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The Variable Man with Gary Goldman and Angus Fletcher | Development Hell · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Welcome to episode two of Development Hell, our revisionist history
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: series based on the radical notion of the best Hollywood
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: stories are the ones that never got made into movies.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Last time, we kicked out the series with the story
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: of how my book Blink failed to make it under
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: the big screen. If you haven't heard that one yet,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: you really really should, because it explains why failed stories
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: have such meaning for me. Anyway, this episode is a
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: wildly convoluted tale, full of big plot twists and huge
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: moral questions, a story so much about right now that's
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: going to get a little uncomfortable. Allow me to introduce
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: guests Number one, Angus Fletcher. He's a screenwriter.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not a screenwriter, and I've never really wanted to
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: be a screenwriter. Have no aptitude in screenwriting.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Don't listen to Angus. Angus is in fact a screenwriter,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: as you'll hear, he's also an author, researcher, and professor
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: of story science at Ohio State and a longtime friend
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: of Revision's history. Some of you will remember him as
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the person who provided the intellectual scaffolding for our memorable
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: revision of The Little Mermaid. Remember this so you think
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: we should be able to we should fix Ursula.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I think we should just stop her from doing
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: whatever she's doing. We should have a conversation with her
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: about maybe why this isn't helpful.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: Do you, Prince Eric, take Ursula to have and to
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: hold in sickness and in health for as long as
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: you both shall live.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Eric looks deep into Ursula's eyes, hypnotized.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: If you haven't heard that Little Mermaid series, listen to it. Anyway,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: back to today's story.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I'm just fascinated by this problem that Hollywood has, that
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: it keeps selling the same story over and over and
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: over again. And so you know, back when I was
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: actually a Shakespeare professor up at Stanford, I placed this
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: folk all the Pixar and I was basically like, how
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: is it you guys who were able to make stuff
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: that's like better? This is when they're making movies like
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Up which had just these totally berserk narrative structures. And
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: so the anyway they let me inside, I learned all
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: this stuff. I thought it was totally fascinating. I realized
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: that they were making stories in a totally different way
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: than Hollywood was. So I went down to Hollywood to
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: advise Hollywood, and that led to me basically trying to
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: convince Hollywood by writing a series of screenplays the Pixar way,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: because I thought that they would then allow me to
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: consult on movies. Instead, No, they just hired me to
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: write screenplays, and that's how I got an agent. And
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: then one day my agent called me up and because
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: he knew I'm just obsessed with the original Total Recall,
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: which had destroyed my mind when I was young, and
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: he was like, how would you like to work with
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: the writer of Total Recall, Gary Goldman?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And so that's how we got together. Gary.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Wait, Gary, you wrote Total Recall. Meet Guests number two,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Gary Goldman. He's also a screenwriter, but unlike Angus, has
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: no trouble admitting it.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, I was the last writer on Total Recall. On
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the first Total Recall.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Total Recall amazing movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger Sharon Stone, directed by
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Paul Verhoven.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So it was about a milk toast character who finds
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: out that he's not who he thinks he is, which
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: is that he's a kind of a super spy.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: But how real?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Does it seem?
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: As real as any memory in your head? Come on,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: don't bullshit me.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: No, I'm telling you, Doug, your brain will not know
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: the difference, and that's guaranteed or your money back.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: What about the guy you lobottomized? Did he get the refund?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Came out in nineteen ninety blockbuster tons of awards total
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: recall has a number of It has a genealogy. It's
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: not just to me. I mean, it has a short story.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: The source material is from Philip K.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Dick. And then there was a fantastic original screenplay by
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Dan O'Bannon and Ron Schussette that everybody loved from the beginning,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and this launched the project. In fact, this is sort
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: of the prime example of this idea of development hell,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: which is that you sell something for a lot of
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: money and everybody's very excited about it, and they tell
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: you it's going to be a movie right away, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: then it goes into a process of development where everybody
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: has a hand in revising it and reconceptualizing it and
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: making it in their image and in the middle. Depending
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: on your involvement, you can be in development hell along
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: with the project, or you can be a bystander pushed
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: to the outside watching it go through the process of
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: development Hell with lots of other people, not including yourself.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're lucky it gets made at all.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: The project had been in development for almost eight or
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: nine years when I got involved.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, eight or nine years. Yes, So if you go
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: back to the original screenplay, do you think that's a
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: better movie than the final screenplay?
