Charlie Kaufman Talks AI, WGA Strike & Slams Hollywood System: “The Only Thing That Makes Money Is Garbage” — Sarajevo

deadline.com:

Sporting a grey WGA-branded “strike” t-shirt, writer-director Charlie Kaufman led a packed-out masterclass this morning in the main hall of the Bosnian Cultural Center at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The Being John Malkovich writer is in town to receive the Bosnian festival’s career achievement award, and during his masterclass, he offered a strong condemnation of the current Hollywood studio system and urged filmmakers to find new ways to create work. “At this point, the only thing that makes money is garbage.

It’s just fascinating. It makes a fortune, and that’s the bottom line,” Kaufman said. “It’s very seductive to the studios but also to the people who engage and become the makers of that garbage, especially if they’re lauded for the garbage because they don’t have to look inward or think long about what they’re doing.” Kaufman, who has writing credits on pics like Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and has directed cult features such as Synecdoche, New York, and Anomalisa, continued to tell the audience full of local and international industry professionals to“make movies outside of the studio system as much as possible and think of ways to do that.” “I have this pipedream of creating an organization of artists to figure out how to finance and support filmmakers who make things that have value,” he added.

With these strong declarations, Kaufman promptly moved on to the grey elephant in the room: the current WGA strike, telling the audience that the wider discussion around the WGA’s “AI issue” is that “writers have been trained to eat and make the garbage too,” meaning writers indulge in and create work that he described as lacking creative ambition and humanity. “As long as they are in that