Latest / How To Talk To Humans / Is AI Replacing Hollywood? Larry Wilson Reveals Why Storytelling Still Wins "Part 1"

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Is AI Replacing Hollywood? Larry Wilson Reveals Why Storytelling Still Wins "Part 1" · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:00
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans.
• 0:04
  Larry Wilson: This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills.
• 0:10
  Larry Wilson: Are you looking to get a better job?
• 0:12
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• 0:15
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• 0:22
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• 0:25
  Larry Wilson: Now, I can only do it with humans.
• 0:27
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires and zombies extraterrestrial, this is not the joke.
• 0:33
  Larry Wilson: But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned in 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world.
• 0:47
  Larry Wilson: And their secrets are unbelievable.
• 0:52
  Larry Wilson: What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success.
• 1:05
  Larry Wilson: This is a monumentous day.
• 1:09
  Larry Wilson: It really is.
• 1:10
  Larry Wilson: Today officially marks the demise of Hollywood.
• 1:18
  Larry Wilson: Now I know some of you saying, oh no, no, we'll see.
• 1:22
  Larry Wilson: Why is this important?
• 1:23
  Larry Wilson: Well, it isn't really important, except as it has to do with AI.
• 1:33
  Larry Wilson: Because you've heard me talk many times here on this training about AI and the impact that it has.
• 1:40
  Larry Wilson: Yeah.
• 1:42
  Larry Wilson: Why do I say it's the demise of Hollywood?
• 1:46
  Larry Wilson: Well, because last night my son was so excited.
• 1:51
  Larry Wilson: He said, You've got to see this, you've got to see this.
• 1:55
  Larry Wilson: And he showed me a video online that had just been released yesterday.
• 2:01
  Larry Wilson: And it was about 30 minutes.
• 2:04
  Larry Wilson: It's sort of a, well, sort of a science fiction-y short.
• 2:10
  Larry Wilson: This actually will be an amusing time capsule when people see this far into the future.
• 2:16
  Larry Wilson: It was called Pomegranate, and basically the short film is about it must be sometime in the future, and there's all sorts of hints of a dystopian future.
• 2:30
  Larry Wilson: And a man who seems to have some kind of artificial parts to him.
• 2:49
  Larry Wilson: Some of this is now made explicitly clear, but he's going to plug him into some kind of machine that uh simulates experiences in the customer's brain.
• 3:01
  Larry Wilson: And pomegranate is a safe word if he's in a situation that's too scary or stressful.
• 3:10
  Larry Wilson: If he says pomegranate, then it will stop whatever the download is that's happening in his brain and return him to consciousness.
• 3:19
  Larry Wilson: Suffice to say, what I saw made it instantly apparent to me that Hollywood is done.
• 3:30
  Larry Wilson: The entire Hollywood system, the entire concept of huge studios and multi, multi-million dollar paydays for actors, and all the associated people who work in the films, uh costume design and costume fabrication and set design and set fabrication and uh camera operators and directors of lighting and makeup and hair, everything.
• 4:06
  Larry Wilson: And of course, actors, everything.
• 4:09
  Larry Wilson: They're obsolete now.
• 4:11
  Larry Wilson: The film that I saw, Pomegranate, no one in it is real.
• 4:16
  Larry Wilson: They're all creations of AI.
• 4:18
  Larry Wilson: Now, I I hasten to point out, in case someone jumps to see that immediately, I hope you do.
• 4:26
  Larry Wilson: It's fantastic.
• 4:29
  Larry Wilson: It's it's it's revolutionary.
• 4:31
  Larry Wilson: It's an incredible thing to see.
• 4:33
  Larry Wilson: The voices are real actors.
• 4:37
  Larry Wilson: And I don't know why that is.
• 4:40
  Larry Wilson: Whether it's too difficult at this point.
• 4:44
  Larry Wilson: If it is too difficult, give it about three weeks and I bet they'll have it solved.
• 4:50
  Larry Wilson: It's moving so fast.
• 4:53
  Larry Wilson: I looked at um, and now I've forgotten the name.
• 4:56
  Larry Wilson: Oh, I feel terrible.
• 4:58
  Larry Wilson: Zach is his first name, the writer-director of Pomegranate, but you'll know his name very soon.