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: No?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Not in my case.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: So you're saying development hell is a bad thing. Accept
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: in the case where I'm involved in convicings, which, by
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: the way, a legitimate position that I would write, I'm
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: totally open to agree with that.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, when I was starting out, I read the
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: original Total Recalled screenplay as a junior executor for a
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: producer who was considering making it and acquiring it. And
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: basically the problem that most people felt was that it
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: fell apart in the third act. So and this apparently,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: it fell apart so disastrously that even though it had
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: many different stars and directors attached and people always wanted
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: to make it, it didn't cross the finish line. And
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: by the time it got to me it was eight
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: or nine years later. It had been in pre production
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: with Bruce Beresford and Patrick Swayzee and the producer Dino
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Dilarentis in Australia, and in fact, Bruce Beresford asked me
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: to come over and do a rewrite on it, and
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I said I couldn't because I was working with Paul
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Verhovean on another project. But Dino went bankrupt. Arnold Schwarzenegger
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: had always loved the project and had been watching it.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: He went the owners of the Carolco studio that had
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: done the Rambo movies and he said, you know, I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: want to do this, and they bought it from Dio
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Dilarentis out of bankruptcy for a humongous amount of money
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and with the idea that Arnold was attached. Arnold wanted
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to work with Paul Verhoven because Paul had just done
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: RoboCop and I was working with Paul Verhovean on a
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: movie called about Out of Body Travel, and Paul said
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: he didn't think it was ready to shoot and that
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: he was going to leave our project and go do
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: another project, and he was apologizing to me for that.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I said, what's the other project and he said Total Recall.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I said, well, that's really funny, Paul, because I turned
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: down totally the chance to rewrite Total Recall because I
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: was working with you, and he said, well, what did
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: you think about it? And I told him my take
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: and he said, well, you know, that's pretty much how
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I see it too. Let me let me see if
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I can get you the job to rewrite it.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Gary, Gary, Gary got worried. We want to talk with
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: his other project. But now I'm thinking we can come
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: back to total recall or is this all leading up
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: to the other project. Well, they're connected, yeah, So what's
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: the connection? The connection is I would say Philip K. Dick,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick, sci Fi Master. To name just a
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: few other Philip K. Dick film adaptations, Blade Runner, Minority Report, Scanner, Darkly,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick is probably the most important sci fi
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: writer ever, or at least of the last hundred years.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: After working on Minority Report, Gary was becoming a bit
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: of a Philip K. Dick specialist, which is not a
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: bad thing to be in a town that loves sci
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: fi adaptations. When we get back, Gary and Angus go
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: to work on adapting another of his stories. We're back
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: with Angus Fletcher and Gary Goldman, who've just been set
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: up to work together on an adaptation of a Philip K.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Dick story. I've done four projects based on Philip K.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Dick material. This would become my calling card in Hollywood
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: was that I did Philip K. Dick adaptations.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: So, Angus, wait, did you have a particular affection for
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick prior to this project?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean I loved the movie Total Reco And
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: I'm going to acknowledge that I was such a philistine
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: that I had no idea that it came from Philip K.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Dick.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: And happened was the moment I got the call from
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: my agent. I then went and read all of Philip K.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Dick and it's surreal. I mean, he sort of went
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: from science fiction into religion. And I called Gary up
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: and I was like, well, Gary, I was like, what
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: do you think you know?
