Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

BoomTown's Thumbs-Up "Weekend King" (But for Appalling Reasons)

weekendking

Thanks to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington for pointing us to “Weekend King,” a San Francisco-made movie, which sounds just delicious from the trailer below.

It’s about a repulsive but rich computer programmer named Rupert Coleman from Silicon Valley who buys a bankrupt town in Utah and hopes to become its beloved ruler.

High jinks and heart-warming life lessons ensue, of course!

Arrington thought it sounded “sappy,” which it does, but BoomTown went all soft and melty in the middle over the idea of it.

Why? True story: Once, while at a party in 1999 talking with a well-known Web billionaire, sick of the excess, I suggested that he take a ton of his Web 1.0 bubble money and buy a village or town somewhere and dude it up with all sorts of cool stuff like free everything.

The catch? Require the citizens to rename it after him and hold an annual parade dedicated to his glorious accomplishments.

He demurred (No, it was not Mark Cuban, because he’d have totally done it!), much to my disappointment, so you can see why I love the idea of this movie.

(In the latest excessive Web 2.0 bubble, my new request of an Internet multi-billionaire recently was to convince him to try to become best friends with Brangelina and brood by dangling the plane and donations galore to worthy causes and free babysitting forever. Again, no luck.)

Here’s the video:


comments so far. Add yours.

  • Robert Bushman

    I saw it this past weekend and had a blast. It is lighthearted and silly, and the story feels more real than most Hollywood flicks. It hits the indie mark of telling a good story on a minimal budget. Definitely worth the price of admission.

  • http://kara.allthingsd.com Kara Swisher

    Robert:

    Thanks! Two thumbs up then!

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

I think going public today is almost like a Bataan death march. I think Wall Street — this will insult many people — but I think in many ways it bears a resemblance to organized crime. It is legal today what they do, but what they do is manifestly unfair.

— Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, in conversation with Bloomberg Television’s Margaret Brennan