Tag: Burn Hollywood Burn

Is ‘Moneyball’ Coming For Hollywood?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I had an interesting Space conversation (below) with someone where we stumbled upon an interesting idea — is it possible that Hollywood is about to get “Moneyballed?” What I mean by this is, if you gut Hollywood from its human element outside of digital body scans that are used like ring tones, is it possible that cold, hard metrics will the be-all and end-all.

Two things.

One, I suppose one of the reasons why so much of Hollywood sucks these days is that already exists. The corporate suits look exclusively at the bottom line and that’s it. But this idea I’m proposing would take things to the next level because there would be ZERO human involvement when it comes to the production of the collection of entertainment we consider “Hollywood.”

The other idea is that Hollywood isn’t going down without a fight. It’s possible a lot of carve outs to be mandated via regulation. This would happen as part of a broader effort on the part of the greater knowledge economy to prevent its complete consumption by the AI revolution.

The issue is that Hollywood could very well get suckerpunched by the tsnuami that is the looming use of AI in showbiz. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the injection of AI into showbiz is what happens Next after the Streaming revolution.

Now, obviously, if we have a civil war starting in late 2024, early 2025 then lulz, it may be like the advent of TV before WW2 — we’re just going to have to wait for things to get sorted out before we get to experience it.

Will A.I. Bring A Broadway Renaissance As Hollywood Fades?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As is suggested in the movie “La La Land,” there is still a lot of truth to the myth that young people with a few bucks in their pockets make their way to Los Angeles in hopes of making it big in Hollywood. The rise of A.I. generated entertainment might change all of that, however.

Instead of going to Hollywood, young people in the near future might flock to New York City in hopes of making it big on Broadway and leveraging that fame to get a full body scan that will allow them to live passively off the scans use for years to come.

I say this because I wonder if the potential death of mass media because of A.I. generated entertainment might might lead to people turning to live theatre in a way not seen since before the advent of Hollywood in the first place.

I’m not saying I think this will happen for sure, but it’s definitely a possibility. It’s very easy to imagine a future where AI has grown so powerful that we have a “Her” movie situation. Instead of paying $15 a month for Netflix, we will pay a similar amount for access to the “scans” of actors over the years that we can use to populate our very, very specific movies.

Now here’s another interesting idea — will there be any market for mass media entertainment at all outside of the theatre or will everyone just use A.I. to generate very personalized entertainment? There won’t even be a need for a prompt — your digital personal assistant will just know you so well that you sit down and watch entertainment it generates on the fly based on what it knows about your personality from use.

But I still think it’s possible that live theatre — and Broadway specifically — could balloon in cultural significance as we transition away from Hollywood having any humans involved.

A.I. Killed The Hollywood Star?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I had a really interesting Space conversation on Twitter with a guy who proposed the following provocative concept: the rise of AI generated technology will mark the end of Hollywood as we know it.

He posits that the entire celebrity parasocial edifice will come crashing down as everyone can tailor their entertainment to be very personal and without any “real” actors. Everything will be generative, no IRL humans involved.

This is a really interesting idea. And I like it because it forces me to challenge some basic assumptions and to come up with and answer to this guy’s very valid observations.

The more I think about it, the more I think Hollywood celebrities have nothing to worry about, for no other reason than they still have time to warp the advance of technology such that they thrive. For instance, just because you may be able to create a completely generative movie or TV show in the near future, doesn’t mean you will want to, especially if there’s a huge marketing campaign to make you feel that your generative actor isn’t as “special” or entertaining as a scan of a real person.

In fact, there is a novel by David Brin that deals with something like this. It’s called Kiln People and it has some really thought provoking ideas about the nature of celebrity. Anyway, I think in the near future when we Petite Singularity is in full force that instead of Hollywood being burned to the ground that the basic elements of Hollywood celebrity culture will simply exist in a different form.

So, when you sit down to watch a TV show or movie, yes, you will create something generative…but you will also probably be willing to pay a premium for a scan of, say, Harrison Ford (and other actors) to plop into your generative, personalized content. In fact, one could even go so far as to say that in the future you will be paying a flat monthly fee not for Netflix, but for access to the scans of a multitude of actors you might use for your movies and TV shows that you generate via a prompt

And, what’s more, once AI technology reaches something akin to that seen in the movie “Her,” you might simply tell your personal assistant to create the content for you using voice commands and you can be even more lazy.

