The Case for Challenging Movies in Uncertain Times, Part 1

A "Hopeful Conversation" about the state of cinema with UNDEREXPOSED's Alex Rollins Berg

let’s strip it down and begin again

Intro: Lately, I’ve been using Thursdays to bring you conversations with filmmakers about their work. I want to try something a wee bit different today. I hope you dig it and it becomes a monthly feature. Like our monthly challenges and my friday takeovers, I see it as another way to build the FilmStack community.

This is still a conversation and it is still with a filmmaker, but it will be a very long and free-flowing conversation about the state of cinema and culture. So long in fact that it is spread across two posts, mine and theirs. Starting today on HopeForFilm and then continuing tomorrow on theirs, which in this case is Underexposed.

I started to get to know Alex Rollins Berg when he reached out to interview Vanessa Hope, the director and producer of INVISIBLE NATION, a film I helped to produce. And yeah, she happens to be my wife too. I have thoroughly enjoyed Alex’s posts and responded to one with a comment that to me wanted to become a longer conversation. And.. well… it did. Join us now for that conversation, won’t you?

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Ted: You recently quoted Voltaire at the top of your “Unknown Desires” post: “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” I would love if we could find the path that opens us all to greater complexity in our creative work, and a mindset that would include the embrace that much will never be known (thankfully). I get frustrated that so many films (and novels, and music, and art) have what I perceive of as an attitude of knowing. It is the opposite of curiosity. Of exploration. Of experimentation. It leans towards a proof, an already closed argument, and as a reader or an audience member, a viewer, I want to be let in. Do you think this is where culture is, and how do you think we might advance it from there?

Alex: I love that quote. Absurdity seems to be the core aesthetic of our moment, and I suspect that’s largely due to our misguided pursuit of certainty. You see it in Silicon Valley’s crusade to rationalize all aspects of life, including art, and in how we’ve adapted the nonstop firehose of information spraying at us. Certainty, or the performance of it, can feel like a life preserver.

I recently watched Prime Minister, the documentary about former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern, in which she said something like, “In times of rapid change and complexity, people naturally seek simple explanations.” Given the whiplash of change we’ve experienced in the first 25 years of this century, what amazes me, genuinely, is that we aren’t doing worse.

But if we want to move toward greater complexity, and I think we must, we’ll need to reawaken some muscle groups that have gone soft. Namely: willpower. The will to resist convenience. The will to sit with ambiguity. For me, that starts with something as simple as going to a movie theater. Showing up at a certain hour, putting my phone away, and surrendering to someone else’s story. That act of full commitment feels increasingly radical, and for me, spiritually revitalizing. We also have to be wary of people who claim certainty. Especially in art. Passing through uncertainty is the only way something genuinely new can be achieved.

Ted: My wife, Vanessa Hope, recently shared a quote with me that basically said the beauty of the unknown and uncertain is that it can carry hope. I think that is one of the reasons I have found myself so drawn to “life’s mysteries” lately, is that they are inspiring because they could come out well. They could be something other than chaos.

Alex: Ah, thank you, Vanessa - another quote to pocket. I’m right there with you. Our technocratic class has done its best to rationalize the world into submission, and intentionally or not, they have disenchanted it in the process. Mysteries still abound, but so too does information, which is wonderful in so many ways, but severs our access to those mysteries. Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgard recently wrote an essay in Harper’s about the difficulty of finding meaning and beauty these days. Since we’re sharing quotes: “You might think an abundance of information would add substance to the world,” he writes, “but the opposite is true: it empties the world; it becomes thinner. That’s because knowledge of the world and the experience of the world are two fundamentally different things. While knowledge has no particular time or place and can be transmitted, experience is tied to a specific time and place and can never be repeated. For the same reason, it also can’t be predicted. Exactly those two dimensions—the unrepeatable and the unpredictable—are what technology abolishes.”

Ted: I like making up names for things because we need names to better recognize that some things exist. Our capacity to hold multiple – even conflicting – ideas at once grows over time. But often we won’t see the 32 types of snow until we give them all names.

When we were in Taiwan recently, Vanessa was answering a question about her film in Mandarin and used the romantic word for love when she meant something closer to deep appreciation. When she explained it later to me later, I thought it funny – and really interesting. It’s sort of astounding that we only have a single word for something as complex as love. Sure, we use modifiers to clarify, but we really should develop our language. And I feel this so deeply when it comes to our experience in the world as it is and it is becoming.

We are suffering not just a loss of words, but we don’t know how to use the great tool of cinema to define the moment anymore or even to capture the place or spirit. I link it all to our current emphasis on culture as transactional product. We need to recognize culture as a need, as a celebration of what is to be alive, and what it is to be part of a community contributing to the wonder of the moment.

Granted now that I am on the other side of the mountain I can more readily let my obsessions with accomplishment, security, and career slowly dissipate and instead consider more fully how to use my devotion to making cinema work better -- and that’s a privilege -- but I think we have to all start to unlearn and unwork and experience things fresh and for the joy again. Some folks I know tear down a film as soon as soon as it ends, but I want to find where they found that new thing and succeeded in capturing what may never be here again – what was in the experience.

