BONUS EPISODE: Thriving in the Age of AI w/ Jonathan Wang

For over 35 years Todd Garner has overseen blockbuster films like Conair, Anchor Management, Triple X, 13 Going on 30 and the Mortal Combat franchise. Why are they letting you make these movies? Join Todd as he shares tips and stories from the front lines of producing in Hollywood. I'm Adam Sandler. I'm Rebel Wilson. This is Jeff Broke. I'm Kaley Quokka. I'm Eli Roth. This is Mal ways. Hey it's Ed Helms. This is Shane Mitchell. Everybody this is Kevin James and this is the producer's guide. The producer's guide. The producer's guide with Todd Garner. Todd Garner. Todd Garner. Todd Garner. Todd Garner. What a combination. Welcome back to the producer's guide where we deep dive into the minds of the industry's best producers and attempt to uncover the stories behind the stories. I'm your host Todd Garner and today we have a truly special guest with us. Joining us today is Jonathan Wong, an Oscar-winning producer known for his incredible work alongside the creative duo of the Daniels, Daniel Kwan, and Daniel Scheinarch. From his beginnings in the vibrant world of music videos where he produced award-winning projects for legends like Bob Dylan, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z, Jonathan has seamlessly transitioned into feature films and he's left an indelible mark on the industry. His debut feature, Swiss Army Man, premiered at Sundance in 2016 and garnered the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award. Jonathan went on to produce everything everywhere all at once, A24's highest-grossing film, which swept the Academy Awards in 2023, winning astounding seven Oscars, including Best Picture. As the co-founder of Playgrounds, Jonathan collaborates with the Daniels to develop compelling narratives for both film and television. Looking ahead, Jonathan's working on an exciting slated projects, including the Daniels Next feature with Universal Pictures, a thought-provoking documentary on AI from focus features, and a diverse array of projects across animation, narrative, and television. And today, I wanted to pick his brain about AI because he is making that documentary for focus features, and he presented an incredible presentation to the producer's united group. And he has such a unique perspective on AI that differs from what a lot of people are saying, which I love. And today, we do a deep dive into AI, what the future may hold, and how can we help to get us out of them. All right, I'm here with Jonathan Wong. How are you, Jonathan? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Excellent. Excellent. Well, I wanted to have you on this bonus episode, urgent episode today. You presented such an incredible presentation to the members of producers united about AI. AI is evolving at such a rapid rate that by the time this comes out in two days, they will probably be irrelevant. But before we get into the AI stuff, I wanted just to introduce you to people. You're an incredible producer. You've had already your young age. And you've famously produced everything everywhere all at once, for which you won the Academy Award. You really have been in the independent space most of your career. I think there is this misnomer, especially after you've won the Oscar. They roll out the streets of gold. You're driving a Lamborghini to your office where you then take your Bentley back home. And everything is smooth sailing. And one of the things when you and I first spoke, I was so blown away by, is how that is absolutely not the case. You're living movie to movie, and your career is based on what's coming next. It used to be people thought, "Well, what was your last thing?" For us, it's really what's next, right? I mean, walk me through your experience making that movie and also waking up the next day with the Oscar. What did change if anything? Well, thank you for having me and thank you for doing this podcast. Things are really important for us to be looking at these things and demystifying things. And I think that had I had this resource when I started out, it would have been really helpful. Because, as I said, we have all of these misinformed, misguided ideas about everything that we put off. We are so good at telling stories in our industry that there is this story that we portray confidence. Like, I'll start with just the anecdote. When we were doing the awards campaign, we released our movie in March of 22. And the Oscars were in March of 23. And so that whole time that you're doing an awards campaign, you're not getting compensated for your time. So you can't actively be working on things and you actually are not getting compensated for your time. Most people, if they had good enough lawyers or they had enough cloud, they would have negotiated in these box office bonuses or awards bonuses. But remember, all those things are applicable against your back end. So, you know, to just put that in layman's terms for your listeners who don't really know what that is, it's just that it's basically an advance, right? The money that is owed for you from the profit is advanced you early when you get an Oscar nomination or a win. So you're kind of living off of that as an indie producer would. And you're then expected to have tuxedos in front like you are a multi-millionaire, you know, which in fact, I very much not. And so through that time, it was really hard. I was very lucky that the suit company, Isaiah, Isaiah, they were very nice. And they gave me suits to wear in exchange for me having their little logo on my collar. But I would have been like, I would have gotten a loan at the time to be able to afford these tuxedos because it's not like something that I could afford at the time. Now, I don't want to say like, I was not raised with money. So like the difference of how I was raised to how I how I was through the Oscar season, I want to clarify and just say like much more well to do then than I was growing up. So I'm not pretending like I was working, you know, minimum wage jobs. There was definitely an honor and I owned a home at the time and I was like renovating my house. So just for like context, I don't want to pretend like I don't want to cosplay for, you know, it was like something that was hard, it wasn't easy. And it is against this idea that like you're a multi-millionaire as soon as you win an Oscar, which is not the case. But it's also to level set and say I wasn't I wasn't utterly broke. But to answer the question of how how did I get there? How how what was the process like we didn't ever think that that movie was going to be as successful as it was. And but but through that process, it has reiterated to me the power of story. And I think oftentimes as we think about our business, we think about it like as a one-to-one with box office or monetary success. And we suddenly we we start pretending like we're bankers rather than storytellers. And I think that that is just a fundamental misunderstanding of what we do. And I think to really understand what a producer does in terms of their fiduciary responsibility to a budget. It's also a fiduciary responsibility to the story. And I think we are the arbiters and the guides of the storytellers to usher them through the the nation stages of like a seed of an idea all the way to pulling it off and putting it on the big screen and making sure that it's going to have an impact within the culture that is really meaningful. And that sounds very high-falutin and I think that it is, but I think it's the goal that we strive for. So on everything everywhere. It was always our intention to make a really fun film that spoke to these deeper truths of the immigrant experience of generational traumas of the like ADHD experience like all these deeper things but all kind of. Guilded under the guise of action side five fun. And we didn't think that it was