Vincenzo Natali's Peripheral Visions

Come for Josh's rant on the future of the internet, stay for his conversation with Vincenzo Natali, director of 'Cube,' 'Splice,' and your favorite episodes of 'Hannibal,' who has taken on William Gibson's reality-bending book 'The Peripheral' and turned it into electrifying TV. The two discuss how horror is in our DNA, his creative relationship with AI, and the difficulties of turning 80's sci-fi into modern art. Discussed: Ray Harryhausen, math that kills you, "big" iPads.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hey, and welcome to what Future. I'm Josh. Whoa whoa,
whoa whoa? What? Josh, what's going on with your audio?
It's funny you should ask that. Um. Funny and also rude.
Actually um, But that's okay. I'm gonna let that slide.
I am recording this portion of the podcast from a
hotel room just outside of San Francisco, which sounds like

(00:43):
when you say somethings just outside of a major city,
sounds like you're doing like a drug deal, right, I mean,
I'm not doing a drug deal. Maybe explain that one.
I don't know, just just outside of Like, why aren't
I in San Francisco? Right? You know, I guess I'd
more likely to do a drug deal in San Francisco,
you know. Maybe I don't know. I'm not trying to
comment on the crime in San Francisco or anything. Okay, No,

(01:05):
I'm not Gavin Newsom. I don't know what's going on there.
But anyhow, I'm in a hotel. I'm traveling during what
is a very unusual week I think in the world.
But I mean is every isn't every week unusual? Now?
Am I nostalgic for a time that never existed. Do
I imagine an era where the weeks would go by

(01:27):
and you wouldn't know anything about what the president was doing,
or what was happening in politics, or if there were
wars in the world, or like what the billionaires were
doing with you know, their money, or what kind of
horrible crimes are being committed or atrocities in other countries?
Like Am I nostalgic? First off? Is it nostalgia? I

(01:49):
don't even know. Do I perceive of this thing having
existed that never really existed? I mean, all of these
things were always happening, but you didn't always have to
know about And now it feels like there's a moral
requirement to know, right, I do think it's a little
bit the lack of information that we used to have.
But anyhow, so I'm traveling, and when you're traveling and

(02:15):
I'm alone, I think you have a lot of time
to ponder. By the way, this is all my explanation
of why my audio sounds bad. I just want to
remind the listener out there that we would be talking
about something it's way more interesting. I think if Lyrah
hadn't called me out um rudely and sensitively called out
my audio changes. Look, it's just who I am. I'm

(02:36):
a really rude person. No, I can't, I can't it.
I understand you're just not nice. It's fine, but you
know so, so I've had a lot of time to
think that. I've been thinking about, um, the way that
we travel now, which feels like, you know, sometimes it's
not just physical travel, but it's this kind of like
you know, I don't know, you know, at the at

(02:56):
the risk of beating uh. First off, beating a dead
horror is kind of a rude expression. I do once
in a while catch myself when I say, because you know,
I say, it's like Zelda, my daughter, and it's like, yeah,
that does sound really rude and mean. Anyhow, not to
beat the dead horse. But obviously Twitter is is on
my mind a lot because once the Twitter stuff really

(03:16):
started getting bad, and I do think a lot of
people are kind of backing away from Twitter. It feels,
I mean, there are a lot of people who are,
you know, rage quitting it, but also just kind of
going like, I'm not going to spend a lot of
time with this now. I don't I don't like to
rage quick things, so I'm going to kind of hang
on and just see where it goes. You know, I
just want to kind of sit on the sidelines and
watch it burn like the little girl in that meme picture.

(03:38):
Meme picture. That's the most old I've ever sounded. Just
then we can put a put a mark down, write
it down on the calendar mid November. Josh to Pulsky
sounds as old as he's ever sounded when he says
the words meme picture. Anyhow, over the last few weeks
I've been I've been experimenting with this social network called
masted On, which is not new. It's it's been around

(04:00):
for several years. Have you heard of mastered on. No. Conceptually,
the way it functions and looks is you know you,
if you looked at it, you'd say, okay, that's kind
of like Twitter, but it is um You can have
your own Twitter with its own sort of rules and regulations,
and that your personal like lyras Lyra's masted On instance,

(04:24):
can be part of. It's part of this thing called
the feed averse, like the Federated Universe of masted on
instances or mastered on servers or whatever. This is already
sounding completely insane right, like, totally makes no sense. No
normal person wants this, no normal person needs this, No
normal sounds next level Internet like the Internet I'm not

(04:48):
ready for. Well, it's it's actually interesting because it is.
And I wrote a little bit about this on this
masted On thing about how you know, there's this whole movement,
this web three point no movement, which is is concerned with, uh,
decentralizing the Internet. Meaning the way the Internet works now
is essentially this top down creation. Right, We've turned it

(05:09):
into this place where every part of the Internet you
go to, or every part of the Internet you use,
is essentially owned and operated by some massive corporation that
sets its own sort of rules and regulations and has
its own policies and can kind of do whatever it
wants with the users. Right. So Google and Facebook and
Twitter and you know, Amazon and whoever. Right. But what's

(05:31):
interesting is this master died on network operates very much
like an expression of this idea that maybe the Internet
shouldn't be all of these super huge, shared, single size spaces,
but it should be you can connect spaces together. And

(05:52):
by the way, this is kind of how the Internet
used to be. Things could be connected together, but they
were not necessarily beholden to a single way of doing things.
And so what Masteredon is, interestingly is like maybe a
better expression than any crypto thing I've ever seen, or
any n f T or any of this stuff that
people talk about and pitch on on on social networks
as the future where it's like, oh, yeah, okay, I

