Jesse Hawken
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179: BlackBerry (with Gus Lanzetta)
🕑 Added 2024-09-23 14:14:58 +0000 UTCThe writer and podcaster Gus Lanzetta returns to the podcast from São Paulo to give our listeners an update on life in Brazil since their Supreme Court banned X: The Everything App from access to the country, and we thought we would pair this with a movie about a revolutionary communication tool that was suddenly not important anymore: Matt Johnson’s 2023 comedy-drama BlackBerry.
BlackBerry is that rare Canadian movie that had a worldwide impact; based loosely on a true story, it chronicles the boom and bust of the tech firm Research in Motion based out of Waterloo Ontario, and their “angel investor” Jim Balsillie who scaled the small company up to a global powerhouse with 20 billion in sales annually with their invention of the BlackBerry smartphone, only to crash out years later when the iPhone changed the marketplace once again.
Gus and I talk about the recent boom of movies dramatizing the origin stories of brands and what makes BlackBerry stand out from the rest, what this film has to say about being a Canadian, Glenn Howerton’s terrific performance as the hotheaded Balsillie, and how Johnson pushes the limits of copyright law and the Fair Use exception to tell this story with unlicensed clips and logos.
And Gus tells us all about life in Brazil now that Elon’s latest “jogada de mestre” has led to a mass exodus of Brazilians over to Bluesky and what led up to his idiotic war against the Brazilian Supreme Court that has further jeopardized the company!
Follow Gus Lanzetta on Bluesky.
Part one of Gus Lanzetta and Antonio Uribe’s series The Boku Diaries for American Jank
Trailer for BlackBerry (Matt Johnson, 2023)
Canadian viral video Man Goes Crazy Rips off Shirt During Street Interview
Music video for Tapa no Real, Marcos Valle, 1983
Comments
Christopher Camposeo
“A tank top could not contain the tub of yogurt that is Elon Musk” (Brazilian Vin Diesel voice) lmaoooo
Jesper Ohlsson
These movies are our "clap if you want to live" North Korean cinema. As long as they are made, we have no room to talk shit.
