The Indie-Film World Debates the Future of Acting

On Tuesday night at the Marlton Hotel’s Manhattan restaurant, Chez Nous, I found myself crammed into a back corner talking to Paul Schrader about AI. We were there to celebrate Killer Films’s Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, who in March will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Award, an honorary Oscar given to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” The party was thrown by the restaurant’s owner, David Kuhn, a book agent and former magazine editor, alongside his partner Kevin Thompson, a production designer who’s worked on several Killer movies, and Julianne Moore of Julianne Moore fame. It was crowded with guests like Schrader, Chloë Sevigny, and Alessandro Nivola spilling out into the restaurant, drinking and reminiscing quite loudly about their work with Killer over the years.

Moore, fresh-faced in a pink button-down, having just received raves at Telluride for The Debut, placed her cheek directly next to mine to share her memories. “I’ve worked with Killer six times and am about to start my seventh movie with them,” she yelled into my ear. (In a speech later, she mentioned she’d thought it was seven times but that the internet had told her six times. The internet, which is increasingly proving to be a mercurial source of information, told me it was seven times: They’ve made Safe, Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, Savage Grace, Still Alice, Wonderstruck, and May December.)

“They’re original, they’re dogged, and they get movies made,” she added. “They’re the first indie producers to receive the Irving Thalberg Award. It’s pretty fucking huge. They’re champions of indie film and of artists, and they do not have commercial taste.” 

“Very classy group,” added Schrader, who worked with Killer on First Reformed. “I wish I could’ve gotten my claws a little deeper, gotten more money!” I asked him about the state of independent cinema and how the world has changed in the 30 years since Killer Films came on the scene, and he very cheerfully declared its death. “The studios are gone. Independent film is now running its course. Now you have to get hooked up with a streamer,” he said. “Another type of film is being made now: post-internet film. I call it ‘scanning and scrolling’ cinema. Cinema being made for kids who grew up on the internet, watching sports on TV, checking messages on their phone, and watching YouTube all at the same time.”

He paused to think about that more. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is one of them where you embrace contradictions. Things we used to call ‘mistakes’ are now called ‘style.’ Somebody walks into a room with the red coat on, and you cut, and he has a green coat on. That would be a continuity error. Now it’s called a choice.” I was confused — this happened in director Jane Schoenbrun’s Camp Miasma? “No, but they have the equivalent of it. Move the furniture around. Change stuff. Your audience is probably on their phone while they’re watching.”

Schrader had been catching heat all week for his comments on a new all-AI movie. I asked him about the blowback, and he smiled. “I spent the whole day working on an AI film. I have a script that I fed to AI, and I’m working on the opening sequence now.” He pulled out his phone, scrolled through his emails, and showed me a clip of a very Paul Schrader–y scene including burly, tattooed men smoking and drinking and playing dominoes in a back room. The image was uncanny and blunt. “So the blowback doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “AI is here. It’s not going anywhere. We have to figure out how to work with it,” he said. “A lot of people are going to lose work. Actors will be next. It’s gonna change. And whether or not people will pay to empathize with silicone-based characters, we don’t know yet. I think they will. They already are with Avatar and whatnot.”

I asked if he will miss working with real people. “There’s parts I don’t miss. When they don’t come. When they don’t know their lines. When they’re in a bad mood.” He pondered for another minute. “But then on the other hand, you have a drink with ’em. And you walk in the morning, and they say ‘good morning.’ AI don’t say ‘good morning.’ But they’re there!” 

Nearby, real actor Chloë Sevigny, who worked with Killer on her first film role in Harmony Korine’s Kids and has since made American Psycho, Boys Don’t Cry, Party Monster, and Mrs. Harris (“Not to toot my own horn!”), recalled being 19 years old walking into Killer’s production office and “feeling like I was gonna be taken care of. They were cool, they were smart. It gave me a sense of relief. They bought me an apartment, gave me money for food.” Now, she’s developing her feature directorial debut with Killer. Compared with Schrader, she feels more optimistic about the state of indie cinema and the survival of the human race.

