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"I tell people, 'The film is different every time,'" explains director Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Rams). "And they always say, 'What do you mean? I don't understand!' So the best way to explain it is that each iteration of the film is 100 percent unique, because there are things being created for that iteration that will never occur again."
Hustwit admits the idea for a generative documentary was the result of boredom -- at repeated screenings of his own films.
"You go on a 50-city tour, and every time you hit 'play,' you then go to a bar or something because you can't watch the film anymore. I've seen it too many times. I just want to be surprised by the movie, like the audience. We're making digital files now. There's no film. There's no celluloid. We're not carving these things out of marble, so why can't the digital files just have some capabilities, and do some other things?"
With documentaries about Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie, and Mavis Staples under his belt, Hustwit knew that a generative film about the visionary musician and producer, Brian Eno, would be a perfect fit -- especially because the 76-year-old Englishman pioneered the use of generative technology in music. For decades, he's been the man behind evocative, ambient soundscapes for such storied acts as U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie, and Roxy Music, with whom he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.
There was only one catch.
"Brian didn't really want to have a documentary made about himself, and he turned me down the first time I approached him," Hustwit says. "But I worked with Brendan Dawes, who's my lead tech and collaborator on the project, and we made a demo that we showed to Brian. He was blown away, and finally agreed to be part of it. You can make a documentary about someone or something, or you can make a documentary that is that person or that subject."
For each viewing of Eno, there's a common framework:
The rest of the 100-minute doc features words, music, visuals and graphics selected by algorithm -- one "randomly" chosen scene unlocking another -- with each film boasting 75 percent unique content. In one iteration, Eno's work with Roxy Music is front and center. In another, the art rock band is just a fleeting footnote, with U2 in the spotlight instead.
"I asked Brian early on, 'Can we have a film about you that does not mention Roxy Music at all?' And he's like, 'Hell, yes! Why does this thing that I did 50 years ago for one year have to be mentioned every single time anyone talks about me? I've done so many other things,'" Hustwit recalls.
But the filmmaker admits he may have felt a little nervous when a young guest with direct lineage to Roxy Music showed up at an event in Los Angeles last week.
"Bryan Ferry's son, Isaac, came to the screening," says Hustwit. "He's in his 20s. Really sweet kid. Looks just like his dad. There was a big Roxy scene, so he got a good dose of Roxy. I was pleased that it happened. But again, sometimes it doesn't!"
A few audience members at the screening said they'd already seen the documentary 15 or 20 times. Eno, himself, has seen his namesake film four times.
"He loves it because it does what we set out to do," says Hustwit, who continues to tweak the movie -- because he can. "It continues to evolve. There is no cutting room floor with this approach."
Eno is now on Generation Four, but there's something the director would like to make clear. The proprietary software used in the documentary shouldn't be equated with artificial intelligence.
"People hear the word 'generative' and they automatically think, 'Oh, AI. Whose work are you stealing?' And that's not the case," Hustwit explains. "This is a human-coded generative platform. This isn't like an AI model that was trained on watching other people's films, and is just copying that. We put our own intelligence as storytellers and filmmakers into the coding. The material is all our material. We're using the software under rules that we've come up with, and algorithms that we've programmed on our own material. It's 100 percent ethical -- and it's much more difficult than using, you know, ChatGPT."
To meet growing demand, Hustwit has teamed up with Eno technology whiz Brendan Dawes to form a new studio called Anamorph, that specializes in generative technology.
"After showing it to tens of thousands of people at film festivals, everyone's mind is spinning -- what else could we do with this approach? So yeah, we're already working on multiple other projects with other filmmakers and studios."
Hustwit can't wait to see the new discipline applied to blockbuster Hollywood films.
"I want to do it on a Star Wars level," he says. "Just see how people's minds would explode when they hear that it's a different version in every theater. You can also have a generative Marvel film. Or what about the four movies about each of the Beatles that Sam Mendes is directing? What if you blended those together, and you were getting some sort of mash-up of the four different films that changed every time you saw it?"
These are ambitious goals that are entirely possible in the not-too-distant future. But for now, Hustwit is content to see his documentary, Eno, on movie theater marquees.
"We've had a phenomenal theatrical run with the film totally booked by our tiny in-house team, and now it's grossed over a million dollars," says the director. "The doom and gloom in the media about theatrical distribution for documentaries and independent films is somewhat false. There's an audience out there if the movies are smart, well done and inspirational."
But whether Oscar voters will reward a content-fluid documentary that showcases new technology like Eno remains to be seen -- at least for 2025.
"Can a film that is different every time it screens win an Oscar?" Hustwit asks. "What's actually being nominated here? Is it that particular version that's on the Academy portal? I can make a director's cut of the film, but that's defeating the entire purpose here."
Perhaps it's time to pull a flash card from Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies set, and think outside the box.
"Normally, I don't really campaign for the films, but this one is different," says Hustwit. "There's a bigger idea here about a new kind of cinema. We made this film about Brian, but we also invented a new way to make movies, and I think there's bigger ramifications around this than just this little documentary."