Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode two of Development Hell, our revisionist history
Speaker 2: series based on the radical notion of the best Hollywood
Speaker 2: stories are the ones that never got made into movies.
Speaker 2: Last time, we kicked out the series with the story
Speaker 2: of how my book Blink failed to make it under
Speaker 2: the big screen. If you haven't heard that one yet,
Speaker 2: you really really should, because it explains why failed stories
Speaker 2: have such meaning for me. Anyway, this episode is a
Speaker 2: wildly convoluted tale, full of big plot twists and huge
Speaker 2: moral questions, a story so much about right now that's
Speaker 2: going to get a little uncomfortable. Allow me to introduce
Speaker 2: guests Number one, Angus Fletcher. He's a screenwriter.
Speaker 3: I'm not a screenwriter, and I've never really wanted to
Speaker 3: be a screenwriter. Have no aptitude in screenwriting.
Speaker 2: Don't listen to Angus. Angus is in fact a screenwriter,
Speaker 2: as you'll hear, he's also an author, researcher, and professor
Speaker 2: of story science at Ohio State and a longtime friend
Speaker 2: of Revision's history. Some of you will remember him as
Speaker 2: the person who provided the intellectual scaffolding for our memorable
Speaker 2: revision of The Little Mermaid. Remember this so you think
Speaker 2: we should be able to we should fix Ursula.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we should just stop her from doing
Speaker 3: whatever she's doing. We should have a conversation with her
Speaker 3: about maybe why this isn't helpful.
Speaker 4: Do you, Prince Eric, take Ursula to have and to
Speaker 4: hold in sickness and in health for as long as
Speaker 4: you both shall live.
Speaker 3: Eric looks deep into Ursula's eyes, hypnotized.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: If you haven't heard that Little Mermaid series, listen to it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: back to today's story.
Speaker 3: I'm just fascinated by this problem that Hollywood has, that
Speaker 3: it keeps selling the same story over and over and
Speaker 3: over again. And so you know, back when I was
Speaker 3: actually a Shakespeare professor up at Stanford, I placed this
Speaker 3: folk all the Pixar and I was basically like, how
Speaker 3: is it you guys who were able to make stuff
Speaker 3: that's like better? This is when they're making movies like
Speaker 3: Up which had just these totally berserk narrative structures. And
Speaker 3: so the anyway they let me inside, I learned all
Speaker 3: this stuff. I thought it was totally fascinating. I realized
Speaker 3: that they were making stories in a totally different way
Speaker 3: than Hollywood was. So I went down to Hollywood to
Speaker 3: advise Hollywood, and that led to me basically trying to
Speaker 3: convince Hollywood by writing a series of screenplays the Pixar way,
Speaker 3: because I thought that they would then allow me to
Speaker 3: consult on movies. Instead, No, they just hired me to
Speaker 3: write screenplays, and that's how I got an agent. And
Speaker 3: then one day my agent called me up and because
Speaker 3: he knew I'm just obsessed with the original Total Recall,
Speaker 3: which had destroyed my mind when I was young, and
Speaker 3: he was like, how would you like to work with
Speaker 3: the writer of Total Recall, Gary Goldman?
Speaker 1: And so that's how we got together. Gary.
Speaker 2: Wait, Gary, you wrote Total Recall. Meet Guests number two,
Speaker 2: Gary Goldman. He's also a screenwriter, but unlike Angus, has
Speaker 2: no trouble admitting it.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was the last writer on Total Recall. On
Speaker 1: the first Total Recall.
Speaker 2: Total Recall amazing movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger Sharon Stone, directed by
Speaker 2: Paul Verhoven.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it was about a milk toast character who finds
Speaker 1: out that he's not who he thinks he is, which
Speaker 1: is that he's a kind of a super spy.
Speaker 2: But how real?
Speaker 1: Does it seem?
Speaker 2: As real as any memory in your head? Come on,
Speaker 2: don't bullshit me.
Speaker 4: No, I'm telling you, Doug, your brain will not know
Speaker 4: the difference, and that's guaranteed or your money back.
Speaker 1: What about the guy you lobottomized? Did he get the refund?
Speaker 2: Came out in nineteen ninety blockbuster tons of awards total
Speaker 2: recall has a number of It has a genealogy. It's
Speaker 2: not just to me. I mean, it has a short story.
Speaker 2: The source material is from Philip K.
