Last week on IndieWire, two separate stories highlighted a strange generational divide emerging between some old and new filmmakers.
The first article was about 20-year-old Kane Parsons, whose viral analog horror phenomenon “Backrooms” is now a major theatrical release from A24. Parsons spoke to IndieWire in detail about his debut film‘s shot construction, visual effects, sound design, and narrative world-building. The “Backrooms” director also dissected the unique challenge of delaying his college applications to deliver a movie worthy of the big screen.
The second article was about 79-year-old Paul Schrader.
Among the greatest living American screenwriters, Schrader is arguably best known for 1976’s “Taxi Driver,” an essential touchstone of 20th-century cinema that earned four Oscar nominations. As a screenwriter, director, and routine media provocateur, the world-famous filmmaker has spent much of his career exploring themes of loneliness, political rot, and spiritual decay through titles like “Raging Bull,” “American Gigolo,” and “First Reformed.”
That’s precisely why it’s so strange to now see Schrader discuss the creative potential of ChatGPT like a suburban dad showing off his new Bluetooth grill thermometer. In fact, reading Schrader’s recent keynote address from the industry symposium AI on the Lot in Los Angeles, I found myself yearning for the analog opportunity to gently shake him by the shoulders.
To be clear, I don’t think artificial intelligence should, or even can, be banned from most artistic spaces at this point. I also don’t think technology itself is inherently corrosive to creativity. Indie filmmakers are consistently developing cutting-edge tools that broaden the artistic landscape, and from here on out, that’s likely to involve AI some of the time, whether we like it or not.
But when it comes to living legends, like Schrader, promoting the use of generative software in Hollywood, there seems to be a meaningful difference between using technical innovation to expand creativity and allowing that convenience to flatten the fundamentally human perspective that first made moviemaking matter. Drawing that distinction feels more urgent than ever, as a growing number of aging creatives divulge a shocking willingness to trade in their reputations for the chance to make even just one more film.
Out with the Old, in with the Letterboxd
Hollywood has always been obsessed with youth, but the current generational turnover happening inside entertainment has been especially disorienting for several reasons. Many young filmmakers are no longer arriving in theaters through familiar pipelines like festivals, studio internships, or film schools. Instead, they’re coming from digital communities that generate social media buzz long before the broader business understands what it’s looking at.
A movie like Markiplier’s “Iron Lung” — a feature-length film adaptation of an indie video game that was self-distributed but stunned at the box office early this spring thanks to the popularity of its director and star on YouTube(?!) — would have sounded nonsensical to many financiers a decade ago. But surprising cross-platform updates to the modern Hollywood playbook don’t strip film history, or the people who actually lived it, of their cultural and educational value.
Ironically, the onslaught of AI sludge reshaping the look and feel of life online today has been steadily compelling some viewers to embrace exploring last century’s cinema in the real world. Repertory screenings, physical media rental stores, microcinemas, and revival theaters continue to attract Gen Z and millennial audiences at impressive rates across North America. These businesses’ appeal stems from both a sense of local community and a tangible connection to the past: two feelings that are harder for consumers to find in a fragmented media landscape.
In turn, many younger cinephiles have translated their newfound love of archival cinema into identity-defining social media content that helps raise awareness about film itself. In that sense, today’s audiences aren’t rejecting movie history so much as actively excavating it — but that feedback loop could have some unintended consequences for older creators.
Many aging auteurs seem mentally caught between honoring their artistic legacy and giving in to the risky promise of AI that’s tempting (and, in some cases, directly financing) almost everyone in the media right now. On one hand, these older creatives remain among the few storytellers capable of contextualizing the seismic social and political shifts that have brought humanity to this point over the last century. On the other, they’re susceptible to the same social and economic pressures aggressively conditioning most people to fear irrelevance.
A Market for Eye Witnesses (or, Sellers Seeking… Blindness?)
Reading Schrader’s comments about AI, my vague sense of sadness comes less from his experimentation with the tech than from the broad, resigned language he uses to describe it.
“Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?” Schrader said during his keynote speech at AI on the Lot. He then discussed how ChatGPT could generate a new “Paul Schrader” script idea on command, giving the software the affectionate pen name of “Alex Indigo.” Schrader said ChatGPT did not write the movie he’s currently working on, but that he’s still likely to lean on AI in some way to get it made.
There’s something undeniably bleak about that kind of audacious self-outsourcing coming from the man who wrote “Taxi Driver.” After all, Schrader is a famously opinionated artist and film critic whose career has revolved around obsessively describing, classifying, and interrogating his personal perspective. Minimizing the importance of his own creative labor is one thing, but Schrader’s remarks read more like philosophical recklessness than individual liberation.
Of course, he is hardly alone in his interest in AI and new media. Over the last several years, older and middle-aged filmmakers, like James Cameron, Darren Aronofsky, and Gareth Edwards, have all publicly embraced some version of generative software’s potential role in the future of cinema. Their positions on the technology vary considerably, and none have gone quite as far as Schrader in publicly experimenting with AI-generated authorship. But Cameron has argued that AI tech could help reduce the cost of blockbusters while maintaining crew headcount, and Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup partnered with Google DeepMind on several AI-assisted shorts.