going to hit that hard but we all had confidence that the movie was going to do well. But just to see the legs of the movie like I said it was like a full year from when we released it till the the Oscars which you know typically the award season is like you're releasing October November like now we're getting these awards movies. We had this this long ramp up of word of mouth and people are talking about it and spreading the word and it was just this really beautiful organic movement and 24 was like capitalizing on that and did such a great job to support us through that process that once we got to the awards. People were talking about it like oh it's a no doubt it's inevitable like they're going to win and it's like it's really confusing as a young indie outsider filmmaker to suddenly hear like oh they're the they're the front winners of the big dogs like you got to take them out like we were up against Steven Spielberg like it was so crazy you know. So yeah I think the the the next morning after the Oscars it was a very sobering experience because on the one hand it was the most real experience of my life and the most transformative beautiful moment of my life outside of my wedding. And to wake up the next morning and then just be there hungover and like he's just looking at an Oscar it's like I can talk about that for hours but it's that that reality of your goals fulfilled in your mind and seeing it instantiate it in a statue it realizes just how little you know about yourself I really thought that what I was chasing was the artistry the. The craft the platform the social change all these like noble things and really I just didn't realize but like I was secretly in my heart chasing that thing and so to get it was a very simultaneously satisfying thing but also very confusing but I know that's not the reason why you're bringing out but I know that's okay and then how is your life change since the Oscar did all of a sudden you get flooded with phone calls of people saying here's a movie go produce it or is it. The same grind as it was the day before it it's a bit of both right and I think that that is the thing that I'm very grateful for the ways in which it has made my jobs easier in so far as like our industry is an industry of gatekeepers right and suddenly now I have less friction as I navigate through and I can I can set up meetings in and of myself rather than having to like. Curry the fame or the celebrity of someone else would be like oh I produce for this person I can just meet people on my own right which is a gift I've never experienced that before and so that part is great but that it doesn't get any easier to make a movie or doesn't get any easier to green light movie like sure there's a little bit more confidence and I can call an executive or a finance here and say hey trust me and they go okay I do whereas in the past they be like I don't trust you more than Adam like I don't know you at all. So there is that sign but it's still the job of a producer is 24/7 it's the problems that come up when you're dealing with the personalities on an Oscar winning level are the same problems that you confront when it's Indy like my life depends on this if I don't make this movie I'm nothing it's the same level of passion and need and like every decision is catastrophic like it doesn't get any easier. It doesn't get any easier at any scale. Perfect segue to why I actually that I wanted to speak to you about this but it's a perfect segue to AI let's talk about gay keeping and personal stories and how it's hard and green light. The thing about AI the way that it's described in the media is kind of multifaceted right number one the the first instinct is you get the the sales pitch from all these tech companies that it is that's it no more gay keepers no more problems you you sitting in home in your in your computer at your kitchen table can make a quality movie the same as Avatar just give it a couple prompts you're going to make a movie put it online that's the sales pitch number two the media then we'll grab a hold of it and say well Hollywood's cooked we're totally fucked. Anybody can make a movie forget Hollywood there's no more distribution studios are gone look at look at the layoffs everybody's gone. And then three you have because we're naturally fearful as human beings and especially in the business like oh God what does this mean for us how do we curb the guard rails on it how do we stop it. And then lastly you've got the guys at their kitchen table or in the basement going fuck yeah no more gay keeping I'm going to win an academy award watch this Jonathan I'm going to deal you in three months I'm just going to do four prompts and we're done. None of that talks about what you talked about which is the passion it took the sacrifice it took the personal story you wanted to tell yes obviously when you were rewarded by your peers at the highest level it meant something to you. But the grind day in and day out is kind of twofold one it's the passion in the heart of the human beings that put their blood sweat and tears into that movie that made it impactful and we didn't even know we wanted that that was not yes it's a genre but it's such a subversion of the genre that it was such a different take on it like you said it dealt with things that nobody expected. And to there is something to taking the time and I mean that literally of the shooting days where magic is found and if you can push a button and in 30 seconds being facetious but in 30 seconds try to create something you don't have those mistakes you don't have the improv you don't have the subtlety you don't have the being in your hotel room thinking what about tomorrow's work what if we tried this there's there's something that comes with time that meets creativity that meets pain that kind of really delivers things that are really special. And all of those things AI is threatening promising to take away and make it be easy for anybody completely accessible no more gatekeepers why don't you explain to me what AI is both promising and what it actually can do. To say first just blankedly like almost everyone's interaction with AI currently is through a large language model like chat gpt where it's trained on language right and they go well how can language then turn into movies right like what what are we talking about here well what we need to understand is that a eyes are big pattern recognition machines so that if I know you know roses are red violets are if I've read enough text I can predict that that word is going to be blue right in the same way that I can see two plus two equals five maybe I'm not computing two plus two equals five at first but I understand the pattern right and then you could then think about okay but then within a pixel of image with a bunch of pixels I can see there's the difference between this left thing that is an I and this right thing that is an I and this mouth and I can start understanding the patterns of a face or I can start understanding the patterns of the human genome or I can start understanding the patterns of a script or a camera move or then you can see how these systems are taking in a lot of data to be able to understand how to model the world and predict likely scenarios and that's exactly what we see in Sora in sort of two and these leaps and capability is because of just raw compute and raw data that we're just feeding and feeding and feeding. So the big thing for us to understand as an industry is the reason why we are here with this level of capability to be able to talk about these applications is to understand that our collective creative labor and human labor has been stolen to train these models. No one is being compensated for any of this right currently that your movies that you have been that you've made have trained these models my movies have without