The ORACLE of SILICON VALLEY
As his HBO show powers down after six seasons, Mike Judge reveals how he so successfully skewered — and predicted —the world of tech
SIX years ago, Mike Judge wasfeeling apprehensive about his new HBO series, “Silicon Valley.” Hewasn’t even sure about the title.
“It was just a placeholder,” the writer, producer and comedy mastermind tells The Post. “It was never meant to be the real title. But even when we got close to airing, we still didn’t have anything.” Judge was adamant that the title not be “Silicon Valley.”
“That’d be like if ‘Entourage’ had been called ‘Hollywood,’ ” he says. “It’s ridiculous.”
But after HBO pushed for it, Judge conceded, and in hindsight he’s glad he did.
“I feel OK with that title now,” he laughs. “It was kind of ballsy, but I think we pulled it off.”
After six critically acclaimed seasons, “Silicon Valley” — which follows Richard Hendricks, a brilliant but nebbish programmer, and his ragtag team at a tech startup called Pied Piper — is nearing its end. The final episode airs next Sunday, Dec. 8.
But for many longtime fans and viewers, it feels too soon. And not just because Judge hinted in interviews last year that the show had found its “second wind” and could continue indefinitely. Silicon Valley, the real one, has never seemed so ripe for satire.
When “Silicon Valley” premiered back in 2014, the tech industry was a very different place. Theranos still seemed like a legitimate medical startup. Amazon was just a website to buy books. Uber was years away from killing anyone with a self-driving car. Nobody had ever heard of Cambridge Analytica. The idea that a social-media site could influence an election with fake news and Russian bots was laughable. But in 2019, corruption is everywhere, and nobody thinks of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos as scrappy idealists anymore.
Judge and his writers have a knack for predicting the future of Silicon Valley from controversies over mining data to using AI to compress files. The Season 6 premiere even began with Hendricks appearing before a congressional hearing, in an episode that first aired just days after Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill.
It helps that Judge came from the world. Long before he created MTV’s seminal series “Beavis and Butt-Head” or the cult hit movie “Office Space,” both of which put him on the map, the Ecuadorian-born writer and director first worked as an engineer for a Silicon Valley startup called Parallax that made interface cards for high-res graphics screens.
“Silicon Valley” has also leaned on real Silicon Valley stars (and fans of the show) to serve as consultants, including Facebook COOSheryl Sandberg, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman and Bill Gates. (Gates once said Judge doesn’t “make any more fun of us than we deserve.”)
So, as the real Silicon Valley grows more farcical by the day, why is the 57-year-old Judge headed for shutdown mode? During a long-ranging phone interview with The Post, he shed insight into his decision — and the world he’s satirized for six years.
Whenyouhearabout some new absurdity happening in Silicon Valley, like Elon Musk unveiling his electric pickup truck and accidentally smashing the supposedly unbreakable windows . . .
MIKE JUDGE: [Laughs.] That was so great. Yeah, the tech world continues to amaze.
But does it make you think, “We may be ending ‘Silicon Valley’ too soon?”
I guess, sometimes. When all the WeWork stuff started happening [the office-space sharing company tanked after a valuation of $47 billion], people were tweeting at us about it. And at that point, we’d already finished the final season. That was one of those moments when I was like, “Oh, man, I wish that had happened a little earlier.” But I don’t know, I think we’re getting out at a good time. Why? Everything that’s happened in the tech world is getting a little less funny than it was six or seven years ago. It’d be like if you tried to do “The Beverly Hillbillies” in the days of fracking. On the one hand, it’s a hilarious premise, they stumble onto all of this oil and now they’re rich. But if you did it today, all of that gets overshadowed by how burning fossil fuels and fracking are ruining the Earth.
Doesn’t that just make better fodder for satire?
Well, sure, yeah. On the one hand there’ve been times when I think, oh we could’ve done more. But then I remember at the beginning of the series being so overwhelmed with how much stuff there was to make fun of. I was trying to cram it all into the pilot, because who knew if they’d even let us make a series?
When did you feel confident that you had something special?
The tech world is getting a little less funny . . . like if you tried to do “The Beverly Hillbillies” in the days of fracking. — Mike Judge on satirizing Silicon Valley
Once they picked up the pilot and we started doing episodes in earnest. I thought it was good, but I wasn’t sure. Especially if you’re too close to it and you looked at it a million times, you can’t tell. But I had a hunch that it was really good, that we had something authentic.
Being authentic was the most important thing?
I think so. I’d briefly been an engineer in Silicon Valley, when I was 23, and I used to get so frustrated any time there was an engineer or programmer character in a movie or TV show. I’ve rarely seen it done in a way that felt even remotely real, except for [the 2010 film] “The Social Network” and a little movie called “Primer.” When we were casting and [the late] Christopher Evan Welch read for Peter Gregory, I thought, “Oh, my God, we’ve got something here. I’ve seen guys like him in the real Silicon Valley.”
Is that why it became such a hit in the real Silicon Valley? They recognized themselves in these characters?
