WeCrashed could also be called WeBoggle. This dramatization of the already quite dramatic real-life rise and fall of the real estate rental company WeWork is Apple TV +’s entry into the growing fashion for fact-based dramas that rub you in disbelief and then fly uselessly on the couch and try to understand . how, what, why and just as it all happened.
WeCrashed will launch in September 2019, the beginning of the end of WeWork, as its founder, Adam Neumann, would like it to be. He is played by Jared Leto, who just manages to channel the charismatic Israeli-accented serial entrepreneur rather than imitate, though he and Tom Hiddleston also seem to converge in appearance, which is confusing on another level. Neumann is about to be fired as CEO of his own company by the board (led by Anthony Edwards, plays a similar but more demanding version of his funding role in Inventing Anna, another show about people’s willingness to believe in reality) constructed for them by one with endless chutzpah, nary a jot of documentation and hardly more cash than that). The unicorn – the tech industry term for a private startup estimated at more than $ 1 billion – is starting to get hard to figure out.
We then jumped back (and back, a little, but not too much over the eight episodes) to unpack the story as Neumann and his wife / muse / cheerleader / enabler Rebekah (Anne Hathaway, just navigated the journey of Cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow ‘n’ Woo Woo actress made Yoga teacher to billionaire ice queen) managed to tear the defeat from the jaws of Triumph.
Because my entire education and understanding of U.S. corporate structures, shareholders, buy-ins and buyouts comes from multiple views of the Mike Judge comedy Silicon Valley (The succession was too complex, I fear) I can not quite tell you how WeWork arrived. was estimated at $ 47bn at its peak, which is why it dropped to $ 10bn the moment one looked at actual documentation. But I think it has something to do with the fact that Neumann was a spectacular seller and his wife reflected on him twice his natural size. And, of course, everyone went a little blind to the fact that even though WeWork’s buildings were filled with glamorous, trendy tech startups, it was itself a fairly standard real estate company. What “disruptive” innovation it seems to sport was largely borrowed finery. Neumann’s $ 60 million private jet probably didn’t help either. Treating a company and its assets like your own personal fiefdom, even if you created it, does not tend to end well.
What WeCrashed does not do is bring us a lot in the way of insights into the structures, systems, or thoughts that allow this kind of extraordinary untethering of reality in a field that is supposedly full of the brightest and best number crunchers out there. . It’s a wonderful and deeply enjoyable story of rags and riches on (relatively) rags, but it panders the viewer’s innocence rather than offering something more flesh, or a broader perspective or critique. In fact, the Judge’s Silicon Valley offers more in the way of analyzing part greed and ambition to make the decision disappear, compromise people and principles, and shape every bend in the road between a vision and its eventual realization.
It also remains to be seen or written about the financial value of charisma – WeWork, named by Neumann, had an almost cult-like quality. What is the premium on attractiveness versus business history? Should we expect investors – who are wealthy, still humans – to be able to resist this, or should we appreciate the possibility that they are at least a little susceptible to such strong promises made?
Away from the business side of things, Leto and Hathaway create a convincingly enough marriage between two narcissists (though we can not say, with his mix of being both supportive and toxic, how much it really looks like the right thing to do). However, they never make their characters really alive as individuals. Their relationship buckles and bends under the pressure of near insolvency and other self-induced vices of life – including Rebekah’s self-proclaimed marriage vows that would not advise anyone directly connected to Paltrow or with lesser California on either side – but the couple (who now have five children) are still together today. So maybe love really overcomes everything? Or maybe just shared self-love? Or maybe just in the old reality where we are all billionaires.
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