“How did we get here?” Director James Gray’s powerful message at the Cannes Film Festival

Brut America

“We used to think of franchises as McDonald’s and Burger King, now we talk about it with cinema.”   At the Cannes Film Festival, director James Gray had this to say about capitalism ...  #Cannes2022

Transcript

00:00I think we're in serious trouble today, don't you?

00:03Take a look at the world.

00:05I mean, what happened? How did we get here?

00:07How did we get here to where there's like two people who own everything, right?

00:11There's a bunch of authoritarians that are trying to take over the planet.

00:15How did we get here?

00:19It didn't happen by accident.

00:21You know, I'm not advertising for Soviet-style communism

00:26because I went to the Soviet Union in 1984.

00:29It was completely broken.

00:31But you at least had some other system.

00:34Today it's the market.

00:36The market is God.

00:38You tell someone who's under 20,

00:40you're a sellout, they think it means you have no more tickets left.

00:44They don't know what it means.

00:47So where does that leave us?

00:51The whole point is to inspire creativity,

00:54to inspire a world which is creating artists at a rapid rate,

00:58and instead what we teach is,

01:00oh, that's a good franchise.

01:02Get into that franchise.

01:03We used to think of franchises as McDonald's and Burger King.

01:05Now we talk about it with cinema.

01:08What happened?

01:09Something happened.

01:11Why aren't we talking about that more?

01:13Where is the critique of capitalism itself,

01:16which has led to a system of horrendous inequality?

01:20So when you ask me about where we are today,

01:23we're in deep trouble.

01:25And it's up to artists to show what's wrong

01:27because it's not coming from anywhere else,

01:29I can tell you that.

01:31So that's my own view.

01:36That's an easy applause line.

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