Category: Film
Noah on cultural stagnation
Fast-forward to the 2020s, and the artistic community has been largely disintermediated. If you want to be a successful commercial creator, the way to get started now is not first to struggle to prove yourself in the closed and cosseted artistic community — it’s to simply throw your work up online and see if it goes viral. If it does, you’re in.
This means that any creator whose goal is to sell out can do so without spending years making art that impresses artists. Of course, some creators still just intrinsically want to impress other artists. But if the money-motivated creators have left the community, there are just fewer people in that community left to impress. It becomes more and more niche and hipster. And there are fewer crossovers from the art world to mass culture, because the people left in the art world are the ones who don’t really care if they get famous and rich.
…But that’s the basic principle — if you want more novelty, I think you’ve got to make the artists work for each other more. How you do that, in a world where technology has made artists irrelevant as gatekeepers, is not something I have a concrete answer for. We may simply be in for a long period of artistic stagnation in America.
To sum up, I sort of believe that cultural stagnation is real, but I also think the root of the problem is probably technological — and therefore very hard to expunge.
Here is the full essay. One question is how much stagnation we have, and I will not address that at this moment. Another is what is the source of that degree of stagnation. I am perhaps more inclined to blame the current quality of audience taste today. In the past, audience taste often did very well, for instance in supporting the Beatles or Motown, or many earlier Hollywood movies, even when critical or artistic taste was mixed. Mozart too was popular with his audiences. Still Noah’s hypothesis is an interesting one.
Addendum: Alex and I wrote a paper on closely related issues, An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular Art.
Tabarrok on the Movie Tariff
The Hollywood Reporter has a good piece on Trump’s proposed movie tariffs:
Even if such a tariff were legal — and there is some debate about whether Trump has the authority to impose such levies — industry experts are baffled as to how, in practice, a “movie tariff” would work.
“What exactly does he want to put a tariff on: A film’s production budget, the level of foreign tax incentive, its ticket receipts in the U.S.?” asks David Garrett of international film sales group Mister Smith Entertainment.
Details, as so often with Trump, are vague. What precisely constitutes a “foreign” production is unclear. Does a production need to be majority shot outside America — Warner Bros’ A Minecraft Movie, say, which filmed in New Zealand and Canada, or Paramount’s Gladiator II, shot in Morocco, Malta and the U.K. — to qualify as “foreign” under the tariffs, or is it enough to have some foreign locations? Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts*, for example, had some location shooting in Malaysia but did the bulk of its production in the U.S, in Atlanta, New York and Utah.
…“The only certainty right now is uncertainty,” notes Martin Moszkowicz, a producer for German mini-major Constantin, whose credits including Monster Hunter and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. “That’s not good for business.”
A movie producer is quoted on the bottom line:
“Consistent with everything Trump does and says, this is an erratic, ill conceived and poorly considered action,” says Nicholas Tabarrok of Darius Films, a production house with offices in Los Angeles and Toronto. “It will adversely affect everyone. U.S. studios, distributors, and filmmakers will suffer as much as international ones. Trump just doesn’t seem to understand that international trade is good for both parties and tariffs not only penalize international companies but also raise prices for U.S. based companies and consumers. This is an ‘everyone loses, no one gains’ policy.”
Trump proposes 100% tariff on movies shot outside the United States
Here is one link. Of course the proposal is not easy to understand. If it is a Jason Bourne movie, do they add up the number of scenes shot abroad and consider those as a percentage of the entire movie? Does one scene shot abroad invoke the entire tariff? o3 guesstimates that about half of major Hollywood releases are shot abroad to a significant degree, with many more having particular scenes shot abroad.
Imagine the new Amazon release: “James Bond in Seattle.” And it actually would be Seattle — do they have baccarat there?
