Mainstream trailer: The ‘grotesque’ Andrew Garfield film that prompted mass festival walkouts

His performance has been compared to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker

A new Andrew Garfield film that prompted festival walkouts has dropped its first trailer.

The actor takes on his boldest role yet in Mainstream, in which he plays a YouTuber obsessed with fame.

Directed by Gia Coppola, the film satirises the lifestyle of online celebrities and features many scenes that ruffled feathers when it first debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2020.

Despite Garfield’s “grotesque” performance being praised, critics were left shocked by the actor’s “go-for-broke horrendousness”.

IndieWire said Garfield’s character is “one of the most obnoxious ever”, and described him as being “the grotesque lovechild of Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison in The Doors and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker”. 

Read more:

• The Wire creator David Simon blasts Piers Morgan as an ‘empty parasite
• Piers Morgan accuses Meghan Markle of ‘hit job’ on the Royal Family and Britain
• Man asks protester for her Instagram without realising it’s Rihanna
• Sophie Winkleman says she landed ‘Two And a Half Men’ role without Hollywood knowing she is a royal

Mainstream divided critics, with Variety describing it as “a messy, childish scrawl of a film”.

The film co-stars Stranger Things actor Maya Hawke, Nat Wolff, Johny Knoxville and Jason Schwartzman.

Coppola is the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, the man behind the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now.

Mainstream will be released in US cinemas and on VOD in the UK on 7 May.