Cate the Great

Cate Blanchett: You can, yeah, because your connection with the screen is really intimate, and the story is only being told to you. When you go to a concert, part of being there is that you're all hearing the same thing. It's about being in a crowd. If you go to a gig and there are two people there, then it's not the same thing.

Jack White: Let me circle back for a second. What about this new form of communication that's happening right now on the Internet? When you go to the theater with your friends, and you stand in the foyer and you communicate about what you've just witnessed and you exchange ideas and thoughts about what went on, you have a responsibility-when you're face-to-face with people, you're responsible for what you say. You have to defend it and stand behind it. On the Internet, though, you don't have to do that. Journalists, film critics, theater critics, music critics, 12-year-olds-they all become one voice in a sense. Should creative people be frightened of this kind of communication without responsibility?

Cate Blanchett: I think the downside of the Internet is that speaking-or writing-has become the point in and of itself. I'm of the opinion that it's okay to be silent, to not speak if you don't have anything to say. Someone was talking to me the other day about her teenage daughter who is very creative. Now, to become a painter or a sculptor or a graphic designer is quite an isolated way to spend your life. But this girl's passion, she said to her mother the other day, was being with her friends, and she said there's this sense that she doesn't exist without the other people there. It seems like people increasingly just can't be by themselves because they're so used to having an epicenter on the Internet that actually exists for other people. Until someone clicks onto your Facebook page, it doesn't mean anything.

Jack White: Right, you don't exist.

Cate Blanchett: Then, suddenly you have 175 friends. But it's important to be aware that this is a big part of the way the world is communicating and of the effect that it is having on people's thinking.

Jack White: Well, when you go out to give a performance, you're putting yourself out there into the world to share with other people. If you just do it in your room by yourself, no matter how beautiful it is, is it dead?

Cate Blanchett: It's always better in your room. It's always perfect in your room. And then other people get in the way.