WE NEED FUTURE CINEMA, NOW

Daft Punk did it for house music, now WE need to do it for movies. P.S. I drank way too much espresso today and therefore frequently use the word 'fuck' and its numerous variations.

Somebody told me to drop my credentials at the top of these posts. Which I fucking detest. But I’ll do it.

I have made a bunch of movies over the last 15 years. A bunch of them have screened at major festivals like Sundance, TIFF, SXSW, Telluride, Venice, Tribeca, and my personal favorite Sitges (everywhere but Cannes, goddamn it), most have received distribution via top tier distributors in theaters, on major streamers as originals, etc. GOD I HATE DOING THIS. But I do it to say: I’m not a household name by any means, but I’ve had a great run in the traditional world of independent film. The current system has pretty much worked for me.

But it needs to die. And quickly. It’s dying anyway, so let’s pull the fucking plug and move on.

Ok. Can I take you on a journey? I’d like to take you on a journey. And just in case you think I suck, I’ll bring Daft Punk along as my humble spirit co-narrator. And if you think they suck then please leave because you suck. Yeah that’s right. Anyone who doesn’t like Daft Punk has no soul and therefore no business being here. PEACE OUT HATERS.

Here’s what you will learn from Daft Punk, via me, in this post:

• How to create the future by respecting the past

• How to gain freedom through lowering costs

• How to innovate and tell a story at the same time - YOUR METASTORY

Ok, ok. Before I get too far, what does Daft Punk have to do with the future of cinema? EVERYTHING.

First of all — they are robots. That’s cinema.

But for real first of all, their debut album “Homework” reflected their understanding of and a reverence for the dance music legends who came before them. They’d done their homework, and honored their studies. And nowhere is this respect more blatant than on the banger track “Teachers” in which they namecheck the masters who came before them — this includes everyone from those you probably all recognize like Brian Wilson, Dr. Dre, and George Clinton to the lesser known (outside of the niche) largely Chicago and Detroit based progenitors of dance music.

Daft Punk looked like they walked out of the future, sounded like they were from the future, and created the sound that would become our actual future. And they were theatrical and bold and unapologetic as fuck about all this. But they did it by paying respects to the past.

And they did it on their own terms.

Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk) — “to be free, we had to be in control. To be in control, we had to finance what we were doing ourselves. The main idea was to be free.”

They recorded this album, which included chart topping hits like “Da Funk” and “Around the World” in their bedroom studio (another reason it’s titled “Homework”). Before long, they would sell millions of records, and more importantly — leave a lasting impact on culture.

Daft Punk’s bedroom studio where their debut album “Homework” was recorded.

This album also inspired Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze to make two of their best videos, helping them develop their signature styles early in the careers, before they directed classic films like ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.

Gondry

Jonze

They made two more incredible, Earth shattering albums, pushing dance music forward and into the public consciousness. People were now listening to underground house music, previously experienced exclusively in sweaty raves in former industrial towns across Europe and the American Midwest, all over the world — these tracks were breaking into the top 40. You could hear “Around the World” on the playlist at grocery stores and malls literally around the world. And it started with two guys in a bedroom in Paris. If that’s not subversive art, I don’t know what is.

For one of these albums, their second, when they were on top of the world after their breakout success — they appeared in a promo stunt dressed in their robot costumes on a Japanese train, dancing their hearts out. According the Bangalter, they did this because they wanted their music to feel the way the music they loved made them feel as children. COME ON! THIS IS THE SPIRIT IN WHICH ALL ART SHOULD BE CREATED.

Next, they took on scoring TRON. Again, paying tribute to the past — the great Wendy Carlos of the original TRON score (and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), and a now classic but once revolutionary ‘dropped out of the future’ film of its time, by making music that felt right for the film, but also like it was not just from the future, but from another planet in the future — a planet that exists as a simulation in a distant future only reached through a wormhole on the other side of some origami folded universe.

If this doesn’t get you going, you’re dead to me.

Their next, and thus far final, album was “Random Access Memories”. A clever title. And masterful storytelling. As I mentioned, Daft Punk is comprised of two robots who make electronic music, with a reverence for the past, who control their own work and somehow keep creating new futures that blow up the old futures they already created (which are now their pasts… fuck time travel narratives and their annoying paradoxes). How else could they wrap up their music careers than to make an album that sounded AND FELT unlike anything ever made, while tapping a whole gang of their musical heroes to come play with them?

Not only this, but they have a track featuring MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, THE NEVER ENDING STORY, SCARFACE composer Giorgio Moroder talking about how he intentionally set out to create the music of the future in the 1970s!!! WHICH HE DID??!!!

And then, THEN, they end the record with a psychotically energized track called “Contact” that starts with an account of an air traffic control operator witnessing a UFO, and then builds to a rocket launching. THE FUCKING ROBOTS WERE FUCKING ALIENS WHO LEFT US THIS INCREDIBLE MUSICAL LEGACY AND ARE NOW BLASTING OFF BACK TO FUCKING SPACE.

This is storytelling.

So why have I spent however many hundred words of my post on FUTURE CINEMA ranting about an electronic music artist who hasn’t release truly new material in 15 years?

Because I fucking love them. And their template is analogous to film.

Here’s how:

CREATE THE FUTURE BY RESPECTING THE PAST

Teachers: Godard, Peckinpah, Coppola (Francis), Schrader, Verhoeven, Cassavetes, Kassovitz, Coppola (Sophia), Tarantino, Bigelow, Cameron, Korine, Hopper, Varda, Lucas, Maysles, Lee, Fargeat, Duplass, Noe, Kaufman, Carpenter, Nolan, Herzog, Soderbergh.