(06:13):
can kind of see how this works because I want
to give the person who runs the this whatever instance
of Mastodon gives them control, but it also gives the
individual a lot of control. And in fact, Mastodon is
built in many ways by the l g B t
Q plus community, by transactivists, by people who have really
been you know, beat up on sort of mainstream social networks,

(06:37):
people who are not the mainstream sort of you know,
American middle American user or whatever. And so they've built
mastered On with this idea of consent, giving you control
and consent over what you can see, over what can
be shared over you know, how information is sort of presented,
and and and and and it takes into account all

(06:59):
sorts of things that a lot of like older social
networks have been very slow and taken into account, like
having content warnings or you know, keeping photos blurred until
the user actually wants to see them, or even having
you know, written descriptions for photos for people who are
have you know, site issues or whatever. And so I
think it's just an interesting and it is an interesting
model that where Twitter is like Twitter basically created tools

(07:22):
that would allow people to harass other people on mass
and they did nothing to prevent it. Like Twitter is
basically custom designed to allow for these like sort of
insane mobbing techniques where you can retweet somebody and show
it to a bunch of people who have nothing to
do with it, and all of those people can kind
of pile on, whereas something like masted On is built

(07:43):
like to do kind of the opposite. It is not
meant to like have things go viral necessarily or expose
this sort of one message or moment to like as
many people as possible, and what you can do with
that with that individual moment is much more about like
what you consent to versus sort of what the system

(08:03):
pushes you into. And so I'm not saying that massodon
is the future of social media. Maybe you know TikTok
is the future, although you know, I just looked at
TikTok recently and I have to say, what I saw
there was very worrying for humanity. In my opinion. That's
just one old guy's opinion. One one guy who said,
meme page, talking here, meme picture, whatever it is. I said,

(08:28):
but you know, I think it's interesting that there's some
new ideas still to explore, and it kind of gives
me a little again, I feel I feel like all
the time, I'm like, oh, I'm so surprised to discover
that maybe I don't feel as hopeless as I thought
I did about some of the things that are happening.
But I do think Massodon is an interesting sort of
experiment in what if we thought differently about how we
should arrange people and how we should arrange social networks.

(08:51):
And and frankly, like, one of the reasons why I
continued to remain extremely interested in technology even when it's
kind of abusing me is that, you know, it feels
like there still is something there that we haven't seen yet,
that we haven't experienced yet, that we hadn't even thought
of yet, you know. And if you if you'd have
told me that I would even be entertaining a new

(09:14):
sort of framework for a social network, I don't know
A year ago, I'd be like, no, I don't think
that will ever happen again. And so, you know, I
am kind of impressed with technology's ability to to surprise.
I mean, I think the conversation we had last week
with the CEO of mid Journey is a great example
of another technology that has surprised me and impressed me

(09:36):
and excited me about the future and anyhow, So all
of this this has all been on my mind, and
as I've been traveling and alone with my thoughts, just
sitting in a dark room, one loan tier streaming down
my cheek, just thinking and being with my brain. Um,
you know, it reminded me of a of a conversation
we had recently, which I think, you know, is very relevant.

(09:59):
And I've been thinking a lot about with the director
and producer Vincenzo Natali, who's you know, currently helming The Peripheral,
which is a show about virtual reality and the future
of technology and like really wild stuff based on a
book written by William Gibson. And as I've been alone
with all of these thoughts about shifting from place to
place and what technology can actually do for us, and

(10:22):
also what is frightening about it, I felt like it's
a good time too to have that conversation. So here's
my conversation with Vincen's natally and obviously the audio is
gonna sound way better than this does. Vincenzo, thank you

(10:58):
for joining me today. I'm really pretty shade it. I
have a question for you, which is, what did you
have for breakfast today? Well, I'm a healthy breakfast person.
I would like to say, yes, I had to brand
and route. That sounds healthy. Yeah it is, and then
the rest of the day it all goes to hell. Yeah.

(11:19):
And and what about sleep? Do you get a lot
of sleep? Are you a good sleeper? I am? Yeah, really,
I like to do a health check with when anybody
who comes on the show. I just want to get
a sense of like how they're feeling, like what their
wellness levels are, that sort of thing. Well, there's a
million other reasons I could drop dead at any seconds. Okay,
but sleep and breakfast at taking care of we're in
a good place. You're like, I had a great, very

(11:40):
healthy breakfast and I just sorted a ton of cocaine,
So anything can happen. It's exactly everything in moderation. You're
a director, a producer, a writer. You wear many hats,
but you do seem to be interested in horror to
some extent or at least. Uh well, actually, would you
call it horror? Would you call the some of the

(12:00):
things you do horror? Oh? Yes, I have no problem
with that label. Okay, good, you're not like no, But
what is it about the genre? Like how did you
come to that genre? And what is it that excites
you about it? And how do you stay excited about it?
And there's like three different questions, but let's start with
how you got there. Well, people have been asking me
that a lot recently. It's hard for me to answer
that because my earliest memories include horror. I've always been

(12:24):
drawn to it and in life or or film, well both,
I guess not not horrific events in your life. No,
although I'm convinced that, you know, an attraction to horror
is sort of an awareness or a reaction to the
horror that exists in our lives, so that you know,
it's a kind of sensitivity. Joe Hill very wisely said

(12:48):
that people who create horror content are not satistic, there empathetic,
And I feel like if you have a lot of
empathy for other people and your sensitive to the world
around you. Probably you have a taste for horror because
the world can be pretty horrifying. Yeah, so so maybe

