Blackberry (Amazon)

WEBVTT

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today. In

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the show, we were talking about
the movie BlackBerry, which is a bill

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right now for rent on Amazon.
So there's a bit that Bill Bird does

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and he talks about Steve Jobs.
He did this on Conan and he said

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that he doesn't think Steve Jobs is
that impressive, because Bill's attitude is Steve

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just liked to do a room with
a bunch of like coders or something that

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he was like, all right,
I want music in a little phone thing,

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you know, get it done.
And that was his attitude about Steve

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Jobs. And I thought about that
bit constantly watching this movie BlackBerry, which

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is sensationally good. I had no
idea that the history of the BlackBerry was

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so compelling, and this came.
Actually, you know, it's a little

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bit of a not to say that
it's like a you know, tundra kind

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of landscape. But you know,
Berry just went off the air, Succession

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just went off the air. I
was sort of feeling like, man,

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what am I gonna What am I
gonna watch? What am I gonna talk

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about? And I saw this movie
was available for rent on Amazon for seven

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bucks in HD. Totally worth it. It's excellent. It's sort of obviously

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like I'm sure, nowhere near the
budget, but it's very reminiscent of the

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Social Network. But it's also like
a very Canadian version of the Social Network

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and also very not Canadian at the
same time. And I'll get into this,

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you know, some specifics that I
think we'll illustrate that. But the

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guy who made this movie is a
guy named Matt Johnson. And Matt Johnson

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did a movie called The Dirties,
which you may not have seen. It's

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a bit more obscure. I saw
it back when I was a developing executive,

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and I thought it was excellent,
and I'm sure I tried to offer

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him something, and you know,
to try to get in touch with him,

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because he's super talented and just like
in the Dirties, he acts in

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this film and he's also a really
interesting actor. He's a very natural way

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about him and he's sort of naturally
comic, and his part in the movie

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is also great as an actor.
But the reason I say it's very Canadian,

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very not Canadian at the same time
is that Jay Barrischell plays sort of

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like the creator of the BlackBerry with
Matt Johnson's character. It's kind of like

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they come up with it together,
and they are very Canadian, very polite,

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they're kind to each other. And
then Glenn Howarton from a Toy Sunny

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Philadelphia plays this guy who comes in
and kind of supercharges the company, and

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he's the sales guy and the business
guy. And I think in real life

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he's Canadian, but he's the character
is not Canadian in meaning that he's very

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rude. He's very American. Actually, he's very capitalistic, rude, cutthroat.

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Not to besmirge my fellow Americans,
but I think it's fair to say

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that we're a bit more capitalistic and
intense than Canadians, who you know,

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I lived in Canada for a year. Canadians are like the nicest people on

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the planet. I want to explain
why this movie is so good and there's

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a sequence that happens. It's like
forty five minutes in. I don't think

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this will spoil your enjoyment of the
film, and I think if you know

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what happens in this sequence, you'll
understand why you should watch it and why

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it's worth renting and why honestly,
it's one of the better movies that I've

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seen this year. So we're forty
five minutes of the movie. We've established

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that Glenn Howardton and Jay Barrischell need
each other. And I really related to

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this because I've had professional experiences where
I've felt like, you know, I'm

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sort of the creative guy, and
I could speak to creative, i could

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speak the language of other creatives,
but I need a business guy with me,

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right because I'm not the business guy. And I found anytime I've had

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significant success, it's because I've had
that person and we sort of balance each

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other out. So, you know, the business guy, maybe by himself,

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would not necessarily have, you know, all the creative the way of

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speaking to creatives that somebody who is
just a pure creative would have. And

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if you are somebody who's a creative, you're not going to have the business

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savvy that the business guy would have, and so that makes a great partnership.

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And that's what you see with Glenn
Howards and Jay Bershell. And there's

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a moment, so forty five minutes
in they're going to this pitch meeting in

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New York and Jay loses the prototype
of the BlackBerry in a cab and seemingly

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abandons the pitch like seemingly just like
leaves, and Glenn's in the pitch by

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himself. He's pitching the Saul Rubeneck
and he makes a great pitch, but

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it doesn't matter because he's not a
tech guy. He doesn't actually understand the

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tech knowledge of it. And so
Sal Rubane's like, what you're talking about

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is not possible. We've tried it. And so Glenn is stymy. No

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matter how well he pitches it,
there's no way for him to sell it

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without someone who can speak to the
creative technology side of it. And then

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Jay comes in late. He's found
the prototype and he is a tech guy,

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and he immediately explains how he figured
something out that nobody else could figure

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out. There were multiple other companies
trying to do this, and you see

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Sal Rubeneck, you know, sort
of like light up and then he uses

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the prototype and Jay's like, you
know, if you use your thumbs,

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it's kind of easier, and you
see him using his thumbs, and it's

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it's like, oh, this is
the birth of something that now we all

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do constantly, right, And it
feels just electric, right. It's that

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sequence is as good as anything in
the Social Network. Really it is.

