We recently interviewed Cody Clarke for their film My Submission about an actress’s attempts to land a job, and her night recording self tapes. We talked about found footage, the beast that is the industry at large, and the prospect of AI as a downsizing tool in Hollywood.
AMR: We get a lot of found footage films these days, mostly in horror, what made you want to do a comedy/drama film in that vein?
CC: I’ve made a couple other non-horror found footage movies (The DVD, We Should Make a Movie) as well as several mockumentaries, and I think a bunch of years ago it just got into my head that presenting fictional characters through a piece of art that the characters have ostensibly created themselves is a really interesting way to get to know them. Much as we might get to know (or feel like we’ve gotten to know) a real life filmmaker through their work, the same could be done with characters. Not all stories would work for being told in this way, but once I had that realization that it was a possibility, it opened the doors conceptually for me to be able to come up with those kinds of stories once in a while.
I’m forever in debt to horror as essentially starting the ‘found footage’ subgenre, but I think some subgenres that start within a certain genre have the potential to work in other genres as well, if we just expand our minds. For instance, psychological horror becoming psychological comedy or psychological drama in the hands of someone like Charlie Kaufman. But, that particular leap of course happened in literature long before it ever happened in film.
AMR: How much of your own experience/those close to you experiences, went into this film regarding trying to get projects and experiences within the film industry?
CC: I mean, people who know me will definitely see a lot of me in this movie, particularly in her character. Not necessarily personality-wise, but definitely opinion-wise in spots. A filmmaker friend of mine, Dan Lotz, said that this might be the most Cody Clarke movie that I’ve made yet. He might be right, and not just because of the soapbox aspects, but because it is kind of a synthesis of a lot of what I’m into aesthetically and intellectually.
As for my own experiences, all of my dealings with the Hollywood machine itself have been horrible, in kind of a ‘the house always wins’ way. It’s a casino, and you’re just a mark. Even if you’re a golden goose, even if you’re bursting with ideas and could make them a ton of money, you’re just a mark in their eyes. The one good thing is that you really do on occasion meet cool, not at all fake people who work within that system and who are beacons of light amidst the darkness. Famous people who are a lot cooler and more aware than you could even imagine, but just can’t be publicly cool, or else like whack-a-mole they’ll be whacked on the head for it and sent back into their hidey hole. To use the casino metaphor again, I guess it’s like meeting a waitress at a casino that you do genuinely connect with, but she can’t let the pit boss see her being a normal human being with a customer, so you’ve gotta be stealth about it.
AMR: Normally I’d put this in later but I think it works here, from this project what would your advise be to people trying to get into the industry who are doing similar things to your protagonist in parts of the film?
CC: That’s a great question. I think above all else my advice would be that, if you really are right for something, like destined for a particular project, there really isn’t a wrong note you can hit or a wrong thing you can do (other than you turning it down). You’re just ‘it’—it’s just fate at that point. Someone can see you across the room at a party, or in a department store, and get this psychic realization that you’re who they’ve been looking for for their art. The best projects come together like that, are romantic in that sense. I’d say just open yourself up to recognizing those moments in life when they happen, and not being afraid by those moments just because you got it into your head that you need to have recorded the perfect slate video, or paid for the perfect headshot, or put together the perfect reel, or read the lines in a perfect way. It doesn’t have to be hard work, is what I mean, and it’s not a red flag if something comes to you easily and effortlessly. The best opportunities in life often come as a result of someone just being irrationally, often inexplicably, enthusiastic about you. And that can seem creepy at first maybe, to the uninitiated, but at its core its the most beautiful thing in the universe, and a powerful way for art to come together. That said, genuine creeps can operate in that same way, but what they’re doing is an impression of that, not actually that. Just because they’re faking love at first sight doesn’t mean that love at first sight doesn’t exist.
AMR: How do you see A.I reshaping the experience of those seeking to work in the industry in the next few years?
CC: My first love was magic, and in learning magic you learn to spot magic tricks, and most of what I’ve seen as far as the promise of AI isn’t real, just a trick. Like, for example, the most impressive stuff people see from AI is very helped along and corrected by humans. It’s like 20% AI, 80% human tweaking of what was generated. AI is a technology, but it’s not THE technology, and it never will be. It over-promises and over-hypes in order to get a ton of funding, and then it under-delivers and blames that on not having enough money and resources and water and energy. Even though every available speck of that is being allocated to AI. The truth is, there is a ceiling to all this AI stuff, and it’s a lot lower than futurists say it is. Our world is going to be reshaped and contorted and upended in various other ways besides AI.
As far as navigating that in the immediate, people doing things BECAUSE of AI is a very real threat, even though AI itself is an overblown threat. A company laying off a ton of people because it thinks AI can do all their jobs easier and cheaper is a threat, even if it’s not literally true that AI will be able to do that. Belief in AI is more dangerous than AI. The belief is the danger, less so the tech.
I would say that Hollywood is very clearly being downsized, and AI is certainly an aspect of that, but AI is mostly just the scapegoat—the Hollywood model is dead for plenty of other reasons, it’s just that AI is a convenient reason to present to the public. The writing was on the wall for a while though. What makes a movie able to be a movie was chipped away at for decades, and now there’s almost nothing left to chip away. The Hollywood era is almost over. But, filmmakers like me and others will always make films, because we don’t do it to be a part of industry, we do it because we genuinely love the medium.
AMR: What was your inspiration behind making this film, this can be filmic inspiration or personal real life inspiration?
CC: I think I’ve made so many movies at this point that my biggest inspiration for my films are just previous films of mine. I’ll be working on a movie, and at some point I’ll think to myself ‘oh—if I were to zag here in the story instead of zig, I could have a completely different movie that tackles this similar theme’. And then I just write down that germ of an idea and revisit it later. Then, of course, when you start actually fleshing an idea out, it changes and changes and changes, and by the time you’re done with it, audiences might not see how intrinsically connected the two pieces of art by you are. But, they’ll feel a sort of distant-relative aspect to them perhaps.
AMR: If you had to sum up the message of the film in a line what would it be?
CC: What you hold dear when alone, for your own survival, will not be the same as what you hold dear when you’re in love and can finally breathe.
AMR: Do you have any future projects you would like to talk about or plug?
CC: I’m writing a sci-fi film right now that I’m really excited about, and that I have the lead cast for (someone new that I haven’t worked with before). I hope to shoot that in the Spring or Summer here in NYC. But, with how fast I work, who knows, I might shoot a couple other movies before then. I will certainly participate in Joel Haver’s yearly ‘Make a Movie Instead of Watching the Oscars’ event, where thousands of people around the world shoot a feature film (40 minutes or more, by the Academy’s own definition) in the 3 1/2 hours that the Oscars are airing, then edit it in a week. I’ve done that every year since 2022. But, the sci-fi one is my next real big project.
If you would like to check out My Submission yourself you can head over to the link below
http://killthelionfilms.gumroad.com/
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