In Defense of WeWork

My take on the Hulu doc — from a filmmaker at a WeWork on-demand “hot desk”

Nuance is dead. Not only has it vanished from our politics, but apparently it has disappeared from film, as well. Director Jed Rothstein (The China Hustle) is brilliant, which is why I was so puzzled by his latest, Hulu’s WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn. If you have ever actually worked at a WeWork, you may be just as confused as I am this morning. Hello from a WeWork “hot desk,” by the way. I am writing from inside an immaculate office space on 25th Street. There’s coffee, lemon water, and a quiet clicking cadre of masked freelancers. Doesn’t seem to be any new-age church service afoot.

Yes, for sure, there are some very strange parts of Adam Neumann’s story — the tracking bracelets, the odd Goop-style wife, the audible on-camera fart. I am not sure you can take a charismatic upstart (is he really that charismatic?), give him a tiny wireless head mic and billions of dollars and expect anything less. But the film is so focused on Messiah-like imagery and painting Neumann as a two-headed capitalist-con and socialist-shyster that it misses one very important and rather fundamental piece of the story: the average person who rents office space from WeWork just likes the cool digs.