(13:09):
that's why I really don't know if ever gets into
self psychoanalysis, I'm sure no. I like, I like, that's
hopefully you have a breakthrough on this show. That's what
I would like to have happened. So I'm just you know,
at the end of the day, I'm just not that interesting. Like,
I don't think there's anything particularly distinctive about me, And
that's part of the reason I'm drawn to fantasy. In
anything that I make, I would never want to document

(13:30):
my life because I would just put people to sleep instantly.
My external life is not very interesting. Maybe the internal
one is a little more interesting. But I, you know,
horror to me, it's all kind of one thing. Horror,
fantasy and science fiction are a way of approaching the
real world in an indirect way, and and you know,
it's partially an escape, but I think it's more about

(13:51):
like digging under the surface of things and so on
some level, probably unconscious level. That is part of the
reason that I am drawn to it. Um part of
it is, you know, I just grew up in a
kind of middle class environment and you know, in a
very safe city Toronto, you know, an apartment complex, very clean,

(14:13):
very you know. I think there was just maybe a
desire to escape from that. And but horror specifically, I
think it's it's deeper than that. I think I actually
believe that there might be genetic code for like a
horror gene that is responsible for what draws people to horror,

(14:33):
because I see it in my kid who connected with
this stuff, and I have not encouraged it whatsoever. I
am just feel like it's hereditary. You don't think you
don't think there's just like a kind of within your world,
there's I mean, presumably you've got a lot of projects
going on that are I mean, you're around this stuff
all the time. You don't think it's just like by
osmosis from just the conversations or the things you're working on.

(14:56):
You think it's just an inherent He was so young
when he is drawn to it, it it would have he
couldn't possibly have been affected by anything that I can
certainly would have seen that. So no, it's some I
actually think there's like a protein sequence that that makes
you I don't know this is just a silly conjecture
on my part, but I think we have you know,
our taste certainly has to be determined by our genetic makeup,

(15:18):
So why not horror? I mean, it's interesting. I feel
like a lot of the things you've done, or at
least certainly some of the things you've done, are interested in,
like how the body works and how the mind works.
And what's funny that your explanation for why someone would
like horror, perhaps why you like it, is something that's
like just genetically built in. I mean, I think there's

(15:39):
something to it. By the way, I'm sure there's a
study out there that either proves or disproves this concept,
but I do, I do think it is an extreme thing.
Like I know people, and I'm sure you know these
these people who don't like to be scared when they
watch a movie, don't like to experience like what a
horror movie does, or even what a thriller does. And
it's a very strong, it feels like a very binary

(15:59):
sort of reaction. It's either like you really like it
and you enjoy it and there's just something about it
you can do over and over again, or you really
dislike it and I found that, like, there's not a
lot of people who are like I like a little
bit of horror, but not too much. So maybe there's
something to it, you know, maybe we need to do
some study. Maybe we need to do a study. Um,
I almost don't want to know, that's the thing, Like,
I think I would rather not too deep in a way.

(16:23):
Here's a great plot for a film. It's a group
of scientists are studying whether or not we're genetically predisposed
to be scared and like it, I don't know. And
then you take it from there, You've got it. That's
a that's a free idea. So okay. So, but was
there a movie or something for you when you were
a kid you was like, this is the thing. Was
there a artistic entry point for you, or like a
piece of work that you were like, this is the
thing that I want to do. Well. My first vivid

(16:47):
memory of seeing a movie, and it probably wasn't the
first time I saw, but the one that kind of
really affected me, And this is where I'm dating myself
is I saw The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, which is
a Ray Harry Housing film in a theater. It's one
of his best films, I think, and it has these
magnificent creatures, and that it's got a centaur that's also

(17:07):
a cyclops, and it's got multi armed callie uh statue
that comes to life, and that that really affected me.
I think it was just really transported by that that's
not a horror film, although their horror aspects to it,
And it's really beautiful, you know, and and of course
it's all handmade. And it's one of his later films,

(17:28):
the Seventh Voyage of in Bed, and I guess Jason
and the Argonauts are kind of the gold standard for
Ray harry House, but but this one is the one
that I really connected to it as Tom Baker in it,
who became doctor who. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, it's a really
lovely fantasy film. But there's just something about those creatures
that really affected me. And I definitely went through my
Ray harry Housing period later on when I started to

(17:50):
get interested in making films, like I kind of wanted
to be Ray harry House. So I guess the question
I have there is was it the creatures themselves, like
the concept of the creatures, or was it the the
technical piece of it, like that these were things were
created for film, and they were done in a very
specific sort of artistic way. Oh no, I was so young.
I was probably four years old. No, no, no, it

(18:11):
was it was purely seeing creatures coming to life. It
was just thrilling to me. And at a young age,
I was very interested in Greek mythology, and I think
mythological concepts have always been fascinating to me and have
stayed with me in some respect. I feel like all
my films are have that mythological basis. It just touches

(18:33):
a nerve, you know, these things are so deep in us.
I really I kind of believe in the collective unconsciousness.
I believe that, and there's a commonality between all of
us globally whereby certain images or certain ideas resonate. And
then a horror genre in particular does that because it's
dealing with things that are existential. Comedy doesn't necessarily travel

(18:58):
well between cultures, but horror does. It doesn't really know
any kind of cultural boundaries, and I think it's because
it's tapping into them. You know, obviously, that very very
basic instinct that we all have for survival, right, it
taps into literally into our fight or flight responses. Right.
I mean, when you are scared of like a jump
scare or something that's really horrific in a movie, you're

