From Jean Luc Godard to Steven Spielberg: Wim Wenders discusses the future of cinema in 1982
Trying to predict the future of any notable art form – especially one that’s as rapidly evolving as cinema – has often proven to be a fool’s errand, but that didn’t stop Wim Wenders from trying as far back as 1982 when he gathered 15 of the industry’s most acclaimed names in an effort to pick their brains and gather their thoughts.
The filmmaker’s documentary Room 666 was captured during that year’s Cannes Film Festival, with Wenders hosting each interview subject in the exact same room with the same camera. The major question he wanted answered was whether cinema as a language was in danger of becoming lost, a discussion that remains at the forefront of the cultural conversation today.
Regular Andy Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey was among the most pessimistic of the group, sharing his belief that the medium was on a downward spiral: “It’s obvious [cinema] is on the way out,” he said. “The novel has been dead for a long time; people know that. Poetry was exhausted a hundred years ago. Plays hardly exist…once in a while. And every now and then there’s a movie. Movies don’t use characters anymore. They use some horrible thing called directors. And photography.”
French director Romain Goupil was a lot more positive in his assessment and even ended up predicting the rise of both the prestige TV and mass viewing eras: “Television is going to be this amazing tool, with satellites systematically beaming films all over the world, and everybody will be able to watch them together.” Meanwhile, Noël Simsolo shared an issue that many people harbour towards Hollywood’s current obsession with franchises and IP: “It’s not cinema that’s dead, it’s the people who make it that die by making stupid films.”
In typical Werner Herzog fashion, he wouldn’t answer the question while wearing shoes, so he took them off before acknowledging that he “doesn’t see the situation in the dramatic way the question seems to imply”. That being said, he wasn’t entirely correct on the distinct separation of film and television: “I feel that we aren’t all that dependent on television,” he added. “Film aesthetic is something apart and separate. TV is a kind of jukebox; you’re never inside the film itself; you have a sort of mobile position as a viewer. And you can switch it off. You can’t switch off a cinema. I’m not at all worried.”
Given all that he’s accomplished in the decades since in the realms of both drama and blockbusters, though, the thoughts of Steven Spielberg make for fascinating reading. Even back then, his outlook was positive, even if he was ironically wide of the mark in regards to economic restrictions given the raft of expensive productions he’s directed in the years since: “I’m one of the last of the optimists about the history and the future of the motion picture industry in Hollywood,” he said. “I have to be very optimistic that movies are only going to expand, hopefully not at the expense of other films that might contract, due to economic reasons, because we all know that money is short today.”
Even the legendary Jean-Luc Godard noted that “television and movies are more and more the same,” although he wouldn’t sanction the notion of his creativity being impacted in any way: “I’m here in front of the camera, and yet in my body and my mind I’m behind it. My world is the imaginary, and the imaginary is a journey between forwards and backwards, and I’m a great traveller.”
Over 40 years may have passed since the best and brightest cinema had to offer shared their thoughts on its current trajectory, and yet it remains remarkable that several of them accurately guessed that not only would television continue to draw level with film as a method of storytelling, but the potential issues that would arise as the auteur movement was slowly subsumed by the studio system.