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I'd love to work with you. And the main reason
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I wanted to work with Gary is.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Because I believe that screenwriters had the ability to see
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: the future, because I think this is a common power
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: of story. I think that science fiction is always about
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: intuiting what's going to happen next. And so I said
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: to Gary, I said, Gary, what do you think the
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: future is? And he said, Angus, read this story, variable
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: man and the premise of Variable Man's very simple. It's
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: basically just about a future in which there are these
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: computers who used this histics to predict everything's going to happen.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: And I said, you know, Gary, this seems weirdly like
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: the world we're accelerating it to now.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, he said it is. And he said, and.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: I have a premise or a story that I'd like
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: to pitch to you that I think will kind of
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: be as big, if not bigger, than total recall.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: And that's where we got started, was with his pitch
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: to me. And is the So the Variable Man's Story
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was written when, Oh, I don't know about nineteen fifty, probably.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Oh I see, Oh it really so. Imagining in nineteen
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: fifty a world in which computers predict everything is kind
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: of great if you're in the twenty When when did
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: you guys, When did you guys work together on this project?
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: What was the early two thousand, early two thousands? So
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: you have and so were you were you being faithful
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: to the Philip K. Dick short story or were you
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: were you changing it in useful ways?
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: We were changing it in useful ways. And there a
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: couple a couple of big things. So, first of all,
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Gary's pitch to me was he was like, imagine a
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: future in which computers don't just predict things like they
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: do in the Philip K.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Dick story, which is who wins this war?
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: But he says, you know, imagine that they're able to
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: predict exactly.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: What food you'd like to eat right now. And then
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: he said, and then imagine.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: That they're able to predict a gift that you can
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: give to your best friend for their birthday. And that
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: gift is so good that your friend not only loves it,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: but it seems perfectly like it came from you. And
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: then he said, imagine the computers can pick your soulmate.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Imagine the computers can pick the person that you love
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: so totally and so absolutely that you know that.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: This computer knows you better than yourself. And I said,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: And then he said, and now imagine, after you've given
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: yourself up totally these computers, you wake up one morning
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: and they say to you, in twenty four hours, the
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: world is going to end because humanity is going to
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: destroy itself. And I've crunched all the variables and there's
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: no opportunity for you to do anything. That's the starting
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: point for the story.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, So wait, how far have we traveled?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: We've traveled quite significantly from Philip K. Dick At this
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: he was just imagining a world where there were these
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: computers that were predicting the outcome of a war, and
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: the computer's run across a problem. That's basically the plot,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: well right.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: The title variable Man. Because the other thing that Philip K.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Dick did, which he intuited I think at a moment
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: of genius, was what would happen if you put a
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: person who the computers had no information on into the
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: middle of the statistical world. So these are all these
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: computers that are able to see the future because they
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: have all the data, but there's one person who they
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: have no data on. And so the starting point for
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: the screenplay that Carried and I did was humanity goes,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: oh my goodness, we're going to die tomorrow. Our only
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: option is to bring in someone who the computer has
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: no data on, the variable man, the person who is unpredictable, unknown.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: And so, just like in the original Philip K.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Dick's story, we reached back into time, back into history
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: before the computers and pluck this person into the present.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: And that's basically the beginning of the screenplay is when
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: the variable man arrives in this world where everything has
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: been planned, everything has been predetermined, the computers know everything.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: We're all going to die.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now the way with so many, so many wonderful uh, Gary,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: tell me a little bit about your thought process in
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: moving from the original Philip K. Dick notion to the
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: one that Anglish has described. Tell me about the leaps
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: that you made there and why you made them?
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: All Right, So, I suppose I was very interested in AI.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: You know, everyone's thinking about it now, but it wasn't
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: brand new. And I saw this idea that that of
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the computer that can predict everything, and that you have
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to give up control to the computer because it's it's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: working so fast, uh, And I wanted to sort of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: imagine this sort of trajectory of of going from where
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: we are now to the point where the computer is
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: in total control. And I was really and I remain
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: concerned about this question of decision making and how do
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: we make decisions? And if the computer can make better
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: decisions than we do, then what is the role of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: free will? And if you spend a whole life just
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: simply doing what the computer tells you to do. What
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: is identity. So I wanted to put this hero who
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: comes from the past and who still is accustomed to
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: having free will and his power is to have free will,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and to put it in the situation where whenever he
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: listens to the computer, everything goes right, and whenever he
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: trusts his own judgment, it's wrong.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, wait, wait, so the AI, the AI is
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: smart enough to realize that the only way to save
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the world is to bring someone in from outside AI. Yeah, oh,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: the AI a little bit of self knowledge and humility
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: in your world.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was one of our best things. We
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: created this wonderful AI, a wonderful character called We named
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: him Plato, and uh, he's you know, he's sort of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: somewhere We're going to Butler and God.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's this is this is getting better and better.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: I was gonna chime in there and uh and just
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: and just say that basically, in this society, there are
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: a few people that have tuned out and they're like,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to listen to this computer.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Where does this computer know?