Speaker 1: Dick. And then there was a fantastic original screenplay by
Speaker 1: Dan O'Bannon and Ron Schussette that everybody loved from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and this launched the project. In fact, this is sort
Speaker 1: of the prime example of this idea of development hell,
Speaker 1: which is that you sell something for a lot of
Speaker 1: money and everybody's very excited about it, and they tell
Speaker 1: you it's going to be a movie right away, and
Speaker 1: then it goes into a process of development where everybody
Speaker 1: has a hand in revising it and reconceptualizing it and
Speaker 1: making it in their image and in the middle. Depending
Speaker 1: on your involvement, you can be in development hell along
Speaker 1: with the project, or you can be a bystander pushed
Speaker 1: to the outside watching it go through the process of
Speaker 1: development Hell with lots of other people, not including yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're lucky it gets made at all.
Speaker 1: The project had been in development for almost eight or
Speaker 1: nine years when I got involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eight or nine years. Yes, So if you go
Speaker 2: back to the original screenplay, do you think that's a
Speaker 2: better movie than the final screenplay?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Not in my case.
Speaker 2: So you're saying development hell is a bad thing. Accept
Speaker 2: in the case where I'm involved in convicings, which, by
Speaker 2: the way, a legitimate position that I would write, I'm
Speaker 2: totally open to agree with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I was starting out, I read the
Speaker 1: original Total Recalled screenplay as a junior executor for a
Speaker 1: producer who was considering making it and acquiring it. And
Speaker 1: basically the problem that most people felt was that it
Speaker 1: fell apart in the third act. So and this apparently,
Speaker 1: it fell apart so disastrously that even though it had
Speaker 1: many different stars and directors attached and people always wanted
Speaker 1: to make it, it didn't cross the finish line. And
Speaker 1: by the time it got to me it was eight
Speaker 1: or nine years later. It had been in pre production
Speaker 1: with Bruce Beresford and Patrick Swayzee and the producer Dino
Speaker 1: Dilarentis in Australia, and in fact, Bruce Beresford asked me
Speaker 1: to come over and do a rewrite on it, and
Speaker 1: I said I couldn't because I was working with Paul
Speaker 1: Verhovean on another project. But Dino went bankrupt. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 1: had always loved the project and had been watching it.
Speaker 1: He went the owners of the Carolco studio that had
Speaker 1: done the Rambo movies and he said, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to do this, and they bought it from Dio
Speaker 1: Dilarentis out of bankruptcy for a humongous amount of money
Speaker 1: and with the idea that Arnold was attached. Arnold wanted
Speaker 1: to work with Paul Verhoven because Paul had just done
Speaker 1: RoboCop and I was working with Paul Verhovean on a
Speaker 1: movie called about Out of Body Travel, and Paul said
Speaker 1: he didn't think it was ready to shoot and that
Speaker 1: he was going to leave our project and go do
Speaker 1: another project, and he was apologizing to me for that.
Speaker 1: I said, what's the other project and he said Total Recall.
Speaker 1: I said, well, that's really funny, Paul, because I turned
Speaker 1: down totally the chance to rewrite Total Recall because I
Speaker 1: was working with you, and he said, well, what did
Speaker 1: you think about it? And I told him my take
Speaker 1: and he said, well, you know, that's pretty much how
Speaker 1: I see it too. Let me let me see if
Speaker 1: I can get you the job to rewrite it.
Speaker 2: Gary, Gary, Gary got worried. We want to talk with
Speaker 2: his other project. But now I'm thinking we can come
Speaker 2: back to total recall or is this all leading up
Speaker 2: to the other project. Well, they're connected, yeah, So what's
Speaker 2: the connection? The connection is I would say Philip K. Dick,
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick, sci Fi Master. To name just a
Speaker 2: few other Philip K. Dick film adaptations, Blade Runner, Minority Report, Scanner, Darkly,
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick is probably the most important sci fi
Speaker 2: writer ever, or at least of the last hundred years.
Speaker 2: After working on Minority Report, Gary was becoming a bit
Speaker 2: of a Philip K. Dick specialist, which is not a
Speaker 2: bad thing to be in a town that loves sci
Speaker 2: fi adaptations. When we get back, Gary and Angus go
Speaker 2: to work on adapting another of his stories. We're back
Speaker 2: with Angus Fletcher and Gary Goldman, who've just been set
Speaker 2: up to work together on an adaptation of a Philip K.
Speaker 1: Dick story. I've done four projects based on Philip K.
Speaker 1: Dick material. This would become my calling card in Hollywood
Speaker 1: was that I did Philip K. Dick adaptations.
