🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
"The actual fabric of the universe is both comforting, aspirational and disconcerting."
Hello Tomorrow! on Apple TV+ is both familiar and something we've never seen before. "It's representing materially and metaphorically, America as it once was, America as it will be and America as it is now," Billy Crudup says about the new series, currently streaming. Crudup plays Jack, a salesman in a retro-futuristic United States, tasked with selling condos on the moon while his life begins to unravel. On the surface, it looks like 1950s America, but with futuristic elements like hovering cars and gadgets. "The actual fabric of the universe is both comforting, aspirational and disconcerting." And that element is what's most exciting to Crudup about the world created by Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen. Ultimately the show inspires a conversation about the American dream. "The more time we spend wishing for a better reality, in my estimation, the less time we get in reality and the less chance we have of actually changing reality, because you're not living with the constituent parts of your day-to-day life if you're constantly thinking about tomorrow."
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARTING SHOT WITH H. ALAN SCOTT
ON APPLE PODCASTS OR SPOTIFY
What was it about Hello Tomorrow! that interested you?
Well, they did a very shrewd thing. In the actual material itself, in the original screenplays, they attached all the iconography. So they had images [of] these wonky robots, this sort of emblem for Brightside [the fictional moon colony in Hello Tomorrow!], and you began to become immersed in this alternate version of an American reality. I suppose what ended up happening to me was the language, and the character, Jack in particular, was so familiar, and so close to reality from my perspective, and the world itself was so spectacular, fully realized and alternate. To me, [the story] created this wonderful juxtaposition that has the potential of really illuminating an American human plight in a way that I thought was both familiar and novel.
And your character in particular, Jack, has this outlook that's so familiar, the idea that if you work hard, you'll make it, which is very American but also very not realistic, and Jack knows that. You can see the walls of toxic masculinity surrounding him, and then Jack is slowly seeing that it's not all it's cracked up to be.
You know, I think socially—[and] I'm not a sociologist—but I would expect that it's been 25,000 years of a kind of hierarchy, that, yes, bears responsibility for civilization. So yeah, thumbs up. But we in America have sold ourselves a different story of who we are, this pluralistic land of bounty and opportunity where it is only your gumption and your character and your strength that is going to render any kind of success. And that can be a very oppressive thing for people, particularly when you're contained within a society that really doesn't give you upward mobility.
I mean, right now, the wealth gap has gone absolutely bonkers. So the notion that the people in the middle class have real agency, in my frame of mind, is a fiction. But worse, it's a story that people feel is dehumanizing, ultimately, because when they're not successful, then who the f*** are they? So you're in a war, you're in a country that tells you it's only by the force of your goodwill, the strength of your character, but there is plenty of opportunity for everybody. So let's say you gave your best effort to everything and ended up still in middle management as the best you could do in your 40s. And your girlfriend of 12 years is yelling at you about why you can't get a flat screen. Meanwhile, the stockholders and the president, they've got private planes and islands to themselves. It can be dehumanizing. In Jack's case it's an emasculating experience because he doesn't know who he is beyond this. I feel like I saw that experience with my father. It had to do with the inheritance of a story. It didn't have anything to do with material. He turned to gambling because you feel like you got to hit it big. That's the gamblers mentality right there. He wanted to have his pet rock but the pet rock only comes around once every 50 years or so. So the notion that hard work isn't enough, somehow, to me, can create a confusing sense of self and psychology.
And you see that confusion in the first episode. When your character tells your son—although his son doesn't know yet that you're his father—that his problems aren't going to go away suddenly if he moves to the moon, they're just going to follow him there. Which is the opposite of the men of that era. The idea that if you work hard, you've made it, problems solved. And your character admitting that shows us he's going to break soon. Something is going to snap.
And he wouldn't have realized it or wouldn't have been able to say it if it wasn't his estranged son standing in front of him. In fact, I think he tells himself the opposite every single day, he wakes up with a notion, Vistaville [the town in Hello Tomorrow!] is going to be the town, that's going to be the one that we're going to get all the money, we need to realize the potential of this wonderful idea of creating a haven for working class Americans on the moon. That's his ideal, and the notion that your troubles are going to follow you, he sells himself out of that idea all the time in trying to sell other people on the potential of having hope. So I think you're exactly right, that moment crystallizes what potentially could signal a sense of self-realization, which will lead to some kind of paradigm shift, and hopefully, a dramatic catharsis.
And the relationship your character builds with his estranged son, how he tries to mold him and realizes he just can't. When I was a kid my stepdad tried to teach me car stuff, and I had this look of confusion on my face. Realizing I was lost, he was like, "Some people get how to fix a car, others have AAA. You should always have AAA." And I feel like Jack experiences something similar with Joey (played by Nicholas Podany).