(19:19):
having some version of it that you'd be having if
that thing was happening to you in real life. Like
if you see like a horrific creature coming towards you,

(19:39):
no matter where you are, no matter what you've seen
previously or how you you know what culture you've been raised,
and you have an instinctive sort of you know, reaction.
I wonder, I mean, does horror work in some way
because it's such a foundational sort of response from people.
Do you think is that why it's such a resilient genre. Yes,

(20:01):
And I think that it uses the tools of cinema
more than other genres, which is also why it's exciting
to make horror, because as a director, you prove your
metal through your ability to create an atmosphere and seduce
people into a space, and that requires command over camera

(20:24):
and music and editing more than I think any other genre.
And if you look into the history of cinema, horror
has been with us since the beginning, you know, the
earliest and probably some of those memorable silent films like
Nonsparato are horror films, and there's just something inherently comfortable
about that genre and cinema because cinema is an immersive

(20:46):
experience and it's it's an experience that happens in real
time for the audience, and I think horror also benefits
from those tenets. The more you feel like and the
more you can be transported it into that screen, the
more successful it tends to be. Yeah, it is kind
of a dominating art form and people say it's hard

(21:08):
to look away, but it is. It is in some
ways dominates like the senses in a way that a
lot of other film just simply can't or doesn't maybe
say film, but you know, this is like across a
lot of different media. At this point, I want to a
a Cube. I don't know if it's your first film
that you directed. Is that the first thing you directed
or would I mean assume you had done stuff like
students stuff or something before that. Oh, I've been making

(21:29):
you know, short films since I was eleven, but Cube
was my first future film. Now I remember Cube came
out what seven? Is that correct? Yeah? Depending on where
you live. My recollection is I encountered Cube like on Blockbuster.
I feel like Cube is maybe one of the first
films that and I don't know if this will sound
insalting or not, hopefully not, but it's one of the

(21:50):
first movies I remember seeing in blockbustering going like, I
don't know if this was ever in a theater anywhere
near where I lived. I'm from Pittsburgh, so it's very
possible maybe Cube was in major cities that did not
hit Pittsburgh, PA. But I remember being a fairly important
movie in the sense that everybody was talking about it,
and it was one of those things that seemed to
appear out of nowhere and captured some I don't know, zekeguy,

(22:14):
some moment of anxiety and paranoia that was happening at
that time. Because you just if you had to sum
up for somebody who has no idea what Cube is,
how would you describe it? Uh? Well, Cube is the
story of six strangers who wake up in a maze
of identical cubic rooms with no food or water. All
they have the their minds, their bodies, and the clothes

(22:35):
on their back, and they have to find a way
out before they die of thirst starvation. But the extra
wrinkle in all of this is that some rooms have
booby traps in them, deadly booby traps, right, And ultimately
what they come to realize is that they are in
fact inside a mathematical puzzle, and that the solution to survival,
or at least part of it, is decoding that solution.

(22:58):
But to do that they have to work together. I
wrote it with my lifelong friend Andre Bagelic, were roommates
at the time, and I think the writing process for
us was almost like archaeology. It kind of felt like
we had stumbled on something. I knew almost right away
that this was a great idea, and and like a

(23:18):
lot of great ideas, I feel like I almost can't
take responsibility for it. I think it's just something I
came across, and gradually as we started write this thing,
it was like, you know, an ancient building that was
beneath the sand, and we were kind of slowly unearthened. Really,
what we were doing is we discovering what Cartesian spaces
the mathematical dunce is. Math is pretty cool. Math became

(23:42):
very cool, could be used to kill, to kill, and
to survive, And but I think I think, what at
the core of it, what makes Cube resonate is just
that basic idea that we are dropped into this world
in our actual lives with no plan, and we have
to find a way, and we need to do with
other people. We have to negotiate our path together, and

(24:04):
survival is dependent on being able to do it together,
trying to survive together. And then at this moment, I
don't feel overly optimistic about our ability to work together
and therefore to survive. It's uh, tell me about it anyway.
I think that's sort of a timeless theme, and so

(24:25):
you know, it resonated, then it resonates now. I think
maybe at that time it seemed extra special because there
just weren't any to be honest, there were no other
movies like that. Like I really feel like again that
we just kind of found this amazing thing. And it
was also I remember, you know, the process of trying
to get it made was challenging because people have just
kept saying, well, the short film, and you can't make

(24:47):
a whole movie in one room, and and since Cube,
and not not because of Cube, but you know, in
the years that have passed, for a variety of reasons,
there is a whole genre. There's multiple sub genres that
take place in single space set right, No, I mean
it's it's a whole industry now the cube has spond
From a budgetary perspective, I would imagine like you're like,
it's going to be in a box. Basically you're gonna

(25:09):
be in a like a just an empty room. That
feels like a win on the on the budget side
of things, but it's sort of also kind of waiting
for Godot sort of no exit. I would imagine some
of these things would have influenced that the creation of it,
Like where it's like a bunch of people in a
place where they don't fully understand, the viewer doesn't fully understand,
and everybody's trying to make sense of it, and along

(25:30):
the way we learn, you know, terrible and shocking things
about all of the players. It's a technology movie in
some way, right, Like the place that people are grappling
with Like you said, it's sort of this math problem.
There is a an outside force that is very technical
in nature that needs to be grappled with. How much
is technology for you? Like an important piece of the

(25:53):
puzzle of no pun intended with cub but the you know,
a piece of the puzzle when you're putting together and
when you're thinking about some of these ideas for your
for your films and for the stuff that you're working on,
your TV stuff. Well, I think that we're children of technology,
you know, especially, and I think I predate you, but
you know, my generation and beyond we were a meshed
with our technology to the point where we can't really

