Paul Schrader is ready to incorporate artificial intelligence into filmmaking, saying in a new interview that “I have the perfect script to make any AI possible.”
The 79-year-old “Taxi Driver” screenwriter and “First Reformed” director told Vanity Fair that he believes movies will be “increasingly AI-based,” adding: “I think we’re only two years away from seeing the first AI.”
In fact, he continued: “I was on a call with someone today about a script and I said, ‘Look, this is the perfect script to do all the AI.'”
AI is currently buzzing in Hollywood with news of Tilly Norwood, the first “AI actress,” and a movie directed entirely by AI. When asked by Vanity Fair about his willingness to adopt the technology himself, Schroeder replied, “It’s just a tool.”
“When you’re a writer, you have to describe someone’s reaction. You use codes. You use codes, like words or a certain number of characters, to describe their facial reaction,” he continued. “Actors have their own code. Well, you can create pixels, you can create faces, you can create emotions in faces. And you can sculpt it in the same way that writers sculpt reactions in novels and stories.”
Schroeder also said that “AI is taking over movie reporting,” and that he wouldn’t be surprised to see AI writing movie reviews in the near future. “AI is doing better reporting than average reporting, and AI doesn’t have to favor anyone,” he said. “When you’re doing interviews, you often get hints that the person paying you wants you to like this. You can’t feed that information to an AI.”
This isn’t the first time Schrader has championed the use of AI in the movie business. Earlier this year, he posted on Facebook that he had asked ChatGPT to create a plot for a movie by famous filmmakers, including himself, and was impressed with the results.
“I was shocked,” he wrote. “I just asked chatgpt for ‘Paul Schrader movie ideas.’ Next up is Paul Thomas Anderson. Next up is Quentin Tarantino. Next up is Harmony Korine. Next up is Ingmar Bergman. Next is Rossellini. Lang. Scorsese. Murnau. Capra. Ford. Spielberg (sic). Lynch. All the ideas that chatgpt came up with (within seconds) were good ones. And original. And fleshed out. Why should a writer spend months searching for a good idea when AI can provide them? A few seconds?
Read Schrader’s full Vanity Fair interview here.