Furthermore, virtually all foreign films are shot abroad rather than in the U.S. The incidence in this case is interesting. Assuming the movie would have been made anyway, most of the tax burden falls on the producer, not the American consumer, because the marginal cost of sending the extra units of the film to America is low. Nonetheless lower American revenue will force those films onto lower budgets. Possibly Canadian and also English movies will suffer the most, because they are most likely to have the U.S. as their dominant market.
Of course the U.S: is by far the world’s number one exporter of movies, so we are vulnerable to retaliation on this issue, to say the least.
*Postcard from Earth*
If you are willing to pay $250 or so, you can watch it in The Sphere. From Wikipedia:
Postcard from Earth is a 2023 film directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Brandon Santana and Zaya Ribeiro. Created specifically to be screened at Sphere in the Las Vegas Valley on the venue’s 160,000 square-foot video screen, the film was shot in an 18K resolution with the Big Sky camera system. The 4D film features 270 degrees of viewing experience, climate control, haptic capabilities for the venue’s seating, and scents to create an immersive environment that tells the story of life on Earth. The film is one of two entertainment features to inaugurate the Sphere, along with U2‘s concert residency.
For visuals, and “integration with its venue,” I give the film an A++. For script a D? (Not having read Julian Simon is the least of it.) For soundtrack C minus? So it is hardly the Gesamtkunstwerk you might have been hoping for. But it was worth the money, though barely.
*The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power*
By Amy Sall. I love this picture book, or should I say photo book? Most of it is reproductions of photographs from the “golden age” of African photography, with profiles of each major photographer, plus a section on cinema as well.
One very good way to find “a picture book for you” is to visit a good museum bookshop, in this case for me it was the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth. Look around at the books with images. Find one that intrigues you, and then buy it, take it home and read and look through it. Do note this might cost 2x a normal book, but on average it is more than 2x better. It will open up whole new worlds. And it is not something your GPT is able to do (yet), though of course you can follow up with queries.
You can order the book here.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix) is one of the best and best-crafted documentaries that I have ever seen. It tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian boy living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. As the disease relentlessly robs him of mobility, Mats turns to the online world, spending much of his time immersed in World of Warcraft. (No spoilers.)
To Mats’ parents, his growing screen time is a source of worry and a reminder of the physical limitations imposed by his condition: a life confined to a wheelchair, seemingly isolated and devoid of traditional social connections. By his early twenties, Mats is capable of moving only a few fingers—just enough to click a mouse. But what else, his parents wonder, is there for him?
The documentary follows Mats’ until his death at the age of 25. On the surface, it’s a tragic yet predictable narrative of a young life overshadowed by illness. What happens next transforms the story. After Mats’ passing, his parents post a notice of his death on his blog. To their astonishment, messages pour in from all over the world. Strangers write heartfelt tributes, sharing stories of how Mats profoundly impacted their lives. In the online realm, Mats was known as Ibelin, a vibrant personality who had cultivated deep friendships, inspired others, and even experienced romantic relationships.
The documentary then retells Mats’ story but this time as Ibelin and it does so in such a way that we feel the exhilaration and freedom that Mats must have felt when he discovered that he could have a flourishing life in a new realm. It’s brilliant conceived and aided by the fact that Mat’s entire online life–which in many ways is his life–has been recorded. Everything he said and did, 42,000 pages of text, is preserved online. (As Tyler has said, if you want to be remembered, write for the AIs.)
The film raises profound questions: If heaven is incorporeal, is an online existence closer to a heavenly life than the physical one? What defines an ideal romance? What constitutes true friendship? Highly recommended.
*The Brutalist* (no real spoilers)
As I kept watching, I was thinking “well, this is pretty good but it isn’t great.” But by the time the final scene rolled around, I was convinced. A few points:
1. The Hungarian wife is the best character.
2. The title “The Brutalist” does not refer solely to the architect.
3. The industrial landscapes and shots of an earlier America are excellent.
4. The movie never felt too long, and that is at 3.5 hours.
5. It is an explicitly pro-Israel movie, and that angle I was not expecting at all.
6. The movie does make an actual case for brutalism in architecture. Note the architect and main character starts off as a modernist, not a brutalist.