Alex: I like the mountain metaphor. As a filmmaker, I am very much still climbing, which these days can feel like dangling from the nose of El Capitan with rock shearing off above and below. But there’s exhilaration in that, and a sharpened sense of purpose. As the oft-cited Chinese word for crisis suggests, embedded in crisis is opportunity.

Regarding the impulse to tear down a film as soon as it ends, I see that everywhere now, too. The internet has given everyone a voice, but what we have used it for is largely critical and destructive, not creative and generative. This has been evident since at least the Arab Spring - we’re quick to assemble and tear down what’s broken, but we falter when it comes to imagining and constructing what comes next.

The internet became a central part of our lives only a short time ago, and we’ll need to become gradually more mindful about how we use it. That’s why I’m encouraged by what Hope For Film and others here on Filmstack are doing - creating a more generative, constructive space for cinema discourse.

With Underexposed, I’d love to build toward live events, maybe even self-producing films here. The moment is chaotic and grim for sure, but within that I sense an abundance of potential opportunity, and I don’t want to miss it.

Ted: Thanks for those kind words, Alex. I dig Underexposed too. I guess that’s why we are talking now!

Speaking of challenge of abundance, I marvel at all the great films that have already been made. I have more films I have identified as something I want to see than I have available time to see them. When I do catch up with them, I am frequently impressed, but yet more times than not, when I have available time to watch something – after dinner, after that glass of wine – we settle on another stupid show or something everyone else is watching, and I am disappointed. I wonder how I can curb that urge to stay current with the culture, and instead more frequently indulge my own distinct tastes that generally satisfy me.

Alex: I can relate. It’s like trying to go on a diet at an all-you-can-eat buffet. You want to have the salad, but the mac and cheese is right there – a giant steaming trough of it. But I do believe people eventually tire of so much cultural malnourishment – some people, anyway. Or maybe they will just get bored. Either way, the craving for something that doesn’t feel pre-chewed will, one day, return. The key to getting there personally, I think, is to build small rituals of discernment, and not just in choosing what to watch, but in every area of life. As for staying current with the culture, that is important to maintain, wherever we can still find it. Hopefully we can steer it toward better stuff.

I marvel at the films you have made, and it makes me think about how radically the financing landscape has shifted in the pursuit of certainty. These days, pitching a film often requires you to present “comps” - recent movies that are financially successful and structurally similar. Which is insane when you think about it, because the entire value of a new film is that it hasn’t been made before. I’d love to hear your thoughts: how did we get here? And what, in 2025, feels to you like a reasonable risk for each side, artists and investors, to carry?

Ted: Thanks yet again, Alex; I am flattered. I think it is again “The Curse of Oversimplification” and that is a symptom of people feeling overwhelmed – even if they don’t have to be. I think we have unfortunately trained people to feel insecure in their opinions, particularly when it comes to culture and taste. It is of course easier to go with the herd, and those in power like such actions because it gives them more sway in terms of the outcomes again. But culture is precisely one of the things that it is okay to fight about, and in fact I love culture that makes us want to take a stand. We owe it to each other to advance the discussion though far beyond thumbs up, thumbs down. Beauty is subjective and we can feel differently but it is responsible to articulate how you feel and to try to discern why you feel.

The businesses of creativity have been corralled by the finance ministers, but they aren’t really needed any more if you have responsible people in charge. You can get most of the people to watch ANYTHING some of the time. We’ve learned how to make decent movies consistently and there will be an audience for all of them, albeit for some only when served in a convenient no-hassle environment. Yet, the executives have been fully modified to remain fully compliant. Good luck finding a single executive who is willing to lay down on the train tracks to get their project made. That’s the passion I wanted my team all to have, but only a few ever really had it in their blood.

The whole greenlight process needs to be reinvented – and yeah, I have a plan for that. A company’s reliance on “comps” is really just a mechanism to ensure consistency. No one is really going to make whackadoodle flicks anymore (unfortunately) unless you are making in micro-budgetland. Most companies are more concerned about their projected returns than they are about what the title might say about their identity, their brand, and how that can be used to elevate both their supply and output. A “comp” is always a look back but we are in a time when audiences, art, and artists are all hurtling forward with such speed. We need to understand far more what the factors are that will shape their tastes in 18 months when our film is ready to be released.

Alex: Has your sense of “taste” changed in the last ten years? If so, what shaped that shift?

Ted: I wouldn’t say it is my taste so much that has changed but more my toleration – and that goes in both directions. I have always favored “ambitiously authored” work. I want to see the personality of the filmmaker in the telling of the film. I want it to feel that it could only have come from that director. And I favor flare of some sort but never for the sake of the flare, but more for it as a tool in the telling. Similarly, I favor the experiment to the proof. I like to see people reach beyond their grasps – and if they do that, I am willing to overlook when they fall short, i.e. “the noble failure”.

So, in that sense, my patience for those that don’t take risks grows thin, as does those that only tell a good story well. Maybe my taste in terms of what telling a good story well means has changed over the years.

