The Fountainhead

A lovestruck young man thinks he's met the woman of his dreams on the subway, except that he didn't get her name… 

To find her he has to recruit some helpers... 

Thousands of them…

The Fountainhead is the social media fairy tale of our time. A global romcom for the Twitter Age. The You’ve Got Mail of now.

The film is adapted from Feng He's enchanting true life story, along with The Fountainhead, a Valentine’s Day episode of NPR’s Snap Judgment podcast produced by Mitzi Mock. Mitzi’s 7-minute podcast is the place to start. Click play:

The Movie

The film we envision for The Fountainhead is a comedic, heartfelt romcom with global appeal – a Nora Ephron-esque take on the perilous struggle to find love in a world populated by Internet trolls and catfish, besotted with overnight celebrity and instant gratification, and crowded with the pitfalls of chasing idealized love.

Creatively, it casts off the accumulated baggage of the standard “rom-com” (sexist tropes, tired cliches, formulaic plotting).

Conceptually, it takes the timeless pursuit of “finding the right one” to starry heights and Herculean lengths.

Thematically, it’s an exploration of our ongoing struggle to meet our basic human needs – love, friendship, belonging – in a world where a growing majority of human interaction takes place online. It’s not another pearl-clutching polemic against kids and their phone screens – instead, it reflects honestly on what social media really is: humanity’s new best/worst frienemy.

Commercially, it’s a movie for anyone who met their future spouse on Tinder, who’s ever fat-fingered the “Like” button, or run into a former FWB at the water cooler at their new job. Our plan is to have fun incorporating even more of these elements into the adaptation – trolls, doxxing, deceptively angled selfies – while capturing the IRL heart and feeling that made the true story the runaway sensation that it was, and will be again…

The (Mostly) True Story

Once Upon a Time

On the morning of April 11th, 2011, FENG HE descended the Beijing subway stairs to begin a train ride that would change his life forever. A recent Stanford grad, Feng was commuting to the office of his latest startup, a crowdfunding website akin to a Chinese version of Kickstarter that he had started with some friends from the States and China. The venture, which he’d started with friends from Beijing’s booming entrepreneur scene, was still in its hustle phase, and Feng had been grinding out 20-hour workdays in his scramble to secure funding. That morning, he was on his way to his shoebox apartment for a quick shower and change after back-to-back all-nighters at the office.

Though born and raised in Beijing, Feng had spent nearly nine years studying abroad in America, and since his return to China, he had come to see himself as somewhat of an outsider in his own home city. He often found himself longing for his days as an undergraduate in the States, when he would stay up late with roommates discussing literature and philosophy (and occasionally even having fun). In China, such conversations simply weren’t the norm, and many of the books that inspired them weren’t available – in Chinese or in English. Those memories ate away at Feng as he boarded the train home and cracked open his latest pleasure read. In a sea of faces glued to phones and tablets, Feng, as usual, was the only one on the train reading a bona fide ink-on-paper book. But then everything changed.

Strangers on a Train

A few stops into the ride, a woman boarded the train and took a seat across from Feng. She was young – early 20s, he guessed – and beautiful, with long hair and vaguely exotic features that gave Feng the sense she was “from somewhere far away”. But what really grabbed his attention was the object in her hand – a hardcover book, in English no less. His curiosity was piqued. Craning his neck to read the upside-down text on the page, Feng identified the book as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, which he himself had read years earlier in college. There was no doubt about it now: he had to say something.

If only it were so easy. Bookish and introverted, Feng had never exactly been a player, but the real problem in his love life was his overactive imagination. As he himself tells it, every time he embarks on a new relationship (“or anything, really”), his wishful thinking goes into overdrive, filling his head with images of a perfect future with a fairytale ending. By the time he takes the first step, he’s already set himself on a collision course with reality – no real relationship can possibly live up to his fantasy – and from there, all roads lead to disappointment town.

Now, on the train, as he fumbled for the words to open a conversation with the Mystery Woman, Feng was already stressing out, his brain involuntarily raising the stakes to impossible heights. Finally, he gathered the courage to open his mouth.

“Do you like Ayn Rand?”, he ventured in English.

The woman looked startled. “How do you know?”

“Because I can read upside down.”