7. Do pay attention to how this movie “rewrites” Casablanca.
Recommended, for some.
My Conversation with the excellent Scott Sumner
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Scott joins Tyler to discuss what reading Depression-era newspapers revealed about Hitler’s rise, when fiat currency became viable, why Sweden escaped the worst of the 1930s crash, whether bimetallism ever made sense, where he’d time-travel to witness economic history, what 1920s Hollywood movies get wrong about their era, how he developed his famous maxim “never reason from a price change,” whether the Fed can ever truly follow policy rules like NGDP targeting, if Congress shapes monetary policy more than we think, the relationship between real and nominal shocks, his favorite Hitchcock movies, why Taiwan’s 90s cinema was so special, how Ozu gets better with age, whether we’ll ever see another Bach or Beethoven, how he ended up at the University of Chicago, what it means to be a late bloomer in academia, and more.
And an excerpt:
COWEN: If the Fed had listened to you during the great financial crisis, what would have been the rate of price inflation in 2009, roughly?
SUMNER: I think it would have been a little bit higher than the Fed’s target, but not a lot higher.
COWEN: Say real GDP was going to fall by 2 percent.
SUMNER: You see, that’s what I don’t accept. See, I believe that the fall in real GDP was mostly due to the fall in nominal GDP. We know that the trend rate of growth in nominal GDP had been 5 percent a year going into the slump, and it fell to -3. It’s like an eight-point decline in the growth rate. Now, in a counterfactual where they keep nominal GDP growing at 5 percent a year, let’s say, most of the difference shows up in stronger real growth, and only a small part of the difference shows up in higher inflation. The inflation rate in 2009 was actually around zero. It might have been no more than 2 percent or 3 percent, if nominal growth had been that much higher. Real growth might have been 5 percent higher.
COWEN: This is a point where I think I disagree with you, even though I agree with much of what you’ve said up until now. I worry that by attributing the decline in real GDP to a decline in nominal GDP, that it’s on the verge of being tautologous. Not a literal tautology, given prices don’t move that much — that you’re explaining a thing by itself, and I think it would have been quite possible for real GDP to fall by a few percent.
If we had stabilized the growth path of nominal GDP, we would have had price inflation of, say, 5 percent, which I would have greatly preferred to what we did, to be clear. I think it’s one reason why central banks are reluctant to institute your kind of advice, because they know they’ll be blamed for a price inflation rate of 5 percent. Do you see what I’m saying?
SUMNER: I see what you’re saying, but I think that, in a way, your instincts that it’s almost tautological reflect the fact that you sort of buy into what I’m saying about the interrelationship between real and nominal shocks. We both know that they’re not necessarily at all closely correlated, right? In 2008 and 2009, Zimbabwe had a recession and a hyperinflation at the same time. Their nominal and real economies are going in dramatically different directions. We also know that real and nominal variables are radically different variables.
When our instincts tell us that there’s something tautological about the correlation between real and nominal GDP in the United States, it’s because our instincts have recognized the fact that, in fact, most of the US business cycle is due to nominal shocks interacting with sticky wages. If that hypothesis is true, that model of the business cycle is true for the United States but not for Zimbabwe, then what it’s telling us is that if we can control nominal GDP growth, probably the path of real GDP will also be more stable.
Now, it’s possible that we do succeed in stabilizing nominal GDP growth, and we find out it doesn’t help. But there’s an awful lot of circumstantial evidence to support my claim, because we observe, for instance, in the United States that when nominal GDP is more volatile, so is real GDP. That’s one thing we know. We also know that some of the volatility of nominal GDP comes from very clear monetary policy mistakes that have been made at various periods of time that can be clearly identified.