Also at this year’s AI on the Lot, Edwards praised AI innovation as one that might rank “up there with the camera,” while also conceding it has “no taste whatsoever.” At the same time, other movie giants have established clearer ethical boundaries for implementing AI in their films. Steven Spielberg has said that he sees potential uses for AI in practical production areas; he specifically cited location scouting this past week. But Spielberg also opposes using AI to replace writers, directors, or producers essential to core artistic decision-making.
Guillermo del Toro has been even blunter, saying he would “rather die” than use generative AI in his films. And while Schrader’s “Taxi Driver” collaborator Martin Scorsese has not been as outspoken about generative technology as he was with pre-pandemic Marvel movies, the director’s decades-long commitment to film preservation and his repeated defense of active audience engagement with cinema speak volumes. (The 83-year-old has also managed to navigate today’s internet environment astoundingly well, in large part thanks to the popular TikTok account of his 26-year-old daughter Francesca.)
It’s jarring to witness your heroes grapple with such a monumental disruption to humanity. But at a moment when younger audiences are increasingly hungry for wisdom, it makes sense to ask why anyone who spent their life making movies would now fully embrace tools designed to automate processes that once rewarded experience. That’s tragic and frustrating, but it also makes sense given the escalating importance of volume and speed in modern marketing.
Capitalism treats older workers as liabilities instead of invaluable team members across almost every American business sector. The contemporary entertainment industry pushes that logic into nearly grotesque territory, as film and TV productions compete against 24/7 internet feeds and a rapidly changing meme dialect designed to always leave someone out of the loop.
That digital landscape has led some older filmmakers to regard AI not as a helpful tool but as an existential lifeline for a culture they worry may be leaving them behind. There’s no denying that physical limitations become more real for artists as they age, and AI can play a significant role in making the world more accessible for both the disabled and elderly.
Still, when it comes to actually generating creative work in Hollywood, serious ethical concerns begin the moment that AI is used to overly steer or replace human judgment. For some beloved filmmakers, the issue isn’t maintaining their celebrity so much as weathering a digital ecosystem that gradually degrades confidence when you’re not constantly working. That problem extends well beyond Hollywood, threatening countless American jobs and opening up internet users to new threats — including AI-assisted scams, fake news reports, and fabricated videos.
What’s more, chatbots are increasingly being relied on as personal companions and therapists, pushing a slippery kind of codependence that could impact any age group, but makes it especially easy for older generations that didn’t grow up on the internet to misplace their trust. Most people are still learning how to navigate a technological space that’s evolving faster than the American government will regulate it, and older folks aren’t uniquely gullible.
And yet, it’s disappointing to watch some of the world’s best filmmakers think so uncritically about the impact they have on a future that younger artists must inherit. Many of the artists now openly celebrating AI spent decades teaching audiences how power operates. They witnessed the rise of cable news, the internet, and social media, as well as multiple wars, wealth consolidation, congressional hearings, criminal trials, and more pivotal events. Historical memory is hugely helpful in separating false promises from sincere innovation, and that should make living legends ideal for steadying progress.
That’s why some of their aimless enthusiasm around generative AI can feel so paradoxical and maddening. Economic instability and a widespread drift toward black-and-white thinking have made it more daunting for public figures to be disliked. But as Americans’ faith in cultural institutions continues to erode, older tastemakers have an opportunity to ask Hollywood innovators and leaders tough questions that ensure so-called “efficiency” doesn’t consume the soul of the film industry itself.
We Need Stronger Elders, Not More Content Managers
For all the film’s flaws, there was something truly admirable about watching 87-year-old Francis Ford Coppola spend his own money making “Megalopolis.” The result is self-indulgent and occasionally ridiculous, but in retrospect, it’s also unmistakably human. The “Godfather” genius wrestles with massive abstract ideas that are profoundly important to him with mystifying results. Right now, that sense of imperfection and authenticity is sorely missing from AI in cinema.
When it comes to older artists experimenting with generative technology in particular, tensions seem to arise if their current sense of competitiveness or futurist curiosity eclipses their impulse to protect the art form itself. That’s particularly true for women, many of whom had to spend decades fighting for professional opportunities and institutional respect in Hollywood before finally reaching positions of genuine authority. Time gave us the late-career brilliance of filmmakers like Jane Campion, Agnès Varda, Claire Denis, and Kathryn Bigelow, whose work became richer, fiercer, and more self-assured because these women had lived and learned so much.
Younger audiences benefit from a variety of perspectives, too, and the success of repertory cinema allows many of us who take serious comfort in art history to choose the auteurs we think can best guide us through the changes surrounding movies today. But as older Americans continue to encourage younger generations to work harder and persevere, there’s an added sting for some cinephiles who watch their heroes act as if the future hasn’t changed.
Whether that advice was ever fully realistic or not, it feels obviously incomplete now. Young people, like Kane Parsons, are entering an entertainment market that’s been fundamentally destabilized. That’s why the original voices of legacy filmmakers are worth protecting, even when some of that group’s AI advocates seem hell-bent on acting against the industry’s long-term best interests. They’re still worth engaging because they’ve already survived versions of the questions we’re facing now, and they have insight machines do not, even if they won’t control their excitement about generative tech.
Later in life, accepting his honorary Oscar in 1990, then 80-year-old Akira Kurosawa said he still did not feel he had “grasped the essence of cinema.” That’s the sort of thought worth protecting, if only because it suggests evolution and experience shouldn’t be opposing forces when it comes to film.
