The algorithm never gets me right because I watch very different things
Pedro Almodóvar, one of cinema's most decorated living directors, has offered a quietly devastating critique of the algorithmic age: not through alarm, but through the simple testimony of his own creative life. Speaking from decades of practice, he observes that streaming systems cannot know him because he refuses to be known by them, and that artificial intelligence can imitate the surface of storytelling but cannot endure the long, uncertain silences from which genuine art is born.
- Streaming algorithms tasked with predicting Almodóvar's tastes have resorted, absurdly, to recommending his own films back to him—a failure he engineered by deliberately withholding his viewing data.
- The director's calm acknowledgment that AI can write Hollywood screenplays is not reassurance but indictment: what machines produce competently is precisely the kind of formulaic, pre-packaged cinema he has spent his career refusing to make.
- At the center of his argument is a single word—patience—the quality that separates a script assembled in seconds from one that required twelve years of return visits, abandoned drafts, and unresolved uncertainty.
- The gap Almodóvar identifies is not technical but existential: machines optimize, they do not wait, and waiting—sitting with a half-formed idea across years—may be the irreducible core of serious creative work.
Pedro Almodóvar, 76 years old and at the summit of Spanish cinema, recently turned his attention to the recommendation algorithms that govern what most of us watch. Speaking on a radio program, he described their failures with something close to amusement. Because he watches widely and deliberately refuses to feed the platforms information about his preferences—declining to answer their questions, rejecting their tracking requests—the systems are left working from almost nothing. The result: they occasionally suggest films he directed himself. A machine, knowing nothing about who he is, recommends him to himself.
On the question of artificial intelligence in screenwriting, Almodóvar was neither alarmed nor dismissive. He granted that AI can write screenplays—the kind Hollywood produces in volume, built on rigid structures, familiar character types, and pre-packaged resolutions. The technology assembles these competently. But it cannot, he insisted, do what his own process demands.
The film Hable con ella, which earned him an Academy Award for original screenplay, took twelve years to reach a form he considered finished. He returned to it repeatedly, revised it, let it rest, discarded what didn't serve the story. Other works underwent similarly extended periods of development. This is not slowness as a flaw—it is the actual substance of the work.
What algorithms are designed to do is the opposite: optimize quickly, recognize patterns, deliver results. They cannot sit with an unresolved idea for a decade, tolerating the apparent waste of time that serious creative work requires. In Almodóvar's telling, this gap—between what machines do rapidly and what humans must do slowly—marks the boundary of what artificial intelligence has not yet reached in the arts.
Pedro Almodóvar, now 76, sits at the top of Spanish cinema's international hierarchy. The director from Ciudad Real won the Academy Award for best foreign language film with Todo sobre mi madre, then claimed another Oscar for original screenplay with Hable con ella. His shelf holds multiple Goyas for films like Dolor y gloria and Volver. When he speaks about cinema, people listen.
Recently, on the radio program A vivir que son dos días, Almodóvar turned his attention to something most of us encounter regularly: the recommendation algorithms that populate streaming services. For him, these systems are almost comically unreliable. He described how the platforms constantly fail to predict what he might want to watch, despite—or perhaps because of—the data they collect about his viewing habits.
The problem, he explained, is that he watches widely disparate things and deliberately starves the algorithms of information. When asked what he likes, he refuses to answer. When the systems ask permission to track his preferences, he declines. The result is predictable chaos: the algorithms, working from almost nothing, occasionally suggest films he himself directed. There is something almost absurd about being recommended your own work by a machine that has no idea who you are.
Almodóvar expressed no particular anxiety about artificial intelligence as a creative tool. He acknowledged that AI can write screenplays—specifically, the kind of screenplay Hollywood manufactures in volume. These are formulaic pieces with rigid structures, predetermined character types, established narrative beats, and pre-packaged solutions. The technology can assemble them competently. What it cannot do, he insisted, is wait.
Patience, in Almodóvar's view, is the missing ingredient. He recalled the years he spent developing scripts that eventually became his most celebrated films. Hable con ella, the work that earned him an Academy Award for writing, took twelve years to reach a form he considered complete. He was not satisfied with early drafts. He returned to the material repeatedly, refining it, letting it breathe, abandoning approaches that did not serve the story. Other films underwent similar extended gestation periods. This is not inefficiency; it is the actual work of screenwriting at the level Almodóvar practices it.
An algorithm, by design, optimizes for speed and pattern recognition. It cannot sit with a half-formed idea for a decade, uncertain whether the next revision will unlock something essential or lead nowhere. It cannot tolerate the apparent waste of time that serious creative work requires. This gap—between what machines can do quickly and what humans must do slowly—may be the truest measure of what artificial intelligence cannot yet touch in the arts.
Notable Quotes
The algorithm never gets it right with me because I watch very different things and I try to give as little information as possible about my tastes.— Pedro Almodóvar
AI could write the kind of formulaic Hollywood screenplays made with a very specific format and clear package in every sense—actors, narrator, and so on. What it lacks is patience.— Pedro Almodóvar
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you deliberately hide your preferences from these algorithms, are you testing them, or just protecting your privacy?
Both, maybe. But mostly I'm trying to preserve the possibility of surprise. If I tell the system nothing, it has to guess. And when it guesses wrong—when it suggests my own films back to me—at least I know it's working from genuine uncertainty, not from a profile it's built of me.
You mentioned that AI can write Hollywood screenplays. Do you mean it writes them well, or just that it writes them?
It writes them. Whether they're good is a different question. But the formula is so established, the structure so predictable, that a machine can follow the pattern. What it cannot do is break the pattern because the pattern no longer serves the story.
Is that what took you twelve years with Hable con ella—breaking the pattern?
Not breaking it. Discovering what the story actually needed, beneath what I thought it needed. That takes time. You have to be willing to fail, to throw things away, to sit with confusion. A machine doesn't have the patience for confusion.
Do you think that will change? Could AI eventually learn patience?
I don't think patience is something you learn. It's something you choose, knowing it might not pay off. A machine optimizes. It doesn't choose to waste time on something that might fail. Those are opposite impulses.