(26:15):
distinguish between the two and and Cube. I remember very
consciously early on in creating Cube, I was thinking, this
is Dante's Inferno, but it's the contemporary version of that.
You know, these people were not in in a world
of brimstone and treacle, and um, we're not underground. Uh,
we're in a very sterile, man made technological space. So

(26:40):
these people are in the belly of a technological beast.
And I think more than ever, we probably all feel
that way right now. You know, I'm communicating to with
my iPad. You're in a cube, we're in little boxes.
I would love to know how to escape this particular
zoom cube or whatever that modern reality has placed us in. Sorry,

(27:02):
Josh's not gonna happen. Yeah, I know we're stuck here,
and I think that's it, you know, you, you wonder, well,
are we at service to the technology? Because it doesn't
feel like the technologies that service to us. It feels
like it is its own organism, that it's intentions, whatever
mysterious intentions they have, are superseding those of its creators

(27:24):
to some degree. And I mean, I guess it goes
back to Mary Shelley right and Frankenstein. But there is,
unquestionably it's like increasingly intimate relationship that humans have with
their technology, to the point where I really do feel like,
as we all do, I'm sure we're kind of merging
with it. And it's you know, it's both empowering and incredible,

(27:45):
Like this this little device that we're working on. I
have no other computer that I use. I only use
it to write and I can draw on it. You
only use an iPad. I now only use an iPad.
It's solid state. I can't break it easily. It's very lightweight.
Can I ask a dumb question, I have a dumb question.
Do you use the the twelve point nine inch I
pad or the smaller eleven inch I I use that

(28:06):
pad pro so I draw on it. I just is it?
But is it? It's the biggest one though, because I
just got one. I'm just curious to know what the
what a professional like yourself is using. You've got the
biggest one, right, yes, bigger is that are in my opinion,
I draw with it, do you, and you don't find
it to be unwieldy. Just this is a total aside,
has nothing to do with what we're talking about. But
you think the size is fine. You like that, as

(28:27):
I say, I draw on it, like for me, i'd
like it. I'd like a bigger one if they made them,
because I'm using a pen on it, a bigger iPad,
like I'm trying to imagine a larger iPad that would
just be like a desk that you carry around, well,
you know, bring it on. I say, okay, interesting, you know,
I love it because it's very but it's very late weight.
It's much lighter than a you know, desk that will

(28:49):
certain in a desktop or you know, even a notebook.
And yeah, sorry, I completely got you off what you're saying.
But I was just so curious because you mentioned before
and I was gonna ask you that you run an iPad.
I was gonna ask you, but you were you were
talking about this, the fact that this is the only
device you use for for everything. Yeah, and it's so empowering.
Like I did, I've finished a graphic novel that I

(29:10):
did entirely on my iPad. I did a I'm embarrassed
to admit this that I did an album of musically
that I did on my iPad, which is even more
extraordinary because I have no musical ability and you use
garage band, and I used garage band, and I found
I could do all these things. It was like, you know,
being able to suddenly speak a language that I can
never speak before. Um, and I don't think my music

(29:31):
is very good, by the way, I'd love to hear
just what you made, because I actually used to produce
music for a living, and so one of the things
I do love to do as a kind of recreational
activity is sit on either with my iPad or on
my laptop and work on random music just because it's
like it's just relaxing to me, you know, it's like
something I don't have to do for work anymore, and

(29:52):
so it's become fun. But you're basically saying you're not
a musician, you know, by nature or whatever, but you've
created what you would would you just describe as an
album's worth of material. I would love to hear it.
I mean I would just if you could you further
to that, Sorry, jobs, I don't mean to interrupt, but
further to that, for a mere forty dollars or something

(30:14):
a year, I was able to upload it onto every
music streaming service there is. I could go listen to
it right now. Is that what you're saying? Ye, go
into band camp or iTunes everything? Is it under your name? Ye?
Just under my name? And I like how you're like,
i'bout a musician. I you know, I don't really just
sort of like just messing around. But also it's on
Spotify right now if you want to listen to it,
I mean, we have. We're gonna play some of it.

(30:36):
I will, We're definitely gonna play some vic I'm dying
to hear what it sounds like. How would you describe
it before I even listen to What is the genre? Uh? Well,
I'll probably falls into ambient, you know, like it's it's
not terribly melodic. And this is just me goofing around.
Like what I loved about doing it was I have
no pretensions of being good and and ironically I feel

(30:56):
like that made me more creative, Whereas when I draw,
I'm not a great artist, but I'm good enough that
I tried really hard to be good. But when I
was making the music, it was just fun. I was
just like a monkey with finger paint, and I was
so I was continually surprised at like, oh, that's better
than I thought it would be. And if you listen
to the album, it's very silly and playful and goofy

(31:17):
in a way. You spent your life thinking, boy, I
wish I could make an album. That's something He's been
a far off dreamer. Was it just one day you
were like, oh, I have garage band on here, I
might as well screw around with it. Actually, what it is,
I'm a nervous flyer. I used to be very uncomfortable
in an airplane and and I find there is nothing
more engaging and distracting um and and it makes time

(31:39):
fly faster than when I'm doing music. I just I
just completely lose myself and it so the whole album
was recorded on airplanes. No, that's I'm I'm a terrible flyer.
I take xanax. I mean that's my My solution is
I literally medicate myself and I get on planes because
I'm so convinced that I'm going to die for me,

