MoviePass, MovieCrash is now streaming on Max.
From the outside, the implosion of the movie ticket subscription app MoviePass feels far too convoluted for a 90-minute movie. But documentary filmmaker Muta'Ali has found an easy, approachable explanation: It was greed that killed this beautiful beast. That avarice, which took MoviePass from a tiny, fledgling tech startup to a corporate behemoth and then a cautionary tale, was an outside virus added to a company that initially espoused the high ideal of making moviegoing simpler and more accessible. Muta'Ali briskly retraces the origins of the business from the mouths of the people who built it, making its glossy red card debit card a symbol of a worthwhile dream that was ultimately destroyed in 2018.
In MoviePass, MovieCrash, there are three perspectives on what exactly went wrong. The first belongs to the employees. Typically in these kinds of rise and fall movies, a filmmaker will interview the usual suspects – the executives, investors, and other major movers and shakers — to provide their behind-the-scenes insights. What’s refreshing about Muta'Ali’s strategy is his interest in the day-to-day, ground-level observers rather than focusing exclusively on the C-suite occupants. We hear from programmers like Omar Miscara and customer service agents such as Emmanuel Freeman and Sidney Weinshel, who were there both for the company’s idealistic beginnings and dealt with the disaster of its untimely end. Their reactions to these events provide fascinating insight into the anxieties that arise from job insecurity and the vitriol expressed by disgruntled customers – instigated by executive ill-advised decisions — felt by lower-level employees.
One of those executives, Mitch Lowe, provides the second story. With credits at RedBox and at Netflix, he entered MoviePass as a trustworthy figure, someone who could take the fledgling corporation to the next level. He brought Ted Farnsworth — a hedge fund investor from HMNY who promised incalculable growth — into the fold with him, beginning a period of rampant spending that could’ve probably funded the economies of a few small countries.
These two men were true disruptors.
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But it’s the third perspective that’s the most surprising. MoviePass was founded not by Lowe and Farnsworth, but by two Black men: Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt. The former began his career working for Motown with the group Boyz II Men before moving on to Miramax, and then later founding Urbanworld Film Festival. In his interviews, Spikes is so amiable and soft-spoken you would never believe he has ever raised his voice. He jokes that sometimes he needs an anger translator like the one in the famous Key & Peele skit about Barack Obama. Watt, meanwhile, is a smooth, direct player and an entrepreneur.
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Back in 2011, the two men combined forces, initially to make a subscription service for Urbanworld, and then to build an innovative movie ticketing app that became MoviePass. They assembled a small, dedicated team that brought them to the precipice of success by being scrappy and smart; when they were frozen out from selling tickets by the movie theater chains, they set about finding a way to directly buy up tickets to sell at a discount rate. These two men were true disruptors.
While MoviePass, MovieCrash is certainly an engaging oral history about the creation and destruction of the company, it’s equally absorbing as a searing critique by the filmmaker of systemic racism in an entrepreneurial environment. Because despite Spike and Watt’s savviness, they struggled to close deals for financing – leaving MoviePass with only 20k subscribers after five years. That stagnation made them desperate, forcing them to take on Lowe as a partner in the hopes that the presence of a gray-haired white man might ease investors. That part of the plan did work, but it also unwittingly opened the door for someone like the disreputable Farnsworth to enter.
Muta'Ali weaves in a subplot of Black work undermined by establishment greed.
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Muta'Ali weaves in a subplot of Black work undermined by establishment greed that adds a bitter element to this story. Spike and Watt would eventually be forced out of the company they founded by Lowe and Farnsworth, and were left to watch it crumble from the very near sidelines. The employees share a plethora of stories about the wasteful spending that ensued – everything from a misbegotten Coachella promotional event that roped in retired NBA player Dennis Rodman as spokesperson to renting out a Sundance mansion for a lavish festival party. These are confounding, enraging, and jaw-dropping recollections when you consider the hurt Spike and Watt must have felt as they powerlessly observed the financial carnage tearing apart what they’d worked to build.
It’s also telling that Lowe never takes any responsibility for the raging garbage fire he lit. Some of that obliviousness is because Lowe and Farnworth presently have federal charges pending against them relating to the collapse of MoviePass, and to admit fault on camera would be an even worse idea than those that led to said collapse. But it also speaks to the cyclical hubris of powerful white men: They wrest control of a Black business from its founders, unwittingly destroy it through sheer incompetence, and then hide behind the belief that it was only an honest mistake. Lowe certainly doesn’t come off well when he accuses Spike of not having the temperament to work in a high-pressure environment, and brushes off criticism levied by irate workers who saw social media posts from lavish parties they weren’t invited to attend, even while they lacked basics like power strips and pens at the office.
Lowe certainly doesn’t come off well.
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Muta'Ali employs other smart strategies to paint a picture of the final days of MoviePass, from cellphone videos detailing the unbridled spending — such as Farnsworth throwing yacht parties — to audio of meetings captured by employees. He also uses slick animation to reenact the many events that led up to the end, all of it pointing to the present ills of contemporary corporate greed.
Some of the most damning exhibits , in fact, are clips of interviews done with financial news programs that show Lowe and Farnsworth consistently pledging the oncoming profitability of the company through various means, such as studio and theatrical investment and the sale of user data. Each time they promise high profits, the stock valuation soared higher, allowing them to demand more capital, which they then squandered rather than invest in improving the app’s poor stability or averting blackouts on specific, highly anticipated movies like Mission: Impossible - Fall Out that angered users and called the entire point of MoviePass into question.
Even with these nefarious acts, which duped investors into an allegedly fraudulent sense of false security, it’s hilarious that Muta'Ali sees the nadir of MoviePass being the release of Gotti, a 2018 John Travolta biopic. (I forgot it existed until it appeared in this documentary, but has the distinction of being among just a handful of movies to maintain a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.) Other shocking revelations occur, and there are more instances of finger pointing than one can count. But more than the successes, the failures, or the unbelievable stupidity and greed on display, what you’re left with is the tiny embers of MoviePass as the dream shared by two ambitious Black men and the legion of movie fans who still pine for the vision of easy moviegoing – and the faint hope that they could be reignited.