• 5:07
  Larry Wilson: I'm very certain.
• 5:09
  Larry Wilson: I saw some of his earlier work, and by earlier I mean like a month ago.
• 5:13
  Larry Wilson: And the difference between a month ago and last night was astronomical.
• 5:20
  Larry Wilson: So all this technology is moving at light speed.
• 5:23
  Larry Wilson: It's it's moving at an incredible pace.
• 5:26
  Larry Wilson: And and uh, you know, please don't misunderstand me.
• 5:30
  Larry Wilson: Uh pomegranate is not some brilliant uh uh script.
• 5:35
  Larry Wilson: It's good, but it's not brilliant or earth-shaking or you know, Shakespearean.
• 5:43
  Larry Wilson: I think uh this writer-director wanted to showcase some of the things that he can do, and they are extraordinary.
• 5:51
  Larry Wilson: I won't give any of it away, you'll be able to see, but almost any, almost any visual you can imagine with humans in it.
• 6:02
  Larry Wilson: Of course, they aren't real humans, they're artificially created, but they sure look human.
• 6:08
  Larry Wilson: And there's close-ups on them where they seem to have muscles under their skin moving, where some little tiny movements, it it's incredible.
• 6:18
  Larry Wilson: And there's pirates on the ocean and sea monsters, and uh well, you'll just have to see it's incredible.
• 6:26
  Larry Wilson: And I think in many ways, this writer director wanted to show that there's nothing that his studio cannot produce.
• 6:36
  Larry Wilson: And I shouldn't know the name of his studio, I've forgotten that as well.
• 6:39
  Larry Wilson: I'm sorry, I should have written that down.
• 6:41
  Larry Wilson: But I guess I just feel like, oh, you'll know in the next week, you'll hear all about this.
• 6:47
  Larry Wilson: And why?
• 6:48
  Larry Wilson: Why is this so important to us?
• 6:51
  Larry Wilson: Well, because the one thing, besides the voices for the actors, but the one thing that clearly was not AI was the story.
• 7:06
  Larry Wilson: And you've heard me say here before, talking about AI, saying my beef with it, of course, was that people were starting to worship it as if it were some sort of entity or god.
• 7:23
  Larry Wilson: It is not, it is simply a very powerful and efficient machine.
• 7:30
  Larry Wilson: And it can do things faster than we can do them.
• 7:34
  Larry Wilson: And so the challenge in many ways becomes your communication skills with AI.
• 7:45
  Larry Wilson: Uh, I do not have an inside track on this, I do on communication skills, but I don't on this film, Pomegranate.
• 7:54
  Larry Wilson: I don't know anything about this guy.
• 7:56
  Larry Wilson: My guess is he must be very young.
• 7:58
  Larry Wilson: And he's very talented.
• 8:00
  Larry Wilson: He has got some great stuff going on.
• 8:02
  Larry Wilson: There's some very clever stuff, very, very clever stuff.
• 8:06
  Larry Wilson: But the story seems to be organic, not virtual or artificial.
• 8:16
  Larry Wilson: The story seems to be one he wrote himself, and like I say, uh don't don't go into it expecting Shakespeare.
• 8:24
  Larry Wilson: It's not Shakespeare, but it's solid, it's very solid, and it has a point it wants to make about technology.
• 8:35
  Larry Wilson: And I I personally feel that um I I feel that whether the director writer is conscious of it or not, a lot of his choices were influenced by how he feels about presenting this new technology to the world and how resistant people are to it, and how unfamiliar it is, how how it's just unknown territory.
• 9:03
  Larry Wilson: And so people are sometimes resistant to that.
• 9:06
  Larry Wilson: They're you know, it's a little frightening.
• 9:09
  Larry Wilson: Uh, to me, it was mind-blowing.
• 9:12
  Larry Wilson: And I thought, wow, this is this is revolutionary.
• 9:18
  Larry Wilson: My wife, who was watching with us, when it was done, she just said, This is like seeing men walking on the moon.
• 9:27
  Larry Wilson: I had to agree, yeah.
• 9:29
  Larry Wilson: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Larry Wilson: And I said, It feels like how cowboys must have felt when they saw the very first automobile.
• 9:40
  Larry Wilson: Like, here's this horseless carriage that can run all day faster than a horse.