(32:00):
it's definitely one of the few situations where I don't
have any control over anything. And so I'm sure, as
you know, as a like a producer and director, you're
probably used to having a lot of control over things,
so maybe there's a similarity there. But um, yeah, music making,
that's interesting. I have made some music on planes, but
I've never thought of it as a alternative to or
in a in addition to medicating myself so I don't

(32:22):
lose my mind. Maybe that that would be a good
convenient It could, I could. Maybe I'll make an ambient album,
you know, who knows. Maybe that's how I break into
the into the low key music genre. This is so interesting.
The films are there's a lot of technology and you're like, whoa,
this is really funked up. This is a bad technology
is very bad for us in some ways, or this
technology is being used in a really bad way, but

(32:44):
in your actual life you like it and you're finding
new uses for it that you feel really good about. Yeah,
that's just it. It's it's not simple. I think we
have a complex relationship with our technology, and I see
a lot of what's negative about it and a lot
of what's really scary about it. You know, there's this
thing called mid Journey I've been working with, which is
this artificial intelligence program. You probably know that the paints.

(33:05):
And I just created a look book for my next
movie entirely with mid Journey, which again is incredibly cheap
to use. It costs by thirty or forty dollars a month.
And I did I don't know, thirty or forty paintings
to basically create the look of my film. And I
did you know, I did some additional photoshop type work

(33:27):
on it, but it did about eight of the work
for me. In you're mentioning this, sorry, go ahead, finish
your point that I have a couple of things. Oh no, no,
but it's just so it's it's thrilling. It's like, oh
my god, it's doing artwork that is beyond my level
as an artist. And if I had to pay someone
to do this, this would cost me thousands and thousands
of dollars and it would take a really long time.

(33:48):
I did this sort of part time for a month,
you know, like a few hours every day, for a
month and it cost me thirty bucks and the results
are kind of amazing, and not only because the quality
the arts good, but also because depending on the prompts
you use and the way it works is you just
write in a few words and then it it interprets
that as an image. It's very creative. I would write

(34:11):
something kind of not to dictate what I wanted, but
to sort of discover like it was it was suggesting
images from my movie. It wasn't just taking my dictation.
So in that regard, I suddenly could see the end
of my role in this industry. You mean you could
see the end of like what you do, like that

(34:34):
coming to an end. Yeah, I see it. I'm not
saying it's going to happen based on what mid Journey does.
It's not a big extrapolation to imagine how would do
the same thing with words and with screenplays, especially screenplay,
because screenplays are very structure oriented, you know, not like
writing a novel, which is has a very kind of
intimate personal point of view. But let's face it, in Hollywood,

(34:55):
most screenplays are just a mash up of a whole
bunch of other screenplays anyway, So how much of belief.
Is it to imagine a machine that could take everything,
every screen cleet it's ever written. And then if you
wrote a prompt like say pilot for Buddy Cop Show
where African American female cop teams up with alien and

(35:17):
both fall in love with robot, sixty pages, comedy, action,
fast paced, and then in five minutes, it's going to
give you not one, but like four versions of your prompt.
And then you'll take those four versions and you'll read
them and you'll go, oh, I like that, and that
maybe I'll take this piece from there and you'll either

(35:39):
say we'll do it again, or you the writer will
then cobble edit what it's produced, much in the way
that I would edit these paintings that it would give
me and then maybe right over it or you know,
like add your layer to it, and it would permit
you to write like a hundred scripts a year. And

(36:09):
does this scare you or does this excite you? As
a person who's doing that stuff, You're like into it?
It's both right. I'm so happy and excited that you
mentioned mid Journey for a couple of reasons. First off,
we interviewed the CEO of Mid Journey, A couple of
weeks ago, who is a fascinating dude. But also the
art for this I dropped a link in the chat.

(36:31):
I don't know if you have access to the chat here.
Oh there, I can see it enough. Yeah, gorgeous. So
this art, this art idea with mid Journey, you have
a similar level of excitement that I had, which to
me and I've said this, I probably now said this
on the podcast a few times a few different episodes.
Um it, it was like the most amazing thing I've
ever seen a machine do. I've ever seen a computer do,
because it felt like I could see a dream almost

(36:55):
anything you can think of. It could depict like my
brain can't visualize like quite that way. Maybe yours is
better at I mean, you're you're working obviously an extremely
visual medium. But to see a thing that is a
string of words that I understand, the philosophical, intellectual concept
of that string of words. To see that string of
words be turned into image, and not just the image,

(37:15):
but really fucking good, really interesting art was like pretty
mind blowing to me. And it seems like you had
a similar reaction. But there are a lot of people,
especially people in your world, who are artists and creators
and directors and writers who are really really freaked out
about it, because I mean I could have paid an

(37:35):
artist to do this art right totally, but I didn't.
You know, I paid thirty dollars above a bid journey,
and I think it's like an amazing piece of art.
Like I'm like, this is so beautiful. I it's hard
to believe I had anything to do with it. So
how far off do you think we are from? Like,
you know, you being replaced as a screenwriter and possibly
a director. Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm not

(37:56):
I'm not knowledgeable enough to say, but I do feel
like I was a charter to Mountained, I'd be fucking terrified,
or even a lawyer, like those jobs are going away.
There's no way. It's interesting you go, you go to
the opposite end of the spectrum because the people who
are upset about AI stuff like this right now are
largely artists working artists, And I think that, you know,

(38:19):
there's going to be a clear drop off. And I've
had people sort of a don't really mentioned to me
that they've they've seen their work dropping off already from
people just you know, doing this AI stuff. The only
thing is and I can only speak about now and
then my crazy conjecture of what the future might be.
But right now, yes, the Journey is amazing, and I
don't know, there's Dali and there's other ones. It's great

(38:40):
if you just want to, like, if you have a
wide bandwidth of what you want. If you want something specific,
it's not very good. You need an artist to come
in and you know, if you have a logo or
specific image you want, if you want some crazy album
cover art, the Journey is your tool for sure, because
it's crazy. It is crazy, like crazy is the wrong word.

