Charlie Kaufman Holds Hollywood Responsible for Today’s ‘Terrible’ World

Filmmaker Charlie Kaufman’s got a lot to say about the state of the world—and why he thinks Hollywood is at least partially to blame for it.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the mind behind 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and this year’s short How to Shoot a Ghost said the film industry has “everything to do with [why] the world is in a terrible, terrible situation right now.”

As part of said industry, Kaufman considers it a personal responsibility to “not put garbage into the world,” which for him, means doing his own thing and not giving into the urge to use AI in filmmaking.

A massive selling point for the technology is its ability to give people exactly what they want, fast. But Kaufman argues that, in Hollywood at least, that predisposition has been present long before AI exploded onto the scene: “If you start trying to figure out what it is that people want, you’re doing what AI does. It’s why Hollywood remakes the same five movies every 10 years, and it’s why they have a formula for what a movie is.”

More critically, Kaufman said the “greed and acquisitiveness” in the industry stems from “damaged people doing so much damage.” His comments feel particularly potent in the wake of reporting on Thursday that Paramount will attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery—a merger that itself has seemed, well, catastrophic, to put it nicely.

Kaufman argued that Hollywood executives are “really lost and don’t have anything, so they’re desperately trying to make themselves better by acquiring, by lording it over people, being powerful and wealthy.”

Notably, Kaufman did not spare his criticism for himself: He described himself as another damaged individual, but suggested that his coping mechanisms are healthier than others’ in the industry. “[I read] a poem, see a painting, or listen to music which speaks to me and breaks me for a moment, and where I feel an experience honestly and delicately portrayed,” he said.

AI, he added, is doomed to fail in art because it can’t create the feeling of being alive, which Kaufman said was now more vital than ever: “If we don’t allow ourselves to connect with other humans who have the experiences that we have, then I think we’re lost.”

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