When we see this show up in similar movements in real output, there’s just a strong presumption that there’s a causal relationship there. Financial markets also seem to treat it like there’s a causal relationship. Financial market responses to Federal Reserve policy shocks seem to reflect a view in the financial markets that these things are important for the real economy.
COWEN: I think my view would be, when you get a very bad recession, it’s typically the combination of negative nominal shocks and significant negative real shocks, often to credit markets. The negative real shocks are not just an epiphenomenon or result of the nominal problem mixed with sticky wages. You have both happening, and the credit market problems don’t just go away if you do your nominal job. Then you get back to these situations where you’ll need a fairly high rate of price inflation to stabilize the growth path of nominal GDP.
You just think credit market shocks are not that important? Like what Charles Kindleberger wrote, you wouldn’t really agree with that economic history? Or how should I frame your view here?
And on cinema and the arts:
SUMNER: Well, there was — I can’t get the quote right exactly, but Susan Sontag said something to the effect of, “Are artistic masterpieces still possible?” Then she said, “Or are we not receptive to the possibility of future masterpieces?” Is the problem they’re not being produced, or that we’re no longer receptive to them? I think it is somewhat of an open question. You can consume so much of any art form, or multiple art forms, that you become a bit jaded.
I don’t know, it would be interesting to think about what younger viewers that are very talented at the arts think of directors like, say, Kubrick as compared to how I view Kubrick. I saw the Kubrick films when they first came out, but he has been very much imitated. So maybe younger viewers would be less impressed by some of his films because they would think, “Well, I’ve seen that before.” Of course, what they saw before was actually after he created that innovative style.
We just have so much material flooding our senses that it may be more difficult. Like, could you imagine someone coming along like Bach or Beethoven in classical music in the next decade and having that impact? Wouldn’t you agree it’s unlikely we’ll get something like that?
Self-recommending, I also liked the part at the very end.
Addendum: Here is commentary from Scott on the CWT.
Updating the best of 2024 lists
Here are my additions to the year’s “best of” movies list:
All We Imagine as Light
A Real Pain (didn’t think I would like it, but it is very good)
Green Border
A strong finish, yes?
I’ve also been listening to Two Star & the Dream Police, and Mount Eerie’s Night Palace, not recommended for most of you but very good nonetheless.
As for the end of the year surprise book, one of the very best from 2024, there is Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV. I’ll be writing more about it in 2025.
*A Complete Unknown*
I hate most biopics for their predictability, but loved this one. The Dylan character was remarkable, including his musical abilities. The film is willing to admit that Dylan might have been a jerk, no hagiography here. The Pete Seeger and Joan Baez characterizations were at least as good. It was a meaningful and instructive portrait of America in the 1960s. Everything feels real. Here is a very positive Cass Sunstein review.
As for imperfections, it bugged me a wee bit that the chronology of the songs and their order was off. And maybe it was ten minutes too long?
I think it is hard for younger people today to understand the import of Dylan. Does this movie solve that problem? I still am not sure.
*The Return*
I rarely like adaptations of classics on the big screen, but I give this one (trailer) high marks. Ralph Fiennes plays Odysseus and Juliette Binoche has the role of Penelope — you cannot imagine better castings. The film is fully serious, and understands the classic text extremely well, without being slavish to it. It understands the implicit politics in the story. And while you know the ending (more or less), it is truly dramatic and suspenseful at the psychological level. Don’t be put off by the so-so reviews, how many film critics today have a decent command of Homer?
Very good sentences
…Corbet can be just as critical of indie movies as he is of studio-backed ones. “Art-house cinema and big tentpole releases are equally algorithmic,” he said. “I’ve seen ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ remade forty-five times. I know why; it’s an extraordinary film.” Still, he went on, “There’s this kind of faux subtlety, and an allegiance to good taste, that I find really frustrating. It’s the same recipe, regurgitated over and over.”
