“If you’re selling something, you’re lying all the time and it can be corrosive to the human spirit”: Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe on The Beta Test and toxic Hollywood culture

Hot on the heels of his other off-the-wall creations, Thunder Road and The Wolf of Snow Hollow, comes Jim Cummings’s third feature The Beta Test. Co-written, co-directed and co-starring best mate PJ McCabe, the movie is a biting satire of Hollywood superficiality, following the trials and tribulations of an agent whose life starts to unravel after he accepts a mysterious invitation for no-strings-attached sex.

It’s not difficult to see how Cummings continues to garner a cult following, once again bringing a unique frenetic energy and brutally dark humour to the screen, channelling something reminiscent of Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman in American Psycho or Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club, with a dash of Jim Carrey’s physical comedy thrown in for good measure. It’s a wild ride of a movie, bringing together thriller, drama and cringe-comedy elements, while being searingly, if not disturbingly, accurate in its send-up of contemporary culture in a post-#metoo world.

The Upcoming sat down with the director and his co-creator to discuss how they came up with the concept, how their film cuts across genres and the themes it hits upon, such as toxic masculinity and fears of big data.

Cummings told us: “I think a lot of people go to work and feel like they’re performing this facade of a person. Jean-Paul Sartre said, ‘There’s no such thing as a waiter, only someone impersonating a waiter.’ And I feel like that’s true of all of us. Especially in sales. If you’re selling something, you’re lying all the time and it can be corrosive to the human spirit if you do it for long enough. I think a lot of people in the audience go, ‘Oh, that might be me. I can change.’”

Sarah Bradbury
Video: Filippo L’Astorina

The Beta Test is released nationwide on 15^th October 2021.

Watch the trailer for The Beta Test here: