CANNES, France (AP) — Today john lennon He was shot and killed on December 8, 1980. Yoko Ono spoke to a San Francisco radio crew from his home in New York’s Dakota Apartments.
They were promoting their new album Double Fantasy, and their two-hour conversation covered a wide range of topics. Despite being warned by interviewers not to ask questions about the Beatles, Lennon and Ono were surprisingly open in their answers. That day, Annie Leibovitz also took Lennon’s famous portrait of him undressing and hugging Ono.
The interview is similarly revealing. The two, especially Lennon, talk about love, relationships, creativity, life after the Beatles, raising their infant son, writing songs in bed, and more. At 40, Lennon sounds like someone who has found true clarity.
“It feels like nothing happened until today,” Lennon said.
In John Lennon: The Last Interview, Steven Soderbergh turns leftover tapes into a documentary that does as much as unravel the mysteries of John Lennon and Ono. “Get Back” is a song dedicated to the Beatles.. This movie was released on Saturday cannes film festival.
“Throughout our conversations, I was really drawn to their generous spirit,” Soderbergh said in an interview in Cannes on Saturday. “In this apartment, it’s as if the world happened in one day.”
Making it posed serious problems. Soderbergh decided to play the audio. Although he was able to find a way to visualize much of the film, it still left large gaps where the dialogue became more philosophical.
“Everything else we could solve, we worked on it for as long as we could,” Soderbergh says. “Then there was the inevitable moment: ‘Okay, but what are you actually going to do? You just started playing and you ran out of time and money. That’s where the meta stuff came in.”
Director Soderbergh accepted Meta’s offer to use artificial intelligence software to conjure images for these sections, which make up about 10% of the film. Soderbergh caused an uproar when he announced the news earlier this year. Did one of America’s leading filmmakers use AI? A movie about the Beatles, isn’t that an exception?
The AI parts (which were overwhelmingly panned by critics at Cannes) are pretty bland and not much different from the special effects. But Soderbergh has spearheaded an industry-wide conversation about the use of AI in filmmaking. For Soderbergh, who has made movies on his iPhone, it’s a conversation he’s eager to have.
AP: At a time when there’s a lot of discussion about AI in movies, you’re very outspoken about the use of AI here. why?
Soderbergh: Transparency is so important that we don’t realize how much it’s used and used to manipulate us in the world outside of creative contexts. We don’t know because they don’t tell us. We found out about it by chance through a whistleblower. I’m kind of my own whistleblower. “This is what he’s doing.”
AP: Did you expect such a strong reaction?
Soderbergh: I knew what was going to happen. I take this issue very seriously and understand why people have emotional reactions to this subject. As I’ve said before, I feel I owe people the best version of the art I’m trying to create and full transparency about how I’m doing it. But yeah, you wouldn’t say yes if a meta offered you these tools and finished the movie and you didn’t know you were going to get some excitement. That was part of the deal.
Associated Press: Some fear generative AI could tear apart the film industry. But you don’t see it as a bogeyman.
Soderbergh: Most of the important things you do when you make a movie can’t be done with this technology, and I don’t think they ever will be done with this technology. Imperfections become more valuable and more interesting when anyone can create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection. I’ve yet to see someone with some creative credibility put full metal AI into something and see how people react. I think that’s necessary. How do we know where that line is until someone crosses it? I don’t think what I’m doing is beyond that. Some may disagree. I still don’t know where my line is. I’m looking forward to it.
AP: What instructions did you give to the program to create the animation?
Soderbergh: Like a ring of light that appears out of nowhere. The black rose changes into Busby Berkeley’s, and then turns into a red rose. I couldn’t speak very clearly to the people I worked with. It was difficult to describe what I wanted to see. The good thing about this technology is that at least you have something in front of you that you can react to right away.
AP: Has your experience given you any framework in which you think this technology should be limited?
Soderbergh: My rule is: It has to be necessary. Is that the only way to achieve what I want to see? Is it really the best way? That’s the real question. There will be many people doing things with AI that cannot accomplish these two tasks.
AP: There are ethical arguments, but there are also aesthetic arguments. Otherwise, this is bare human interaction.
Soderbergh: We needed a way to visually track them as they flew. If I don’t do that, I can’t work. It is difficult to determine how long it will take to find homeostasis with this technique. I think that will happen. If you look at this technology in the film production business, each department has or will have a very different relationship with this technology. I’m going to have a different relationship with the writers, with the actors, with the costume designers, with the production designers, with the sound effects guys.
Every creative person has their own prism and is influenced by that prism in different ways. Part of the problem is our innate desire to have a simple template for how to approach this. I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all solution.
AP: In any case, the dialogue in the film is very moving.
Soderbergh: Especially his burning desire to destroy the myth of the male rock star at a time when no one else was in the mood. It’s moving. What I hope young people who watch this take away from this case is that this man told the truth about everything from the jump to the last day of his life. He’s just made that way. And he was constructive. He’s very opinionated, but at the same time very thoughtful and helped me with all of the “Can we do this better?” Can we create a better humanity on this planet?