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: And their lives are horrible and all their decisions are bad,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: and they decide to choose their own soulmates, and they
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: have horrible marriages.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And then everyone who.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Listens to exactly what the computer says has this Instagram
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: life where they are actually so happy and their kids
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: are so perfect and everything is so amazing.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, Cole comes into this world. Our
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: hero comes into this world.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: And he of course finds an appalling and as as
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: appalling as we would find it, and he's determined to
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: ignore Plato. He's determined to ignore the AI that has
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: brought into the future to save humanity from itself. So
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: this is another kind of unfolding paradox is humanity doesn't
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: want to save itself. It means listening to the computers
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: on how to save itself.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, so many questions.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: First of all, tell me a little bit about so
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: our variable man is called as in the Philip K.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Dick story, your veryble man is called coal. Tell me
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: about your coal? And where does he come from? What's
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: his personality?
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Why is he? Why is he the way? Why is
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: he so capable of standing up to AI even if
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: AI has all these demonistrable advantages.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So basically he's just a classic action hero.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: The idea is he embodies kind of our cowboy American
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: trust in our guts. And so the opening sequence, he's
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: sent in to stop this hacker, this hacker who's been
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: creating chaos across the world, who's been sort of, you know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: getting into all these top secret facilities and creating we
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: think he's gonna launch world War three whatever.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And so Cole goes in and he's being sort of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: instructed what.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: To do, and we already had these computers at this
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: time that are sort of running the percentages and telling
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: him do this, do this, do this, do this other thing,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: and he's listening to the computers.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: He's breaking in.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: He finally gets to the heart of the layer where
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: this hacker is, and he kicks down the door and
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: he points his gun and then the hacker turns around
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: and it's a child, and Cole realizes, oh, my goodness,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: this is the hacker. This is the person who's been
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: creating all this chaos. And he gets this word on
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: his earpiece, kill the hacker, and he says, I can't
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: kill the hacker.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: This is a child.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And there's this long pause and they say, look, we've
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: run all the numbers. If you don't kill the kid.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: This is going to happen again. Pull the trigger and
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: he stands there in the moment. Can I pull the trigger?
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Can I pull the sugar? And then he doesn't do it.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: He doesn't pull the trigger, He drops the gun, he
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: grabs a kid, and what essentially happens is he dies
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: saving the kid's life. There's a fireball that blows him up,
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: but the kid goes on and the kid lives.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And because that fireball incinerates him.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: He can be brought into the future without changing time
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: because he was essentially eliminated from the timeline. So if
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: you reach into the exact moment just before he dies
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: and pull him into the future, time isn't changed. And
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: so he's the perfect person to bring back because he
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: has demonstrated the ability to say no to the computers,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: and also because taking him doesn't change time.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Oh I see so in the Fruit, when we meet
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Cole's he's part of the present, he's not. He's He's
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: just a guy who's standing up to the tyranny of AI.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Here's an action hero who's AI has been corrupted by
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: this hacker. He's started to solve the problem. He fails
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: as an incident. How much time passes between that initial
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: encounter with the hacker and then when our story is
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: taking place.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Well, this is part of the twist because when you
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: get into the future, you think that an enormous amount
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: of time has passed because the future is radically different
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: from when Cole disappeared, and it's so different that he
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: can't believe it.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: But we start to.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Learn that actually a very small amount of time, much
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: more less time than you might suspect, has passed between
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: when he died and when he was brought back because
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: these computers, as Gary was saying, have accelerated human decision
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: making to the points that our.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Society has started to run on this.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: Utopia cycle and everything is just going much faster and
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: much better than anyone could have imagined in our time.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: And it's because of this great genius who was the kid.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: The kid is is the thing that made the difference
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: because he didn't kill him. Because Cole didn't kill him,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: he survived and he became the great genius that ushered
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: us into this accelerated utopia.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Now, why one thing I don't understand. If we are
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: in accelerated utopia, why do we need saving? Why would
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: utopia have a kind of expiry date. Isn't the definition
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: of utopia that it keeps going in perpetuity?
