The Town with Matthew Belloni

'Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons on Bursting into Hollywood, Internet Fandom, and Old IP

36 min

In this episode of The Town, host Matthew Belloni interviews 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons, whose micro-budget horror film 'Backrooms' (based on his YouTube series and a 4chan meme) became the youngest director's film to open at #1, grossing $81 million domestically. Parsons discusses his skeptical yet collaborative journey from internet creator to Hollywood success, his desire to maintain creative integrity by avoiding AI in art, and his focus on original projects over legacy IP.

Summarized by Podsumo

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✨ Key Takeaways

1

Kane Parsons, at 20, became the youngest filmmaker to open a movie at #1 with 'Backrooms,' an A24 film produced for $10 million that grossed $118 million worldwide.
2

Parsons emphasizes the importance of creative control and collaboration, noting that he worked closely with producers to adapt his web series into a film while preserving its 'DNA'—contrasting with typical Hollywood IP adaptations that lose their core.
3

He is 'personally opposed' to using generative AI in his creative process, arguing it destroys 'creative specificity' and the audience's trust that artistic choices are deliberate.
4

Parsons prefers to focus on original projects rather than adapting legacy IP like Star Wars, stating he only considers IP that has 'shaped my own experience of life.'
5

Despite his sudden success, Parsons remains grounded, planning to take things 'three-year chunk by three-year chunk' and avoiding a predefined career path.

💬 Notable Quotes

"I've grown up seeing IP get sort of torn to shreds when you bring in a writer who doesn't know the material... So it's just trying to be sensitive to that and sensitive to my own sort of authorship of the project."
"If the artist is willing to make that kind of completely arbitrary choice... I'm then open to conclude almost any choice in that project is arbitrary on a human level and so I just kind of tune out."
"I think I make stuff for people who like... to get obsessive with the things they consume... It's somehow ballooned to a degree where it's being marketed to everyone, many people who do not have that itch."