Soderbergh defends – Steven Soderbergh’s documentary built from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s surviving 1980 radio interview premiered Saturday at Cannes, but its use of Meta’s artificial intelligence to generate surreal visuals triggered an uproar. Soderbergh defended the choice as
By the time Steven Soderbergh’s new documentary reached Cannes, the conversation already had a different kind of soundtrack: anger.
The film. “John Lennon: The Last Interview. ” debuted Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival and draws on surviving audio from the day John Lennon was shot. Dec.. 8, 1980.. Lennon and Yoko Ono gave a two-hour interview to a San Francisco radio crew from their home in New York’s Dakota Apartments. promoting their new album “Double Fantasy.” The interview was built around openness despite warnings to avoid Beatles questions.. On that same day, Annie Leibovitz shot the portrait of a clothes-less Lennon wrapped around Ono.
Soderbergh has said he was compelled by the generosity of spirit in the surviving conversation—an exchange that moves through love. Lennon’s relationship with Ono. creativity. life after the Beatles. raising their toddler son. and writing songs in bed.. Lennon, at age 40, sounds to Soderbergh’s film like someone who has found clarity.. “I feel like nothing happened before today,” Lennon says in the material.
Making the documentary required a creative workaround that later became a flashpoint: parts of the interview that turn more philosophical couldn’t be fully visualized through conventional means.. Soderbergh said he worked on everything he could solve. but eventually reached an “inevitable moment” of limits—running out of time and money—where the filmmakers needed a different approach.. “OK, but really what are we going to do?. We just started playing and ran out of time and money.. That’s where the Meta piece came in,” he said.
Soderbergh accepted an offer from Meta to use artificial intelligence software to conjure surreal imagery for those sections.. He characterized the AI-assisted visuals as making up about 10% of the film.. When Soderbergh revealed the plan earlier this year. the news prompted an uproar. with critics and audiences reacting to an industry question that follows generative AI into nearly every new production: what happens when a tool is used in the name of art.
The uproar at Cannes was sharpest at the AI elements, which were overwhelmingly slammed by critics there.. Even so, Soderbergh’s defense leaned on the boundaries of what was done.. The AI parts were described as fairly banal and not different greatly from special effects. and there were no deepfakes of Lennon.
In an interview Saturday in Cannes, Soderbergh also framed the use of AI as a matter of disclosure and trust.. “Transparency is so important in the world outside of the creative context,” he said.. He argued people outside creativity are not fully aware of how often such tools are being used and manipulated without notice. and that the public often learns only after. “by accident. by some whistle blower.” He compared himself to “my own whistle blower”: “This is what he’s doing.”
He said he understood the emotional response.. “I knew what was coming. ” he said. adding that he takes it very seriously and feels he owes audiences “the best version of whatever art I’m trying to make and total transparency about how I’m doing it.” At the same time. he said he couldn’t imagine agreeing to finish a film with Meta’s tools without anticipating backlash: “You don’t say yes to Meta offering you these tools and offering to finish the film and not know you’re going to come in for some heat.. That was part of the deal.”
The debate he described wasn’t only ethical—it was also artistic.. On whether generative AI could “tear apart the film industry. ” Soderbergh argued the technology can’t replace the kinds of jobs that matter in making a movie.. “Most jobs that matter when you’re making a movie cannot be performed by this tech and never will be performed by this tech. ” he said.. He also suggested that as technical perfection becomes easier to generate. imperfections could become more valuable: “As it becomes possible for anybody to create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection. then imperfection becomes more valuable and more interesting.”
Soderbergh said he is waiting to see how audiences react when someone with creative credibility goes “full-metal AI” on a project. and he emphasized uncertainty about where the line is.. “How do you know where the line is until somebody crosses it?” he asked. before adding. “I don’t think what I’m doing crosses it.. Some people may disagree.. I don’t know where my line is yet.. I’m waiting to see.”
He was also asked about how the animations were made.. Soderbergh said he used prompts that produced “circles of light that come out of nowhere. ” and he cited examples including a black rose turning into a “Busby Berkeley” sequence. then a red rose.. He said he wasn’t “very articulate” to the team he worked with. and that it was hard to describe what he wanted to see.. The technology’s advantage. he said. was speed: “The good part about this technology was at least ability to have something in front of me quickly that I could respond to.”
Asked whether his experience offered a framework for limiting the tool. Soderbergh gave a rule: AI should be used only if it is necessary.. “I’ve determined my rule is: It has to be necessary.. Is it the only way to accomplish what I want to see?. Is it truly the best way to do it?. That’s the real question.. You’re going to see a lot of people doing stuff with AI that fail those two challenges.”
He returned to the question of the film’s dialogue—described as a deeply human. “naked human dialogue”—and said his goal was to stay close to the conversation as it moves.. “I needed a way to follow them in flight visually, or I’m not doing my job,” he said.. He acknowledged that it may take time to reach stability in how filmmakers use the technology.. “It’s hard to judge how long it will take us to find homeostasis with this technology.. I think we will.”
Soderbergh said departments in a film will develop different relationships with AI: he will not approach it the same way a writer. actor. costume designer. production designer. or sound effects team would.. “Each creative person is going to have their own prism and be affected by it in different ways,” he said.. He added that the instinct to impose a simple template for how AI should be handled is part of the problem. and he rejected a universal approach: “Our inherent desire to have a simple template for how this is to be approached is part of the problem.. I don’t think that’s possible.. I don’t think there’s a one-size fits all.”
For Soderbergh. the most lasting value of the interview remains tied to Lennon’s spirit in the recording itself—especially Lennon’s desire. he said. to destroy the “male rock star myth” when that wasn’t the mood elsewhere.. “That’s inspiring,” he said.. He hopes young viewers come away with a specific takeaway: “This guy told the truth about everything from the jump. right up through the last day of his life.. He just was built that way.. And he was constructive.. He was very opinionated but also very thoughtful and all in the aid of: Can we do this better?. Can we do a better version of human beings on this planet?”
The tension running through Soderbergh’s comments is the same one the documentary sets up: he wanted an open. faithful visual path to a conversation he calls naked and deeply human. yet the most contested elements were added only after the project reached a boundary of what he could solve through traditional filmmaking—leading to AI imagery for about 10% of the film. and to a public argument over transparency once that decision became known.
Steven Soderbergh John Lennon Yoko Ono Meta AI Cannes documentary generative AI filmmaking transparency surreal imagery