Speaker 2: So, Angus, wait, did you have a particular affection for
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick prior to this project?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I loved the movie Total Reco And
Speaker 3: I'm going to acknowledge that I was such a philistine
Speaker 3: that I had no idea that it came from Philip K.
Speaker 1: Dick.
Speaker 3: And happened was the moment I got the call from
Speaker 3: my agent. I then went and read all of Philip K.
Speaker 3: Dick and it's surreal. I mean, he sort of went
Speaker 3: from science fiction into religion. And I called Gary up
Speaker 3: and I was like, well, Gary, I was like, what
Speaker 3: do you think you know?
Speaker 1: I'd love to work with you. And the main reason
Speaker 1: I wanted to work with Gary is.
Speaker 3: Because I believe that screenwriters had the ability to see
Speaker 3: the future, because I think this is a common power
Speaker 3: of story. I think that science fiction is always about
Speaker 3: intuiting what's going to happen next. And so I said
Speaker 3: to Gary, I said, Gary, what do you think the
Speaker 3: future is? And he said, Angus, read this story, variable
Speaker 3: man and the premise of Variable Man's very simple. It's
Speaker 3: basically just about a future in which there are these
Speaker 3: computers who used this histics to predict everything's going to happen.
Speaker 3: And I said, you know, Gary, this seems weirdly like
Speaker 3: the world we're accelerating it to now.
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, he said it is. And he said, and.
Speaker 3: I have a premise or a story that I'd like
Speaker 3: to pitch to you that I think will kind of
Speaker 3: be as big, if not bigger, than total recall.
Speaker 1: And that's where we got started, was with his pitch
Speaker 1: to me. And is the So the Variable Man's Story
Speaker 1: was written when, Oh, I don't know about nineteen fifty, probably.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, Oh it really so. Imagining in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty a world in which computers predict everything is kind
Speaker 2: of great if you're in the twenty When when did
Speaker 2: you guys, When did you guys work together on this project?
Speaker 2: What was the early two thousand, early two thousands? So
Speaker 2: you have and so were you were you being faithful
Speaker 2: to the Philip K. Dick short story or were you
Speaker 2: were you changing it in useful ways?
Speaker 3: We were changing it in useful ways. And there a
Speaker 3: couple a couple of big things. So, first of all,
Speaker 3: Gary's pitch to me was he was like, imagine a
Speaker 3: future in which computers don't just predict things like they
Speaker 3: do in the Philip K.
Speaker 1: Dick story, which is who wins this war?
Speaker 3: But he says, you know, imagine that they're able to
Speaker 3: predict exactly.
Speaker 1: What food you'd like to eat right now. And then
Speaker 1: he said, and then imagine.
Speaker 3: That they're able to predict a gift that you can
Speaker 3: give to your best friend for their birthday. And that
Speaker 3: gift is so good that your friend not only loves it,
Speaker 3: but it seems perfectly like it came from you. And
Speaker 3: then he said, imagine the computers can pick your soulmate.
Speaker 3: Imagine the computers can pick the person that you love
Speaker 3: so totally and so absolutely that you know that.
Speaker 1: This computer knows you better than yourself. And I said,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 3: And then he said, and now imagine, after you've given
Speaker 3: yourself up totally these computers, you wake up one morning
Speaker 3: and they say to you, in twenty four hours, the
Speaker 3: world is going to end because humanity is going to
Speaker 3: destroy itself. And I've crunched all the variables and there's
Speaker 3: no opportunity for you to do anything. That's the starting
Speaker 3: point for the story.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, So wait, how far have we traveled?
Speaker 2: We've traveled quite significantly from Philip K. Dick At this
Speaker 2: he was just imagining a world where there were these
Speaker 2: computers that were predicting the outcome of a war, and
Speaker 2: the computer's run across a problem. That's basically the plot,
Speaker 2: well right.
Speaker 1: The title variable Man. Because the other thing that Philip K.
Speaker 3: Dick did, which he intuited I think at a moment
Speaker 3: of genius, was what would happen if you put a
Speaker 3: person who the computers had no information on into the
Speaker 3: middle of the statistical world. So these are all these
Speaker 3: computers that are able to see the future because they
Speaker 3: have all the data, but there's one person who they
Speaker 3: have no data on. And so the starting point for
Speaker 3: the screenplay that Carried and I did was humanity goes,
Speaker 3: oh my goodness, we're going to die tomorrow. Our only
Speaker 3: option is to bring in someone who the computer has
Speaker 3: no data on, the variable man, the person who is unpredictable, unknown.
Speaker 1: And so, just like in the original Philip K.
