June 14, 2023 • 12 mins
A scrappy independent Canadian film starring Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton, directed by Matt Johnson (an under-the-radar genius, who will no longer be under-the-radar now) - Blackberry is legitimately competitive with The Social Network as a thrilling ride from nothing to world domination with three men of very different personalities and skill sets, who create something every single person on the planet is affected by. This is a fantastic film and one of the better films I've seen this year. Really funny, but just as dramatically compelling, it represents career-best work from its three stars (Matt stars in addition to directing and co-writing). It's available for rent on Amazon right now, and well worth the rental.
Trying to figure out, "What should I stream tonight?" Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best TV recommendations for what to watch on streaming platforms. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts if you're enjoying the show, and mention a movie or TV show you want me to cover (and I will). Subscribe for future episodes.
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Trying to figure out, "What should I stream tonight?" Come back to Watch This Tonight as your podcast for the best TV recommendations for what to watch on streaming platforms. Please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts if you're enjoying the show, and mention a movie or TV show you want me to cover (and I will). Subscribe for future episodes.
Reach out to us @BenamorDan (Twitter), watch_this_tonight (Instagram) or @watchthistonightpodcast (TikTok).
Watch This Tonight is a movie recommendation podcast and TV recommendation podcast, produced by Voyage Media. You can find other Voyage Media podcasts at voyagemedia.fm
Thanks for listening.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.
(00:22):
I'm a producer, writer of filmand television and now a podcast producer.
And despite having every streaming service,I never know what to watch. So
anytime I watch something good, Italk about it on the show. This
way, you'll never have the sameproblem I do. I watched this tonight.
There's always something good to watch.Let's get started. Today. In
the show, we were talking aboutthe movie BlackBerry, which is a bill
(00:43):
right now for rent on Amazon.So there's a bit that Bill Bird does
and he talks about Steve Jobs.He did this on Conan and he said
that he doesn't think Steve Jobs isthat impressive, because Bill's attitude is Steve
just liked to do a room witha bunch of like coders or something that
he was like, all right,I want music in a little phone thing,
(01:07):
you know, get it done.And that was his attitude about Steve
Jobs. And I thought about thatbit constantly watching this movie BlackBerry, which
is sensationally good. I had noidea that the history of the BlackBerry was
so compelling, and this came.Actually, you know, it's a little
bit of a not to say thatit's like a you know, tundra kind
(01:29):
of landscape. But you know,Berry just went off the air, Succession
just went off the air. Iwas sort of feeling like, man,
what am I gonna What am Igonna watch? What am I gonna talk
about? And I saw this moviewas available for rent on Amazon for seven
bucks in HD. Totally worth it. It's excellent. It's sort of obviously
like I'm sure, nowhere near thebudget, but it's very reminiscent of the
(01:51):
Social Network. But it's also likea very Canadian version of the Social Network
and also very not Canadian at thesame time. And I'll get into this,
you know, some specifics that Ithink we'll illustrate that. But the
guy who made this movie is aguy named Matt Johnson. And Matt Johnson
did a movie called The Dirties,which you may not have seen. It's
a bit more obscure. I sawit back when I was a developing executive,
(02:14):
and I thought it was excellent,and I'm sure I tried to offer
him something, and you know,to try to get in touch with him,
because he's super talented and just likein the Dirties, he acts in
this film and he's also a reallyinteresting actor. He's a very natural way
about him and he's sort of naturallycomic, and his part in the movie
(02:35):
is also great as an actor.But the reason I say it's very Canadian,
very not Canadian at the same timeis that Jay Barrischell plays sort of
like the creator of the BlackBerry withMatt Johnson's character. It's kind of like
they come up with it together,and they are very Canadian, very polite,
they're kind to each other. Andthen Glenn Howarton from a Toy Sunny
(02:58):
Philadelphia plays this guy who comes inand kind of supercharges the company, and
he's the sales guy and the businessguy. And I think in real life
he's Canadian, but he's the characteris not Canadian in meaning that he's very
rude. He's very American. Actually, he's very capitalistic, rude, cutthroat.