(39:02):
It has a kind of alien which I love, like
alien quality to the way it creates images. But it's
very difficult to control and it still has limitations. It's
not good with human faces, right. I think in one
year from now that will be, Yeah, it will be
way better at that, and then in five years from
now it will be able to perfectly create anything you
can tell it to do. I mean, but that's just it.

(39:23):
So right now, where it is, like a lot of
these technologies, is it what will do for artists is
it will allow them to produce more work basket, right,
you know, because it will do a lot of the
heavy lifting, Like if you have a city background you
need or some thing that's like very time consuming, and
it could produce that for you, and then you could
paint on top of that, or you can do things
with it. It's an augmentation. Yeah, I tend to agree,

(39:44):
and I think it's like photoshop. I mean in the
sense that there are things photoshop does for artists as
an example, or garage band for you, for instance, you
clearly have an artistic sensibility about the music you want
to make, but there are parts of it you can't
do on your own, right, I mean, and so so
garag band is there to kind of fill in some
creative gaps or some experience gaps for you. I mean,

(40:04):
I think I agree with the AI stuff, but I
think it's also scary just because we're not used to
seeing creative output from a machine. Like yes, you tell it,
I want to mountain in c G. I like, it
will make a mountain and you go, all right, well,
it kind of randomize the surfaces of that mountain. So
that sort of makes sense to me. This is like
much more specific kind of creativity, and I think that's

(40:27):
where it kind of freaks people out. It feels like
it's creating something on purpose. Oh utterly. It doesn't now
take a huge leap to imagine. No, this thing is
sentiment and you know that's like a slippery word. But
it's not just like, you know, a random machine that's
putting things together. It's going to have an opinion, right, Like,
it's going to have a perspective. Now that might not

(40:49):
be a human perspective, or it might be just a
kind of synthetic imitation of a human perspective, but it's
going to have a perspective. It's going to be something
that you sort of have to negotiate with. It's not
going to just be paint by numbers machine. And so
I think that's where it gets unsettling. It's like, oh okay,

(41:09):
and that's where I started to go, well, yes, at
some point there, you're not going to need the director anymore,
because you're going to say Alfred Hitchcock meets um Jacques
Tati style with James Cameron's lighting or something like, and
then it will just make a movie for you. Yes,

(41:31):
So here's the unsettling part. You get to realize, oh,
I'm just cobbling from things that exist. Right, See how
original am I like? That starts to very advanced a
I basically right, Well, we like to think that we're
more than that, right, that we have souls, that we
are expressing something that is entirely unique to us. But
especially in the film world, I don't want to speak

(41:52):
about other artists. You know, film is so technical and
it's such a It is a medium that needs to
speak to many, many men people, And so I think
a lot of filmmakers, not saying all of them, but
a lot of filmmakers are really taking what they've absorbed
from other filmmakers and then putting the through the filter

(42:12):
of who they are and expressing that. And when you
start to realize that's the AI like, there's really maybe
there's not so much difference between well, I think there
may still be some use for humans. I have not
even gotten to the peripheral, which I want to talk about.
You're a producer. You directed what the first two episodes

(42:34):
of the show? Is that right? I directed episodes one, two,
and five, and six, and I have a wonderful directing
partner like Riley who did the other ones. So this
is your I mean, this is kind of your baby,
and it is based on a women Gibson book. I
will admit I've only watched the first episode and I
haven't read the book. And I am a lifelong William
Gibson fan, and I have there are a few books

(42:56):
of the last you know, I dont a decade or
so that I have. I have missed, and I was like,
I should I read the book first and then watch,
And then the trailer was so compelling, and I'm like,
I'm just gonna watch it. I'm just gonna bite the bullet.
And it's dealing with sort of this concept of obviously
with virtual reality, like a much more advanced virtual reality.
There's a really interesting undercurrent about healthcare in the country

(43:16):
where like a pill costs like a thousand dollars or something.
And it's also kind of like exploring this this like
alternate reality or like metaverse reality that you know, I
mean the metaverse. I don't know how much like faith
or stock we put in the concept now, But do
you feel like this is reflective of this moment? Is
this a mirror to the world as it is now?
Or is this total fantasy? Oh no, it's not a

(43:37):
little fantasy. I mean the book was written in and then,
in typical Gibson fashion, the world has kind of grown
into the book. It was pretty trump like when he
wrote this thing, and but he was basically writing about America.
That was I had walked a little further down the
Trump road, because there's a near future south eastern United

(43:58):
States location that kind of is that's where we made
our our primary character, Flynn Fisher. And there is a
concept in the book and it's kind of a spoiler
for the series. But because we're talking about okay, well,
but that is not the chilling part of the story. Okay, okay, good.
The chilling part of the story is something else, Like
we've known about this for a long time, you could

(44:19):
see it coming. But the way he articulates it, I
am positive, is the most correct and plausible depiction of
what is in our near future, and it is utterly terrifying. God.
As the years have gone by, it has been born out,
you know, the subsequent whatever. It is eight years since
the book was published, So I don't think you can
watch it without getting a little bit like queasy because

