A Modern Tale Speeding Down the Superhighway
Already there is the risk that a film about Internet entrepreneurship could be too late. The Internet’s value has fallen both on the financial markets and on our cultural meters.
But “Startup.com” benefits from everything about the Internet with few of the insufferable tech-head side effects. It is telling, for example, that a full hour of this engaging documentary passes before the audience is forced to look at a computer screen. The work of newcomer Jehane Noujaim and documentary veteran Chris Hegedus (who, along with husband-producer D.A. Pennebaker, made 1993’s “The War Room,” about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign), “Startup.com” is as timeless as it is timely.
Their subject: two longtime friends who start a business together, with one as CEO and the other as chief technology officer. In that respect, the story could as easily be 1950 as 2000, yet the Internet business model collapses the whole company-building process to a matter of months. Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman both talk about what they’ve learned and experienced “over the last year,” not unlike kids who have emerged from a summer camp that seemed to last a lifetime.
Age and experience run as subtexts throughout “Startup.com” as the two twentysomething entrepreneurs try to build Govworks.com--an Internet system that facilitates interaction with city government, like paying parking tickets online. Noujaim, who was Isaza Tuzman’s classmate at Harvard and roommate in New York, gets a particularly apt assessment of the situation from Isaza Tuzman’s girlfriend. With their suits and ties and cuff links, she says, “they look like such grown-up gentlemen. But you know what? They’re not.”
That doesn’t mean they’re not charismatic and interesting, though. Isaza Tuzman, a former investment banker, charms venture capital firms out of tens of millions of dollars. He leads employees in company cheers and is the face of Govworks in TV interviews and magazine spreads. He sits next to Bill Clinton during a discussion of how the Internet could change government--and then has the chutzpah to tell him to think about being CEO at his company after leaving the White House.
Herman has a much mellower style and different ideas about what constitutes success and failure. His role in the business as a co-founder begins to crumble beneath him, though, and as these two childhood friends try to steer Govworks.com across the collapsing bridge of the Nasdaq, they do and say things that neither imagined as part of their business plan.
Noujaim and Hegedus were both assessing the dot-com phenomenon as a subject before they joined forces for “Startup.com,” and it’s easy to see why. Either these two friends start with nothing and become fabulously successful and wealthy, or they don’t. Either way, the drama is built-in.
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Shooting on high-definition video kept the filmmakers light on their feet, as they followed the two subjects, reportedly, 18 hours a day for months. It’s in the least likely moments that they’ve found their best material. It’s remarkable how much happens on cellular phones and how heart-to-heart conversations always take place in a car. But such is the go-go world of high-tech business. Hegedus’ work on sound here is particularly critical because the film relies more on words than visuals--sales pitches, deal meetings, pep talks and those ridiculous company cheers.
In many respects, the filmmakers benefit from not having their particular start-up in Silicon Valley, but in New York. The geographical difference allows the film to focus on the company without getting enmeshed in the broader Silicon Valley culture, already documented in enough books and magazine articles to fill an IBM server.
Documentaries tend to fall into two categories: the micro (think Errol Morris’ “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control”) and the macro (anything by Ken Burns). Here, Hegedus and Noujaim have struck a balance--a business that represented an whole industry. Or did.
* MPAA rating: R, for language. Times guidelines: language less coarse than a high school hallway.
‘Startup.com’
Distributed by Artisan Entertainment. Directors Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus. Producer D.A. Pennebaker. Cinematographer Jehane Noujaim. Sound Chris Hegedus. Featuring Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
Exclusively at the Landmark Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A., (310) 478-6379; opens May 25 at Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena, and the Edwards South Coast Village, Santa Ana.
