Cannes Report Day 9: Guillermo Del Toro Tells Cannes to Not Be Shy About Streamers: ‘Break the Machine From the Inside’

thewrap.com:

had some bleak words about the state of the movies in the first part of a Cannes symposium about the future of cinema. But in part two of that conversation, the “Nightmare Alley” filmmaker had a much more optimistic message and explained why today’s directors can’t be afraid of how the movies are changing.Speaking on a panel with other directors including Rebecca Zlotowski, Abderrahmane Sissako, Abel Ferrara, Lynne Ramsay, Laurent Cantet, Pawel Pawlikowski, Joachim Lafosse and even a surprise appearance from Nicolas Winding Refn, del Toro explained that as filmmakers, we “can’t be shy about the platforms,” referring to the algorithms and new methods that are dictating the way the movies are being made today. “We want to break the machine from the inside, show us what we can do with them.

We are troublemakers, rebels, we want to destroy the machine,” he said via the Cannes Twitter feed recapping the panel.But he went further and explained that even before the Netflix’s of the world trotted out data to decide how to make movies, there were always people giving notes and dictating the formula they wanted to see in films, and there was nothing different or “so great about having films produced by the f—ing Weinsteins.”In fact, del Toro even shared a story about a studio note he received making “Pan’s Labyrinth” in which they asked if the main character actually needed to die in the end.

But it was that conflict and pushback that made him smarter as a director. “Any time you’re missing voices, you’re missing the symphony being complete.

Art is not possible without disobedience, and art is not possible without assholes. You have to measure your sanity against the assholes,” he said.