my consent or compensation so this whole idea of opting in I didn't opt in you didn't opt in it was just stolen right and so right now there's a lot of people holding their hair out to figure out well how do we even get compensated for this how do we even understand copyrights how do we even understand anything and the point that we're feeling is this technology is utterly incompatible with the systems we currently have right and so as I look at these systems and I'm thinking about the applications I go okay there's big fundamental conversations we need to have but we also need to understand that yes these tools are able to provide extremely efficient and extremely helpful tools to us but like any tool all tools are dual use like movies as a great tool I could either make movies that could be used for pro social loving messages that will make us want to be noble citizens who can be able to you know raise families and to be able to be active members of our community or we can make movies that are propaganda that will prop up authoritarianism or we could have you know really nefarious actions where you could manipulate people into mind controls we've seen in the past so any tool whether it's a hammer to build a house or to to kill someone they're always dual use and so as we think about this AI technology and we get into the specifics of it we need to know that this tool is simultaneously on a narrow interest like like script coverage that it's going to be helpful in some ways and in other ways it's going to be really really damaging and so knowing all that and kind of getting us to this place let's let's look at the to your question of like what are the applications within the film industry right now I'd say that the biggest thing that we're seeing is narrow applications within script writing script coverage VFX animation and like actual pipeline tools like so Moon Valley is a company that has said that they have clean data and they're and they're training their models on clean copy written data and that they're able to do text to video and some of this stuff as well but I don't think that those applications yet are really helpful for us and so what we're doing is we're thinking about okay well there's there's AI systems and AI tools that are able to plug into our current pipeline so maybe in the past there was someone who I needed to roto out your background to put you in the middle of a forest and we would farm that out to India or we'd pay other labor to do that rotoscoping for us now it's very efficient to just put it into an AI system right you're seeing that VFX you know like even if you go to Photoshop and you're right now within Photoshop you can do text to image replacement of backgrounds and you can kind of do a similar thing with VFX to be totally honest like my work right now is to be able to make sure we don't adopt these too quickly by way of replacing jobs you know so I'm trying to pump the brakes and say yes I see all of this these technologies but I want us to hold on and make sure we're adopting them into our pipeline responsibly and naming the terms what is the intention of these AI companies and I think the way to think about it is to think about it like Uber and taxis and oftentimes people think that we as the film industry were the taxi industry and the tech companies are Uber I would make an argument that that's actually a misnomer we in the film industry example we are like the consumer that we make a deal with a tech company that yes I want the convenience and the ease of your technology and I will then leave this one industry which is the archaic taxi industry and then enter into a relationship with you the advanced Uber taxi system and at first those prices are set by Uber to attract us in and we're paying $10 to go to the airport and then they get the market share and then they control the systems of production and so then they hike up everything so now if I want to go to the airport and pay $200 to get to the airport from the east side that relationship if you imagine it in the film industry is like us going to these AI companies and it's an efficiency it's a tool for you to be able to you know fight against this consolidation that's happened through strikes in the pandemic and think about the efficiencies to your system and then we go okay great let's enter into a deal and then I go to you know Sora and I make a deal to them and I say you can train on my whole library I'm Warner Brothers let's just say take every property I have and train on it because the exchanges you're going to make my production so efficient I could do a Batman movie and you have all the data from all this up and they go great within those clauses they're going to then get blanket forgiveness for training on your model right so all the past theft they go okay now I'm forgiven for that and then they also are able to then use all that data and not compensate you further along the way and hold all of that technology and this is when I go to them as Warner Brothers and I say hey I want to use your technology to finish up this post production on the scene or I want to be able to just generate the scene without bringing my actor in and I'm going to save so much money at first it's going to save us money in the short term but in the long term what we've seen is all of our creative property all of our tools all of our means production are now subsumed into the tech industry and then they control everything and then they don't need technicians they don't need gaffers they don't need key grips they don't need symmetographers they have all of that human labor that they've trained on so as you can see there's like this trajectory of yes right now there are these very specific small narrow interest tools but as you think about it on a on a bigger scale their goal is to take all of the human labor that has been of value and pull it into their company so that it can become part of an AI system so that's it's a hard thing to understand but their goal is to take in everything every bit of human labor well I find this very fascinating because a lot of people talk about AI in the same way which is oh cinematographers and customers and grips and best boys and up the ladder creatively you know primarily below the line now and then ultimately the theory as well it's going to replace actors having worked it a couple of huge corporations in my youth I know or I feel like a lot of people that are in the executive suites are hearing that go okay well it's not me thank god let me disabuse you of that myth because let's talk about how fast these waters rise for the executives if you're at the top level of any of these media companies they're like great AI is awesome let's get rid of everybody let me give one dude a computer and make avatar okay well then we'll get into that the specifics of how crazy that statement is but fine everybody below them is like oh fine good I mean you get great I'll just be the executive for one person let that's no that's not the way it's going to go first the thing is going to go first is here's the strat of studios some sort of reader pool then a story editor then assistants then a CEO then a director of development then a VP senior VP president of production chairman up right and then CEO right and there's there's there's some variation of that and there's marketing and this I'm talking about just the production side of it AI can now read a script and give you coverage bye bye story readers right you don't need a story editor anymore because what they used to do is take all the coverage make copies and give it to the executives that's gone assistants essentially you can chat to UPT and assistant now make your calls they could be gone CE's their thing was they would read scripts and do notes and compile lists and things like that gone because I know because I've