Oscar-winning filmmaker Daniel Roher on Tuner, The AI Doc, and the creative paralysis of personal work • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

The AI Doc is about projections and Tuner is the type of thriller that we used to get often but now it’s like a treat when you get it now. There used to be multiple of these types of films a month, and now it’s very special when you get one. So, Daniel, give us a projection of the future of cinema for smaller scale movies: what is the best way to keep a variety of films available?

I have an answer that will likely annoy the community.

The community is varied.

Stop making three-hour indie movies. That’s the first thing. It’s really fucking hard to take time out of your busy life to go to the theater for that on a regular basis. Second, audiences and filmmakers, both, we all have to pay better attention because the market’s oversaturated. There are more films getting made than ever, and the market’s flooded. It’s not the same landscape as it was fifteen years ago or ten years ago, or even five years ago before the pandemic.

But I really think that something that I hope happens, as AI continues to proliferate and become a bigger part of our lives is the need and desire for community, for place, for communal shared experience. I live in Los Angeles and I love going to Vidiots. The only thing about Vidiots that bums me out is that it’s sold out all the time. If you’re not quick to the draw, you’re not going to get to go to the 35 millimeter screening of The Matrix. And that’s awesome.

But I also understand that that’s not representative of every city or community, but it still inspires me. As much as rep cinema excites me, we all have to go to the theater, put your money where your mouth is and go see a few new, original films when they’re out. I love going to the cinema. It’s my favorite thing. It’s the only thing I do out of the house.

With that, this is a part of your documentary, but I also recently had a child.

Mazel tov. How recent?

She’s one. To the runtime point, when I was doing the night shift when I was on parental leave, I started to filter my watchlist by runtime—100 minutes or less was all I had before she’d wake up. A lot of thrillers, a lot of rom-coms, it was great.

I worship at the altar of the tight 90. If a movie is over two hours, without fail, going into it I know that there is an extra ten minutes or twenty minutes, it needs a haircut. Very rarely is a film over two hours and deserves the runtime. It does happen, but rarely. What it comes down to is filmmakers make films for themselves and are like, “This is the version of the movie I want to see.”