The list goes on.

These filmmakers took established and tired genres, cut them up, and pasted them back together in their own image. They established genres of their own. They revived cinema when it was dying (as it does every 20 years) and made us love movies again.

Godard’s iconoclastic legacy is so strong that Richard Linklater, an iconoclast himself, just made a movie about it — imagine — what would Godard do if he was in his prime today?

We need these kinds of filmmakers now. Right now. Auteurs (yes I fucking said it) who have a vision, and use today’s tools and the ridiculous state of the world we live in to make explosive movies with something to say — artistically, politically, personally. Movies that shake us to our core, drive us into theaters, make us not stop talking about them until EVERYONE knows why we are so crazy about what they are doing.

There are so many bold filmmakers who have paved the way for us. Let’s study their work, and not copy them formally, but follow in their footsteps spiritually.

GAIN FREEDOM THROUGH LOWERING COSTS

I just dropped this quote, but I’ll repeat it:

Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk) — “to be free, we had to be in control. To be in control, we had to finance what we were doing ourselves. The main idea was to be free.”

I’m not saying everyone needs to finance their own movies. But what if we took a first principles approach to reexamining what a movie should cost? If we do that, maybe we can finance our own movies? If we can tell groundbreaking stories without building sets (seriously look at the world around you, there’s production value everywhere) and designing expensive set pieces, maybe we can pool our resources, and share in the spoils? If we share our time, our resources, our knowledge — we can control the means of production. Because they just don’t cost that much anymore.

Want to know something? After years of overly produced movies with too much world building and not enough humanity, our movies will be better simply because we have less money to spend. Writing is free. Befriend actors. Steal locations. Edit on a public library computer if you have to.

Truly, I can think of no valid reason that should stop someone with a vision from making a movie right now. You don’t have a camera? Use a cell phone. You have a good reason why you need a cinema camera to shoot your film? Fuck it, you can borrow mine. I’m not kidding.

Pitch me something that makes my spine tingle and I’ll give you everything I can to help you make it happen.

Here’s the thing — if you and your friends can make a movie without asking anyone for a dollar, you control the story, you control the distribution, and if it makes any money, you control the profits.

INNOVATE AND TELL A STORY AT THE SAME TIME - YOUR METASTORY

The filmmakers I listed above all make great movies. They are all innovators. Most of them are also great at telling their own story. Daft Punk turned themselves into robots. They created a mythology surrounding their work that drew even more interest to their art. And then they had the goods to back it up.

In a world where we have so much information at our fingertips, nothing sells like mystery. More importantly, in creating a narrative around yourself as an artist, you free yourself from the prison of you. Your anxieties, your insecurities, your ego — you check that shit at the door when you become the artist whose movies will break our brains. You think Harmony Korrine and Gaspar Noe are the enfant terribles we see in interviews when they have dinner with their mothers? No! It’s a performance. A powerful one. Create the artist you want to become. Tell that person’s story. Have some fun with it. Wear a robot mask if that’s your cup of tea. And let us follow that narrative as we follow the evolution of your work.

CONCLUSION

Let’s stop making movies for the market.

I’ve personally been guilty of this — why are we trying to make movies we think will work in today’s market when today’s market is broken beyond repair? We should be making movies that blow audiences’ minds. That show them what cinema is — movies that make future generations want, nay… NEED, to make movies. The timidity and over commercialization and just… fucking… lameness that has been the last 10 years in cinema is so so SO boring.

We live in 2025. The seas are rising. Cars drive themselves. Everyone is talking about AI all day long. Let’s create a FUTURE CINEMA deserving of the future we live in — good and bad.

Let’s break some shit. Narratives. Business models. Everything. Let’s tell great stories.

If we wanted our lives to be dictated by market forces we’d have gone into finance. But we became artists. We owe the spirit of Dionysus more than we’ve been giving.

The time is now. A lot of us thought the DSLR would democratize filmmaking 15 years ago. Me and my friends made a black and white movie out of our backpacks in France with a crew of 5 within 30 days of the Canon 5D Mark ii dropping. It was our ode to the French New Wave. We thought it was the future. But we were still beholden to the old distribution system. Kind of. We had iTunes, which was a lifesaver, but god… if I was releasing that today, the reach we could have.

Turns out, the means of distribution are as important as the means of production.

And guess what? Distribution is now FREE. I’m bringing these words to you for FREE. You can bring your movie to the internet for FREE. And promote it for FREE.

This is freedom.

I know I’m not alone here. There are so many great voices on this platform spearheading the cinematic revolution that needs to happen.

Jon Stahl

writes in incredible detail about the current system and how to adapt to the new one that’s emerging.

Sophie

’s

That Final Scene

and her concept of cinemas as cultural gyms feels like the start of a training ground for a new generation of film lovers to truly appreciate the art of cinema.

Taylor Lewis

’s new Zine Project is exactly the kind of film lover run publication that eschews the hollywood press machine’s fluff and gives us the platform we need to discuss the films we love.

And of course

Ted Hope

drops a film school education’s worth of knowledge (more actually, as its based in an INCREDIBLE wealth of experience) consistently.

The passion from these writers/film lovers and SO many more gives me so much hope that a FUTURE CINEMA is happening. It’s truly revolutionary —I can FEEL it — and I can’t fucking wait to see what you all make.

PEACE.

Sean