Dakota Shapiro on Social Networking and ‘Valley of the Boom’ [Exclusive Interview]

Nation Geographic channel’s new docudrama limited series, Valley of the Boom, offers a look at the 1990s tech boom and bust in Silicon Valley and the beginnings of the internet and social networking.

Dakota Shapiro portrays Stephan Paternot, the co-founder of the 90’s internet startup/social networking service theGlobe.com. I recently spoke with Shapiro about his role on the new series, his own use of social networking, and what we can look forward to from the rest of the series.

Valley of the Boom was a project that got Shapiro’s attention right away. “I remember reading the script last year thinking that I hadn’t read anything like it,” Shapiro began.

“[It] uses a lot of really fantastical, bombastic storytelling methods that I had really never seen done. So I was just super excited about that, and I was excited about the beginnings of the internet because I’d never seen anything that has addressed that and, actually, even though I use it every day, I knew very little about it.”

The setup of the series is certainly unique, which made it all that more exciting for Shapiro to be a part of.

“I remember the director Matthew [Carnahan] and I were supposed to meet and he said, ‘You know, it’s going to be so weird that some people really may not like it. And I’m totally okay with that.’ I admired the fact that he said that so much because I think that you can only really make something that speaks to some people if it’s specific and weird in your own way, and I think Matthew really got that across. I think that he really went beyond that, and I really love it.”

Working on the show inspired Shapiro to do some of his own research to learn about technology. “Hopefully, that’s what this show will do is inspire some questions at least. This is something that’s very much a huge part of our lives and will continue to become more and more, I think.”

“Technology is truly shaping our world, and it is happening more and more,” he continued. “The more I read about it the more I’m learning that what we have now is only the beginning of what will be. I don’t know, I feel like this is stuff that, collectively, we should be having discussions about. Because it’s going to be affecting all of us and I just happen to think that’s interesting.”

Valley of the Boom lets us see these beginnings of social networking, something with Shapiro is very much a part of, like most of us. “The main one I use is Instagram. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends from my hometown,” he noted. “But I mean, I don’t know if you know the things on your phone, but now it’s tracking your usage of certain apps. And that was a little bit of a rude awakening seeing how much time I spend on these apps.”

The early vision for social networking that we see on the series was all about the connection that the internet can bring.  

“I’ve made friends from the internet. It’s connected us a little bit in a completely different way. I was actually reading this book about modern dating, and it was talking about that change and how technology changed how people in our grandparents’ generation generally married someone from down the street or somebody within a close circle of friends. And it wasn’t really necessarily for love; it was for practical purposes. That has changed, and even more so with the internet and the number of people we have access to now. I just thought that was interesting.”

Shapiro portrays Stephan Paternot on the series, and the structure of the series also allows us to see Paternot himself speak about what he remembers from that time.

“It was challenging, but it was also exciting and also great because I actually got to meet the guy I play, Stephan Paternot. We became friends, so I feel like I have a pretty good insight about it. He also wrote an autobiography so it was really easy to do research for this project,” Shapiro said.

“There’s going to be the initial comparison. Like how do I do this so it doesn’t seem like an imitation? It comes with its own challenges.” 

Shapiro shared some more of his favorite things about working on the show, including the memory of a particular scene.

“I really got along with the cast, so I got to meet some of my best friends on the show. We got to be in Vancouver together; that was super cool. I have a particular moment on set that I really enjoyed, in episode six I think, there’s this homage to John Wu and we basically had this giant foam Nerf battle,” he laughed.

“We’re being pulled by cables doing all the action guy stuff. That was a check off the bucket list. And also, they wanted all these Nerf bullets hitting us in slow motion, so at one point the director and the entire crew and some of the other cast who weren’t filming were all shooting us with Nerf guns,” Shapiro continued. “It was very fun.”

As for what we can expect from upcoming episodes, Shapiro gave a few hints.
 
“You can expect a great big dance sequence starring me and Todd [Oliver Cooper],” he laughed.

“We’re not professional dancers, so watch out for that. We are surrounded by professional dancers. We might look a little bit better. You get a slow-mo gun battle and I think the episodes just get exciting and ramp up more and more,” Shapiro went on. “It’ll be a good time.”

In addition to Valley of the Boom, you’ll soon be able to see Shapiro on the film Eye Without a Face. 

“It is in post-production at the moment. It’s about an agoraphobic young man who is active on all these webcams and living out this other life as like the protector of these people. It’s very interesting.”

Be sure to catch Dakota Shapiro on Valley of the Boom, airing Sundays at 9/8c on National Geographic Channel.

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