend that goes fantastically awry.

The context: Youssef's character, Jeff, owns a company that has just devised a filter that can identify and block hyperrealistic generative-AI images. Smith's character, Venis—rhymes with tennis, not the appendage—is the founder and current owner of Traam, a Facebook-esque social-media platform. He desperately wants Jeff's tech because Traam is being overrun by politically and theologically inflammatory false images that have triggered violent outbreaks around the world. Carell plays Randall, a.k.a. Dark-Money Gandalf, a venture capitalist and father figure to the others (Jeff even calls him Papa Bear). Jeff, Venis, and Randall are all worth billions.

‘The fourth guy, Schwartzman’s Hugo Van Yalk, is the only one in the group who isn’t a billionaire. The others have nicknamed him Souper, short for Soup Kitchen.

In the scene they're currently filming, Jeff catches Hugo in a lie about knowing somebody at the International Monetary Fund. Jeff gets him to agree that if he can prove Hugo is lying, he'll have permission to perch atop Hugo's chair like a jungle cat on a tree branch and “fuck your head.” Hugo admits to lying, and Youssef climbs onto the chair and begins dry-humping the back of Schwartzman’s skull.