CraveOnline: You talk about passivity in the media and it’s interesting that television was always considered the most passive. They called it the boob tube. Now television has gotten more challenging and actively engaging and maybe films have become less so. Have you thought about that at all?
Rick Alverson: There’s very few episodic things that I seem able to manage my way through. I’m speaking of things that are described as this is the point where television surpasses contemporary film. I think that there’s a great amount of obfuscation occurring there.
Here’s what I was talking about earlier and about the intentions of the thing. The seams start to show in a lot of episodic television. The seams are that the primary focus is repeat viewership. It’s easier to obscure their problems and we have a gaping hole, an empty chapter between two pieces of a puzzle. Even in binge watching, it’s very different. I think that the hour and a half/two hour form is sometimes more [nuanced].
Are there any passive entertainments that you enjoy?
Well, there’s some music that I think I absolutely react to passively. I use it as an anesthetic, sedation. For whatever reason, I just think that the sensorial and psychological component to audio/visual media is so profound that I’m constantly aware of what it might be doing to me that I’m not conscious of because I spent my whole life unlearning things that were taught to me about behavior and about the world, about composition, about the way the world works in really fundamental ways, from recklessness and commercial episodic television, commercial film, these sorts of things.
There has to be an awareness of the capacity of this thing to alter. And I think if we believe that we’re, as human beings, above being altered by something because we can use our intellect as a shield, I don’t believe that.
Have you bothered with the comic book movies that are so prolific today?
There’s too much going on. That’s what I’m talking about. I feel like I’m being force fed. I also get very claustrophobic so if there’s too much happening, I need to settle down.
Beyond making films addressing it, what other steps can we take to engage more in that capacity?
I think it’s awareness. The act of awareness, the act of curiosity, the act of openness to the diversity of experience that’s not contained in the narrow bandwidth of moral conundrum.
Do you have a next film planned?
I have several projects, yes. One is called The Mountain, a historical fiction hybrid that occurs in mid-20th century, uses that as a hook to hang on the decline of Dr. Walter Freeman.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