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, so this is part of the great
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: middle of the beginning of the story is why is
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: it exactly that we're going to die? What could possibly
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: go wrong? Everything seems like it's perfect. What is going
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: to destroy the world? Well, nobody is able to identify
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: exactly at the beginning of the movie what's going to
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: go on. All they know is that the computers are
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: quite insistent that is going to happen in the next
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: twenty four hours. And what happens over the middle parts
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: of the screenplay is various different alternatives start to emerge.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: We start to see all of these different moving pieces,
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: and we start to realize, oh, sure, you know it's
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: a utopia, but there's still humans in it, and there's
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: still other things going on. And I don't know how
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: many of the twists you want me to ruin up, Malcolm.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: But one of the things that starts to become a
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: question that haunts the hero is is he the one
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: who's going to destroy the world? Is what the computers
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: saw that he would get brought back and that by
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: not listening to the computers. He was going to be
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: the one that blows everything up.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: You know what this is, if I might reduce your
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: whole premise to an axiom. This is the cinematic version
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of the famous adage in the Land of the Blind,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: the one eyed man is king right. Yeap, your coal
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: is your one eyed man who is asked to be
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: king right. And what you're describing just there is he
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: knows he only has one eye right. He's wrestling with
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: the fact that he can't see it all. It's sort
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: of beautiful. Let me give you a little recap of
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: where we are. There's a perfect utopia where AI runs everything.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: People do what computers tell them to do and are
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: better for it. For reasons we don't quite understand yet,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: this utopia is in danger. In order to save it,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: the AI named Plato no Less brings back to life
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: a guy who defied its commands in the past. After
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: the break, Gary and Angus try to get the movie made.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So tell me about your tell me more about your goal.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: So does he who who do you imagine playing your goal?
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So we actually had we had quite a lot of interest.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: We had interest from Bradley Cooper's people.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: We had interest from Mark Wahlberg's people. But the one
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: thing that was always common.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Was that people became increasingly disturbed about the paradox at
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: the center of Paul Psyche, because if you're going to
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: play this part, you have to wrestle with all of
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: these sort of profound questions, And one of the most
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: profound questions is that what the computers are doing is
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: they're saying, trust us. And the reason they get us
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: to trust them is by being able to predict our
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: most intimate choice.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: They're able to.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: Predict our heart. They're able to know our heart better
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: than we know our heart. They're able to say, you're
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: going to love this person, and when you meet this person,
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: your entire life is going to be changed. And the
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: computer does this to Cole when he gets into the future.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Is he picks the perfect person for Coal and they
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: fall in love immediately. In fact, they fall in love
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: so fast that they don't even know that they were
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: set up by the computer.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: They only figure it out after the fact.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: So now Cole knows that the computer has told him
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: this is who you're going to love, this is your soulmate.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And the computer has also told him the world is
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: going to end, and so essentially the existential choice facing
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: Coal is is my heart wrong.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: And I don't love this woman and the world is
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: going to be fine, or.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: By following my heart and accepting that I love this woman,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: is everyone going to die?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And that he has to listen to the computer when
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the computer gives him a mission, and the computer's mission
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: for him is to kill someone. Is to kill the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: person who's going to trigger the singularity.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Same mission as was given him before he was incinerated.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: That's right, but on a much bigger and more advanced scale. Yeah,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And the twist is that the person who he has