I love that example. If we weren't so attached to the stories that we've been telling each other for so long, and sort of legislating and hiding from some of the actual truth and fabric of our daily existence, that's what we would be able to do collectively, identify and celebrate the ways that our differences are the things that make us stronger. I feel as though Jack, in his best version of himself, is a terribly empathetic person and is capable of not just picking a mark for somebody that he thinks can be sold something, but for identifying what somebody's need is, what somebody's human, psychological, emotional need is. And Jack, like any good preacher, knows how to provide existential support. Now [he's] not offering heaven, he's just offering a condo on the moon.
What about the aesthetic of the show did you respond to?
Well, it does, to me, create attention, because it's representing materially and metaphorically, America as it once was, America, as it will be and America as it is now, which is if we don't get our handle on the story we're telling ourselves, we're going to be stuck selling each other bulls*** while our lives pass us by. And there is something comforting [to that], in the same way that we have comfort food that we know is not going to make us live longer, but emotionally it's nice. [We have] television shows that we know aren't expanding our horizons or enriching our mind, but they feel nice and cozy. I think that part of that is a product of living in an aspirational society, you forget the present moment, because you're so concerned with the story from the past that's going to create the imagined greatness of the future. And so the design department was sublime on this from the costume, the production, the special effects. I remember speaking with the costume designer about this one lapel, and she showed me pictures from the '50s. She said we've taken this cut here and what we've done is we've added these flares, which are our imaginative, creative idea of creating our own perfect society here. Hopefully it'll evoke an intuitive response from the audience that's both familiar and disconcerting and exciting. So that's what I think Amit [Bhalla] and Lucas [Jansen] were really wonderful about pursuing, which is the actual fabric of the universe is both comforting, aspirational and disconcerting.
Totally. From the very beginning, when the woman goes out to pick up a package delivery. She's dressed in this beautiful 1950s dress, looks amazing and the delivery truck is the futuristic vehicle that hovers and is driven by a robot, and then, all of a sudden, the truck backs into her and kills her. It's so jarring.
That's a great reframe for all of these characters. You've dressed up in your fantasies just to pick up a package, which is probably some bulls***. The next veggie dice. And the randomness and unpredictability about any life. I think one of the things that I appreciate about what Amit and Lucas do is there's no safe haven for any of us. Life happens. The more we spend time wishing for a better reality, in my estimation, the less time we get in reality and the less chance we have of actually changing reality, because you're not living with the constituent parts of your day-to-day life if you're constantly thinking about tomorrow. And for Jack, it's a way of running from shame and agony that he feels about not being the responsible husband and parent that he assumed he would always be, but [also] by not being successful. And by the way, it's financially successful, let's be clear about what the objectives are in the American dream. It's a fiduciary compensation beyond your wildest dreams. And who can have a bigger plane, et cetera, et cetera. It's not unlike his prospect for the moon. It's a chase to nowheresville. You can spend your whole life doing it, but what are you actually doing with your life?
And if you think about it, going back to the toxic masculinity theme, only dudes would spend so much time going after a big ball in the sky.
[Laughs] That is hilarious. You know, interestingly too, it depends, obviously, from the vantage point with which you observe America. I had forefathers that were escaping an oppressive lifestyle that they felt was impeding their sense of accomplishment. In England, you're born into a certain class, and there's not a whole lot of a way out of it, for better or worse. And one of them that I was told the story of emigrated. He was a knife maker, and emigrated to everything that you would imagine to have been the new world. I believe he emigrated to New Jersey, but it was in maybe early 18th century. And the notion was, in terms of what you said about those pipe dreams, the notion of that a new frontier is, in one way, a beautiful human characteristic to your stepfather's point of view, we need some people who have AAA, we need some people who can change the tire and we need some people to invent hover cars to keep us from changing tires. It's really the collection of all of them that gives us our greatest potential. Fundamentally we say we want to pluralistic society, but...
The only one making money is the guy creating the hover car.
And that's what we're all fighting about right now. What does it mean to all be on equal ground? What does it mean to have equal opportunity? I appreciate that conversation and I appreciate aspirational entertainment that hoped not just to entertain you, but move you and hope it makes you think.
I have to ask you about your other Apple TV+ show, The Morning Show. I'm obsessed. What can you say about the third season?
We just finished season three, shooting it. I was doing an interview about a month and a half ago. And somebody asked me that, and I started talking about it. And pretty soon I got word that apparently there were only a few things that I could say and they included: Apple TV+'s The Morning Show is produced by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. [laughs] But here's what I think I can tell you, which is the world, and America specifically, has experienced some pretty spectacular news stories over the last two years. Our lives have been shaped by some of the events that have happened, and like the other two seasons, The Morning Show tries to take on every single one of them. So the inertia behind the plot of this season is sizable.
Listen to H. Alan Scott on Newsweek's Parting Shot. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Twitter: @HAlanScott