It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was good enough. They spent the next several stops chatting about Rand, The Fountainhead, and philosophy. So far, so good. The old man sitting next to her even tried to help, giving Feng his seat. But then the conversation petered out. Feng wanted to keep talking – by now he was totally smitten with this Mystery Woman whose name he still hadn’t managed to catch – but he couldn’t find the words, and with nothing left to talk about, they both returned to their books and resumed reading in silence. Grappling with his anxiety, Feng struggled to work up the courage to ask for the woman’s contact info, but then, all of a sudden, it was too late. The train pulled into a station called Jin Tai Xi Zhao ("The setting sun casts its light on the golden balcony”), and just like that, the Mystery Woman rose from her seat, smiled, said goodbye, stepped through the doors, and disappeared into the bustling Beijing rush hour crowd. She was gone. And Feng hadn’t so much as caught her name.

What Might Have Been

Two stops later, Feng reached his own destination and did his best to put the Mystery Woman out of his mind. That lasted all of five minutes. As Feng puts it in hindsight, he was “obsessed with regret”. His brain was already at work building and embellishing his mental image of the woman. She was, he imagined, an “independent person” who had “interesting opinions” and wasn’t "afraid of letting other people know about them” – in short, exactly the kind of woman Feng was looking for in a partner, and exactly the kind of woman he was having trouble finding.

Meanwhile, at a cafe near Tsinghua University, a psychology PhD student named JANE was on her fifth first date of the month. And this guy was just as dull as the first four. Fuckboys, manboys, dumbfucks, techbros… at least this one didn’t bring his mom along. She found an excuse to leave and went home to commiserate with her roommate, who suggested she try this new app called Weibo – the first Chinese version of Twitter. 

“What does it do?” 

“You post short messages and read other people’s short messages.” 

“Why on earth would I want to do that?” 

“I dunno, it’s new. And it’s cheaper than coffee dates with creepy losers."

After a day or two of putting up with Feng’s brooding about The One Who Got Away, his filmmaker friend, ZHIWEI, had had enough. “Feng,” he said over their daily lunch together, “you need to get on Weibo and find her”.

The Tweet

At the time, Weibo was relatively new – so new, in fact, that Feng, a tech industry insider, wasn’t even on it yet. Zhiwei walked Feng through the signup process, and that evening before leaving work, Feng made his first tweet.

It was a long shot, for sure. Feng’s brand new account had only two followers: Zhiwei and another friend, HUANG BIN, who had studied with Feng at Stanford. Both retweeted Feng right away to amplify his message, but the odds still looked bad. When Feng met a group of friends for dinner that night, he begged them all to retweet him, but most weren’t even on Weibo.

Meanwhile, at their apartment, Jane’s roommate called her over to check out this crazy story some guy named Feng just posted. So romantic, right? Jane wasn’t impressed. Another stunted young man shunting repressed oedipal urges into an idealized fantasy of purposely unattainable romance. “Textbook displacement”, she quipped. Welcome to Jane’s dating scene.

The roommate pushed back – maybe Jane wouldn’t be so miserable on dates if she didn't spend the whole time picking apart why the guy wants to fuck his own mother. But Jane was positive she had Feng figured out. He wasn’t in love with a human being, he was obsessed with the fantasy of a “perfect” partner. The Mystery Woman appealed to him precisely because he knew nothing about her – his mental image of her was missing any potentially inconvenient details (e.g. values, beliefs, any sort of personality), leaving him free to fill in the blanks. If Feng ever actually found the real, imperfect human being, she predicted, he would lose interest within a week. But as long as she remained a fantasy, he’d pursue her to the ends of the earth.

In fact, Jane realized, this guy would be the perfect case study for her dissertation. Accurate field research would require covert observation of the subject within a simulated dating context. Or, in layman’s terms, she’d have to catfish him, repeatedly arranging to meet in person and then flaking out. If her hypothesis were correct, she reasoned, his delusional obsession would never allow him to accept that he was being set up, and rather than allow the fantasy to die, he’d accept any farfetched excuse she gave. Casting aside her ethical qualms, Jane got to work on a fake Weibo account and dating profile for the woman on the train.

Little did Jane know, this catfishing experiment would change both their lives forever.