I hope so. I really wanted it to have that street cred with the nerds. I wanted it to be like “This Is Spinal Tap,” which viciously made fun of heavy-metal bands in the best way and yet heavy-metal bands loved it.
What makes a rock musician love “Spinal Tap” or a tech guy love “Silicon Valley” even though the joke is always on them?
Because everybody thinks the joke is about somebody else. After Season 1 aired and we were starting to write Season 2, we were invited to meet with some tech companies. Everyone would do this thing where they’d say, “That’s great how you make fun of people who claim they’re making the world a better place. But let us show you how we’re
really making the world a better place.” [Laughs.]
Not everybody in Silicon Valley was a fan. Elon Musk had some constructive criticism.
That’s right. Something about how it was obvious none of [the writers or creators of the show] had gone to Burning Man. [Laughs.] Which is so weird.
What does that even mean?
I think he was upset that we mentioned him during a party in the pilot, and the party was deliberately lame. So he was saying that Silicon Valley has changed a lot — you need to go to Burning Man to understand it.
Have you taken his advice?
Nope. [Laughs.]
Of all the insiders who’ve consulted on the show, all the Silicon Valley billionaires, were any of them legitimately funny?
Oh, yeah. A lot of them. We’ve had some pretty funny people involved.
Have they ever pitched you jokes?
Not specifically jokes. But some of their ideas, based on real things, have been really funny. There was one woman who worked at Dropbox, who wanted to be anonymous, who gave us some great stuff. Like how awkward it was to be the only woman at a startup, especially if another woman got hired because then everyone wants the two of you to be friends.
That’s cringeworthy.
It really is. She also told us a great story about their servers catching fire, which of course we used. Everybody who’s come to us, they know the show, and they know what we’re looking for and they have a sense of humor. We’ve been very lucky.
Have you ever heard a story that was just too weird or mean
spirited, where you thought, ‘No, we can’t use that, nobody would believe it?’
All the time. Remember Tom Perkins? He’s no longer alive but he was a major investor in all the big companies like Google and Amazon. He wrote this op-ed for The Wall Street Journal where he compared the plight of billionaires to Jews in Nazi Germany. [Laughs.] It was one of those things where we thought, “We can’t exaggerate this. There’s no way to turn it into satire. It satirizes itself. We’ll just put it in exactly like it is.”
But you did change it, right? I think I remember this.
We gave the line to Gavin Belson.
And didn’t he take it a step further? He said something like, “Billionaires are treated worse
than the Jews in Nazi Germany. And we didn’t do anything wrong!”
That’s right. [Laughs.]
It’s so horrible.
But not something you couldn’t imagine them saying. I remember a speech by Justin Rosenstein [a former Google and Facebook engineer], who did a cameo on the show and he’s a nice guy, but he did a speech [an infamous 2014 TechCrunch talk] where he showed a photo of some amazing 19th century castle built by King Ludwig the Second and how it took hundreds of people dozens of years to build. And then he says what Sergey [Brin] and Larry [Page, the Google founders] did in their garage was way better. [Laughs.] Because it reaches more people.
He might not be wrong but . . .
But the hubris! It’s just unbelievable. It’s the lack of self-awareness that always strikes me and how they don’t ever acknowledge that they’re standing on the shoulders of many, many other people in the hardware side of things. You never hear about them, the people who actually built this stuff.
They aren’t the ones who become celebrities.
Steve Jobs didn’t build anything. The fact that an iPhone right now is what a Cray supercomputer was in 1993, and it’s all due to some hardware innovations. I don’t know who those people are, and I’ve asked! I’ve tried to find them. I’m genuinely curious. And nobody knows. They’re just engineers working deep inside AMD[Advanced Micro Devices] or Intel or something.
You got so much right about the real Silicon Valley. Was there a particular plot point or character that you think really nailed that culture?
There was one line where Gavin says, “I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place than we do.” That kind of sums up everything.
So what’s next? Now that you’ve skewered the tech world, what else is begging to be satirized?
I have a couple things that I’m working on. I’m going to do another series for HBO that’s based on a German novel called “QualityLand.” It’s set in the future, where they’ve come up with algorithms for everything, so your needs are met before you have them. I’m also working on something about a bioengineer who discovers the a--hole gene.
Sounds like you’re far from done with technology.
There’s just so much to say. At one point I wanted to do a satire about a mission to Mars. I think that’s another example of human beings being a little too arrogant and too idealistic. “OK, we messed up this planet but we definitely won’t mess up Mars.” [Laughs.]
You have no interest in going to Mars?
It sounds horrible. I was looking at the Mars One website, and there’s a section where all the candidates who’ve signed up are sharing their interests. They’re into things like hiking in the mountains and volleyball. Shouldn’t your main interest be staying in your room for the rest of your life?
Volleyball on Mars could be difficult.
You can’t even go outside without a helmet and a tank of oxygen. Stuff like that is really bizarre and funny to me. People get so enthused about an idea, but I don’t think they’ve really thought it through.