adam driver's amazon commercial is why we can't have nice things.

or how capitalism is actively killing cinema.

The Marlboro Man on Sunset Strip in the 80s

Capitalism has turned us into selfish, contradictory beings. Why do we see the internet grouse at fiction readers, pointing to self-help books by men in grey business suits as the only reading that ‘counts’?

This war being waged has specific victims in mind.

It’s why subjects like tech do not have the same vitriol aimed at them; these tech execs are learned in a way that the capitalist can place value on.

Art is the curing of callousness. we have doctors who heal our bodies, psychiatrists who are tasked with healing our minds.

It is information, books, paintings, films that can heal our souls.

-ayan artan, in defense of pretension

I have spent my whole life learning to recognize the sound of my own voice.

In this noise polluted world, hearing yourself is not an easy task and hearing yourself enough to be able to articulate what it is you think and feel and know and dream is basically the mental equivalent of climbing Mount Everest everyday. And so I’m very particular (especially as of late) as to what I allow in to the chaotic amphitheater that is the modern mind.

Needless to say, I don’t watch commercials, ever. And the times I have been forced to specifically in the past few years my mind glitches like its in the matrix and I’m left wondering if everyone can see the same pixelated forgery letting them know it is in fact, a simulation.

Over Christmas break one of these commercials broke through.

Adam Driver, someone I consider before this moment to be pretty intentional when it comes to the craft of acting, was sitting in an oversized reading chair “dramatically” reading 5 star Amazon reviews. The millions circulating the Amazon writing room even came up with the incredibly clever campaign title of “5-Star Theater.” The commercial further mocked as it let us know that this was in fact

“performed by a real serious actor.”

I don’t remember what I was trying to watch to have to endure this ad but I do remember that I immediately turned the television off and laid down on my parents’ living room couch closing my eyes and trying not to cry those stupid tears that seem to sneak out when an undeniable anger is building up inside you.

(so much so that I wrote about it here as well.)

Why the anger when seeing a “celebrity” on a commercial has become, you know,

an american staple?

Because it was a blatant reminder that one more person I thought cared about acting as an artistic pursuit and not a monetary means to an end decided to participate so much so that he actually mocked the very art he more or less creates.

I arrived in LA ten years to act in movies and the myth was still the exact same as it is now - you just have to start out by doing these lower level roles (at the time that more or less meant cable tv)

but then eventually you’ll become “famous enough” to choose

whatever role you want.

Walter Goggins was just on a show that receives “global praise” and is categorized under prestigious television and yesterday as I walked through my parents’ living room while they were watching something I saw him dressed as a cowboy in a Walmart commercial.

And right before Goggins, Billy Bob Thornton (who also looked like he might be dressed as a cowboy), who 30 years ago had the artistic gumption to write, direct, and star in a movie called Sling Blade, was “stranded” and selling me a mobile phone service.

This reminded me of what I think is one of the most important writings of our time from fellow substacker, Ted Gioia’s post: Is There a Crisis of Seriousness?

The undermining of standards of seriousness is almost complete,” [Sontag] declared, “with the ascendancy of a culture whose most intelligible, persuasive values are drawn from the entertainment industries.” In this frivolous new world, everything must be pleasing and inoffensive. Everything and everybody gets marketed like an exciting new product… The public accepts this as a matter of course.

They hardly expect anything to be real nowadays.

Technology was setting the agenda for creativity. Everything else—script, directing, acting, was subservient to the computer-generated imagery. But 1996 was just the beginning of cinema as a digital spectacle.

With each passing year, the artificial digital component has increased, and the real human element decreased.

This is the illusion of Hollywood and its hero’s myth through the distorted lens of “celebrity” and its precisely why movies with reviews like this are being produced:

And yet: one can’t help but shake the feeling that everything you’re seeing has been carefully calibrated to sell you stuff, whether it be the litany of car brands and sponsors on display (the protagonists are part of the Expensify APX GP F1 team and they make sure to show you the full name as often as possible), or the visual sheen of flawlessness that’s become characteristic of Kosinski’s work.