Not to besmirge my fellow Americans,but I think it's fair to say
that we're a bit more capitalistic andintense than Canadians, who you know,
(03:23):
I lived in Canada for a year. Canadians are like the nicest people on
the planet. I want to explainwhy this movie is so good and there's
a sequence that happens. It's likeforty five minutes in. I don't think
this will spoil your enjoyment of thefilm, and I think if you know
what happens in this sequence, you'llunderstand why you should watch it and why
it's worth renting and why honestly,it's one of the better movies that I've
(03:45):
seen this year. So we're fortyfive minutes of the movie. We've established
that Glenn Howardton and Jay Barrischell needeach other. And I really related to
this because I've had professional experiences whereI've felt like, you know, I'm
sort of the creative guy, andI could speak to creative, i could
speak the language of other creatives,but I need a business guy with me,
(04:06):
right because I'm not the business guy. And I found anytime I've had
significant success, it's because I've hadthat person and we sort of balance each
other out. So, you know, the business guy, maybe by himself,
would not necessarily have, you know, all the creative the way of
speaking to creatives that somebody who isjust a pure creative would have. And
(04:30):
if you are somebody who's a creative, you're not going to have the business
savvy that the business guy would have, and so that makes a great partnership.
And that's what you see with GlennHowards and Jay Bershell. And there's
a moment, so forty five minutesin they're going to this pitch meeting in
New York and Jay loses the prototypeof the BlackBerry in a cab and seemingly
abandons the pitch like seemingly just likeleaves, and Glenn's in the pitch by
(04:51):
himself. He's pitching the Saul Rubeneckand he makes a great pitch, but
it doesn't matter because he's not atech guy. He doesn't actually understand the
tech knowledge of it. And soSal Rubane's like, what you're talking about
is not possible. We've tried it. And so Glenn is stymy. No
matter how well he pitches it,there's no way for him to sell it
(05:12):
without someone who can speak to thecreative technology side of it. And then
Jay comes in late. He's foundthe prototype and he is a tech guy,
and he immediately explains how he figuredsomething out that nobody else could figure
out. There were multiple other companiestrying to do this, and you see
Sal Rubeneck, you know, sortof like light up and then he uses
(05:32):
the prototype and Jay's like, youknow, if you use your thumbs,
it's kind of easier, and yousee him using his thumbs, and it's
it's like, oh, this isthe birth of something that now we all
do constantly, right, And itfeels just electric, right. It's that
sequence is as good as anything inthe Social Network. Really it is.
(05:53):
And even though it's not as polished, I don't think I'm sure again,
like I said, I'm sure theyhad one budget of Social Network, but
the quality of the craft of thestorytelling, the acting, the sort of
energy of it, it's great.It's really really good. And I think
for Matt this was kind of inevitable. You could see his talent in his
(06:15):
first film, and I think thisis his third film, and I'm just
really excited because it's you know,his previous two films. I didn't see
the second one, but I meanI saw the first one, and they
felt even though I'm sure they werecarefully they almost had to be carefully designed,
but they didn't feel as constructed froma scripting perspective. And again,
you compared to The Social Network withSorkin, you know, that's not a
(06:39):
small bar to clear in terms ofthe comparison the quality of the writing,
and I think this is competitive tothat comparison, which is a significant thing
to say. So yeah, Iwas really impressed. And it has such
energy and it's so fun. Andthen it has a big time jump,
so you know we're going to it'sthe promise of the premise, right,
we sort of know that we're goingto follow the rise and fallow BlackBerry,
(07:00):
So we jumped forward into time.And now the company faces different challenges,
right, And there's a moment wherethey invent like texting already exists, but
they invent texting where I guess textingused to cost ten cents per text and
they invent texting through data that doesn'tcost anything. And it's like they won
the Super Bowl, if they startedcelebrating, they're putting up music and they're
(07:27):
dadzig, is this a great road? It's so fun to take this ride
with these guys. And there's alsoI thought a lot of stuff that really
rang true if you've studied other successfulbusinesses that sort of came and dominated the
landscape, and you know, like, for example, there's a great documentary
where they talked to Jimmy Iovine andDoctor Dre about making the Beats by Dre
(07:50):
headphones and how did those headphones becomeso big? Basically, Doctor Dre and
Jimmy Ovine, anytime they hung outwith somebody who's a famous person, they
would just give them the headphones andtry to get them take a picture or
talk about it or something. Andthat's what Glenn Howardton has his salespeople do.
He finds out he goes to Googleand he finds out they're calling the
BlackBerry the Crackberry, and he tellsthe salesman go hang out anywhere which people
(08:13):
are and just use the BlackBerry.And that is part of what helps fuel
its popularity, is it becomes almostlike a status symbol. I love movies
like this where it's about something thatnone of us actually understand, but you
get so invested in it, inthe technology, and like, oh,
are they going to figure out thedata load and crap like that. At
(08:33):
a certain point, they're at adiner and I think they're moving salt shakers
around and demonstrate stuff. Anything likethat. I'm always into that. And
I also loved how this film doesn'tpresent Jay and Glenn as complete opposites,
meaning that the obvious thing to dowith the Glen is the bad guy.