spoken to several writers who have told me that they've gotten notes that they know where chat to UPT so executives in studios and production companies were using chat to UPT to do notes they are essentially loading the gun to put in their own mouths and they can see because there's wording and there's ways that they these writers like this a human being did not write this it's this sincerely too many fucking times or you know whatever it is even about UPT but those goddamn asterix and things like that and so by what I see is and then I can tell you right now there's already so much chatter over the last five years of oh we just want big IP oh we just want what we've already done oh that's what the audience wants let's just keep giving the audience big IP and things that they've already seen that's quote unquote theatrical that's quote unquote undeniable correct and then now the all we really want is packages so I want a package with a writer producers bring me a package with a writer and a director what do you need VPs for? what do you need EVPs for? so now you're saying okay I can I'm the president of production or the chairman of the studio you know Jonathan brings me a package I run the scripted chat to UPT gives me the synopsis I last synopsis seems good that director seems good that actor seems good it seems like it's a safe bet let's go bye bye all of the creative executive community bye bye this is the misnomer that we are just feeding this beast thinking well it's not going to be me it's not going to be me and the weirdest part is the most terrified people are writers producers of this technology I would bet we may be the last two people standing right if I mean if this technology is true that it can do all the things that you know Sam Alman says it can do hey you're a writer and you can write a good script and it can do everything you can do you can make a movie right and a producer could help you put all the pieces together and get it out there and sell it and figure out distributions through YouTube so it's like the wrong people are afraid of this the people that should be terrified of this are anyone who works in a media company that is below the level of CEO because that is the first and easiest thing to replace with this technology full stop I'm so glad that you said that because very few people articulated that well I think a lot of people just go oh you're not safe from it but if you really understand the intelligence that these systems have and the goals of these companies the easiest thing to replace is the executive suite it is the easiest thing to replace if you like Craig Garen sent me a Wall Street Journal article this morning showing just how hard it is for people in their 40s to get job because the whole white collar system is crumbling right now because if you're prioritizing profits like if that is the corporate mandate to mandate profits end over end annually well of course human labor is a redundancy right and so we need to then have a question of like a realignment of values like what are we actually doing here what is this technology serving because if it's serving profit and profit only and we've said oh humanity and human labor is a collateral damage on our path to get profits for companies well that we as you said you're loading the gun that you're putting in your mouth because you are not as efficient as a computer system that requires no unionization it requires no breaks can do your job much more efficiently than you and is endlessly more intelligent than you that's not a good combination right so that might all sound gloomy and do me and then you want to then throw in the towel and put your hands up and say okay well I guess I got to find a new job no the thing that we have right now for whatever reason these AI companies decided to start with their AI systems to do text to video why did they come to our playground first I don't know I don't know I would like to know what you would think about that but they did they came to our they came and knocked on our door they didn't start with they didn't start with medicine they didn't start with with the pharmaceutical companies which have seemed to be much more valuable why did they start with us I think it's because of messaging it's harder to get a buy-in on a smaller technology that you know honestly could help medicine because it's behind the curtain they're not on social media every day so the easiest thing to do is go look at this shiny spaceship we created and look at Peter Griffin beating the hell out of Snoopy in this video and hey you can make bigfoot in Star Wars now and everybody goes whoo shiny object there's two sides of that there are there's the Hollywood community or the content I guess community that is very small compared to the world and then you have the world who every single person believes they are Steven Spielberg the only reason they haven't got the Academy Award is they've just been screwed over by the system and what the what what social media is very company tech companies are very good at is that's right you know Gary you you you should be Steven Spielberg the only reason you're not is because those dumb Hollywood people don't recognize your talent here's a technology that's going to even the playing field right not to admit not to say that there hasn't been iPhones for the last 10 years with video editing capability and you you know but oh I don't have the right actor friends I don't know but listen we're going to get into the creativity part of it but I think that they're selling that because it's shiny and the whole world can see it and go holy crap I want that I want to be Jonathan Wong I want to get the Academy Award I want to wake up hung over with an Academy Award and the only reason I'm not is because I don't have the technology and now that I'm going to get the technology nothing can stand in my way and because there's this wave of that pushing against us and we're seeing these little 13 second clips we're like holy crap that could actually happen and as Billy Ray said he said listen if there is a young Steven Spielberg and this technology helps that voice come up and rise and make something incredible great they deserve a seat at the table if this technology can help people tell better better stories and it does lower the barrier to entry and it does lower cost and there's a way to use it in a creative and interesting way great but that's not what's being sold right now what's being sold is the promise of let's just annihilate Hollywood it's easy and anybody can do it just do some prompts and AI will figure it out for you what people are really worried about or excited about is the physical production of movies the cell is Hollywood is cooked put in a few prompts and you can create a picture if you rewind all the way back it's like you don't need to be a writer anymore if you just have an idea just put it in a chat dbt it's going to write the script it's going to make the movie and you're going to be a billionaire so walk me through the production part of it like you can say make a movie about some blue guys that are climatically conscious oh that's avatar and like you know it's like no it's really not like it's hard like there's going to be can't just put in two prompts and get a good movie you're going to get yeah you're going to have prompts that are going to give you some generic retelling of the stuff that you as you say has been stolen to make a movie is a lot of work I was just watching Frank it's time to get my door is movie at the academy and you just have to do those credits and there's a lot of people doing a lot of work you're ridiculously talented to believe that just one person in their kitchen table can do all of that it seems a little far fetch to me and also sure maybe you could make a movie of a few prompts but it's just going to