“American indies have been conditioned to think small,” Dennis Lim, the artistic director of the New York Film Festival, told me. With “The Brutalist,” Corbet has gone full maximalist. The film, which takes place over a span of thirteen years and ends with a coda set two decades later still, promises, from its first moments, to be a capital-“E” Event. To the sounds of orchestral rumbling, a title card announces the “overture.”
That is from an excellent Alexandra Schwartz New Yorker article about the new movie The Brutalist.
My Conversation with the excellent Paula Byrne
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
Tyler and Paula discuss Virginia Woolf’s surprising impressions of Hardy, why Wessex has lost a sense of its past, what Jude the Obscure reveals about Hardy’s ideas about marriage, why so many Hardy tragedies come in doubles, the best least-read Hardy novels, why Mary Robinson was the most interesting woman of her day, how Georgian theater shaped Jane Austen’s writing, British fastidiousness, Evelyn Waugh’s hidden warmth, Paula’s strange experience with poison pen letters, how American and British couples are different, the mental health crisis among teenagers, the most underrated Beatles songs, the weirdest thing about living in Arizona, and more.
This was one of the most fun — and funny — CWTs of all time. But those parts are best experienced in context, so I’ll give you an excerpt of something else:
COWEN: Your book on Evelyn Waugh, the phrase pops up, and I quote, “naturally fastidious.” Why can it be said that so many British people are naturally fastidious?
BYRNE: Your questions are so crazy. I love it. Did I say that? [laughs]
COWEN: I think Evelyn Waugh said it, not you. It’s in the book.
BYRNE: Give me the context of that.
COWEN: Oh, I’d have to go back and look. It’s just in my memory.
BYRNE: That’s really funny. It’s a great phrase.
COWEN: We can evaluate the claim on its own terms, right?
BYRNE: Yes, we can.
COWEN: I’m not sure they are anymore. It seems maybe they once were, but the stiff-upper-lip tradition seems weaker with time.
BYRNE: The stiff upper lip. Yes, I think Evelyn Waugh would be appalled with the way England has gone. Naturally fastidious, yes, it’s different to reticent, isn’t it? Fastidious — hard to please, it means, doesn’t it? Naturally hard to please. I think that’s quite true, certainly of Evelyn Waugh because he was naturally fastidious. That literally sums him up in a phrase.
COWEN: If I go to Britain as an American, I very much have the feeling that people derive status from having negative opinions more than positive. That’s quite different from this country. Would you agree with that?
Definitely recommended, one of my favorite episodes in some while. And of course we got around to discussing Paul McCartney and Liverpool…
Info Finance has a Future!
Info finance is Vitalik Buterin’s term for combining things like prediction markets and news. Indeed, a prediction market like Polymarket is “a betting site for the participants and a news site for everyone else.”
Here’s an incredible instantiation of the idea from Packy McCormick. As I understand it, betting odds are drawn from Polymarket, context is provided by Perplexity and Grok, a script is written by ChatGPT and read by an AI using Packy’s voice and a video is produced by combining with some simple visuals. All automated.
What’s really impressive, however, is that it works. I learned something from the final product. I can see reading this like a newspaper.
Info finance has a future!
Addendum: See also my in-depth a16z crypto podcast (Apple, Spotify) talking with Kominers and Chokshi for more.
Best movies of 2024
Poor Things
The Delinquents [Los Delincuentes], from Argentina, tragicomedy
The Teacher’s Lounge
All of Us Strangers
Anselm
The Zone of Interest
You Can Call Me Bill
Lynch/Oz
Miracle Worker, that is a very old Arthur Penn movie, about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. Interesting throughout, and some parts were stupendously good, especially when dialogue was absent and Helen and Anne are simply fighting.
Civil War, and much more here.
About Dry Grasses
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Twisters
Blitz
All We Imagine as Light
A Real Pain
Green Border
So overall a pretty good year, even though it never felt like it on any single weekend. I will post on anything notable between now and year’s end, noting that I simply treat those Dec.31 Academy Award releases as 2025 movies.