Jay is this sort of sweet,you know, innocent guy, and that's
(08:56):
the dynamic between them. But youclearly see over the course of the movie,
and eventually they bring in Michael Ironsideas like an additional kind of heavy
hitter, which, by the way, great to see him. He's good
in this. Its haven't seen himin a while. You clearly see the
Jay starts using Glenn Howarton and MichaelIronside to do the things that he knows
(09:18):
must be done for the good ofthe business. But he doesn't want to
do it himself. He's too softto do it. So he'll suggest,
hey, maybe we should do this, which is the cutthroat move, but
he just has them sort of doit for him. So again it's like
the characters are complex, they're nuanced. It's not a simple sort of you
know, one is good, oneis bad. And at the same time,
(09:39):
the movie does pose the question whatis success worth? What does it
cost? Jay over the course ofthe movie becomes clearly more like Glenn in
terms of different characters, and it'slike, you know, if you're successful,
but in order to be successful,you have to kill the morale of
your company and the people who workfor you. Is that worth it?
If you push the envelope in termsof what is necessarily legal in order for
(10:05):
a short term success, is thatgoing to eventually come back and haunt you?
So it sort of deals with thosequestions. I thought, very elegantly.
It's again it's well, it's reallywell written. The beginning and end
of the movie. There's a sortof callback they do that I won't spoil,
but it's just as good as whatthey do in the Social Work.
Like, I'm so impressed with it. It's so satisfying. You take the
ride with these guys as they facethese existential thrusts of the company, and
(10:28):
anytime they overcome them, you're likecheering, You're like yeah, And so
it's just yeah, I was thisis a really pleasant surprise. I mean,
I knew how good that Johnson was. I honestly expected this movie to
be good, and then I wasencouraged to hear a lot of buzz about
it going into it, and Ithink it was even better than what I
(10:48):
was expecting. So I don't wantto kind of puff it up too much,
you know, I like, butI thought it was excellent and I
think that if you rent it,you won't regret renting it. And it
really good use of Len who's stellarin the movie. He's like a coiled
he is like it is the actingperformance equivalent of like a king Cobra that's
coiled and ready to strike for twohours. That's what Glenn Howarton is doing
(11:11):
this movie. I thought Jay wasreally good. Mad He's really good.
It's like the third lead. There'sa great payoff with his character that is
apparently true to life. That itwas incredibly you know, cathartic. So
yeah, great movie, BlackBerry.If you have seen it, I'd love
to know what you think. Encourageyou to check it out. It is
available for rent on Amazon right now. That is the show for today.
(11:35):
As always, thank you so muchfor listening. If you enjoy the show,
please leave a five star review onApple Podcasts. That is the best
way you can support the program,and you can always hit me up at
Bennimore Dan on Twitter, Watch ThisNight on Instagram, watch This Tonight TikTok,
watch This Night podcast on TikTok,or you can join our Facebook group.
Until next time, Bye bye,love and be loved,
Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.
(00:22):
I'm a producer, writer of filmand television and now a podcast producer.
And despite having every streaming service,I never know what to watch. So
anytime I watch something good, Italk about it on the show. This
way, you'll never have the sameproblem I do. I watched this tonight.
There's always something good to watch.Let's get started. Today. In
the show, we were talking aboutthe movie BlackBerry, which is a bill
(00:43):
right now for rent on Amazon.So there's a bit that Bill Bird does
and he talks about Steve Jobs.He did this on Conan and he said
that he doesn't think Steve Jobs isthat impressive, because Bill's attitude is Steve
just liked to do a room witha bunch of like coders or something that
he was like, all right,I want music in a little phone thing,
(01:07):
you know, get it done.And that was his attitude about Steve
Jobs. And I thought about thatbit constantly watching this movie BlackBerry, which
is sensationally good. I had noidea that the history of the BlackBerry was
so compelling, and this came.Actually, you know, it's a little
bit of a not to say thatit's like a you know, tundra kind
(01:29):
of landscape. But you know,Berry just went off the air, Succession
just went off the air. Iwas sort of feeling like, man,
what am I gonna What am Igonna watch? What am I gonna talk
about? And I saw this moviewas available for rent on Amazon for seven
bucks in HD. Totally worth it. It's excellent. It's sort of obviously
like I'm sure, nowhere near thebudget, but it's very reminiscent of the
(01:51):
Social Network. But it's also likea very Canadian version of the Social Network
and also very not Canadian at thesame time. And I'll get into this,
you know, some specifics that Ithink we'll illustrate that. But the
guy who made this movie is aguy named Matt Johnson. And Matt Johnson
did a movie called The Dirties,which you may not have seen. It's
a bit more obscure. I sawit back when I was a developing executive,
(02:14):
and I thought it was excellent,and I'm sure I tried to offer
him something, and you know,to try to get in touch with him,
because he's super talented and just likein the Dirties, he acts in
this film and he's also a reallyinteresting actor. He's a very natural way
about him and he's sort of naturallycomic, and his part in the movie
(02:35):
is also great as an actor.But the reason I say it's very Canadian,
very not Canadian at the same timeis that Jay Barrischell plays sort of
like the creator of the BlackBerry withMatt Johnson's character. It's kind of like
they come up with it together,and they are very Canadian, very polite,
they're kind to each other. Andthen Glenn Howarton from a Toy Sunny
(02:58):
Philadelphia plays this guy who comes inand kind of supercharges the company, and
he's the sales guy and the businessguy. And I think in real life
he's Canadian, but he's the characteris not Canadian in meaning that he's very
rude. He's very American. Actually, he's very capitalistic, rude, cutthroat.