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And even though it's not as polished, I don't think I'm sure again,

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like I said, I'm sure they
had one budget of Social Network, but

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the quality of the craft of the
storytelling, the acting, the sort of

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energy of it, it's great.
It's really really good. And I think

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for Matt this was kind of inevitable. You could see his talent in his

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first film, and I think this
is his third film, and I'm just

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really excited because it's you know,
his previous two films. I didn't see

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the second one, but I mean
I saw the first one, and they

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felt even though I'm sure they were
carefully they almost had to be carefully designed,

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but they didn't feel as constructed from
a scripting perspective. And again,

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you compared to The Social Network with
Sorkin, you know, that's not a

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small bar to clear in terms of
the comparison the quality of the writing,

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and I think this is competitive to
that comparison, which is a significant thing

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to say. So yeah, I
was really impressed. And it has such

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energy and it's so fun. And
then it has a big time jump,

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so you know we're going to it's
the promise of the premise, right,

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we sort of know that we're going
to follow the rise and fallow BlackBerry,

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So we jumped forward into time.
And now the company faces different challenges,

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right, And there's a moment where
they invent like texting already exists, but

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they invent texting where I guess texting
used to cost ten cents per text and

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they invent texting through data that doesn't
cost anything. And it's like they won

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the Super Bowl, if they started
celebrating, they're putting up music and they're

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dadzig, is this a great road? It's so fun to take this ride

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with these guys. And there's also
I thought a lot of stuff that really

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rang true if you've studied other successful
businesses that sort of came and dominated the

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landscape, and you know, like, for example, there's a great documentary

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where they talked to Jimmy Iovine and
Doctor Dre about making the Beats by Dre

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headphones and how did those headphones become
so big? Basically, Doctor Dre and

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Jimmy Ovine, anytime they hung out
with somebody who's a famous person, they

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would just give them the headphones and
try to get them take a picture or

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talk about it or something. And
that's what Glenn Howardton has his salespeople do.

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He finds out he goes to Google
and he finds out they're calling the

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BlackBerry the Crackberry, and he tells
the salesman go hang out anywhere which people

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are and just use the BlackBerry.
And that is part of what helps fuel

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its popularity, is it becomes almost
like a status symbol. I love movies

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like this where it's about something that
none of us actually understand, but you

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get so invested in it, in
the technology, and like, oh,

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are they going to figure out the
data load and crap like that. At

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a certain point, they're at a
diner and I think they're moving salt shakers

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around and demonstrate stuff. Anything like
that. I'm always into that. And

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I also loved how this film doesn't
present Jay and Glenn as complete opposites,

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meaning that the obvious thing to do
with the Glen is the bad guy.

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Jay is this sort of sweet,
you know, innocent guy, and that's

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the dynamic between them. But you
clearly see over the course of the movie,

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and eventually they bring in Michael Ironside
as like an additional kind of heavy

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hitter, which, by the way, great to see him. He's good

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in this. Its haven't seen him
in a while. You clearly see the

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Jay starts using Glenn Howarton and Michael
Ironside to do the things that he knows

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must be done for the good of
the business. But he doesn't want to

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do it himself. He's too soft
to do it. So he'll suggest,

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hey, maybe we should do this, which is the cutthroat move, but

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he just has them sort of do
it for him. So again it's like

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the characters are complex, they're nuanced. It's not a simple sort of you

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know, one is good, one
is bad. And at the same time,

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the movie does pose the question what
is success worth? What does it

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cost? Jay over the course of
the movie becomes clearly more like Glenn in

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terms of different characters, and it's
like, you know, if you're successful,

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but in order to be successful,
you have to kill the morale of

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your company and the people who work
for you. Is that worth it?

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If you push the envelope in terms
of what is necessarily legal in order for

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a short term success, is that
going to eventually come back and haunt you?

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So it sort of deals with those
questions. I thought, very elegantly.

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It's again it's well, it's really
well written. The beginning and end

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of the movie. There's a sort
of callback they do that I won't spoil,

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but it's just as good as what
they do in the Social Work.

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Like, I'm so impressed with it. It's so satisfying. You take the

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ride with these guys as they face
these existential thrusts of the company, and

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anytime they overcome them, you're like
cheering, You're like yeah, And so

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it's just yeah, I was this
is a really pleasant surprise. I mean,

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I knew how good that Johnson was. I honestly expected this movie to

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be good, and then I was
encouraged to hear a lot of buzz about

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it going into it, and I
think it was even better than what I

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was expecting. So I don't want
to kind of puff it up too much,

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you know, I like, but
I thought it was excellent and I

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think that if you rent it,
you won't regret renting it. And it

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really good use of Len who's stellar
in the movie. He's like a coiled

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he is like it is the acting
performance equivalent of like a king Cobra that's

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coiled and ready to strike for two
hours. That's what Glenn Howarton is doing

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this movie. I thought Jay was
really good. Mad He's really good.

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It's like the third lead. There's
a great payoff with his character that is

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apparently true to life. That it
was incredibly you know, cathartic. So

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yeah, great movie, BlackBerry.
If you have seen it, I'd love

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to know what you think. Encourage
you to check it out. It is

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available for rent on Amazon right now. That is the show for today.

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As always, thank you so much
for listening. If you enjoy the show,

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please leave a five star review on
Apple Podcasts. That is the best

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way you can support the program,
and you can always hit me up at

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Bennimore Dan on Twitter, Watch This
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watch This Night podcast on TikTok,
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Until next time, Bye bye,
love and be loved,