Going Viral

A few hours later, Feng was in a coffee shop, meeting with his friend, GOGO. When Feng mentioned his tweet, Gogo signed in to Weibo to spread the word – only to discover that Feng had already been retweeted by nearly 1,000 other Weibo accounts – all complete strangers. Xu Xiaoping, a famous Chinese entrepreneur with thousands of followers, had stumbled across Feng’s tweet and retweeted it to his own huge audience. Refreshing the page over and over, Feng and Gogo saw the retweet count rising with every passing second. Feng had gone viral.

The next morning, Feng awoke to find his Weibo feed full of retweets from well-wishers from all over. He was excited, but also apprehensive – total strangers were sending him messages like “She’s your one true love! You have to find her!”, and he suddenly felt pressure to give his newfound fans the fairytale ending they were looking for. And despite all this attention, there was still no word from the Mystery Woman. It seemed as though his tweet had reached everyone except the intended recipient.

As Feng’s message blew up, Jane realized the clock was ticking on her plan – with the tweet spreading this quickly, it was only a matter of time before the real Mystery Woman saw it. She needed to get to Feng first. So, fighting pangs of guilt, Jane pulled the trigger on her catfish plot, DMing Feng on Weibo, posing as the Mystery Woman.

Trading rapid-fire tweets with Jane, Feng became even more convinced by her caustic wit and kooky-cool perspective on the world that she was the one, the Mystery Woman, everything he’d hoped she’d be and more. All Feng had to do now was see her in person. Could they meet?

When Jane arrived at her local coffee shop, sure enough, there was Feng – true to form, he’d shown up even earlier than she had. She decided to observe the subject for a bit before making contact. But as she watched him from afar, something changed. It wasn’t just that he seemed nice – he did, but she was jaded enough to know how little that meant – this guy actually seemed interesting. And kind of cute, in a way. As her preconceptions began to melt away, the guilt at what she was doing began to set in. Mortified, she snuck out unnoticed, leaving Feng hanging.

Two hours later, Feng finally gave up and went home, DMing the catfish account to ask what had happened. This only intensified Jane’s guilt, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. So she made up a story she thought would throw him off for good and let him move on: she was leaving China forever. Already on the plane. Family emergency. You’re a great guy, and you’ll find someone else. No further details. It sounded shady as hell, but she figured if nothing else, the subtext was clear: it’s never going to happen.

Feeling queasy, Jane deactivated her Weibo account and waited for him to break the news to his new army of followers.

The Video

But Jane had misjudged Feng once again. Instead of giving up, Feng doubled down. If the Mystery Woman had left the country, that just meant he had to broaden the search area. But the planet Earth is a big place full of people who can’t read tweets in Chinese, and anyone who tells you "love is the universal language” has never tried crowdsourcing a global Internet missing person search.

Feng decided to follow his filmmaker friend’s advice. That night after work, he set up a video camera and chalkboard in his apartment and spent the next three hours sketching out the train story in pictures that anyone in the world could understand. He posted the video to Weibo accompanied by a plea to his followers: spread this everywhere. Every continent, every language, every platform.

The next day, Feng received word that Phoenix TV, a major Chinese network, had shown his video on the air. In the span of less than 48 hours, he had become a bona fide celebrity. 

Meanwhile, as the retweet counter on the video ticked upwards, Jane realized her plan was backfiring spectacularly. All she'd wanted was to get herself out of a jam and let Feng move on with his life, but somehow she’d managed to set him up for an even bigger letdown. And not just him – her lie was now inflating the hopes of millions all over the world. She realized she had to come clean before things snowballed even further.

Jane opened Weibo, reactivated her old catfish account, and started composing an apology message to Feng. How do you find the right words when anything you say will break his heart? And what if he went public with her deception? She’d seen the handiwork of China’s “Human Flesh Search Engine” (a subculture of online vigilantes similar to Anonymous). Could she risk being doxxed?

Jane finally realized there was only one way to make up for what she’d done: find the real Mystery Woman herself and put her in touch with Feng. She started poring over what little info she had on the woman, trying to construct a psychological profile to narrow the search. But while she agonized over this, another new development was unfolding...

"It Was a Sunny Afternoon..."