I still think that instead of going to Hollywood in the near future that young starlets will head to New York City to see if they can make a name for themselves on Broadway then get scanned into the Big Hollywood Database and then live off the passive income of their body scan. I don’t feel enough people are listening to me about this possibility.

Anyway. It definitely seems as though the future of entertainment is going to have a lot of twists and turns.

Hollywood’s Post Human Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though Hollywood is about to enter an era of transition not seen since that from silent movies to talkies in the mid-20s. As we careen towards a Petite Singularity based on the Chatbot Revolution it definitely seems the conditions are there for Hollywood as we know it to cease to exist within a few years.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, “The Town” and the idea of that Hollywood tech could reach the point where there is no “uncanny valley” when it comes to resurrecting dead celebrities was broached. The person interviewed gave a very open ended, evasive answer, but the sentiment was clear — this revolution is well on its way.

As such, this raises a lot of very intriguing — and potentially alarming — consequences for not just Hollywood, but society as a whole. In fact, one could make the case that this revolution of Hollywood would be the point of the spear for an actual hard Singularity at some point in the near future.

What other indication that technology is officially going to fast for human culture to catch up than the idea that Hollywood will no longer really need humans at all. This could lead to the rather nightmarish scenario where entertainment is kind of forever fixed at some indeterminate “now” in which no new actors ever work their way through the ranks because every actor since the dawn of Hollywood can be conjured up at will.

Another, less depressing scenario is all of this leads to the theatre industry suddenly seeing a incredible resurgence. It could be that Broadway will be seen as the premiere “artisanal” creative outlet for actual human actors and instead of a starlet taking a bus to LA to start her career, she goes to Broadway. She builds enough buzz as a live actor that she catches the eye of those few Hollywood director still making movies the old fashion way.

The goal of her career would then be to make a big enough name for herself that she could get scanned for Hollywood and have her image plopped into all the movies being made with dead actors.

Anyway, the point is — the conditions are there, at least, for a huge disruption in showbiz in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Movie Pitch: ‘Bottom Rail’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a famous anecdote from the very end of the Civil War when a former slave is claimed to have told a bunch of white people that, “bottom rail is on top now.”

Ok, here’s my movie pitch.

The movie opens with a montage about a virus that wiped out much — but not all — of humanity. After a lot of chaos, death and destruction, humanity manages to bounce back. But here’s the twist — white people are now in the minority and pretty much the entire globe is run by black and brown people.

You would have to be very careful how you approached this story, but in general, the point would be to confront white people in the audience with how systemic racism is real TODAY. The movie would be an excuse to highlight the macro social injustice that POC have to endure in our modern world.

You might suggest that white people in this future world are blamed for the the destruction of the old world and that only adds to the prejudice that they face. Now there are obvious risks to this move in the sense that Right wing nutjobs might completely miss the point of the story and latch on to it as a parable about the perils of illegal immigration.

Ugh.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Anyway, it’s an interesting idea. It’s a more realistic end-of-the-word scenario than is in most fiction these days.

What Is Wrong With Me

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have fallen into a horrible rut as I reach my 50th birthday. I love to produce media but I loath to consume it. But, as they say, if you have time to write you have time to read (or watch.) I have a new Netflix account and there are all these really good movies and TV shows to watch….and I just can’t get into them.

Meh. I don’t care. *I* want to be the person creating content for other people, not having to slog through some other person’s vision. It’s all very curious and frustrating. I need to get outside my comfort zone, expose myself to new ideas so when I do write content I have those new ideas rolling around in my mind.

It’s all very much a pain in the ass, especially as I yet again start from scratch on a new iteration of the second draft of my first novel. It should not be so difficult. All I have to do is plop myself in front of my laptop and watch something, anything, for longer than a few moments.

The last few TV shows I actually got into were 30 Rock, Mad Men and the first season of Stranger Things — otherwise, nada. This is so embarrassing. Some of it is I have a very specific taste in content to the point that if it doesn’t hit me just right…I can’t bear to watch it.

Anyway. It’s time for me to come to grips with the fact that I’m not some sort of man in a high castle. If I’m going to be a successful content creator, I have to CONSUME content as well. It’s very difficult because as I’ve grown older, I’ve all out of the habit of consuming ANY media outside of the occasional movie.

Ugh.

A Massive Plot Hole In ‘Glass Onion’ — SPOILERS!

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Ok. I got a bone to pick with Rian Johnson about the latter part of what is otherwise a really great movie.

So, one of the key moments of the movie is someone gets shot. Then that weapon just magically is never mentioned again. What the what?

