I think now more than ever there's so much available honesty that you can find on the Internet. You can go on to YouTube and find really, really vulnerable, really veritรฉ stuff. It's not even veritรฉ, it's real! It's people confessing very private things. In a world with "It Gets Better" videos where people are trying to keep themselves alive and speak out to other people and are really brave and courageous.
James PonsoldtAfter that really, I spent the majority of the spring going to tons and tons of regional festivals throughout America. Every corner of the country, I took the movie to twenty film festivals or something to that extent. I've lost track. Probably done Q&As 40-50 times at this point. It's always hard to watch something I've made, but I've got a little more objectivity and kind of see the film as not just an extension of myself.
James PonsoldtAnd I was constantly trying to stay in body, so to speak. It feels very surreal, and I go away to a happy place where I'm there but not really there. I was just trying to enjoy the night, I guess is what I'm saying. We had a lovely after-party.
James PonsoldtI think the irony of modern life is that our data, our highly personal information, has been taken from us, but in many cases it was given away freely by us. We willfully, consciously or unconsciously, acquiesced and gave it away for a new app, you know? For the products that we have. We didn't read the fine print, or don't even really care and didn't really check to see if we could opt out. No one had to steal it from us.
James PonsoldtI think now more than ever there's so much available honesty that you can find on the Internet. You can go on to YouTube and find really, really vulnerable, really veritรฉ stuff. It's not even veritรฉ, it's real! It's people confessing very private things. In a world with "It Gets Better" videos where people are trying to keep themselves alive and speak out to other people and are really brave and courageous.
James PonsoldtInnovation, sending civilians to outer space, mapping the mind, curing cancer - all these things, they're great. Obviously these same companies are also making a lot of money and accumulating a lot of our data at the same time, which seemed like independent things and one is beneficial and one is problematic for us as individuals, but in the rush of the new I think a lot of the philosophical, ethical, moral, and legal questions don't get asked in time. It's not in our nature to pause, sit, meditate, question, debate. We move forward. Technology generally answers itself with more technology.
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