The deification of everything F1-related, from the science/tech to the glory of victory on the race track, start to grate after awhile. This movie was obviously made to not only make Apple into a credible artistic force but also to increase the popularity of Formula 1.

-

David Chen

, ‘F1 The Movie’ Is a Long Car Commercial…

I went to an early screening of the race-car movie F1 to see Damson Idris. At least, I believed it was a two-hander that focused on his character, rookie Formula One driver Joshua Pearce, going toe-to-toe with Brad Pitt’s burnout never-was Sonny Hayes. That’s what the trailers want us to believe. The trailers, however, are a lie.

This is firmly Brad Pitt’s world and everyone else is just living in it. Though both the plot and Hayes gesture at giving Idris’ Pearce the limelight, it’s all a facade to hoist Pitt even more into the heroic center.

If anything, the race-car drama gives a peek into the minds of those who cling to power at the cost of everybody else.

-

Brooke Obie

And this is something similar to what

Sam Widdoes

touched upon in his post, The Private Equity Takeover of Indie Film

According to Hollywood Reporter, A24 executives are now asking for "the A24 version" of commercial properties—wanting to know what their take on John Wick or Suits would look like.

This represents a fundamental shift from finding singular visions and figuring out how to market them, to starting with market demand and working backward to creative decisions.

Hollywood “cinema” died the moment commercials became cinematic.

So when does a “myth” get to be fully revealed for what it is, a flat-out lie?

Fame does not give you access to artistic freedom, it gives you access to a lifestyle that you then have to keep up with by doing beauty tutorials and credit card commercials and “PSA’s” that are simply the lip service necessary to receive paychecks until the world ends.

And how can cinema thrive in a system like that?

Because despite Timothee’s impassioned speech,

Hollywood isn’t where greatness is born, it’s where image is commodified in pursuit of studio and now streaming’s bottom lines.

And this is deeper than just America’s cultural “pursuit of money,” it’s humanity distorted in service of the almighty dollar and in this system true, transformative art can never be birthed - much less thrive.

To give Hollywood any sort of legitimacy in regards to artistic expression after the amount of times it has shown the world its true colors is to run back into the arms of an abuser because you think they deep down know what love is and can give it to you.

They do not. And they cannot.

And this is the truth the future has to be stirred from -

Hollywood is not a system for cinema.

Neither is Big Tech and its artificial monsters.

Any more so than a McDonald’s has the means to deliver to you food that doesn’t purposefully require a steady amount of doctor’s visits to monitor the side-effects of the high blood pressure and obesity it produces.

But we keep ordering and consuming the same films from these establishments and pretend to be confounded as to why we are culturally dying.

This isn’t about a judgement of one’s individual choice. If you want to be a celebrity - have at it. Same if you want to be an influencer or brand ambassador, but let us stop pretending true artistic expression can be brought forth through these means.

This is about recognizing that in order to consistently make and release the kind of films that set the world ablaze with deeper knowledge and understanding and God forbid - empathy for your fellow man -

we cannot operate in the same system that has burnt these things to the ground.

We cannot keep acting like these are the same vehicles in which societal and global change can occur.

They are mouthpieces for a capitalistic narrative that puts money above the value of human life. And thus can never produce the voices required to build new worlds championing humanity.

What is ultimately necessary for the kind of new (film) world order we are building on here to be brought to fruition is truly a recalibration of the human mind back before we needed to attach a number to every living thing to determine its value.

And that is a lot to ask of an individual much less an entire field of work.

But this isn’t just some kumbaya let’s all hold hands kind of moment

this is a plea for our collective future.

Because in order to make this kind of massive cultural change to an industry - we need each other.

We need the stories we have yet to tell to bring society back from the brink - this is what art is supposed to do - remind you that you are still in fact alive and thus have the capacity to hope when everything else seems to scream to the contrary.

Reading this post from Cameron Andrews yesterday reminded me of just how important a communal support system truly is:

I am a filmmaker and an artist. That is something that is within me, and something no person or establishment has the power to give or take from me.

