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June 2001 Issue

Virtual Fatherhood

Andrew Bender reviews Startup.com

One has to marvel at the prescience of Jehane Noujaim, one of the two directors of Startup.com, the new documentary that's bound to become the chronicle of record for the dot-com era.

This first-time filmmaker had the good fortune to be roommates with a high flyer named Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and somehow prevailed on him to allow her to shoot his adventures as he left his job at a Wall Street brokerage to join an internet startup with his childhood friend Tom Herman.

By now, the Internet boom-and-bust part of this story should be achingly familiar. Tom and Kaleil start with a mission to build a company to handle governmental transactions over the web--pay parking tickets, register your car, etc. They go through the usual highs (scoring countless millions from venture capitalists, growing from half a dozen employees to well over 200 in the space of a year, a meeting with one very famous person) and lows (saying something stupid in front of a client, buying out another founder, summing up the competition). A former mayor of Atlanta endorses the company and gives pep talks, the company builds a client base, moves into a funky office space in Lower Manhattan's Silicon Alley, builds, tests, and launches its site…

…and is soon out of business.

On the face of it, there's nothing particularly Jewish here, but every once in a while you'll be caught by a detail. A producer for a camera crew coming to film the employees for a television appearance suggests that they raise their fists as part of a chant, but Kaleil rejects the idea saying that it reminds him of a Nazi salute. And is that a chai he's wearing around his neck in a couple of the scenes?

In fact, Kaleil is of Colombian Jewish ancestry, and Tom is also Jewish, though his family background--running a summer camp, which receives a wonderful moment in this film during a corporate retreat--doesn't really prepare him for the corporate world. While Kaleil is all energy and flash, Tom is more thoughtful, and a little awkward and annoying. Together, they're sort of the Bugsy Siegel and Woody Allen of the dot-com world.

Tom is also a dad, with an adorable daughter who pouts as he tries to fix her hair. This scene comes up right near the beginning of the film and drives home the point that in no small measure, running a small company is a lot like being a parent. You have to worry about everything from finances to the security of your home, and even if most families don't grow to 200 people, the interpersonal issues often prove the thorniest.

Startup.com has its own family pedigree--its other director is Chris Hegedus, who with her husband, D.A. Pennebaker, made the acclaimed War Room (1993), about the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. Yet some people will carp that the cinematography, occasionally a little out of focus and with funny lighting, makes it hard to watch, or that more could have been made of the relationship between Tom and Kaleil and its dissolution.

But in this age of Survivor, with its sky high budgets, multiple cameras, reshoots of pivotal scenes and thousands of hours of footage for 13 hours of television, it's refreshing to remember that real documentarians take what they get. The use of small cameras with low resolution and spotty sound gives the film a sense of immediacy, intimacy, and reality that are hard to beat.

So was Jehane Noujaim prescient when she decided to make this film, or just lucky to have been in the right place at the right time? Or, maybe, like her subjects, did she recognize a good idea and then work it for all it was worth? -----------------

Startup.com ­Rated R (for language). Directed by Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim, Starring Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman. Running time: 103 minutes.

 

Los Angeles-based Andrew Bender reviews films for various JFL websites and writes about culture, travel, and food for publications including the Los Angeles Times, Travel & Leisure, and Fortune. This former production company executive and sometime screenwriter also reviews restaurants (and we're keeping his identity secret by not posting his photo).

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