On today’s episode of the Daily Variety podcast, Natalie Portman, Rob Lowe, Daniel Kwan, Kiernan Shipka, Judd Apatow, Salman Rushdie, Gregg Araki and more talk about industry issues in an interview conducted at Variety’s Sundance Film Festival studio presented by Audible. Music legends Kim Gordon and Kathleen Hanna also talk about the music business then and now in conjunction with Tamra Davis’ Sundance doc “The Best Summer.”
Sundance takes place in the rarefied atmosphere of Park City, Utah, a town of beautiful surroundings and luxurious ski resorts, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune to real-world issues. The divisiveness and division in our country was brought to light by the incident in which Florida Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost was punched in the face at a private party hosted by the CAA. The drunk gunman, who was not invited to the party, reportedly yelled racist remarks at Mr. Frost, who is of Puerto Rican, Haitian and Lebanese descent. And on Saturday, the mood for many became even more somber. The news that ICU nurse Alex Preti had been shot and killed by ice agents in Minneapolis reached the mountains by noon and could not be ignored in the hectic environment of so many filmmakers and creators.
Natalie Portman and Zoey Deutch were among the bold names who wore “No ICE” pins while promoting their projects in Park City. Portman was at Sundance promoting her latest drama, “The Gallerist.”
“Obviously it’s a very fun community that celebrates film here, and we’re very excited to be showing ‘The Gallerist’ here. But we’re also at a very devastating moment in this country’s history, and I think it’s impossible not to talk about what’s going on right now, the brutality of ICE, and how it has to stop immediately,” Portman says.
Deutsch, who was at Sundance for the comedy film “Gail Daughterley and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” echoed Portman’s sentiments.
“It’s impossible not to think about the current state of our country, what’s going on, and the brutality of ICE,” Deutsch said. “Personally, I’m so proud to be an American and see how communities and people come together during this time. And at the same time, I’m so ashamed to be an American and to see how our government is handling things. I just want to stand with the great people of Minnesota.”
This episode features observations on everything from the production exodus from Southern California to the use of intimacy coordinators to the impact of social media and AI tools on content production.
Daniel Kwan, the three-time Oscar-winning writer and director of Everything Everywhere All at Once, offers sobering thoughts on the dangers of an arms race over generative AI technology systems that have the potential to reshape every aspect of our lives. Kwan is the producer of the Focus Features documentary “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.”
“What gets forgotten in the general conversation is whether you think this technology is good or bad, whether you think it’s all hype or not, what I think we can all agree on is that this technology is fundamentally incompatible with our current system and our current institutions,” Kwan said.
“Things are breaking down, aren’t they? The consensus of truth and knowing what’s true is breaking down. Our education system wasn’t built for machines that could just spit out things and do the work for our children. “Filmmakers like a lot of work, but a lot of that workforce is already kind of unemployed, especially when it comes to voice actors and background extras. It’s fundamentally incompatible, and our systems aren’t ready for that,” Kwan says. “And, in my opinion, the reason companies are deploying them so recklessly is because they are engaged in a geopolitical corporate race that is incentivizing them to deploy this technology and capture as much market share as possible.”
(Photo: Daniel Kwan at Sundance Studio for Variety, courtesy of Audible)
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