• 9:52
  Larry Wilson: I mean, imagine what that must have done to their brain.
• 9:58
  Larry Wilson: And then my son, I think, came up with the most apt analogy.
• 10:03
  Larry Wilson: He said, It's like a samurai who draws his sword and sees the very first gun he's ever seen, and is thinking, What is this?
• 10:18
  Larry Wilson: And then someone fires the gun, and I'm imagining, I don't know, but I could imagine a dying samurai thinking, there is no honor in this.
• 10:32
  Larry Wilson: Probably right, probably isn't any honor in that, but definitely revolutionary.
• 10:39
  Larry Wilson: That's seriously what it felt like.
• 10:42
  Larry Wilson: That I just saw the entire studio system in Hollywood, the last hundred years, the advent of motion pictures going from uh simple one-reelers in black and white, and then having you know, cards saying what the dialogue was supposed to be, and then actually having sound in the movie with voices and music, and how mind-blowing that must have been.
• 11:19
  Larry Wilson: And then in the 50s, color suddenly coming in, and 3D, and you know, all of it.
• 11:29
  Larry Wilson: I mean, all of it mind-blowing.
• 11:32
  Larry Wilson: But now it's all history.
• 11:36
  Larry Wilson: Now, some of you are saying, hey, man, I was gonna go see uh The Odyssey this weekend at a movie theater.
• 11:43
  Larry Wilson: Are you telling me they're closed?
• 11:44
  Larry Wilson: No, of course not.
• 11:46
  Larry Wilson: As with any time that some revolutionary, I was gonna use the word teleportation, I mean, might be a little strong, but paradigm-changing technological breakthrough happens, like the motor car, like men walking on the moon, like the first gun a master swordsman ever sees, never heard of it.
• 12:16
  Larry Wilson: Suddenly, someone who's not even close enough to touch with his sword is able to fire a projectile and kill him.
• 12:24
  Larry Wilson: I mean, that just it's mind-boggling.
• 12:28
  Larry Wilson: It it it defies the ability to imagine, it just defies.
• 12:35
  Larry Wilson: That's what I saw last night.
• 12:38
  Larry Wilson: But as always with those kinds of things, it will be a gradual process.
• 12:45
  Larry Wilson: When talkies appeared in movies and sound, there were still silent pictures for many years, and they made money uh when color came in.
• 12:58
  Larry Wilson: There were still films in black and white, you know.
• 13:01
  Larry Wilson: The first one I think of most notoriously in well, now I don't know the exact year.
• 13:09
  Larry Wilson: I want to say 1959 or 1960, uh, Alfred Hitchcock's uh psycho is shot in black and white.
• 13:18
  Larry Wilson: And the studio was very reluctant to do that because everyone was shooting everything in color.
• 13:24
  Larry Wilson: And I think Hitchcock, Hitchcock's always struck me as a master strategist and and diplomat, I think.
• 13:34
  Larry Wilson: So the story that I've heard is that Hitchcock told the studios, oh, because of the nature of the story and there's blood and stuff, in color it might be too much, might be too shocking in color.
• 13:49
  Larry Wilson: And they went, oh, oh, but I'm told, and Hitchcock had said in interviews, no, the reason was he had a very limited budget.
• 13:59
  Larry Wilson: They had enough to shoot 28 days, I think, which is not very long.
• 14:05
  Larry Wilson: And you know, this is ancient history.
• 14:08
  Larry Wilson: This is back in the days when the studio system ruled the roost, and you didn't get 250 million dollars to just shoot miles and miles of film and do whatever you wanted.
• 14:21
  Larry Wilson: Film was expensive, and I guess Hitchcock's idea was color film was so much more expensive to purchase, so much more expensive to develop, so much more expensive to print a work print to start editing that by shooting black and white, he was able to extend his shooting schedule, I think, by four or five days, which seemed like a huge amount of time then.
• 14:50
  Larry Wilson: Uh, but the point is, technological changes don't happen in the blink of an eye, they take time.
• 14:56
  Larry Wilson: But this guy who made pomegranate has announced, I don't know if it's true or not, but he's announced a feature-length film that will be released October 30th of this year, 2026, in theaters.
• 15:15
  Larry Wilson: I don't know if he's hoping to do that.
• 15:18
  Larry Wilson: I don't know if they're already in production on it.
