WHY A.I. IS NOT THE FUTURE THEY THINK IT IS

If you have watched my little “cult classic,” The Terror Within, you have seen a moment where actor Starr Yelland, playing “Sue,” finds that she is the newest victim of the monster. Knowing her fate, she takes a step of great courage, and takes herself out of the game (a polite way of saying she kills herself to save the others).

That scene was not in the screenplay I wrote.

I merely wrote “She confronts her fate,” and hoped that the actor chosen for the role could “rise to the moment” because I couldn’t think how to write it.

And Starr did.

The audience of Serious Horror Movie Fans I saw it with that Sunday morning over at the Regal Theater in Santa Monica the week before it was released, the entire theater gasped at that decisive moment. Afterwards, several of the audience members came up to congratulate me for having written such a scene (the group was “pro writer”).

And I told them, no, I didn’t do that - Starr did it.

That is what is known as “movie magic,” and I read a couple of reviews by critics while the movie was having its against-the-odds successful national theatrical release, where they said that moment was what elevated the movie out of the “programmer” status it was originally consigned to. I really think Starr’s moment is a major reason why The Terror Within became a cult classic.

And as my friend Jim Wright (he wrote the best back cover blurb for me ever, for “I Will Run Wild,” calling it a combination of Herman Wouk and Samuel Eliot Morison) writes below in his Facebook post that I am re-posting here at TAFM...

“AI will never do that.”

Herewith the explanation of why The Masters of Hollywood, who think AI is their future because it will save them money and increase their profits, have their heads up their asses:

I have many friends on the picket lines in Hollywood at the moment.

And I am reminded of this one scene in the film “The Thirteenth Warrior.”

The Vikings believe their fates were written long before their birth and so they face their death in battle with indifference and maybe even glee and, above all, courage. The movie takes a great deal of time describing how these warriors believe they'll go to Valhalla where "the brave may live forever" and so there is no point in fear or any attempt to avoid your fate. And so they don't. They don't fear and they don't try to avoid death.

And, yet, while there are many, many great scenes in this criminally underappreciated reimagining of Beowulf, there's this one moment, less than 3 seconds on film, that makes the movie for me.

The Vikings have met the monster, they've fought with great courage against overwhelming odds, and they are now trapped in the lair of the Wendol. Many of their number have died by this point and they make a fighting withdrawal, becoming spread out down a narrow tunnel deep, deep underground. The scene is dark and chaotic and fraught with danger. One of the warriors, Helfdane (played by the brilliant Clive Russell) is wounded and can't run any further. He orders the Arab, Ahmed (Antonio Banderas), to go on without him and turns to face the Wendol on his own.

Ahmed goes on down the tunnel and after moment you hear distant fighting and know that the Viking has fallen at last.

When Ahmed catches up to the rest of the band, Herger looks over the Arab's shoulder up the dark tunnel and asks "Helfdane?"

Ahmed shakes his head. No.

And there's this moment. This fleeting second. This tiny brief flicker of pain and loss and FATE on Herger's face. The Viking, this warrior who truly believes the brave will live forever in Valhalla, who joked about the loss of comrades in battle and who has faced his own death over and over throughout the narrative with laughter and fatalism and cheerful indifference, there's this moment where his Viking stoicism cracks and you see for just a fraction of a second his sorrow at the loss of his comrade in arms.

It's an absolutely stunning bit of acting on the part of Norwegian actor Dennis Storhoi, who plays Herger, and if you blink, you'll miss it. It makes the movie. It makes these Vikings human, instead of the cardboard cutouts of most films.

That's acting.

That's craft.

That's art.

No AI, no matter how advanced, could duplicate that moment, that brilliant moment of Storhoi's skill and craft and art. No bit of software no matter how cleverly coded and animated could duplicate that second of raw humanity and pain. No computer generated character could transcend its programming to achieve that moment of greatness.

And so it is for a thousand other moments in film. In writing. In music. In art.

AI might imitate humanity, but it can never BE human.

If the bean counters get their way and replace human creatives with software then the future of movies and television will be one of bland cartoon imitation without those moments of brilliance that transcend the art.

Pay the writers.

Pay the actors.

Pay the musicians.

Pay the grips and the gaffers and the camera operators and the animal wranglers and the location scouts and all those people whose names appear in the end credits and we never bother to know but without true art could not exist.

If you're worried about profit, well, you could always replace the executives with AI.

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