Charlie Kaufman Holds Hollywood Liable for At the moment’s ‘Horrible’ World

Filmmaker Charlie Kaufman’s acquired rather a lot to say concerning the state of the world—and why he thinks Hollywood is at the least partially accountable for it.

In a brand new interview with The Guardian, the thoughts behind 2004’s Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts and this 12 months’s quick How to Shoot a Ghost mentioned the movie trade has “all the pieces to do with [why] the world is in a horrible, horrible scenario proper now.”

As a part of mentioned trade, Kaufman considers it a private accountability to “not put rubbish into the world,” which for him, means doing his personal factor and never giving into the urge to make use of AI in filmmaking.

An enormous promoting level for the expertise is its skill to provide individuals precisely what they need, quick. However Kaufman argues that, in Hollywood at the least, that predisposition has been current lengthy earlier than AI exploded onto the scene: “For those who begin making an attempt to determine what it’s that individuals need, you’re doing what AI does. It’s why Hollywood remakes the identical 5 motion pictures each 10 years, and it’s why they’ve a method for what a film is.”

Extra critically, Kaufman mentioned the “greed and acquisitiveness” within the trade stems from “broken individuals doing a lot harm.” His feedback really feel significantly potent within the wake of reporting on Thursday that Paramount will try to accumulate Warner Bros. Discovery—a merger that itself has appeared, nicely, catastrophic, to place it properly.

Kaufman argued that Hollywood executives are “actually misplaced and don’t have something, so that they’re desperately making an attempt to make themselves higher by buying, by lording it over individuals, being highly effective and rich.”

Notably, Kaufman didn’t spare his criticism for himself: He described himself as one other broken particular person, however steered that his coping mechanisms are more healthy than others’ within the trade. “[I read] a poem, see a portray, or hearken to music which speaks to me and breaks me for a second, and the place I really feel an expertise actually and delicately portrayed,” he mentioned.

AI, he added, is doomed to fail in artwork as a result of it might probably’t create the sensation of being alive, which Kaufman mentioned was now extra important than ever: “If we don’t permit ourselves to attach with different people who’ve the experiences that we’ve, then I feel we’re misplaced.”

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