A group of people are trapped on an island with an murderous idiot with a loaded weapon and that murderous idiot just lets the plot unfold as if he doesn’t have a gun? What? We see the weapon shot twice, so if it had, say, six bullets you would have four more bullets that could be used to influence events. That doesn’t even address that issue that a handgun, by definition, can be used as a threat.

All I can say is Johnson is lucky I was so invested in how interesting the plot was that I was able to push that annoying “what happened to that gun?” feeling in the back of my mind out of the way long enough to finish the movie.

The MAGA Slogan ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ Is Performative Bullshit — It’s Hollywood’s Poor Storytelling That’s The Problem

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Conservatives of all stripes feel really, really put upon by the “woke cancel culture mob.” They to the point that they are willing to destroy American democracy so they can use the hard power of the government to end the “wokeness” they perceive is hurting their feelings.

One of the favorite slogans of the MAGA New Right is “woke woke, go broke.” This is bullshit. It’s bullshit because it fits the narrative of the greater MAGA New Right echochamber of podcasts and Fox News. The issue isn’t so much that Hollywood has “gone woke” as it is showbiz has lost sight of their power: telling a good story.

I could watch a pretty “woke” movie without blinking an eye if it told me a good story and the representation that it strove for was organic to the story. It’s when the story is lacking that I start to roll my eyes, check my watch and dwell upon how the movie is trying to browbeat me with a “woke” message.

If the story was good — I wouldn’t care because I would be so engrossed by the tale I was consuming.

The issue is, of course, that America is cleaving into two nations, one Red, one Blue. And the moment Blues get as angry as Reds — that’s it, the country will probably have a National Divorce and, as such a Second American Civil War. At the moment, Blues are pretty oblivious to the dangers they face when the ascendance of Reds because Reds are such cry babies that you wouldn’t believe that they are going to push majority Blues out of the country with their extreme policies once they’re in power again.

But, here we are. There’s a real risk that that very thing might happen.

It’s all very bonkers and, as such, 2023 – 2025 could be one of the most turbulent eras in American history since 1865.

I Loved ‘Glass Onion’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I found myself drinking some pretty potent whiskey with some a new Netflix account and so the first thing I did was watch Glass Onion. Netflix left so very much money on the table by not giving this movie a wide and long theatrical release, but lulz.

While I would say that “Babylon” is my favorite film of the year, Glass Onion is my favorite movie of the year. Even though in hindsight the movie wasn’t nearly as interesting as it was as you watched it, while I watched it I was totally engaged. I was in the moment and the movie really did what a good movie does — give you interesting characters doing engrossing things.

All I can say is — Rian Johnson should stay as far away from the Star Wars franchise as possible. He is obviously not a fan of Star Wars and he is just not interested in what makes Star Wars so popular. But the man can direct a great murder mystery.

I say that the movie isn’t as interesting upon reflection because there just isn’t much in the way of red herrings. The person would assume did it, did it. There are a few left turns and misdirects now agan again, but in general…meh. But I have extremely high storytelling expectations and I loved Glass Onion. There was a compelling story and you wanted to know things would work out.

There were a few things I didn’t understand about this movie. Why was the character of “Whiskey” played but a non-name actress. I’m not picking on the actress who played the character, but she kind of faded into the background. I mean, imagine if Dua Lipa or even Kaia Gerber had played that character. Madelyn Cline is just sort of…there? I suppose that was kind of the point. They didn’t want a well known person to play the character so we our eyes wouldn’t be drawn to her.

Or something.

But, in general, I was extremely pleased. Highly recommend.

A Second Life For ‘Babylon?’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Even though I walked out just about at the 80% mark because the plot had become way too trite for my tastes, I really did enjoy Babylon. It was very much a spiritual successor to “The Wolf of Wall Street” in the sense that if you liked one movie you are very likely to enjoy the other.

Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

So, what happened?

What did the movie bomb so bad?

I guess marketing? But from the generally positive reactions to the movie I’m seeing from the hip-central that is Tik-Tok….I think you shouldn’t count Babylon out just yet. It’s possible that at some point the film will organically grow in popularity to the point that 20 years from now we’ll all assume it was a popular movie when it came out when, in fact, it definitely was not.

I don’t know when or how this transformation in fortunes might occur, but I do think that once people can watch the movie in the luxury of their own homes and it will likely grow in popularity. At least to a limited extent.

The movie is too good for it to be forgotten. It’s possible — not probable — that it might be a lot of Oscar nominations and maybe wins that ultimately save Babylon from itself.