Rodney Ascher – The TMG Interview
Interview by Paul Preston
Director Rodney Ascher’s most notable documentaries buck the tendency of exploring history or social figures and instead examine vital and metaphysical topics. 2012’s Room 237 took fan theories about the meaning and messages behind Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to the next level, and his 2015 doc The Nightmare explored sleep paralysis in a way that blurred the line between a doc and a horror movie.
His new film, A Glitch in the Matrix, is his deepest dive yet into the existential. The film poses the same question the 1999 Keanu Reeves blockbuster did – “are we living in a simulation?” To answer that, Ascher goes further back to a sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick speech given in the 1970s which addresses his belief that we are living in a computer-programmed reality. Launching from there to science fiction to hard-held beliefs by current-day simulation theory believers, Ascher uses inventive graphics and wild testimonials to explore who we are…or…who we might be.
Clearly The Matrix made a fascinating case for how humans could be living in a simulation. What your film brought to light for me was the beliefs author Philip K. Dick personally held that may have contributed to his famous novels that led to films like Total Recall and Minority Report. Which of the above works sparked your interest in making this documentary? Or a third?
Total Recall has always been a favorite of mine, as a fan of PKD, Dan O’Bannon, Verhoeven and Arnold it really hits my sweet spot. What’s funny about it as a story of simulated realities, is that on paper it’s supposed to be a story of simulated MEMORY. Presumably, a few seconds after the end of the movie we should see Quaid wake up in Recall after the ‘Blue Skies on Mars’ implant has run its course. I’m guessing that back in the real world hardly any time has gone by and he’s going to have trouble reconciling his adventure with the fact that his wife and Harry are still alive.
Conspiracy theories have been the topic of your previous films. What about them do you find most fascinating?
I think that’s a little overstated when you look at the big picture, though 237 clearly suggests that a filmmaker’s explanation of their work isn’t necessarily the last word.
When I was kid, stories about the JFK assassination or Area 51 had the allure of forbidden knowledge and the excitement that ideas from genre fiction might just be true, but it’s been getting more complicated, even since I finished Room 237. Both the details of new ones and their mainstreaming in the last few years raise a lot of important questions about where they come from and what role they play in our culture.
Do you think a greater percentage of people believe the simulation theory now than in Philip Dick’s time? If so, does the current social climate and the rapid-fire spread of misinformation online contribute to that growth?
Absolutely, he was decades of his time even in the realm of neuroses and paranoias but the factors that you describe are more relevant to Simulation Theory as a metaphor for the models of reality each of us have in our heads based on our biases, peer pressure and media diets in my way of thinking.
Amen. So, is it healthy, then, to be a skeptic today?
A rational one, sure. I hope so anyway. I consider myself one but my standards may not be universal.
Many of your on-camera interviewees are represented by avatars, as if they’ve already graduated to simulation living. Their choice or yours?
Mine, I thought it was an interesting way to universalize them by making it less about these four guys specifically than the ideas and experiences they talk about. It also plays into the increasingly unreal ways we’re starting to communicate with digital tools, avatars, emojis, GIFs….
One thing I take away from guys like the ones interviewed in your film that belief in something like this might be its own community, where they otherwise might not have one. Do you subscribe to that?
To the extent where talking about simulation theory can be a social activity, sure, we’re doing that now. But if you’re suggesting that there are lots of lonely people out there who only communicate with other simulation theory subscribers I don’t know if I’ve seen anything to support that. Each of the folks I talked to had many other interests and outside activities.
The film eventually becomes chilling, recounting a murder perpetrated by Joshua Cooke, who was shocked to find the repercussions were not like you’d find in the movie The Matrix. I’m surprised there aren’t more stories like this. Were there, in your research?
Yeah, there’s four of them at least.
Cooke’s story, which he tells himself, is so detailed and chilling, is that acquired audio or did you talk to him?
I talked to him, the final interview was on a payphone in the prison common area.
Do you think we’re headed to a future that’s more virtual reality than reality? Is Ready Player One’s The Oasis inevitable?
I don’t know that we’ll be checked in 24/7 (assuming we aren’t already) but this last year I learned that a lot of flesh and blood meetings are easily replaced by zoom calls and as I’ve dabbled in the world of Oculus I’ve had pretty satisfying social interaction virtually. I think it’ll be a sort of a more common in-between option like phone calls or zooms where unless its worth hundreds or thousands of dollars and the time commitment to travel, more social and business activities will go virtual.
Have you ever experienced an anomaly in your life that made you reflect on the research you’ve done here and think…”could that have been a glitch?”
Mmmmmmm…I’ve certainly noticed a lot of weird synchronicities, even just in the making of this movie; we did all the interviews via Skype in 2019 and then in 2020 we found ourselves trapped in a world where all in-person meetings became video chats. Similarly, the movie was released on the same day as BLISS, another simulated world film and we’re due two more of them before the end of the year: FREE GUY, an NPC comedy and the new MATRIX which hadn’t been announced when we started our production. Something’s in the air.
Thanks, Rodney and I ask everyone I interview what their favorite movie of all time is, but I’m going to break it up for you. First, what’s your favorite movie adapted from Philip K. Dick?
I’ll cheat, Total Recall is my favorite PKD movie but I think A Scanner Darkly captures his style most authentically.
…and what’s your favorite movie of all time?
One hop skip and a jump over from Total Recall, I’ll go with Robocop though on another day I might have said something else.
A Glitch in the Matrix is available now on VOD at YouTube, Amazon, Google Play and more.