“It’s hard to be truly indie when everything ends up on a streaming platform. But I toured with an indie documentary this summer (the Grateful Dead doc Summer Tour), and people were really excited to come to the theaters. That really made me feel hopeful.” Still, she admitted it’s a “different world” than it used to be. “Indie producers were maybe more celebrated and having a moment in the ’90s. More risks were being taken. But I think people are still out there fighting for that.”

Julie Klausner, whose first feature, Hello Cruel World, is being developed by Killer and Lilly Wachowski, was feeling similarly nostalgic. “I’m emotional because being a part of this scene is what I dreamed of, coming of age in the ’90s and seeing indie film. And seeing Strangers With Candy on Comedy Central — it’s their fault I am where I am,” she said. “And to be included in this group of people with the queen of the Redhead Hall of Fame, Julianne Moore!”

She described her new movie as “Brazil meets Big Daddy meets Harold and Maude” and acknowledged she will be releasing it into a complicated era for independent movies. “In some ways it’s inspiring. In others it’s harder than ever. I was really inspired by Nirvanna the Band the Show. And even The Comeback with Lisa Kudrow’s son remembering that he loves writing. We need these things now more than ever.”

I caught Alessandro Nivola just before he left. He told me he’d “seen Christine across rooms at parties since I was about 20 years old and had never met her, bizarrely — even though I was a New York film actor through the ’90s — until a year ago when I sent her a script I wrote to direct, and she read it and asked to produce it. And she’s producing this movie that I’m gonna direct, which I can’t tell you about yet. But just accept that I wrote it and am directing it, and she’s producing it.” 

Indie film, he said, had “been through the dark ages, and there’s a little crack in the jail cell, a little ray of light shining through.” His wife, Emily Mortimer, just shot a film on 35-mm., and he was excited about the potential of a 20 percent federal tax incentive for all movies shot in America. “The biggest problem is everything is shipping overseas,” he said. “I shot The Brutalist in Budapest, and it was set in Philadelphia. I could list ten movies I’ve shot in the last five years where, likewise.” He was also excited about AMC getting into the indie-distribution space with Leawood Films. “They’re gonna be a new player like the A24s and the Neons and the Searchlights. With real money and a theater chain,” he said. “All of these things aren’t happening by accident. This award to these guys this year, maybe it’s a coincidence, but it feels like it’s a groundswell of excitement.”

I asked him how he felt about Schrader’s declaration about the end of actors, and he laughed. “Kids in my daughter’s school are going Luddite, getting flip phones, reading books. There’s a kind of regurgitation of technology that we’ve been binging on for a good long time now. And with this panic of the end of the species or whatever? It’s been a slap in the face to everybody to wake up. Maybe Paul is right, but maybe there’s going to be some other kind of equal and opposite reaction that starts to drive us back to something more human.” 

Vachon herself seemed unfazed by the debates swirling around her with more filmmakers filing in: Daniel Minahan, Rebecca Miller, Oliver Hermanus, Aaron Schimberg, and Todd Solondz. “Everyone keeps saying the same things for 30 years. It hasn’t changed that much. The constellations have changed. We didn’t have streaming services 30 years ago. But 35 years ago, I guarantee everyone said, ‘Where are the character dramas, where are the adult movies, where are the movies that talk about things?’ And that’s where we are now! Hopefully things are stepping into the breach.” 

After all these years, Vachon still describes her job as akin to childbirth. “You forget about the pain, or you’d never do it again. I remember some particularly difficult productions. I’m Not There was a toughie. You’re in the middle of nowhere in Canada, and I just remember feeling like, How are we going to get this done? But honestly, for the most part, the entire enterprise of being a producer is fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. You have to be able to handle it. The great thing about my partnership with Pam is we both handle it in different ways. I’m like, ‘Something will turn up.’ I’m the one that’s not always realistic. And Pam is a little Chicken Little. But somehow the combination works.”

I told her Schrader thought it was over for actors. “I love him. But you know, that’s his M.O. What can I say?” she said very diplomatically. I clarified: Is she pro human beings? “Oh, yes,” she laughed. “No matter how difficult they are. And they are.”