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to kill is, of course the person that he saved
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: when he was a child. And the further twist is
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: that that person is the father of the girl he's
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: been matched with, who he's fallen in love with, and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: that he's been set up to be with this girl
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: because she's going to bring him home to Daddy and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: that's the only way to get through daddy's security.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, so good, it's so good. Why let's
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: go back. So you had the interest from these actors
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: in playing Cole, But why did they have when you
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: said they had trouble with that twist. It sounds to
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: me like this is an extraordinary opportunity for a skilled actor.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: What do you mean they had trouble with it.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Well, so I think that when you think about why
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: total Recall got made, Arnold Schwarzninger has the capacity to
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: be himself and also be meta Ornald at the same time.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: So he's the capacity to kind of laugh at himself
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: at the same time he's being himself. This part requires
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: that ability to be yourself and be outside yourself at
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: the same time, and it forces you also to go
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: against the kind of core fantasy of Hollywood, which is
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: that love saves the world.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: If you listen to yourself, that saves the world.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: And so this caused a lot of cognitive dissonance in actors,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: and the same reason that Gary was talking about that
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: the sort of AI billionaire's daughter was caused cognitive dissonance.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: And so that was a real emotional sticking point for
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: a lot of actors, and I think they were concerned
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: about the story.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right, Angus. Ultimately we didn't want
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, trust your heart and it's all
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: going to work out. That's a lot of Hollywood endings
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: manufacture that ending, and it's the Hollywood answer is trust
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: your heart, and society is producing a new answer, which
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: is trust the AI.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Can you think of a Hollywood movie in previous to
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: this where not the narrow question of don't trust your heart,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: but the kind of broader question of that love and
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: the fulfillment of a real emotional need would have catastrophic
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: consequences outside of it?
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Is?
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: That is this virgin territory is what I'm asking for
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: a Hollywood film. One example springs to mind Casablanca. For
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergmann to get together will farm
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the world, and so they Humphrey Bogart makes the Rick
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: makes the decision not to follow his heart.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I think you're right, but you will.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: There's a crucial difference, though, and that is, do we
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: ever really believe that Rick is madly in love with
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Ingrid Berkman? Not in what you've described as a situation
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: where the two parties are genuinely and have powerful reason
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: to believe that they are genuinely in love, they are soulmates.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Was Ingram Bourkman Humphrey Bogart's soulmon in Casablanca or was
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: it was like his heart is so kind of hardened
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: and covered in scar tissue, we kind of accept him
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: walking away because that's what he does. He walks away, right,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: But you just gotta be something a very different dynamic.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: You're talking about two people who are soulmates having to
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: walk away.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I will say I'm Malcolm my way.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: That's a very iconoclastic reading that you just delivered of Casablanca.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: But also, wait, wait, wait, wait what wait?
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: But they know you don't think Humphrey Bogart's heart is
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: covered in covered in scar tissues.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: I think the point is that even though it is he,
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: he realizes that the romantic thing to do is to leave.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: And so that's the ultimate tragedy of that movie, Malcolm,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: which which you've just desecrated, is that he's a man
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: who is reconnected with his heart and in doing so,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: walked away from it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: You know. Anyway, I think that's the Hollywood schlock reading
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: But but the point is in that movie he walks away.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: He does the heroic thing, and and you know, you're asking,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: is there a movie where someone has basically willingly destroyed
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: the world for their own love.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Has someone willingly made that choice?
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And that one that one did happen in the English patient?
