I'm More Interested in Old Movies and Books These Days
I’m finding I’m more interested in old books and movies these days. I don’t have to worry about Escape From New York or Yes, Madam being generated by AI. I don’t have to wonder if Gate of Ivrel or Around the World in Eighty Days was edited by a glorified chatbot.
I read an article about a South Korean animated film made entirely with AI. Just yesterday, when I was looking for magazines to sell short stories to, I found one that was okay with AI-generated stories. Imagine not only thinking AI-written stories were good enough to publish, but being comfortable enough to say that out loud.
I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies lately, having spent so many years focusing on video games for my YouTube channel. As I look for novels and films, I think about what kind of stories I want to experience. And I’m finding the answer to that is more and more "old stuff." 'Old' is a relative term, of course, but I’m mostly talking stuff before 2010, at least.
Some of the books I’ve read in the last five months include Heavy Time, Gate of Ivrel, Around the World in Eighty Days, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Movies are even older, stuff like Escape From New York, Yes, Madam, Ip Man, Yojimbo, Gojira, Chungking Express, and Shaolin Soccer. There’s a comfort here with these stories. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s nice knowing AI wasn’t involved in their creation, yes, but there’s something more. I feel like so many older movies and books are better than new ones.
My brain is screaming right now: “It’s obvious, Josh. Creators had more creative control back then, before studios and publishers started interfering!” Well, brain, shut up. We both know that’s not really true. Interference by finances and artists pushing back against their limitations and changes is a duo as old as time. The peanut butter and jelly of shittiness. Maybe there were fewer limitations back then, but artists throughout time have had to acquiesce to higher powers reigning limitations upon them. Perhaps it's gotten worse. It’s been at least a decade since I saw a Hollywood movie that didn’t feel toothless and boilerplate. Maybe my brain is right after all?
Then again, I have weird tastes. I mean, how many people are anxiously seeking the 1954 version of Godzilla or Cynthia Rothrock’s first film? I mean, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Am I about to teach a college poetry class? I don’t know, maybe I’m just an old man trapped in a young man’s body. I’m a year or two away from shaking my keyboard at those teens and their holographic projectors implanted in their eyes at age 15 and telling them to get off my digital lawn.
You know, sometimes when I write these daily blogs I completely lose the plot. I usually don’t notice, but even I did a double take at that last sentence.
Things are going to get worse before they get better. With the increasing rise of AI tools, and companies like a16z trying to force AI into everything. Dead Internet theory is nothing new, but I wonder how much longer it's only going to be a theory. I wonder how long it’ll be before human writers and directors are forced to hang their art on the refrigerators of pop culture because copyright-stealing machines have taken over. So many movie studios are really excited about using AI actors and AI scripts. Animation companies are tripping over themselves to have the best genAI tools. Is there any hope? Last I checked, AI doesn’t want money. It expects its payment in the form of all the water and electricity in the world.
I don’t know. It’s a tough time for normal people these days. It feels like I chose a bad time to get back into fiction writing, in particular. Knowing that I’m going to have a hard time selling anything—and if I do, it’ll get stolen by the Altmans and Musks of the world—doesn’t make me feel great. I wonder if this very blog is being hoovered up int some nebulous data center somewhere. It’s like a real-life horror movie.
