In Venice, Together Magazine sat down with acclaimed Australian director Peter Weir to reflect on his extraordinary career, his Golden Lion honour, and the state of contemporary cinema. Weir, whose filmography includes The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society, Witness, and Master and Commander, remains one of the most influential and thoughtful voices in filmmaking today.
“Cinema Needs Directors With Ideas”
Q: Mr Weir, where is contemporary cinema going now?
A:
“It’s complicated. You can only make small observations. One of the problems today is that television and streaming have become the province of the writer. The showrunner is the director, and a series is often made by several directors. Cinema is different. Cinema is the director’s medium, and the director is the key person.
“We need more directors with better ideas. Technology isn’t the enemy. Filmmakers must ask themselves: Are we making the films audiences want to see? Perhaps we need longer apprenticeships. We should ignore the notion of the ‘auteur’. You’re probably not a genius, most people aren’t, but you can be a very competent director. You need an apprenticeship, and above all, you must aim to entertain.
“You don’t have to compromise your vision; you can entertain in your own way. Kubrick made films for a wide audience. Christopher Nolan did it with Oppenheimer. Many people didn’t fully understand the film, but as Hitchcock said: You don’t always need to make sense, you just need to hold the audience’s attention.
“I’d like to see a counterattack from directors, especially new ones. Make films worth the price of a ticket. Less activism, fewer lectures. Cinema is not a church. People come for an experience, not a sermon.”
“There Are Too Many Films and Not Enough Ideas”
Q: Is Europe financing too many weak films with ‘easy’ public money compared to the US?
A:
“Yes. There are too many pictures. I once visited a film school in Australia, great equipment, 20 to 50 students all setting up shots. I said, ‘Clear the equipment out. Sit down. Let’s talk ideas.’
“These tools are only there to record the idea, but you need an idea worth filming. It’s like picking up a loaded weapon. First you learn how it works before you fire it.
“I asked the group: ‘Did anything happen on your way here today? Did you see something strange, touching, curious? What were you thinking about this morning?’ We went around the room. It’s a mental gymnasium, making the muscles of imagination work.
“That’s where filmmaking begins. Too many cameras, not enough looking.”
“The Idea Comes Before the Screenplay”
Q: Are screenplays still important, or less so?
A:
“They’re still essential, but the idea comes first. You can have a beautifully written screenplay that’s simply not interesting.
“Jean-Claude Carrière, who worked with Buñuel, wrote a wonderful book about screenwriting. He said that when he and Buñuel collaborated, they would go to the countryside, work in the mornings, then have the afternoons free. They would have dinner and drinks, then the next morning tell each other their dreams. They did this for ages without writing anything down.
“The writing is the last step. I loved that approach.”
“AI Is a Wild Horse We Must Break In”
Q: Some people are scared of AI. What’s your view?
A:
“It’s too early to tell. There will be benefits, but we must understand the dangers. In the creative world, AI is most threatening to the least talented.
“You can copy someone’s style—but even the greatest art forgers are eventually caught. AI will produce convincing imitations of famous writers, but they will be exposed in the end.
“It will take years to ‘break in’ the horse. AI is a wild horse—we need to get the bridle on, then the saddle. Eventually it will obey its rider. You can’t have wild horses running around.
“Voice replication is particularly dangerous. We’ve already seen political consequences. You don’t want to imagine what will happen once this becomes widespread.”