be a generic kind of retelling of stuff that's been stolen right so where do you come out on that? yeah I think the promise of any tech company is these productive statements that we they feel right to us we go all right I feel like that's true like Facebook when it came out it's like well it's going to bring people together it's going to bring your network right to your home and you could just stay in touch with your friends always you're going to be so much closer to them and we didn't think about like oh it's going to it's going to destroy consensus truth and democracy and lead to genocides in Myanmar like we were like oh all right I didn't think about that externality for that collateral damage but no self-esteem anymore yeah my myself image is totally inverted and I'm suicidal like oh I didn't think about that whoops and then we go but it did feel right like yeah it is going to connect me and maybe for a time it did but then as soon as you plug it into the incentive machine what do they want more of they want more of your attention more and more of your attention and then we're seeing the same playbook happen again here with AI where they're starting with video they're starting with its attention it's again they're like they're like Sora too is all there to generate more attention for their like TikTok they're AI generated TikTok but then you step back and you go oh right we we have enough wisdom here from the past tech revolution to see where does this go what's the trajectory here right and oh I see the the thought of us not having any cultural experience anymore that your Instagram feed and your your TikTok feed is now an AI generating bespoke AI images for your bespoke feed so that I look at mine and I see a completely different world it's not just that the algorithm has pushed a conservative or a liberal belief at me now I just have a totally uniquely different world oh okay that's going to lead to complete loss of culture complete disintegration of any sort of communal ideal like we see where this goes but no one really wants to look at that so to answer your question of can this be the next Steven Spielberg can anyone and their mother be the next Steven Spielberg I think Billy raised right like sure yeah I do think there's some people who are talented enough who they just weren't given the opportunity and they could rise through the ranks I do think Daniels were like that the only reason why we were able to enter into this industry was because we have the Canon 5D and we were able to make little videos that we put online that then had traction to get us more music videos that then got us to make Swiss Army Man but Daniels are brilliant storytellers who dedicated their life and their craft to doing that and then we together spent 10,000 plus hours to get us to the place where we could make everything everywhere and I think that's the point you're trying to make is the AI systems and I think it's so beautifully set by the Center for Human Tech they say like the AI systems are becoming all destination and no journey you just can show up at a destination and you think oh that's all we need to do but what I've realized through this time in producing movies is I don't even know who I'm going to be it's almost like Matthew McConaughey's nonsensical Oscar speech that he gave where he's like my hero's me in 10 years from now actually that person is going to be the 10 years from that but I get what he's trying to say which is to say that it's the journey it's not the destination and that what is wisdom what does it mean to be a truly wise producer or filmmaker and to be able to have a message to bring to the culture it's to have struggled against your lived experience to have wrestled with the big ideas of life to have been able to take in the canon of our shared culture and to be able to synthesize it and give a fresh perspective and say hey look over here people like that is what we need to look at and that's why when we watch movies that do that like I watched one battle after another and I was just like yes I was entertained the very second I got in there and then all the way to the left but was also just so stunned how precious the film was and be like man that like PTA someone who's just tapped in and that is a long journey and a long track record of making wonderful films could he use AI to maybe enhance some of the tools and things sure but that's a different question it's a distraction right tools using tools that we're always going to use these tools like this technology's here we're going to have to contend with it but we do not need to take it into our systems in this way that I was just talking about where would completely disrupt the very thing that we're trying to do which is to tell stories right and so what I'm trying to say by getting on these podcasts and what I'm trying to do within the industry is to remind us of what we're actually doing here and what power we have they decided to make text a video because that's the mouthpiece they want to be loud but we are the ones who were the storytellers we're the ones who have synthesized and have put in our hours to be able to tell good stories and we can say you know what actually tech industry thank you for coming here thank you for bringing this technology to our door we will implement this on our terms and we're going to say you know what we do not want catastrophic job loss where there's no training ground for the next field work to come through the ranks because this is a communal art form where we learn from each other and the journey of making films gives us a depth and knowledge to be able to make better and better films your siloed independent isolated films will result in a specific kind of story that I hope will be ethically made and that will lead to good stories but it's a different thing right it's a different thing than what we do over here and we are happy to integrate these technologies when we're able to address these big fundamental problems and to be able to integrate it in a way that will support humanity and the dignity of the craft the way that a lot of people talk about the way to slow down AI combat AI is through legislation lawsuits stopping the technology and then your brain kind of as a normal person process is like there's no stopping technology we're not going to stop it so your brain kind of shuts down and goes well good luck lawmakers and good luck big corporations and soon I'm just going to sit here and watch these 13 second videos and just freak out because it's getting better and better and better every day like I said I recently saw Frankenstein at the Academy and I just watched the Marty Scorsese documentary and it all comes down to the same thing they make movies that are personal to them that come from their view of the human experience that they want to see they want to put out into the world and they have passion for storytelling that's the way out right the more that we as a collective and I put everybody in this box with us agents, managers, writers, directors, executives marketing people the more that we keep saying we want the same stuff we want the proven we want to make the stuff we've already made and make again and make again and make more of the more we keep saying that in totality not that there's not a place for it, there absolutely is but I'm saying exclusively thinking in that box of only looking backwards and like what we want to just do what we did because it's undeniable, it's theatrical the more we're buying into the fact this technology can do that this technology is better at doing that than as you said making a movie like PTA makes a movie or Guillermo makes a movie there's a place for regurgitation and looking backwards, good luck with that AI we're passionate filmmakers that are telling stories from the heart that we give a shit about and I