The redundancy of so much work exhausts me. I have always loved both Big Hollywood and the more gutter grindhouse exploitation world, but each has been on constant repeat consistently and it wears me out. I felt something similar in the mainstream when I entered the industry forty years ago, and it is why I so passionately latched onto what was already brewing with American Independents. They too however got stuck in the same rut. It is a bit why I have so much affection for those that are already embracing a NonDē approach on how they generate, collaborate, execute, share, market, and distribute their work. There is a real joy to be shared when someone says “fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.” I am willing to tolerate a lot more when I see that positioning from the get-go. It may sound negative to some ears, but to mine, it is the most positive positioning anyone can take in this world.

Alex: How about your attention span? How has that changed in the last ten years?

Mine has been wounded for sure, but something unexpected has happened in the past few years: my attention for infinite-scroll content (Twitter, Instagram, et al) has dwindled to nearly zero. Substack has changed the way I spend time online for the better (though it is still addictive and dopamine-inducing, let’s be honest). I want to believe my attention span is on the mend, and Ted Gioia recently pointed to some encouraging trends that suggest others are feeling the same.

Ted: You could make that a very impressive man-on-the-street question, and I suspect everyone would say the same thing, that is if they had the attention span to remember the question, and that is, what attention span? I think we all forget how to concentrate about ten years ago. And yes, of course, that was THEIR plan. Basically, from Naomi Klein’s SHOCK DOCTRINE to Shoshana Zuboff’s SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM to Cory Doctrow and Rebecca Giblin‘s CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM, the Attention Merchants have been supreme Evil Geniuses and manipulated us into a position of constant stress where in turn we grow compliant and surrender both our choice and the value that we both generate and have inherent in our being. It is not a flaw or a glitch in the system, but the actual design. They have gotten us to watch what they supply, share our intimate secrets, and advance their businesses at our own expense. It is criminal, immoral, and unethical. And we roll over and ask for our belly to be rubbed some more please.

Personally speaking, I pay less attention to the crap in front of me, and focus better when I know I am in the presence of someone in control of their medium. I am thankful when I get that which I feel worthy of devotion. Truth is though I feel myself wanting to dismiss things faster. And the hardest part is reading scripts. I once always read a script in a single sitting. I used to write coverage for producers when I started out. I think my record was 15 scripts one weekend in my early twenties. I consider it a success now if I get through three in a weekend. I do my best reading on the plane, mostly because I am too cheap to pay for wifi in flight. When I read at home, unless the writing is beautiful or structured to land the “what happens next” style of suspense, I find myself needing to move around, eat something, see something new. It is jittery and I hate it.

When it comes to cinema – particular in contrast to print – instead of needing new information, I want to linger longer. I want to be asked to trust it, and I want it to show me it has earned my trust. I just don’t have patience if it is taking me somewhere I have been before without adding anything new to the discussion.

Alex: Surveillance Capitalism was a real eye-opener for me. We may be inching closer to a full-on “techlash,” I hope, as the negative consequences of the past decade come into focus for more and more people. I just hope it’s not too late.

Airplanes and movie theaters are great places to turn off your phone and fully focus on a movie. I can’t manage my attention as well in my home, where I am in control. This fast-paced, phone-addled era has given me a new appreciation for “slow cinema,” films that seem to stretch time have become far more interesting to me for their transportive qualities – The Tree of Wooden Clogs and the like.

Ted: What are the trends that get you excited, Alex? Do you see new aesthetics emerging? Forms? Styles?

Alex: As much as I’m discouraged by the blandness that has overtaken most studio movies and even so-called indie / NonDē flicks, I’m energized by some bright spots on the fringes. You and I both identified Eephus as a refreshing curveball, both for its subtlety and unusual approach to character and structure. Secret Mall Apartment also strikes me as significant for its themes and unique distribution strategy.

I recently enjoyed Sunlight, Nina Conti’s film – it hit some notes I haven’t heard in a while. But no coherent trends or mind-blowing new structures, exactly. I asked Maddie Whittle this question recently, she helps run New Directors / New Films - she told me about this movie Mad Bills To Pay by Joel Alfonso Vargas, so keep that one on your radar. On the genre side, Barbarian, which you mentioned, was very significant for me.

Then there is what I wish I was seeing. It puzzles me, for example, that we don’t have a new wave of microbudget smart phone filmmakers, as we did with mumblecore in the early 2000s. Everyone has 4k cameras in their pockets and good gear is cheaper and nimbler than ever.

I have the honor of teaching at an NYU Tisch residency from time to time, and having served as a writer-director in residence there. With my students, I’ve made something like 62 short films in the past few years, and it has really whet my appetite for lean, mean microbudget filmmaking, and shown me what is possible with very limited resources – more than I ever could have dreamed. I’d love for more filmmakers to catch the DIY fever, and not languish waiting for permission.

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Alex and I continue tomorrow over at Underexposed. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a beat.

Part Two has now been published:

The Case for Challenging Movies in Uncertain Times (Part 2)