"Those jobs are gone, babe."
The piece
"Those jobs are gone, babe." That's Paul Schrader. The man who wrote Taxi Driver. And if you read that this week and went quiet for a second, if you've been counting how many gigs you've got left,
stay with me, because he said something else nobody's quoting, and it's the part that matters to you. Schrader told The Hollywood Reporter his next noir, Three Guns at Dawn, is being made entirely with AI.
His words: "AI-generated human prototypes rather than name actors." He was asked about the jobs. He said: "Those jobs are gone, babe. You can scream 'Stop AI' all you want, but you can't stop it."
Then he emailed MovieMaker to clarify, and this is the sentence. He said he couldn't find three bankable actors. And then: "AI actors need not be bankable."
Look at what that is. He never said the AI performances are better. He said they don't have to clear the bar. That's not a craft argument. That's a financing argument. And financing arguments don't stop at actors.
If the reason to replace a line item is that it doesn't have to be bankable, every line on that sheet is in scope. Yours. Mine. Now here's the part nobody's quoting. Same email. He said he has three non-AI films lined up, and the first one starts principal photography October 12.
Four weeks from now, he's calling a human crew to set. Both of those are true at the same time. The AI film is the experiment.
The human films are the work. He says it himself, he's doing the AI one, quote, "not so much for the story." I'm not going to stand here and tell you he's wrong.
I've watched the work get thinner for three years and I'm not going to pretend I haven't. What I'll tell you is what I'm doing about it. I'm learning the part that's replacing me, so I'm the one holding it. That's the whole plan. You can come do it with me.
And to be fair to him: it's one film out of four. Antoine Fuqua produced the original version and walked rather than make it this way. Nobody should take this as "features are AI now."
Here's the thing to take out of it. Almost none of us are bankable. The financing has never depended on our names. But the thing Schrader is still paying for, three times over, starting October 12, that's the shoot.
Live, in the room, people who make a day happen. So on your next job, find the one call that could not have been made before you got there. Write it down. That sentence is your actual position. And if you can't find one, that's the more important answer.
Comment the one call on your last job nobody could have made in advance, I go through every one.