Directors Hate AI. What About Bottom-Feeding Comedy Writers?

Suppose that my request for a $200 million dollar budget doesn't go through

Christopher Nolan photo by Aalok Soni vea Getty, Guillermo del Toro photo by Lia Toby via Getty.

Big-shot directors hate AI. Christopher Nolan slammed “AI slop” and has committed himself to “practical effects”. And Nolan walks the walk: To make The Odyssey, he actually sent Matt Damon back in time and had him kill hundreds of people — that’s why the movie looks so real! But Nolan isn’t even the most stridently anti-AI marquee director — here’s Guillermo del Toro, who has filmed some of the most convincing fish-fucking scenes in the history of cinema.

I would never, ever threaten the beauty and redeeming power of art. Anyone who reads this blog knows that protecting the beauty and redeeming power of art is priority A-1. Priority A-2 is for me to make enough money to die under a whiskey-soaked pile of prostitutes, but priority A-1 is unquestionably the art thing. That being said: It occurs to me that some directors who forswear AI — in any context, ever, even just for one shot — and say “I don’t care what it costs” typically direct movies that already have nine-figure budgets.

But what about those of us at the opposite end of the entertainment spectrum? And I mean the extreme opposite end — the part of the spectrum looked down on by people who make snuff porn and terrorist training videos. I speak, of course, of TV comedy. It’s been a rough decade for TV comedy. The switch to streaming kneecapped late night TV and sitcoms, we’ve lost market share to reality TV, and people get their comedy for free on social media. These structural factors have been devastating — so devastating, in fact, that writers like me can tell a convincing story of why comedy died without mentioning that we have also mostly produced boring garbage that most people wouldn’t watch on a dare.

For comedy to survive, costs need to be cut; expensive production models no longer work. And that’s why I look at AI and think “I’m listening”. I doubt that an entirely AI-generated show would ever work — AI stuff is subtly weird, and not in a funny, Christopher Walken sort of way. The inhumanness is a fatal flaw, plus people want to see Will Ferrell and Jack Black, not some cyber-rando. But could AI be useful for background stuff and a quick shot here and there? Like I said: “I’m listening”.

Consider a joke that I wrote in an unproduced script (my specialty). A guy — his name is Ernie — has a high-stress, big-city job. One day, Ernie is feeling overworked, and he flashes back to a moment from his childhood. We see young Ernie in his family’s humble shack — this takes place in the early 1900s — where his older brother is very sick. His brother calls Ernie over: “You can go to college now,” he says. Ernie tears up, knowing that his brother isn’t going to make it. But his brother as adamant: “Go to college, Ernie. Make something of yourself!” We flash back to adult Ernie in the city, thinking about all the things that happened to get him where he is.

And then Ernie flashes back again: This time, his older sister is sick. “You can go to any college you want now,” she says. “Go to New York — go to France! We’ll (cough cough) have the money!” And then we flash back to Ernie in the city.

But we flash back again: Another of Ernie’s brothers is trapped under a boulder — he says “You’ll have the money get the good meal plan now, Ernie! The one that’s a card with points so you can buy snacks!” Then we flash to Ernie’s sister, who is being bitten by a cobra: “You can take a gap year, Ernie! And a bunch of pointless electives!” Then another flash to another brother fighting a bear with a pocket knife: “When you graduate, you can get an unpaid internship and just kind of dick around for a few years!” And so on. There are eight flashes total.

A producer — a smart guy who was trying to help me — told me: “You have to lose that joke.” I told him I thought it was funny; he said “I’m not saying it’s not funny, I’m saying it will never get made. The joke involves eight small speaking roles — eight actors who get SAG scale for speaking one line. There are eight sets. There are props — the boulder, the snake — and effects — how are we going to shoot this kid fighting a bear? The problem isn’t just that this joke will definitely get cut; the problem is that you’re signaling to the studio that you’re the type of writer who writes stuff that they can’t possibly film.”

He was right, of course. Writers constantly make decisions that affect costs. And every location, actor, effect, costume, and music cue adds to production costs. Arrested Development wasn’t cancelled just because the ratings were low — the ratings were low and the cutaway gags that defined the show’s sensibility were expensive. 30 Rock had the same problem; it only stayed on the air because it won awards and starred Alec Baldwin. The Simpsons shaped a generation’s sensibilities with their cutaway gags and elaborate jokes, but The Simpsons can do that because it’s a cartoon. The rules in live-action are simply different.

Or, at least: The rules have been different. AI might make certain jokes that were previously impossible possible. Guillermo del Toro and Christopher Nolan are right that AI stuff often feels hollow, but those guys perhaps forget that they can tell a studio: “Get me an ancient ship that I will load with $200 million worth of movie star and sail around the ocean.” Good for them, but in my world, writing “He puts on a baseball cap” is a major risk — those caps don’t grow on trees! If AI expands the universe of what’s possible, then I think it needs to be considered. To do anything less might threaten the beauty and redeeming power of art, which — as everyone knows — is something that I simply will not abide.

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