Paul Schrader's AI Love Takes a Very Gross Turn

Paul Schrader, what happened?! For about a year now, the writer-director has been extremely vocal in his evangelism for AI as a tool in the world of filmmaking. Even other AI shills in his field, like Steven Soderbergh, haven’t been as weird about it as Schrader has. His Facebook page, which was already a wild part of the internet, is a mixture of ChatGPT memes involving himself, confessions about his experiences with an AI chatbot girlfriend, and insistences that the big plagiarism machine will take over the entire industry. He’s so devoted to AI that he says his next film will be made with AI “actors.” That’s gross enough, but never fear, for uncle Paul found a new way to make it worse.

Speaking to The Playlist, Schrader discussed his plans for his next film, titled Three Guns at Dawn. It’s an L.A. noir about three Black brothers — a corrupt cop, a petty crook, and a drug trafficker. Antoine Fuqua was attached to produce at one point but dropped out when Schrader decided to go all in on AI. He intends to populate the entire movie with “AI-generated human prototypes” rather than recognizable actors. “Those jobs are gone, babe,” Schrader said. Ew. Oh, but it gets WORSE. Why does Schrader want to replace actors with AI? “We sent it out to actors, and no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people,” he said. “And it sort of died. But then AI came along, and I didn’t need Black actors.”

Yiiiiiiikes.

How racist is this script that no actors wanted to sign onto it? Because I highly doubt that performers are avoiding it because they don’t want to play a villain. And Schrader is no slouch when it comes to writing layered and complicated men with troubled pasts who find truth in violence. That’s his whole thing. He wrote Taxi Driver! If the guy who gave the world First Reformed and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters had written a good script with those parts for Black actors, they’d flock to the material. He has had no problem in the recent past with casting. So this script must be baaaaaad. Or he’s just a weird liar who needs to justify erasing dozens of jobs from the business. Or people don’t want to work with him for other reasons, like that recent accusation of sexual assault.

Cards on the table here: I am a fan of Paul Schrader’s work. I have this poster for Cat People — framed! — in my house. He’s always been a squirrelly weirdo with an odd online presence, but over the past couple of years, he’s fallen deep into the rabbit hole. The AI fetishism is but one part of the problem. I cannot for the life of me figure out what he sees in this slop tech, which looks ugly as hell and is dependent on the stolen work of people like him. And it’s just nasty for him to send out a script, have Black actors apparently reject it, and decide that the solution is to erase their autonomy in favour of AI. Why would anyone want to watch a film like that? Who is his audience? Because it won’t be people like me who used to make a point of seeing every Schrader film.

I’d ask Schrader if he knows the meanings of his own films but I’m sure he’s already asked ChatGPT that. Embarrassing stuff all round.