OpenAI, Sora, Tyler Perry, and the future of film

Should technology give us more time to make art, or make the art for us?

I began my journey in the entertainment industry as an actor. This was the before times. Heck, it was even before everyone had cable! I had a thought that I might start as an actor and move into directing, because acting seemed to be an easier entrée for me, but I wanted to work in the business because I always loved the “family” aspect of the work. The teamwork. The joy I felt after school in our drama club. Deep inside it made me feel like I was in a Judy Garland movie, excitedly planning to “put on a show” and gather everyone together:

“My dad can build us a stage!”

“My mom will sew the costumes!”

The old black and white studio movies exemplified this sentiment, and I was raised on them as much as I was raised on Velveeta and Wonder Bread.

So, when I began my professional career, I loved, truly loved how many people it took to make an episode of television, which is where I worked most of the time. I loved the DP, I loved the makeup and hair artists, I loved the craft services folks, the grips, all the PA’s and ASM’s, and the teamsters, the drivers, (maybe not so much continuity?) Regardless, there was an entire family of trained professionals surrounding me, welcoming me, and they were who I had run away to join the circus for. To add my skill to theirs to all tell a story together, as a group.

This was especially true when I was lucky enough to work on the last season of DALLAS as a regular. (To all those under age 50, just google it). Everyone there had worked together for over a decade. We were in season 13, and I knew many of the actors from my own childhood. They were pros. Larry Hagman was the son of one of those great, studio actors, Mary Martin. He was Hollywood royalty before the idea of a “nepo babies”.  As the new kid, I was called first, often before sunrise, alone with all the union guys, who were smoking, drinking coffee and building the work for the day. It was the crew guys that explained why I had to eat first- not because I’m special, but because they needed me first in hair and makeup- to always answer “yes” to onlookers asking for autographs, to never get in Larry’s eyeline, all of that. And we were on location for the first several episodes that I shot, so it was a bigger group than usual, including horse wranglers for our scenes at Southfork, extras for scenes in restaurants, boom operators, there were dolly tracks and jib arms and Steadicams. And lots and lots of other people, all working to make an hour of television.

So, it is with a healthy dose of sadness that I decline joining in rapturous chorus with some of my colleagues about OpenAI’s Sora video last week. I tried to be optimistic about it. I did. But then, Tyler Perry scrapped his plans for an 800-million-dollar expansion of his studios in Atlanta. And I knew I was not alone in my concerns.

Clearly the technology is not ready to replace everyone’s jobs today. Someone else can get into the dollars and “sense” of this, and the timelines of when it will all take place. But it is not an accident that the first person to press pause on how we work today, in the present, is one of the most if not the most important Black-owner of a studio, built in a city where many young people I have helped enter the business have flocked to because its more affordable and more inviting to people who look like Tyler Perry than New York or LA. That is just a fact. Look at the diversity in film data every year out of USC and UCLA if you don’t believe me.

So there is the equity part of the equation. This will hurt the people who already make less and get less opportunities than people who look like me. But overall, it looks like soon we may not need, or need far fewer (and certainly the bean counters will no longer want to pay), drivers, grips, DP’s and makeup artists, if they can pay an actor to use their image and ask a computer to create whatever scene they want, wherever they want it set. (Oh, yes, bye-bye location managers!) No more army of people figuring out how to safely have Tom Cruise drive a motorcycle off a cliff and parachute down a mountain, no more green screen. No more love scenes with an uncomfortable star not willing to bare all. Let’s not even start thinking about the porn applications.

This began years ago with CGI for crowd scenes, for example. And it will take a beat, for sure. Changes like this happen incrementally. But it may not take as long as we think, just due to the nature of how much this has made the industry collectively gasp in awe and horror. It’s as though whatever the actors’ negotiated a few months ago is already obsolete. Perry brought up how fast the technology is moving without “guard rails”. Even with guard rails for labor, eventually bean counters and big business will make the most affordable choice. They always do. You can’t stop progress, will be the cry, we owe it to our shareholders.

And don’t get me wrong, some people, filmmakers, will and already do embrace this technology to boldly go where others have not. To create images we have never seen, never even dreamt of before. That is why the most recent DUNE films are so much better than the David Lynch version of yesteryear, made back when I was skipping around that DALLAS set. Because finally the technology can match Frank Herbert’s imagination.

And this is a good thing. I love watching the film form get pushed farther and farther. It has always excited me, ever since Scorsese sped up and slowed down his high contrast black and white footage in RAGING BULL to convey DeNiro’s POV in the boxing ring. (All hail, Thelma Schoonmaker)

But, what about actually coming together? What about the joy of gathering a gaggle of people together to shoot a scene? Leaving labor aside, what about the creative spark that happens sometimes right there because someone has a new idea? Because Christopher Walken pretended (or did he?) to put a real bullet in the chamber of the gun he was holding to Mathew Broderick’s head as we all sat on the BILOXI BLUES set and watched, with breaths held, as Broderick came up with more and more takes of being truly scared shitless, because a crazy man had a gun to his head, all at the urging of Mike Nichols, who kept the camera rolling. I’ve been lucky to be in a lot of “rooms where it happens”, and that’s just a small example of what I mean.

Even if AI can come up with these permutations, scrubbing all of these actors’ performances to generate a new image of them playing a scene, and it will, I thought the whole idea of new technology was to give people more time to pursue creativity? To dream? To imagine?

To be together?

Whether we are taking meetings on zoom or ordering food from our phones, we are isolated: watching films anywhere but in a cinema, ordering anything we want from Amazon rather than walking with a shopping cart in a store, etc.

And making art?

Tonight, as I watched the Screen Actor Guild Awards, the awards I vote for, I was struck by how many actors talked about “everyone” that made their work: naming all of the other guilds with thanks, thanking DP’s and directors and writers and crew and executives. How grateful and privileged they were to collaborate

with so many people to create their performance. And, as SAG gives ensemble awards, the sheer joy they showed in being together, working together, doing what they loved together. Some called it holy; some called it spiritual. And make no mistake, we, the audience feel this, too, when we watch great performances, that imperceptible spark between humans, and we also feel when it is lacking.

Maybe this is where independent film will fill a void? To come together and make a movie the “old fashioned” way… if only someone will pay for it. Or do we now believe that making art is too elitist, too selfish, and not an act of service to those we entertain, to those we move.

Is Tyler Perry the canary in the coal mine? Netflix just got the OK to complete construction of their New Jersey based studio lot, so I hope not. But the day I wrapped DALLAS, I drove off the lot in Culver City just as the LORIMAR sign was being taken down and the SONY sign was being hung by the gate.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised it took this long.

What do you think?