• 15:21
  Larry Wilson: I I don't know anything about it, but I would not bet against it.
• 15:26
  Larry Wilson: If he really has a feature-length film in theaters October 30th, my prediction here is it is going to be a monster.
• 15:38
  Larry Wilson: It's gonna be gigantic.
• 15:40
  Larry Wilson: God, it's gonna be huge, huge.
• 15:44
  Larry Wilson: Now, again, some of you're saying, this is all well and good, Larry, but you're saying I can still go to the movies this weekend in a theater.
• 15:53
  Larry Wilson: Yes, of course.
• 15:55
  Larry Wilson: I'm telling you because of two important factors.
• 16:00
  Larry Wilson: Because one, it looks like this is wholly dependent on your ability to communicate with AI.
• 16:09
  Larry Wilson: Now that doesn't mean it has to be spoken, could be.
• 16:12
  Larry Wilson: I'm not an expert in technology.
• 16:15
  Larry Wilson: I know some people do that.
• 16:17
  Larry Wilson: Maybe it's all typing, maybe it's all uh on the keyboard.
• 16:23
  Larry Wilson: I'm not sure.
• 16:24
  Larry Wilson: But the limited exposure I've had to AI and the experts who I've spoken with have said, oh yeah.
• 16:33
  Larry Wilson: They they, for those of you who may not have experimented, yes, they call these prompts when you're prompting the machine to do something.
• 16:44
  Larry Wilson: The prompt might be a question, how do you blah blah blah?
• 16:49
  Larry Wilson: That's considered a prompt.
• 16:51
  Larry Wilson: Or it may be more like you would think of a prompt where you're telling it to do something.
• 16:57
  Larry Wilson: Paint the sky in the background of the scene this color blue, or uh you'll see stuff uh your mind won't believe, but you might be saying, I want raindrops falling on the pavement, and when they hit the ground, I want them to bounce up about four or five inches off the ground.
• 17:19
  Larry Wilson: So the clarity and specificity of your prompts have a direct correlation with the output of AI.
• 17:33
  Larry Wilson: I realize some of you are saying, to hell with AI, I want to know part of it.
• 17:40
  Larry Wilson: That's all right.
• 17:40
  Larry Wilson: I mean, uh I totally understand that feeling.
• 17:45
  Larry Wilson: I'm sure there's a lot of people who want to know part of those newfangled horseless carriages.
• 17:55
  Larry Wilson: I'm sure there were.
• 17:56
  Larry Wilson: And in fact, I actually feel like I've read historical uh records of certain people saying, Oh yeah, uh those uh you know, newfangled automobiles, uh they're incredibly dangerous.
• 18:13
  Larry Wilson: Uh everyone who drives one at some point uh gets killed because of the way they run.
• 18:21
  Larry Wilson: I mean, it this is the story is there's nothing new under the sun.
• 18:28
  Larry Wilson: The technology may be new, but we, the people, the humans, we remain the same.
• 18:36
  Larry Wilson: I I referenced the Odyssey before.
• 18:39
  Larry Wilson: I haven't seen it yet.
• 18:40
  Larry Wilson: I'm very anxious to see it.
• 18:42
  Larry Wilson: I think Christopher Nolan is a great filmmaker, and so whether I like it or hate it, I know it would be good filmmaking.
• 18:52
  Larry Wilson: I mean, he but the Odyssey is 3,000 years old.
• 19:00
  Larry Wilson: This classic piece of literature, it's actually a poem, a vast sprawling, huge poem, 3,000 years old.
• 19:10
  Larry Wilson: So it was incredibly old.
• 19:15
  Larry Wilson: It was ancient and perhaps by some people forgotten at the time Jesus Christ was born.
• 19:23
  Larry Wilson: Does this give you some perspective?
• 19:25
  Larry Wilson: Uh it's old, it's very old, but it's a great story if you don't know it.
• 19:34
  Larry Wilson: It's the basis of so many stories you've seen on film and TV.
• 19:40
  Larry Wilson: And I'm telling you this, without having seen Christopher Nolan's version yet, you know, uh, those of you who may not be as familiar with the Odyssey, it's been made hundreds of times.
• 19:52
  Larry Wilson: There, I don't know the exact number of films that have been made of it that are, I mean, directly, not influenced by or inspired by.