keep saying this especially in the executive suite because I've been in there the more that these young executives from C to EVP can stand on the fucking table and say we need to make this, I love this my peers will love this and just keep annoying and annoying the green light committee they cannot just keep reverting to the same old same old this is what's gonna set us apart from AI AI can then be for the Daniels to come in and say I'm gonna use that but I'm gonna do something that's from the heart that's creative that's just gonna blow your minds great there's a place for that too but as an industry the more that we are being AI saying I'm just gonna take the technology that we've stolen from every movie ever made and it's gonna regurgitated back to the audience the more we're falling into the trap and by telling stories that are personal to you Jonathan and me and the executives and even the agents if there's movies they want to see the more we can lead and create a business that'll be vibrant and profitable and we'll have a lot of resistance against AI 100% I think that the what you are poking at and what I think we all feel in our heart is this like snake eating its own tail that it's just feel this endless cycle of like okay where does this end if we're just gonna make reboots and reboots and reboots and derivative things and derivative things because of chasing this as you say the undeniable things it's gonna be it's a hit it's easy well it's just exactly what it is it's derivative it's derivative work right and I think that the goal especially what I do as a producer is I like finding filmmakers who write and direct because I trust them to be making something original from as you say they're their deep lived experience like I love a closure I was saying in my hand that you need to find those really insecure parts of yourself and lean into there to find healing same thing that Spielberg talks about his movies where like his therapy and everyone has a different way into their story time but just to like cast a vision for where we're at and where where we are currently in the culture is like social media has made us so isolated that in our attention stands so short that kids in school aren't reading full novels and I want to be like a like a grandma who's like yelling at the porch off the porch and being a lot like I get it but if we don't have a shared culture that we don't have citizens who are able to be resilient enough to have the attention span to engage in conversations to be able to watch a full movie to be able to read or do critical thinking or all these things it's not it's not just bad for cinema it's not just bad for art it's bad for our culture it's bad for us as a nation it's bad for the world and so what we do as storytellers is we tell better stories like imagine a world wherein this would happen and so this is what I'm trying to say is like for our industry we are the ones who have to rise up in this moment they brought the fight to us for whatever reason and we've got really good at trained to like hate each other complain about each other's guilds complain about the studios and we're in fighting and we also on our own micro level like you're talking about are eating our own tail of labor rather than just the land of ideas this will be contentious to some but in this past studio negotiation which I hope everyone got what they needed for their labor side but as it pertains to negotiating on AI specifically we negotiated against the wrong people we were not supposed to negotiate protections on AI against the studios because they are just as you described so well they're just as vulnerable if not worse and so we need to have empathy and sympathy for our industry as a whole and say if we don't fight this we're fucked right? so we need to fight we need to stand together arm and arm with studios with labor and say we stand as a unified front against you tech companies who want to just monetize our collective craft and turn it into an output but it's so much more than that it's not an output it's not just something you regurgitate it is the collective human experience of us as filmmakers us as producers, writers, directors we stand here and say fuck that we're going to hate our term okay we want to use your tools it is here we accept that but not until we can figure out what do we do about deep face like I don't want the same technology that could deep fake an underage person into a porn video I do not want that in the world and I'm not going to implement your tech until we have guard realism how to do that I don't want the same kind of technology that could upturn an election to be integrated into my movie pipeline it's like would we ever use an atomic bomb level tool on our set? no because it's a hazard we can't do it so we as an industry need to stand up and say listen this is here we need to address this but we cannot infight and point at each other we need to stand as a unified front so to your question what can we do? what can we actually do? how do we really protect ourselves? we need to come together in an unprecedented way in a way that we've never done before and we just need to say look sure these upcoming contract negotiations you need to be able to get what you need for your families and for yourself as labor and we always of course producers support that but in this very specific thing of AI do not negotiate against the wrong people and be careful if you're using chatgbt to write notes you're not fooling anybody you're not using your own brain you're getting things done quickly and efficiently but you're not coming from a place of your own heart and honesty and I believe if anybody is using chatgbt to do notes it's because they don't love the thing they're just they don't love the they're not in love with the movie you're in love with the movie yeah you're finishing your job you're stressed you don't want to get fired and you don't love this thing it's the ninth thing that you have on your day and you're just trying to get through it to get the writer notes don't do that because if you're passionate about something you love it you have to tell this story you want to dig in you want to sit there I remember when Scott Stuber and I both got promoted to president of production we talked about the thing we missed the most was sitting in a room for four hours with a writer and just going through it that's like that was the most and for us as producers is the most fun is to sit there and dig in really dig in and go what do you think what do you think what if we tried this what if we tried that if you're just spitting out notes and sending notes off from chatgbt you're going to get replaced because chatgbt can do that you're not fooling anyone and it goes back to my thing look as the producer of Mortal Kombat obviously I love that IP I'm obsessed with Mortal Kombat I love it so much I love making that movie I'm passionate about it and I guarantee I know James Gunn and Peter Saffer and a passionate about DC I'm not saying all IP is bad and all sequels are bad absolutely absolutely is a place for that but we got to be passionate about it and so I'm saying I don't believe every executive or every producer everything it's making everything is passionate about it why? and this is Marty Scorsese documentary he made a movie Jim Sheridan and somebody said to him you just wasted a year of your life making crap make something great and then Scorsese he was like yeah you're right and made raging bull like make something that means something to you because that's what's going to set us apart from all this other stuff all the people in their kitchen trying to emulate what we do and trying to make something that feels like what we do let's be the leaders and if it's in fine if it's something that is IP make it great be passionate about it or pass it to somebody