Paul Schrader says he's ready to make an all-AI-"actor" movie

From context clues, Schrader—currently at Venice to promote his new, woefully human-strewn film The Basics Of Philosophy—is pretty clearly talking about a project previously billed as Three Guns At Dawn, a film he’s been working on ever since writing it during the recent run of Hollywood strikes in 2023. Originally sold to Netflix with Antoine Fuqua attached to produce, the film has now been “reconfigured,” according to Schrader (with the Training Day director no longer attached). Schrader described the movie—originally centered on three Black protagonists navigating around each other in south central Los Angeles—as “A noir about three brothers—a corrupt cop, a drug dealer, a serial killer—built around AI-generated human prototypes rather than name actors.”

Schrader has described Three Guns as the third of three movies he’s currently aiming himself, those associates he has not alienated through alleged sexual misconduct, and ChatGPT at: The first, Non Compis Mentis, sounds like it’ll be human-starring, while the second, The Doors Of Perception, will apparently feature 15 minutes of AI-generated drug trips in an effort to capture the feeling of doing ayuahasca with Paul Schrader. But Three Guns is clearly the showpiece here: A film designed to cut other people out of the process entirely, allowing Schrader to literally create puppets that will just say his damn words without making any problems. As for the impact on the industry, Schrader is, at least, consistent in his life-long Calvinist determinism toward the oncoming collapse of everything: “Those jobs are gone, babe. You can scream ‘Stop AI’ all you want, but you can’t stop it.”