• 20:01
  Larry Wilson: I mean, directly supposed to be, there must be dozens of them, but inspired by.
• 20:06
  Larry Wilson: The story of the Odyssey is this warrior, Odysseus, goes off to fight in the Trojan Wars, leads his men.
• 20:19
  Larry Wilson: Uh, ultimately, I guess the most famous uh historians, of course, know much more detail than I do here.
• 20:27
  Larry Wilson: But the most famous thing we probably know about is the Trojan horse, a way to sneak into the enemy's enclave by presenting something that looks like a gift from the gods, a gigantic horse made of wood.
• 20:44
  Larry Wilson: But inside are all these enemy soldiers.
• 20:46
  Larry Wilson: So once it's pulled into the camp of the enemy, at night when everyone's asleep, they come out and decimate them.
• 20:55
  Larry Wilson: So uh that I think maybe everyone knows, because that term Trojan horse is even used in uh internet and digital stuff, where something that looks favorable and like a pleasant gift actually conceals something like malware, like it's uh it's not good.
• 21:17
  Larry Wilson: So this story, he goes and fights in the Trojan War, and then he the the Odyssey is the story of him trying to get home to his beautiful wife, Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world.
• 21:34
  Larry Wilson: Hard to imagine, but she must be because that's what Homer says about her.
• 21:39
  Larry Wilson: How great is that?
• 21:40
  Larry Wilson: 3,000 years ago, guy's writing this story and says, Oh, yeah, it's not just that his wife is good looking, she's the most beautiful woman in the world.
• 21:52
  Larry Wilson: I would hasten all people listening to this to make a note of that, because that's really Great storytelling.
• 22:02
  Larry Wilson: Now, I'm I'm making a big deal about this and this breakthrough in digital AI produced filmmaking because all of you will not be affected by this.
• 22:17
  Larry Wilson: I mean, you might be affected indirectly.
• 22:19
  Larry Wilson: You might go to see a movie or this.
• 22:22
  Larry Wilson: But people who are afraid of losing their job, if your communication skills are above average, you'll be fine.
• 22:34
  Larry Wilson: Because that's foundational for interacting with this new technology, this AI.
• 22:45
  Larry Wilson: It's how well you can communicate.
• 22:48
  Larry Wilson: And storytelling is what we do.
• 22:53
  Larry Wilson: I wonder if everyone understands.
• 22:55
  Larry Wilson: I've spoken of it before.
• 22:57
  Larry Wilson: This shouldn't be a surprise to you.
• 22:59
  Larry Wilson: It shouldn't be a sudden revelation.
• 23:02
  Larry Wilson: But storytelling is essential to commerce, to business.
• 23:09
  Larry Wilson: It's what we do.
• 23:12
  Larry Wilson: I I know people who uh don't subscribe to this, who feel like, well, uh I my goods that I create or services I provide, uh, they're really good.
• 23:23
  Larry Wilson: So I just have to do them and people see they're really good.
• 23:28
  Larry Wilson: And then those people uh may make a fine living, they may make great income, but they're always frustrated because somebody whose goods or services that are identical to the ones they offer is making three, four, five times as much money.
• 23:48
  Larry Wilson: They're doing so much more business, and and maybe the goods and services aren't even as good as the ones that the person who I'm referring to feels I do a great thing.
• 24:01
  Larry Wilson: I shouldn't have to tell a story, I should just be able to say, look, this is what I do.
• 24:05
  Larry Wilson: Yes, maybe you should be able to, but it's not the way humans work.
• 24:11
  Larry Wilson: And for those of you who are late to the party, communication is human.
• 24:19
  Larry Wilson: You know, sometimes I get so involved that time just slips away.
• 24:24
  Larry Wilson: There's so much here I want to share with you, but I don't want to take up more of your life.
• 24:30
  Larry Wilson: So we're gonna continue the second part of this next week, and it only gets better.
• 24:38
  Larry Wilson: This has been Larry Wilson.
• 24:40
  Larry Wilson: I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful.
• 24:47
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com.
• 24:52
  Larry Wilson: There's a ton of stuff there.
• 24:54
  Larry Wilson: In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
• 25:00
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one.
• 25:10
  Larry Wilson: I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey.
• 25:15
  Larry Wilson: And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Human.