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Oh tell me, tell me, I remember that film is
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: not strong enough. Tell me how that happens in the
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: English Patient.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Well, in the end of the hero basically is a
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: traitor to the allies out of love for a woman. Okay,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: and usually Holly would doesn't put the hero in that position.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: That's they don't decide to. I mean, what they will
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: either do is say there's a greater good here. I
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: mean a lot of English movies, you know, even brief encounter,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: you know, people say I'm in love, but I'm going
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to do this, I'm going to stay with my wife
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and kids. Yes, so there is.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: There is English annoying kind of aristocratic English notion of
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: remembering Tale of Two Cities at the end, it's a
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: far far better thing than I've ever done.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: They love playing that role. They never play it in
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: real life, but they love playing it in literature. Yeah, yeah,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: they're like, are you kidding me? In real life he's good, No,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: he's not doing that. But no, but wait wait, I'm
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: still I'm not satisfied. So it doesn't. Why am I
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: am I wrong? Why does it seem to me like
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: you have described in this movie a much more complicated
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and interesting as a problematic narrative scenario that exists in
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: say Castle Plankt. Bradley Cooper's not having a problem doing
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: a remake of Kazablanca. It's fine with that, but he
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: clearly had a problem with this. So you described to
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: me in your words, well, I can see how they
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: are analogous, but they're not. It's not perfect. Why is
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: it not perfect?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: It's I don't think it's perfect at all. By the way,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I do, I do.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: Want to get on record as saying that you've also
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: designated Charles Dickens, who's another sotemic figure of English literature.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, it's it's the reason that it's that,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: it's that it's different, is uh.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, imagine if the character chose his heart and
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: the Nazis won.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you you choose.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, imagine the sound of music right in which
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: he marries Julie Andrews, and the result of that is
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: the Second World War is lost. I mean, you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: I mean that's the kind of that's the kind of
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: crisis you're setting up. And so in order to establish
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: free will, he has to reject Julie Andrews. He has
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: to reject you know, his heart to save to to
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: to save the world. Accept we haven't even told you
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: the end of the movie, so you don't even know
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: what's going to happen, right and when and when actors
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: got to the end of the movie, the dissonance became
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: so intense for them that, you know, I think that
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: they started to say, how can I, in good conscience
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: play this part? Because I myself don't even understand exactly
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: the part that I'm playing.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: So you're in telling the story of why this movie
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: doesn't get made. You we're listing, we're going to go
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: through the list of culprits, but it's corporate number one
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: that the actors themselves couldn't handle it.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I think that's part of it. But I mean, I
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: think the core of it is is is.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Do we trust ourselves? Yeah, And.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: That's a hard place to go in the movies because
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day, the movies basically no comedy,
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: and they know tragedy, and in a comedy, you give
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: yourself over to a fantasy, and in tragedy. You're like,
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: it's all over from the beginning, and it's a chance
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: for you to kind of wallow. So another way to
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: say this is when we're born, in our brain, there's
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: a kind of primordial story, and that story is that
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: I'm good and that life is good. And that primordial
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: story is so powerful that it allows us to.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Be open to the world and to explore the world.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: And then what happens over time is that story runs
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: up against our experiences of life, many of which are negative,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: and this other story starts to occur in our brain,
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: which is actually, life is not so good, and I'm
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: also not so good, and we start to believe that
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: story more, and that story starts to become more primordial
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: for us, and the good story starts to become more
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: superficial and fantasy for us, and we get into kind
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: of a dissociated place. And in that dissociated place, which
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: I think most humans exist most of the time, they
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: really believe that life is pretty bad and that they're
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: pretty terrible, but they're always trying to actively convince themselves
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: that life is good and that they're a nice person.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: And this is a product of you know, mindfulness, positive
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: thinking all of these things which kind of infest our
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: society now. And when people go to the movies, they
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: want to indulge either the fantasy life of no, I'm
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: a good person and everything works out, or they want
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: to wallow in this negative space of no, you know what,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: this is a safe space for me to admit that
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: everything's terrible and I'm a horrible human beings. And that's
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: why we have like the Dark Knights and you know,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan and all this kind of stuff, you know,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: kind of like the dark, sludgy stuff. And this movie
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: is constantly forcing you back and forth across the threshold.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: This movie is not allowing you to say, you know what, yes,
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: everything is bad, life is bad, life is awful. Nor
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: is it saying there's a kind of simple easy answer here.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: It's pushing you back and forth to kind of reconfront
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: and can you keep going?
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And at the bottom of.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: The movie is this idea that only intelligence is going
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: to solve things emotion, not wishing, not wanting, but being smart.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: And are you the audience smart enough to solve this problem?
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Because if you, the audience, are not smart enough to
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: solve this problem, the computers are going to solve it
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: for you. And so the existential challenge for the movie
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: essentially is are you smart enough to keep ahead of
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: the movie, in which case you know what, you're smart
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: enough to live into the future, or are you going
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: to submit and become passive and be drawn into the
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: engine of the story. And then that's the future of AI,
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: in which you no longer have any autonomy and you've
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: given up your will to the plot and the machinery.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: So I think that's why people find the movie unnerving,
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: because it really does put you in that existential place
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: that you feel that your autonomy is being stripped. But
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: I mean there's also a lot of sort of funny
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: and sort of dire studio stories they're involved, so I
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: think ultimately the studios were also alarmed by this story.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is a big budget movie, and the
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: thing is, if you're going to do a big budget
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: movie like Total Recall like this, you need to get
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: that act on board to try and secure.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: The money.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: And then do you want to put one hundred and
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: twenty million dollars into something that has this premise?
