Welcome back to Bingeworthy—a podcast about all things television, streaming, what we watch, and how we watch it. Currently, we’re in a new accelerated, oversaturated age of TV, the second era of streaming, and the epoch of #TooMuchContent. With pretty much every major media entity having its own streaming service PLUS, the TV attention economy is at its apex. It’s a war for your eyeballs and it’s not about to end soon. Hosted by myself, Mike DeAngelo and Editor-in-Chief of the Playlist, Rodrigo Perez, Bingeworthy helps you, the listener, keep track of it all, know what’s what, and which of these many dozens of shows being released each week and month, are worth tuning into.
In today’s episode, Mike and Rodrigo dig into Showtime’s new anthology series, “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” which tells the story of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful and most destructive unicorns, Uber. The season pivots on Travis Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Uber’s hard-charging CEO who was ultimately ousted in a boardroom coup, and his sometimes tumultuous relationship with his mentor Bill Gurley (Kyle Chandler), the plainspoken, brilliant Texan venture capitalist who bets his sterling reputation on Uber’s success – and then has to live with the consequences.
After the conversation, Writer/Showrunners Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Executive Producer Beth Schacter (“Billions“) stop by to discuss the show and why these stories, like Travis Kalanick of Uber, keep popping up out of Silicon Valley.
“All of this comes from Steve Jobs, in some way,” Koppelman said. “Where he was right most of the time, in terms of knowing what people ultimately would buy and how the world would shift, but his tactics and methods were highly difficult and questionable. But the story gets told in Silicon Valley as though it was worth it. And I guess one of the questions this show asks is – ‘Is it worth it?’ And if it is worth it, then are we willing to acknowledge for certain people and certain kinds of change. as a society, we are willing to pay this high a price.”
Of course, one of the big headlines for the show recently is that the showrunners were able to nab Quentin Tarantino to perform a voiceover for the entire show. This obviously raised eyebrows, as Quentin isn’t necessarily known for lending his voice to other projects in the past.
“David and I have luckily gotten to spend a little time with Quentin and we knew that he had been watching ‘Billions’ very closely and with a lot of enthusiasm,” said Koppelman. “And so we felt that there was a chance that he’d do it. And so, it’s as simple, in the end, as we asked him and he said yes.”
“But we were like, we can’t have just some narrator blousing on about this,” Levien added. “Whose voice would this be? And someone was like, ‘It’d be Quentin Tarantino’s voice. Like, he’d be laying it out.’ And we were like, ‘Right, that’s perfect. We’ll go get him!’ And we were like, well, should we have second choices in case he can’t do it or won’t do it? And that conversation went nowhere. There was no substitute.”
“Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber” is airing new episodes on Showtime every Sunday through April. You can listen to the entire conversation below:
Bingeworthy is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes The Playlist Podcast, Be Reel, Deep Focus, The Fourth Wall, The Discourse & more. We can be heard on iTunes, AnchorFM, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the Spotify embed within the article or click on the lead image at the top page. Follow us on iTunes, and you’ll get this podcast as well as our other shows regularly. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.