that is passionate about it because it's our passion and our humanity and our love for this business that's going to drive us to make things that I can't make until it copies that right? like your movie that came out where you on the Academy Award for was so different and so fun and mind bending and like you said cultural talked about mental illness talked about all those issues that hadn't been done in that specific way before it and AI can't do that I can't sort it out that way it can only go well it's been done this way so I'm going to this is the this is the lowest common denominator and the most average way it's been done that's all I'm saying you know and again, yes we need to put up guardraising and we'll do all that and the unions will do all that but as a collective on a daily basis you could do small things don't use chatty bt2 notes think be fight for creativity fight for projects you're passionate about fight for things you believe in that is what's going to really be the most resistant against any sort of technological takeover what you are highlighting here is this feeling that we all have that there's something really sacred to protect here and you're like don't do that because it's going to replace your job or don't do that because of X, Y, and Z other reason there's merely of reasons why we need to be cautious with this technology the thing the trap that we absolutely cannot fall into is to just think that AI bad or AI good right? and like what you're saying there by saying don't upload someone's script into chat-y-b-t so that it regurgitates back to your notes is because what you do there is to deny the fundamentally beautiful and human thing about the job you've formed that thing out so yeah, it's bad on multiple levels in terms of like did that writer consent to have their script ingested into the training data of chat-y-b-t? I'm guessing no but you did that anyway so shame on you but is it a good tool that you can use to actually help your human labor? yeah, so again it's both of these things but the collateral damage of using this technology is these things the deeper, more philosophical, more beautiful conversations about like what makes me fundamentally human in this job why did these people go to school and dream of becoming a studio exactly? it wasn't so that they could just push paper from one pile of the next through chat-y-b-t to regurgitate notes like as you said, like that there's no passion in that there's no humanity in that that is pure that is just slow right but what we see there is if you're able to go wake up from it and go, look this technology is here it's both you can use it for both good and bad but we need to steer this in a way that it reinforces the things that we find beautiful and it reinforces the things that remind us why we love making movies to not do as you said, like make some bullshit gotta go and think about but what does it mean to make the region bold? well that means we need to be tapped back into the struggle the thing that we've all done banging your head against a wall for four hours trying to crack this part of the script because something doesn't feel human and you go, oh right but then once you do it and it locks in and it sings, you've now created a new world of imagination that we all want to tap into it's not just let's push paper from one stack to another with chatGPT sure, that of course that's possible but it's just fully denied the beauty of why we make movies and so hopefully through this process we're able to just we're able to say yes, it's both these things but as filmmakers that human beings what do we want to protect and how do we band together to protect that thing and that is what we need to absolutely get focused on and fight for and technology is a whole even before AI is such a fucking distraction between social media and emails and the speed and efficiency of which we can work just creates literally second by second activity and there is very very little time in our days for deep thought just to take the time as you said for four hours and bang your head against the wall about a story problem we should be in this business every one of us spending a couple of hours every day with the phones off and I can already if I were to hear this I would be like I thought you what? But to just think deeply to just just sit and think I try to do it I try to do it in the morning as much as I can and I know it's like people say woo woo meditation stuff like I don't do that necessarily but I really try to just think about what's happening in the business what is happening in my projects what is happening and I tell you so many good ideas come if there's a problem on a movie that I'm in post on I'll think about it like deeply try to think about it deeply for longer than eight seconds while I'm between scrolling and making calls and sending emails and watching 43 streamer things we've lost that ability in this business because I can remember I'm old enough to remember when my boss went to lunch I was done I didn't have to make calls he couldn't roll calls he's gotten his car and I was he was not I didn't do shit he was back right and that in that car David you'd have time to think listen to music and we've lost that ability and you can see it in the storytelling we've lost the ability of thought of the time it takes to hit the key on the typewriter and hit return it's so fast the time it was to drive to walk you had one phone in your house anytime you weren't next to that phone you had time to think deeply and as artists which we all are in this business everybody in this conversation were all artists you need time to think deeply about where is the problem where are the challenges how do we solve those challenges as a business as a community how do we wrap our arms around each other and say where do we want to go going forward to make the business vibrant and thrive what new genres can we explore what stories do I really want to tell you can't do that while you're in between and I'm like, "Oh shoot, look at so and so had a great yacht vacation." Right? So yeah, we that's another important part about it is trying to technology is not our friend in that way. There's this paradox called "Jevins Paradox" that came out with the time of the invention of the steam engine. And this this economist scientist last name, "Jevins," he predicted that with this new creation of the steam engine we're not going to see that with this increase of productivity we're not going to see that energy consumption goes down where the use of these technologies goes down. It's actually just going to go more. Meaning like you think the argument is look, these steam engines can take your stuff across the country. You don't have to work as hard now. Now we have technology that's going to do it. But as we see with a new technology we don't then say, "Oh, we're going to plateau and now use all this time to go and think and read books." What we do is we stack energy on top of energy on top of energy and just consume more and more and more. So when the industrial revolution came around, they promised everyone all of our grandparents like, "Hey, you know, great grandparents." It's going to be awesome. These things are going to be automated. So you have all this time to read and go and be with your family and go fishing. It's going to be great. But we just saw it actually just made people have to work more and in more intense ways and just took away some of the really dehumanizing lately. And then social media came in and then now we have AI. And we think that the tech companies are saying the exact same thing. Just imagine how great it's going to be. All human labor is going to be done by these AI's. You're going to get to go and be on a greasian island and painting sunsets and reading poetry to your progeny. It's like, it's a lie. All