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I think it was too demanding, But I think that
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: our main problem here was really that we didn't get
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: a director. We didn't get a strong director. A project
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: like this requires a director who with a very strong
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: vision and who the people with the money trust. And
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I suppose I had the hubris to think that after
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: doing these three Philip K. Dick movies, they would trust me.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: But actually that wasn't enough. The movie's fate in the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: real world precisely parallels it's narrative on the page. In
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: other words, that actually happens. So one of.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: The things that happened is after we went out to
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: all of these actors, I then was on another screenplay projects,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: which is going well, and it was produced by Bob Shay,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: who did Lord of the Rings all these big kind
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: of movies. And so I showed the script to Bob,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: and Bob was like, Oh, the script is amazing. I
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: love the script. We got to get the script produced,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: and so I said, okay, great. But it all culminated
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: in Bob calling me up one day and saying, Angus,
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: we've got financing for this movie. I'm almost entirely in
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: hisstry by financing for this this movie.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I said, oh, okay, I said, what's going on? He said, well,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: there's this company in town.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: They have a computer that they feed all of the
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: scripts into and the algorithm tells them how much money
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: the script is going to make.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And we've already given.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: The script to the executives there and they love this
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: and they're going to give it to the algorithm, and
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: I just know that this is going to work out.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: So I said, Okay, Bob, this sounds great. You know.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: And this company, I should say, they very wealthy, very successful.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: They've invested all these movies.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: You know, they had themselves the sort of top floor
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: of the biggest luxury car dealership in you like, walked
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: in through all these luxury cars to get in their office
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: and sort of like typical high with stuff.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: So I get a call a week or two later
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: from Bob. He's like and he's like, I, Unfortunately, I've
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: got bad news for you. And I was like, oh
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: my god. I was like, did the computers read our
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: script and not like it? He goes, no, No, He's like,
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: that's not the problem. He's like, the problem is the
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: company just went bankrupt. And they went bankrupt because the
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: last script their computers picked was a ball and so
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: now they'd.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Have no money.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: And so we were unable to make our scripts about
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: the infinitely intelligent computer because a stupid computer was unable
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: to pick the right scripts to make.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: A stupid computer. Is it any wonder Angus has gone
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: on to become a pioneer in story science. In fact,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Angus has gone on to become a leading critic of AI.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: He thinks only humans will ever be able to tell
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: good stories. One of the papers that's published is called
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: why computer AI will never do what we imagine it can.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I'm reading now For the abstract, computers contain a hardware
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: limit that renders them permanently incapable of reading or writing narrative.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: This article draws upon the author's work with deep neural
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: networks Judaea, Pearls, do Calculus, GPT three, and other current
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: generation AI to logically demonstrate that no computer AI, quantum
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: or otherwise has ever learned or will ever learn, to
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: produce or process novels or any other kind of narrative,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: including scripts, short fiction, political speeches, business plans, scientific hypotheses,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: technology proposals, military strategies, and plots to take over the world.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: So what do we have here? We have a script
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: about AI killed by an AI company that went bankrupt,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: whose co author goes on to write the definitive debunking
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: of AI. Who's writing that screenplay? Guys, this has been fantastic.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: If my vote is in all do all moguls out
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: there in our listening audience, It's clear what the people want.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: The people want is did you call me with the
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: variable man? Yeah, the people want the variable man.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: They do fingers crossed.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Next week, we'll be back with another story from the
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: depths of development Hell. This episode was produced by Nina
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Bird Lawrence with Tali Ellmen and Bendadaf Haffrey. Editing by
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Sarah Nicks, original scoring by Luisquira, engineering by Echo Mountain.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.