Around 2:30 in the morning on April 22nd, Feng was up late checking his inbox. Weibo was normally quiet this time of night, so when a new retweet popped up, Feng took notice. It was a woman, tweeting from a brand new Weibo account with no photo, and she replied to Feng’s message with the beginning of a story, written in what immediately struck Feng as beautiful prose. It began with the day she bought her copy of The Fountainhead while on vacation in London.

By this point, Feng had gotten so many catfishing attempts that he assumed it was another troll pulling his leg. But the next line in the story made him freeze:

“You said you could read upside down.”

No one else could have known that detail – Feng hadn’t included it in his tweet. It was her. Unable to contain himself, he tweeted out to his new army of Weibo followers: “I found her!”

But then she dropped the bomb: Feng seemed like a good guy. She was “moved by his sincerity”, and she had enjoyed their conversation on the train. But she had a boyfriend. A boyfriend named Wright. She was literally dating Mr. Wright. After assuring Feng that he too would find love someday, she signed off Weibo, never to return.

Following along in real time, Jane breathed a sigh of relief.

No Accidents, No Coincidences

It was all a lot to process, but one thing Feng did know was that his new army of Internet fans deserved the same closure he got. Later that day, he tweeted out "My story has ended, but go ahead and start your own stories”. Little did he know, however, a new story of his own was just beginning.

The next day, Zhiwei and Huang Bin took Feng out to drown his sorrows. They knew their friend – what he really needed was a new project to immerse himself in. But that wasn’t something they could give him, so they settled for the next best solution: Operation Feng Gets Laid. This was the last thing Feng wanted at the moment – he still had too much to process – but his friends took matters into their own hands. Once he’d had a few rounds, they stole his phone, opened his dating app, and started swiping right…

The same night, Jane set about tying up loose ends, deleting her fake catfish Weibo account. But she didn’t stop there. She signed into her real dating site account, planning to take that down too. She’d always blamed her miserable dating life on the quality of men she was meeting, and in all fairness, that was mostly true. But given how wrong she’d been about Feng, well maybe she’d let her jadedness get the better of her just a bit. Maybe this was her cue to take a break from the dating scene, work on herself, and recalibrate her jerkdar. Before deactivating her account, she took one last look at her matches...

And there he was: Feng.

Jane wasn’t much of a believer in fate, but this seemed too weird not to act on. She asked him out for coffee.

Uh, About Those Tweets…

As they chatted over coffee at the cafe where she had first stood him up, Feng found himself drawn to Jane. She had the kind of magnetic presence that naturally draws attention from all over the room, and soon she was holding forth on her field of expertise: psychodynamic psychotherapy. Her ideas themselves fascinated Feng – especially her claim that countries around the world can be seen as individual people suffering from their own pathologies and obsessive behaviors. 

The feeling was mutual – Jane could now see the intellectual curiosity that had led Feng to strike up the conversation on the train, and in light of that, his earnestness started to feel less cringeworthy and even a bit… charming. She could see this moving forward, but she knew it wouldn’t be right to let that happen without coming clean about her experiment. So, after a few awkward attempts to send out feelers and gauge his response, she finally spilled the beans…

She had been the catfish who stood him up at the coffee shop weeks ago. 

This admission caught Feng by surprise, but he didn’t storm out as Jane had feared. Instead he seemed genuinely confused and intrigued – what could have lead her to do such a thing? Burdened by guilt, Jane started explaining the theoretical underpinnings of her experiment and how much the process had taught her not just about Feng, but also about herself.

Feng had dared to be open-hearted, not just to another person, but to the whole freaking world. His example had made her realize how closed off she had been, hiding behind her clinical studies as a way of avoiding her own feelings and those of others – Feng’s especially.

As Jane bared her soul, Feng soaked it in, realizing that she had been his Cinderella all along. It was Jane, the catfish posing as the Mystery Woman, whom he’d truly fallen for online – her irreverent voice, her wild mind, and now her heart.

On the date that followed, their relationship progressed from cappuccino to cocktails, and later that month, on “Chinese Valentine’s Day”, they began “officially” dating, sharing their first kiss at a drive-in theater.

Happyish Ever After

Not long after, Feng and Jane got married. They are currently working on an Internet startup of their own…