Jon Strong

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is the best Wes Anderson film since GRAND BUDAPEST.

I loved every moment.

You know, all you need is one great film every decade.

Not exactly sure what the plan is for companies — but overnight AI has gotten *so good* that we cannot tell what is real or fake…which means people will use it to lie to us.

The good news is I know that real life around me — is real.

So maybe it’ll just make all of us hang out there more.

But until then, Hollywood should prob not get rid of their competitive advantage: real people, doing real things, on the grandest scale imaginable.

Long-term, AI will probably lead to a READY PLAYER ONE type world. The differentiator will be the platform/world building, and real life stuff will be less of a premium there.

Hollywood mixing in AI isn’t necessarily a bad thing — but if they go FULL AI, there will literally be nothing differentiating them from YouTube, in the short term.

I don’t know what AI will do to cinema, but I do have a sense that real people doing real stuff (i.e. Tom Cruise hanging off a plane) will become a premium for Hollywood.

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MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: the final reckoning

Convoluted. Melodramatic. AND the best 3-minute stunt I’ve EVER SEEN, literally worth the price of admission.

THE MOVIES: for those we love…and for those we’ll never meet.

I can’t believe this happened, and it was So Damn Hard to make it happen. :) I’m so excited for you to see it — it’s 3-part series, and it comes out on JULY 24 on Peacock.

You are welcome to binge it, and I think you all will love it. :)

EPIC RIDE: the story of Universal Theme Parks

She loved the concept, and with her as the champion of the project — 9 months later I was officially brought on board as an EP, and developed it together with Universal & Peacock.

I sold a series to Universal. :)

In mid-2022 I had an idea to create a doc-series about the creation of EPIC UNIVERSE, through the lens of the entire history of Universal. I created a pretty awesome deck & teaser, and over 9 months annoyed my way to a meeting with an SVP at Universal Theme Parks.

And a new notebook that I like too.

I got a new pen that I like.

With AI taking over writing for most tasks in the near future…..

I feel like The Written Letter will make a comeback. It will quite clearly say, “I spent actual time on this, because I care.”

It could also become a status symbol. That’s funny.

I have started writing by hand again, for fun.

‪Like musicians giving up on live concerts.‬

Movie studios not fighting tooth & nail to keep the theater experience the *main* distribution point for movies —

is like the NFL giving up on stadiums.

(Feel like the symbiosis worked well until around 2012 or 2015, just around when Facebook went public.)

The internet was at its coolest when it was living side-by-side with the real world.

The internet started sucking when it began killing the real world.

& probably carrying a virus that could bring down our computer.

I’d probably trust AI more if it were *also* just copying what God made, rather than copying our human recreations of it.

But whereas God’s creation, or the universe, is pretty perfect, even just mathematically — we are not.

Our copies of perfection, we warp to use for both good & evil.

So by copying our degraded version, AI is now like a crappy version of a song downloaded on Napster —

Humans take what God has done, & regurgitate it — a copy, or remix, of what’s already here — into art, math, vast hardware & civilizations.

AI (currently) takes what humans have done (our words and designs), and regurgitate that — now a copy of a copy.

The digital world, which we once hoped would help things last forever —
has instead become a daily seashore, washing away all memory of anything from the day before.

In my naïveté, I thought they’d be one of the few that made it.

But maybe in the end, only institutions actually last.

For a little longer at least.

In time everything fades.

Even the Beatles are fading from the collective consciousness.

It’s strange to see things that were meaningful and important to an entire planet…….become simply, the past.

A memory of when they were a big deal.

YouTube video by Jon Strong A Mother Finds the Heroes Who Saved Her Son – The Thank You Project

For Thanksgiving, take a look at this film I made: “The Thank You Project”

It's about a Mother finding all the people who saved her son's life — to thank them all, and throw a big party.

Happy Thanksgiving. :) Share if you like it.

Went to a screening of INTERSTELLAR in 70mm tonight, and ran into Jonah Nolan while waiting for the bathroom.

Watching the one episode I could find of “Pete & Pete” for my 2 boys.

What an opening song. The kids love it.

Glad to see ya on here!

Anyone have a started pack of directors, producers, screenwriters and DP’s that we all followed on Twitter?

I like that, for now, BlueSky is just a completely filmmaking focussed experience.

In my algorithm, at least.