It's hard to look at anything with an objective eye. I think people bring themselves into the equation when they watch a movie. They bring their own prejudices, their own biases, their own feelings toward the subject matter, the characters.
James PonsoldtWe live in a time when there are tech companies that have an unprecedented accumulation of power, wealth, and information with basically no competition. It's not in their nature to self-regulate, to break themselves up, or ask for less information. It's only in their nature to grow and gain more information from us, because the more that they know about us, honestly the better they can market to us and sell to us and make us better consumers.
James PonsoldtThere have been so many instances in my life where movies, music, or literature has made my life tangibly better.
James PonsoldtThis needs to work on that level, but it has the additional strain of it's going to be profoundly scrutinized by political junkies from the right and the left who will pick apart every little thing. We are inherently dramatizing Hillary Rodham, or Hillary Clinton, who's a very famous figure. There's a lot of biographies about her, but there's also elements that are private moments, that are dramatized with an arc, and we have to take creative license. Everything is sort of a cost-benefit.
James PonsoldtMaking movies is really hard, and it can be humbling. And once you put them out into the world, you can't control how people will respond to it.
James PonsoldtAll the more a cheesy musical seems fake, so it requires a level of honesty to be injected or an acknowledgement of that which is fake and fun about musicals, and it isn't necessarily escapist. Like there are great musicals like Once, which feel very almost like a mumblecore musical. I love Once. It's great.
James Ponsoldt