(44:41):
you're like, uh, is this going to happen? On some level?
If you read the book, what it is is a satire.
There was at some point a few years ago a
story that you were working on a film version of Neuromancer?
Are you still working on that? Is that a real thing?
Is there? You're not working on it? Can you talk
about that? It all right? Now? Oh? I can talk
about my version of Roman? Say yeah, I know. That

(45:02):
was my introduction to getting to know Mr Gibson, who
is one of the great not only one of the
great novelists, but one of the great people I've met
in my life. He's just a lovely, lovely human being
and of course brilliant um And I had the good
fortune of getting my greedy, grubby little fingers on Neuromancer

(45:24):
and writing a screenplay based on the book, which I,
to be perfectly honest, feeling is one of the best
things I had written, which of course is because the
books so good, But but it really felt like I
cracked the book, and you know, creatively, on every level
of all the stuff that was done, it was just great.
That The problem was it's like a million dollars cyberpunk

(45:47):
film and I'm not James Cameron. Wait, does that mean
that you can't direct it? Or people don't want to
give you the money, Like what is the at that time?
Now we're talking twelve years ago. You know, I had
some heavy hitting producers who attached themselves to it, and
they just couldn't convince the studios for various reasons. Warner
Brothers said, it's too much like the Matrix. Of course

(46:08):
the Matrix lifted. I wonder why, right, But I always
felt like, yes, that's true. The Matrix took a lot
from Romance, including the word the Matrix, but the heart
of the book is very different, and it was dealing
actually dealing with artificial intelligence that I felt had been
explored at that time. I think it's so funny that

(46:28):
they would say that to me. It's like that part
of it is such a not an important component in
many ways, like the Matrix in Neuromancer is so not
the story, you know, like it is the story about
humanity and those people, and like, you know, it's kind
of also the heist. It's like a heist book, which no, no,

(46:49):
that's you. You you nailed it. The most thrilling bit
is the heist, which is like such an unbelievable sequence
of events and like yeah, like that feels like it
should be a film or something, you know, like you
with Neuromancer, I sincerely hope someone makes Romancer from the
bottom of my heart, but if someone offered it to
me right now, I'm not sure I would take it
because that was written forty years ago, whereas the peripheral

(47:12):
to me, for me is much more exciting because it
is so much about this time. It is speaking directly
to this kind of precipitous moment that we are standing on,
you know, where I just feel like we're on a
razor's edge and I don't know what's going to happen.
And I don't think Neuromancer, for all of its greatness,

(47:33):
is about that because it was written a long time ago.
It is increasingly and I mean this has been on
my mind a lot lately that the things to really
be freaked out by are no longer like these very abstract,
you know, far away fears. They're like things that are

(47:53):
just around the corner. And and you can draw a
pretty clear line from like this moment in time to
something like that happening. And yeah, I mean I get it.
Working in a space, it's so much more topical, or
feel so much more connected to this moment. Makes sense,
though I do think based on what I've seen of
your work, I feel like you would do a pretty
kick ask job with Neuromancer. This has been such an

(48:15):
amazing conversation, Vincenzo. Thank you so much, Like really enjoyed this.
Like we touched on so many things that I am
so interested in. There was some insight, there was some surprise,
there was some unexpected moments. So thank you so much
for doing this. You got to come back and you know,
maybe when you're finally doing Neuromancer, you can come back
and we can talk about thank you. It's such a pleasure.
Thinks thank you. And that is vincenz It talently his

(48:54):
music that you're listening to right now from his album
he produced on his big iPad. And I have to
say pretty good. Yeah, I actually, and I'm not saying
this just because like he's a great guest and a
nice guy. I actually when I heard this, I was like,
what is this is really good? And and and so

(49:17):
you know, you had another example of technology helping and healing.
I would say, not in that order. I have become
addicted to mid journey. Uh that sounds unhealthy. Well, you
know what I mean I'm saying addiction is good. I
love mid Journey. I made so many images that I

(49:38):
ran through my free trial and I want to keep going.
Did you subscribe? I haven't yet. I mean, this happened
last night, but I just think it's so interesting that
he's been using it. You've been using it, I've joined
the subreddit, you're getting deep on it. And well they
also just released a new version. Actually the day at

(50:00):
we I think put out our our show with David
the CEO. There's a new version of that's even better.
And it really is unbelievably good at at creating like
very very almost photo realistic or photo realistic images, amongst
other things. Yeah, I honestly think it's so fascinating that
Vincenzo feels so weirdly sort of I don't know, he's

(50:22):
like optimistic about the fact that it could replace him
in a way, or not optimistic but sort of accepting.
I do feel like there's a limit to its power
right now. It's applications are pretty straightforward. I mean, it's
for me not having to create beautiful artwork for our
show every week. Although I suppose I could mean, I
suppose I could be doing new artwork every week. I

(50:43):
haven't returned to it that much, though, the other day
Zelda was like, can we play with the thing that
made George Washington dancing with like Alsa from Frozen or whatever,
And so you know, it could be the next generation
is going to really pick it up. But I think
that it is kind of addictive in the sense that
once you start doing it and you realize you can
almost put anything into it, and you have no idea

(51:03):
what you're going to get, but every result is in
some way interesting. It is a little bit like a
dopamine hit, you know. As we distance ourselves from social networks,
maybe the next like addictive behavior is just creation and
maybe that's an amazing new and better place for us
to get to. Maybe everybody's gonna become addicted to creating things.
I hope you're right. Well, look, I think that's a

(51:25):
great place to end it on a high note, on
a positive, hopeful note. That is our show for this week.
We'll be back next week with more what Future, and
that's always I wish you and your family the very
best