Not to besmirge my fellow Americans,but I think it's fair to say
that we're a bit more capitalistic andintense than Canadians, who you know,
(03:23):
I lived in Canada for a year. Canadians are like the nicest people on
the planet. I want to explainwhy this movie is so good and there's
a sequence that happens. It's likeforty five minutes in. I don't think
this will spoil your enjoyment of thefilm, and I think if you know
what happens in this sequence, you'llunderstand why you should watch it and why
it's worth renting and why honestly,it's one of the better movies that I've
(03:45):
seen this year. So we're fortyfive minutes of the movie. We've established
that Glenn Howardton and Jay Barrischell needeach other. And I really related to
this because I've had professional experiences whereI've felt like, you know, I'm
sort of the creative guy, andI could speak to creative, i could
speak the language of other creatives,but I need a business guy with me,
(04:06):
right because I'm not the business guy. And I found anytime I've had
significant success, it's because I've hadthat person and we sort of balance each
other out. So, you know, the business guy, maybe by himself,
would not necessarily have, you know, all the creative the way of
speaking to creatives that somebody who isjust a pure creative would have. And
(04:30):
if you are somebody who's a creative, you're not going to have the business
savvy that the business guy would have, and so that makes a great partnership.
And that's what you see with GlennHowards and Jay Bershell. And there's
a moment, so forty five minutesin they're going to this pitch meeting in
New York and Jay loses the prototypeof the BlackBerry in a cab and seemingly
abandons the pitch like seemingly just likeleaves, and Glenn's in the pitch by
(04:51):
himself. He's pitching the Saul Rubeneckand he makes a great pitch, but
it doesn't matter because he's not atech guy. He doesn't actually understand the
tech knowledge of it. And soSal Rubane's like, what you're talking about
is not possible. We've tried it. And so Glenn is stymy. No
matter how well he pitches it,there's no way for him to sell it
(05:12):
without someone who can speak to thecreative technology side of it. And then
Jay comes in late. He's foundthe prototype and he is a tech guy,
and he immediately explains how he figuredsomething out that nobody else could figure
out. There were multiple other companiestrying to do this, and you see
Sal Rubeneck, you know, sortof like light up and then he uses
(05:32):
the prototype and Jay's like, youknow, if you use your thumbs,
it's kind of easier, and yousee him using his thumbs, and it's
it's like, oh, this isthe birth of something that now we all
do constantly, right, And itfeels just electric, right. It's that
sequence is as good as anything inthe Social Network. Really it is.
(05:53):
And even though it's not as polished, I don't think I'm sure again,
like I said, I'm sure theyhad one budget of Social Network, but
the quality of the craft of thestorytelling, the acting, the sort of
energy of it, it's great.It's really really good. And I think
for Matt this was kind of inevitable. You could see his talent in his
(06:15):
first film, and I think thisis his third film, and I'm just
really excited because it's you know,his previous two films. I didn't see
the second one, but I meanI saw the first one, and they
felt even though I'm sure they werecarefully they almost had to be carefully designed,
but they didn't feel as constructed froma scripting perspective. And again,
you compared to The Social Network withSorkin, you know, that's not a
(06:39):
small bar to clear in terms ofthe comparison the quality of the writing,
and I think this is competitive tothat comparison, which is a significant thing
to say. So yeah, Iwas really impressed. And it has such
energy and it's so fun. Andthen it has a big time jump,
so you know we're going to it'sthe promise of the premise, right,
we sort of know that we're goingto follow the rise and fallow BlackBerry,
(07:00):
So we jumped forward into time.And now the company faces different challenges,
right, And there's a moment wherethey invent like texting already exists, but
they invent texting where I guess textingused to cost ten cents per text and
they invent texting through data that doesn'tcost anything. And it's like they won
the Super Bowl, if they startedcelebrating, they're putting up music and they're
(07:27):
dadzig, is this a great road? It's so fun to take this ride
with these guys. And there's alsoI thought a lot of stuff that really
rang true if you've studied other successfulbusinesses that sort of came and dominated the
landscape, and you know, like, for example, there's a great documentary
where they talked to Jimmy Iovine andDoctor Dre about making the Beats by Dre
(07:50):
headphones and how did those headphones becomeso big? Basically, Doctor Dre and
Jimmy Ovine, anytime they hung outwith somebody who's a famous person, they
would just give them the headphones andtry to get them take a picture or
talk about it or something. Andthat's what Glenn Howardton has his salespeople do.
