‘Valley of Boom’ digs into internet roots
— The National Geographic channel limited series “Valley of the Boom” looks at three different companies whose founders wanted to change the world using the new technology of the internet. Those include Netscape, the company that pioneered the first commercial web browser, social networking site theglobe.com and the streaming video company Pixelon.
If all the production did was tell the story of the three companies, it would be little more than the kind of online research that can be done with a click or two. Series creator Matthew Carnahan (“House of Lies”) takes the production to a different level by using a blend of narrative devices and interviews with the real subjects and experts woven into scripted drama. His techniques include rap battles, actors talking directly to the camera, flash mobs, dream ballets and puppets.
Carnahan was only interested in telling the story if he could do it in this style.
“When I started digging a little I said, ‘OK, I would like to do this, but I have to be able to just ruin your network. I have to be able to blow everything up. I have to be able to try at least to do something as disruptive, at least try, to do something as disruptive as the makers and innovators who started the internet and invented the browser and created social networking,’” Carnahan says.
The style of “Valley of the Boom” was one of the main reasons Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”) was attracted to play James Barksdale, the president and CEO of Netscape from 1995 to 1999.
“When I say attraction, I mean fears,” Whitford says with a laugh. “I have never seen this form for television and it is really wild. Did I know this was going to work? No. But I am completely thrilled with it because it is a completely original way of telling a story about a subject where these guys were doing something completely different themselves.
“It’s a fun and appropriate way to do it.”
Actors are often more cautious when playing a role based on a real person because of comparisons people will make. That concern was magnified for Whitford because of how the limited series cuts from the actors playing the major characters to interviews with the real people.
Documentary-style interviews with Barksdale, Mark Cuban and Dan Goodin, plus Netscape founder Jim Clark and co-founders of theglobe.com Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman are sprinkled through the production.
Whitford had to find a way to have fun playing Barksdale without turning the role into a caricature. Not surprisingly, the solution came through research done on the internet.
“I could saturate myself with infor- mation about Barksdale. The more I watched, the more I got an idea of how the guy thinks,” Whitford says. “The only thing is that you have to be wise or you end up trying to do a literal imitation.
“In the end, this was just fun to do. With this kind of storytelling, where you are breaking conventions, makes it interesting because that’s what these guys were doing. They were breaking new ground in this crazy world we live in.”
One of the executive producers of the show is Arianna Huffington, who has a major interest in the internet with her new company Thrive Global. She’s fascinated by the impact the internet has on people’s lives and the unintended consequences of social media’s addictive nature.
The best way for Huffington to understand what is happening today is to examine where it all began.
“Going back to this amazingly idealistic time, we are going to see in the series a sense of triumph and there was no idea at all about the unintended consequences,” Huffington says.
She says the point of “Valley of the Boom” is to stress how important it is for people to take back control of the internet and use it as a tool for good.
“This is the time for us to decide that we need to protect our humanity, we need to protect the connections that matter to us rather than a lot of the ersatz connections that the internet provides. And that requires action. It requires, for some of us, including myself, turning off all notifications,” Huffington says. “I don’t really care if you started following me on Instagram. I don’t frankly care what President Trump just tweeted.
“It’s a really important existential moment, our attention, our time, which is really our lives, have been hijacked. This is the third stage of the internet. And all that was not in sight during the first stage of the internet.”