I hold this belief very close, because it is something I have come to see as fragile, fleeting and therefore valuable. The system is not designed to empower people from the ground up. That is true of life in general and equally true of the filmmaking establishment.

The establishment thrives on the belief that we need it. Until we are a part of it we are nothing, and we are left perpetually trying to become something. I have been lucky to feel validated by people who matter to me and who gave me confidence. But I have also seen many artists, some of the most talented I have ever met, who have not been given that validation. They continue to wait for the validation of the establishment, of film festivals, production companies, publishing houses, galleries, etc… Their art is not “real” or worthy until it is cosigned by someone above them on the ladder.

This has been something of a shock to me as I’ve entered adult life, and it’s been incredibly difficult to deal with at times. I’ve come to realize that it’s because I was so lucky to have a support system that never did anything but tell me that I could achieve my dreams. I entered the adult world knowing I would make movies no matter what.

- Cameron Andrews, Filmmaking, the Establishment, and the Power of Self Expression

This is the cruciality of community.

This is its power.

There is a new film movement being birthed on this platform as I write this.

NonDē:

No filmmaker, film worker, or film lover should be dependent on any particular system or platform to develop, fund, collaborate, release, market, preserve, share, view or engage with the art , cinema, support, or the business thereof that we love and create.

The sustainability of the art, artist, and ecosystem is the primary goal of NonDē.

And its founder,

Ted Hope

, brought forth a manifesto for us all to be a part of.

But before you agree to fully step into building this new way of making, distributing, and releasing movies, you have to answer for yourself -

Do I truly understand what I am worth?

The value I bring to not only cinema’s future, but to the future of this world?

Because for this new infrastructure and ecosystem to be built, you have to understand your own individual value. And I know that may sound trite or almost silly to say out loud but when you live in a world that actively profits off your perceived worthlessness -

knowing you are in fact worthy of this new thing is to actively go against everything you have been conditioned to think.

So the two things I want you to takeaway from this in order for the NonDē Movement to not just be a thing we intellectualize with one another on FilmStack but a true systemic change to the film world’s way of operating are:

1. the necessary exchange of value from monetary back to human worth

2. to know that where Hollywood and Big Tech have fallen short in their exclusion of artistic merit and human worth, we get to build a system that puts it at its very center and I cannot think of anything more defiant, revolutionary, or punk rock than that.

Art isn’t crafted to please the crowd or chase approval….it’s born of conviction. It demands an uncompromising clarity of vision, even if that vision unsettles or divides. True art invites us to stand by our beliefs, not nod in polite agreement. -Rogue Art Historian

how, if art is essentially a gift, is the artist to survive in a society demanded by the market? - Lewis Hyde

And how are we to survive much less thrive in this world without one another?

**some level-setting for you: this post is not about any one individual person - I simply chose the last three celebrity endorsed commercials I’ve seen as examples. But I do think they happen to be excellent talking points for just how far Hollywood has strayed from cinema as an artform. I am always more interested in talking about the system that causes this kind of action or choice rather than any one individual. I don’t want the intentionally provocative title to make any reader miss the point I am trying to make - capitalism has caused us to forfeit our rights as artists (and honestly human beings) in pursuit of the public’s perceived image of us so that one has the ability to make loads of profit off of “fans.” This is not where great art can be born. This is why we need this new film movement now more than ever.

post-notes:

here are two excellent pieces I read this past week on hollywood celebrity-ism that more or less “triggered” this post…

tom, brad, leo, george

by

Sophie

The relationships I've built with these men are fantasy, projection, delusion. They're also the most consistently comforting emotional fixtures in my adult life.

Blonde and the Violence of Hollywood Mythmaking

by

B. Eldon Calder

the entire machinery of American celebrity functions as a self-consuming ouroboros, feeding on myth, scandal, and the fevered projections of an audience eager to mold its icons into whatever shape best suits the collective fantasy.

from Sophie’s incredibly vulnerable and always insightful post