Streamers expose corporate excesses
Hulu’s ‘WeWork’ doc fits right in with Hollywood obsession with ‘cult-like’ leaders.
One of the early sounds of Hulu’s new documentary on the rise and fall of WeWork is the offscreen voice of NYU business professor Scott Galloway, saying of cofounder Adam Neumann, “If you tell a 30-something male he’s Jesus Christ, he’s inclined to believe you.”
“WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn,” which debuted on Walt Disney Co.-owned Hulu on Friday, shows how the co-working startup created an unusually fervent workplace culture, with employee chants of “WeWork! We-Work!” and a CEO who spoke in evangelistic terms about his mission.
Even the prospectus for the company’s ill-fated IPO contained messianic phrases: “Our mission is to elevate the world’s consciousness.” At one point, Don Lewis, a former WeWork lawyer, describes an usher at a company event asking him, “Is this some kind of cult?”
Jed Rothstein, who directed “WeWork,” was intrigued by Neumann’s vision of a “hyper-capitalist kibbutz,” he said in a recent video interview. “And I was of course interested in exploring the reasons that he failed and how the hubris and greed eventually overtook the desire to create a community.”
But was Neumann, a charismatic Israeli immigrant with flowing locks, basically operating a cult
with venture backing? Rothstein won’t go nearly that far but says Neumann’s WeWork definitely had “cult-like” qualities.
“People weren’t forced to carve Adam’s initials into their pelvises or anything like that,” Rothstein said from his Brooklyn office, drawing a clear distinction from actual cult leaders like Keith Raniere of NXIVM. “But I think there were cult-like aspects to it.”
Rothstein’s film, his follow-up to 2018’s “The China Hustle,” is the latest entry in what I’m calling the capitalist-cult movie continuum. These are movies documenting the dramatic ups and downs of business phenomena driven by compelling figures who use their charms to lead investors
and employees to irrational behavior and groupthink.
The genre goes at least as far back as Alex Gibney’s “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” from 2005 and includes his 2019 HBO effort “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” about failed blood-testing firm Theranos and its leader, Elizabeth Holmes, who was indicted for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She pleaded not guilty. The dueling Fyre Festival docs from Netflix and Hulu from a couple of years ago also fit the genre.
“The excesses of culture and business are endlessly fascinating, and there’s been a huge trend as of late in holding corporations accountable with documentaries
like ‘WeWork’ and ‘Fyre Fraud,’ ” said Belisa Balaban, Hulu’s original documentaries vice president. “We know our audiences are riveted by the inner workings of the outlandish people and culture behind the rise and fall of some of these larger-thanlife stories, and that makes them especially compelling for us to champion.”
While I couldn’t find data specifically on the proliferation of such documentaries, it seems clear a broader appetite for docs is growing on streaming services. Parrot Analytics data recently published by Axios show the number of documentary series grew 63% last month compared with January 2019. Meanwhile, demand for documentary programming — measured using search interest, social media, YouTube streams and other data — grew 142%.
And it looks like studios are happy to satisfy that hunger. For example, Discovery+ is set to run a doc on the WallStreetBetsGameStop stock saga, narrated by none other than “Wolf of Wall Street” convict Jordan Belfort. A subgenre of documentaries about dark internet trends — exemplified by HBO’s “Q: Into the Storm” and “Fake Famous,” as well as Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma”— also has been on the rise. Closer to the true-crime side, HBO’s “McMillions” tells the story of a former cop who defrauded McDonald’s of $24 million.
Streaming services love documentaries and docuseries in part because they’re relatively cheap to make, get strong viewership and can tap into of-themoment cultural obsessions.
With “WeWork,” Rothstein chronicles the story of Neumann, who did not participate in the film, until his exit from the company after it canceled its IPO. The documentary features employees who bought into the concept of changing the culture of work and includes a nod to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which sent people fleeing from co-working spaces to home offices. Reps for WeWork, based in New York City, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
What intrigued Rothstein about Neumann’s journey was that WeWork, with its hip office spaces and communal gathering spots, was addressing an actual need in the marketplace. As the documentary hits streaming, WeWork is trying to stage a comeback by going public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company.
“The company was onto something, addressing a real need and a gap in the way that we interact with one another, and the fact that we made this in the pandemic really clarified that, because it became quite clear how much we miss these relationships when they’re taken away from us,” Rothstein said.
The entertainment industry’s interest in cultlike business leaders comes at a time when Hollywood is dominated by spreadsheettoting MBAs rather than magnetic visionaries. That might be a good thing, in some respects.
Beyond the story of Neumann, Rothstein said he wanted to explore a capitalist system that allows such visionaries to leave with golden parachutes when things go wrong, while the employees are left hanging.
“On the one hand, you need big visionary personalities who are going to come in and do big, bold things, and that’s part of what makes America a dynamic country,” Rothstein said. “But on the other hand, that doesn’t inevitably have to lead to this crushing wealth disparity.”
Meanwhile, if people at your workplace start regularly chanting the company name, maybe start updating your LinkedIn.
This is taken from the April 6 edition of The Wide Shot, a weekly newsletter about everything happening in the business of entertainment. Sign up at latimes.com /newsletters.