it's going to do is find more addictive, more powerful ways to suck in our attention and extract our time and money into these tech companies. And so knowing that we have this sobriety of vision of like, we all feel it. You can even think back to 10 years ago pre-cell phones or 20 years ago pre-iPhone and be like, "Man, my life was markedly different." Right? Like, I had more time for things. I'm not saying the old way is better. I'm not trying to preach some old lediglument. But it's just to say, we have lost the agency and the autonomy of what it means to be human. And our job as storytellers is to remind people of like, "Hello, wake up. We do this to point us towards a direction of like, get out of the same hamster wheel. Like, don't just keep doing the same thing and do not take this more potent drug thinking that it's going to be the solution. Because we see the trajectory of history. We see how we keep stacking all this attention. And we got to say, "All right. Let's tell different stories that remind people of this fact. Let's do this podcast to remind people of this fact of like, there is something beautiful about being attentive to the things that matter. And it's not just about getting ahead and finding the derivative of the thing. And using this tool, as fast as we can, to get ahead. So we can get this narrow advantage. Because at the end of the day, we're all racing towards the clip. And we got to wake up to that. >> When you have a wonderful director, like any of the masters, like, you know, Scorsese or PTA or Christopher Nolan or Guillermo, I've worked a few of them on the 30th take of an actor hanging in there with them, going, you know, well, no, let's find this. Maybe, what, what if we tried this? What if we thought, is when you find it. You find that magic. You find that performance. You find that moment that makes the movie. Maybe there's like, what's not working? What if we tried this improv? With AI, what they're selling? Is you're going to watch it? Good enough. Yeah. Maybe I'll try one more thing. Okay, that wide shot. Maybe it'll be closer. Good enough. Out, about to do it. Yeah. It's factory. That, on the, just the most granular level of why it, it, it, it's not good. By any stretch. And it just, that, attention to detail. I couldn't remember sitting summer, 1977. There's a shot in Star Wars. The thing comes out and there's a little man welding. A little guy. It was this visual effect. And I was like, what the, how is that? How do they do that? I read every book to figure out how George Lucas made that little welding man there. Yeah. Right? He did it. He took the time to do that. Right? Because he thought, well, that's going to provide scale. That's going to mean that there's people that live there. Your brain just explodes. Exactly. And, you know, and just hanging in there with an actor and finding that moment, that human moment. It's not. They're going to get thing, they're going to, you know, that's good enough, put it out. And what's going to happen is then it's going to be like, well, movie suck. Okay. I don't understand why. I guess people don't like going to see movies anymore. Boom. Boom. Boom. Down and down and down. The only way out is through passion, creativity, talent, and human connection. I totally agree. I know anecdotally of just being on set after set, shoot day after shoot day. And you see a director that, like, they don't always know just exactly what they want. It's just they're finding it. And to just feel the way a cinematographer would come by and just say, what if we just frame it here? And then suddenly it's like, oh, yes. Right. Okay. Well, who, who actually made that decision? It was actually a collective decision. And it just, it's almost like it felt right. But it's the same thing of like, if you're ever designing a house or you're thinking about, like, planning out a garden or something, it's one thing to imagine in your mind. It's another thing to then be instantiated into the earth and the limitations of what you have. And that, that, in and out, but what does it look like to have an actor? And then what does it look like to have a customer put that actor in something that then brings out the side of them? All of that stuff is such a collaborative, creative art form that you lose. And I'm not saying that there's not, there's not something to be gained in these, in these other pursuits, but it's just something that's qualitatively different. And I really want to know that, because this always leads to like, a bunch of downstream problems, not to get too specific, but like, how are companies? How are studios going to solve for this problem from a copyright? Like, right now, let's just say, you sign a deal and you have your movie get ingested in all of your Mortal Kombat films and get ingested in. And, the, the rights holders within that is going to be, I'm assuming, like, above the line talent, some of the actors, you, you know, who knows the director? But, is your DP getting any points on that movie? Is, is the costumer, is the makeup artist? Is the, is the gaffer who set a light? None of those people are going to take, you know, any sort of profit participation within the waterfall, right? So if open AI and then they start compensating the rights holders, what, like, that DP's vision and how that camera works, that, that was trained in, how do they get compensated for that work? Even if we do agree to everything, these are deep, existential problems that we need to address just on the, like, the technical level that were like, how do we compensate this creative labor? But outside of that, it's just to say, but isn't there something intrinsically valuable about that way of crafting films? And is it, potentially, just a contradiction to think that you can make things of value without going through this communal experience? Because it isn't just one part, it's not just a, a director with a singular vision, it's a director with a crew that, together, they make a singular vision. Yeah, and actors and writers and DP's exactly. Playing off of you, like, as you go day by day, Nancy Myers has, on her monitor, a sticker that says gut, and she doesn't move on until she feels it in her gut. And, AI does not have a gut, so that we'll, we'll never create anything like that. Also, AI does not have a memory, and so, I like to end every podcast. Thank you, Jonathan, so much for your time, and intelligence here. But I like to end every podcast with the simple question, best memory on set. It was, like, any good memory, it's bitter and sweet. And, I remember we're filming everything everywhere. And, we were, on our last week, and, as we're filming, we're hearing up, like, this thing called the Corona virus is landing into the United States. And, we heard that, like, there was the first case that was found in Seattle, and in the second case, that was in New York, and it was all kind of gearing up, as we're in our final week of shooting. And, you know, I'm a young producer, who doesn't know, really, like, everyone, we're all faking it till we make it, right? And, I remember, there was, like, this feeling of, oh, man, we're going to have to make a health and safety decision while they're not to shut down this movie. And, I remember calling around and be like, what do we do here? We look to you as a producer, like, he tells us. And so, I, I kind of took a poll of everyone on set, and it was just like, if I decided, if one person isn't comfortable with finishing the shoot, we're going to shut down. Because, I don't want the liability, or I don't feel comfortable forcing anyone who's uncomfortable. And, I was shocked, like, almost everyone said, let's finish it, except for two people, so we shut down the movie. But, knowing we're going to shut it down, we're going to shut it down, we're going to shut it down, we're going to shut it down,