He finds out he goes to Googleand he finds out they're calling the
BlackBerry the Crackberry, and he tellsthe salesman go hang out anywhere which people
(08:13):
are and just use the BlackBerry.And that is part of what helps fuel
its popularity, is it becomes almostlike a status symbol. I love movies
like this where it's about something thatnone of us actually understand, but you
get so invested in it, inthe technology, and like, oh,
are they going to figure out thedata load and crap like that. At
(08:33):
a certain point, they're at adiner and I think they're moving salt shakers
around and demonstrate stuff. Anything likethat. I'm always into that. And
I also loved how this film doesn'tpresent Jay and Glenn as complete opposites,
meaning that the obvious thing to dowith the Glen is the bad guy.
Jay is this sort of sweet,you know, innocent guy, and that's
(08:56):
the dynamic between them. But youclearly see over the course of the movie,
and eventually they bring in Michael Ironsideas like an additional kind of heavy
hitter, which, by the way, great to see him. He's good
in this. Its haven't seen himin a while. You clearly see the
Jay starts using Glenn Howarton and MichaelIronside to do the things that he knows
(09:18):
must be done for the good ofthe business. But he doesn't want to
do it himself. He's too softto do it. So he'll suggest,
hey, maybe we should do this, which is the cutthroat move, but
he just has them sort of doit for him. So again it's like
the characters are complex, they're nuanced. It's not a simple sort of you
know, one is good, oneis bad. And at the same time,
(09:39):
the movie does pose the question whatis success worth? What does it
cost? Jay over the course ofthe movie becomes clearly more like Glenn in
terms of different characters, and it'slike, you know, if you're successful,
but in order to be successful,you have to kill the morale of
your company and the people who workfor you. Is that worth it?
If you push the envelope in termsof what is necessarily legal in order for
(10:05):
a short term success, is thatgoing to eventually come back and haunt you?
So it sort of deals with thosequestions. I thought, very elegantly.
It's again it's well, it's reallywell written. The beginning and end
of the movie. There's a sortof callback they do that I won't spoil,
but it's just as good as whatthey do in the Social Work.
Like, I'm so impressed with it. It's so satisfying. You take the
ride with these guys as they facethese existential thrusts of the company, and
(10:28):
anytime they overcome them, you're likecheering, You're like yeah, And so
it's just yeah, I was thisis a really pleasant surprise. I mean,
I knew how good that Johnson was. I honestly expected this movie to
be good, and then I wasencouraged to hear a lot of buzz about
it going into it, and Ithink it was even better than what I
(10:48):
was expecting. So I don't wantto kind of puff it up too much,
you know, I like, butI thought it was excellent and I
think that if you rent it,you won't regret renting it. And it
really good use of Len who's stellarin the movie. He's like a coiled
he is like it is the actingperformance equivalent of like a king Cobra that's
coiled and ready to strike for twohours. That's what Glenn Howarton is doing
(11:11):
this movie. I thought Jay wasreally good. Mad He's really good.
It's like the third lead. There'sa great payoff with his character that is
apparently true to life. That itwas incredibly you know, cathartic. So
yeah, great movie, BlackBerry.If you have seen it, I'd love
to know what you think. Encourageyou to check it out. It is
available for rent on Amazon right now. That is the show for today.
(11:35):
As always, thank you so muchfor listening. If you enjoy the show,
please leave a five star review onApple Podcasts. That is the best
way you can support the program,and you can always hit me up at
Bennimore Dan on Twitter, Watch ThisNight on Instagram, watch This Tonight TikTok,
watch This Night podcast on TikTok,or you can join our Facebook group.
Until next time, Bye bye,love and be loved,
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