Speaker 3: Dick's story, we reached back into time, back into history
Speaker 3: before the computers and pluck this person into the present.
Speaker 3: And that's basically the beginning of the screenplay is when
Speaker 3: the variable man arrives in this world where everything has
Speaker 3: been planned, everything has been predetermined, the computers know everything.
Speaker 1: We're all going to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now the way with so many, so many wonderful uh, Gary,
Speaker 2: tell me a little bit about your thought process in
Speaker 2: moving from the original Philip K. Dick notion to the
Speaker 2: one that Anglish has described. Tell me about the leaps
Speaker 2: that you made there and why you made them?
Speaker 1: All Right, So, I suppose I was very interested in AI.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone's thinking about it now, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: brand new. And I saw this idea that that of
Speaker 1: the computer that can predict everything, and that you have
Speaker 1: to give up control to the computer because it's it's
Speaker 1: working so fast, uh, And I wanted to sort of
Speaker 1: imagine this sort of trajectory of of going from where
Speaker 1: we are now to the point where the computer is
Speaker 1: in total control. And I was really and I remain
Speaker 1: concerned about this question of decision making and how do
Speaker 1: we make decisions? And if the computer can make better
Speaker 1: decisions than we do, then what is the role of
Speaker 1: free will? And if you spend a whole life just
Speaker 1: simply doing what the computer tells you to do. What
Speaker 1: is identity. So I wanted to put this hero who
Speaker 1: comes from the past and who still is accustomed to
Speaker 1: having free will and his power is to have free will,
Speaker 1: and to put it in the situation where whenever he
Speaker 1: listens to the computer, everything goes right, and whenever he
Speaker 1: trusts his own judgment, it's wrong.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, wait, wait, so the AI, the AI is
Speaker 2: smart enough to realize that the only way to save
Speaker 2: the world is to bring someone in from outside AI. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: the AI a little bit of self knowledge and humility
Speaker 2: in your world.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was one of our best things. We
Speaker 1: created this wonderful AI, a wonderful character called We named
Speaker 1: him Plato, and uh, he's you know, he's sort of
Speaker 1: somewhere We're going to Butler and God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's this is this is getting better and better.
Speaker 3: I was gonna chime in there and uh and just
Speaker 3: and just say that basically, in this society, there are
Speaker 3: a few people that have tuned out and they're like,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to listen to this computer.
Speaker 1: Where does this computer know?
Speaker 3: And their lives are horrible and all their decisions are bad,
Speaker 3: and they decide to choose their own soulmates, and they
Speaker 3: have horrible marriages.
Speaker 1: And then everyone who.
Speaker 3: Listens to exactly what the computer says has this Instagram
Speaker 3: life where they are actually so happy and their kids
Speaker 3: are so perfect and everything is so amazing.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, Cole comes into this world. Our
Speaker 1: hero comes into this world.
Speaker 3: And he of course finds an appalling and as as
Speaker 3: appalling as we would find it, and he's determined to
Speaker 3: ignore Plato. He's determined to ignore the AI that has
Speaker 3: brought into the future to save humanity from itself. So
Speaker 3: this is another kind of unfolding paradox is humanity doesn't
Speaker 3: want to save itself. It means listening to the computers
Speaker 3: on how to save itself.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, so many questions.
Speaker 2: First of all, tell me a little bit about so
Speaker 2: our variable man is called as in the Philip K.
Speaker 2: Dick story, your veryble man is called coal. Tell me
Speaker 2: about your coal? And where does he come from? What's
Speaker 2: his personality?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Why is he? Why is he the way? Why is
Speaker 2: he so capable of standing up to AI even if
Speaker 2: AI has all these demonistrable advantages.
Speaker 1: So basically he's just a classic action hero.
Speaker 3: The idea is he embodies kind of our cowboy American
Speaker 3: trust in our guts. And so the opening sequence, he's
Speaker 3: sent in to stop this hacker, this hacker who's been
Speaker 3: creating chaos across the world, who's been sort of, you know,
Speaker 3: getting into all these top secret facilities and creating we
Speaker 3: think he's gonna launch world War three whatever.
Speaker 1: And so Cole goes in and he's being sort of
Speaker 1: instructed what.
Speaker 3: To do, and we already had these computers at this
Speaker 3: time that are sort of running the percentages and telling
Speaker 3: him do this, do this, do this, do this other thing,
Speaker 3: and he's listening to the computers.
Speaker 1: He's breaking in.
Speaker 3: He finally gets to the heart of the layer where
Speaker 3: this hacker is, and he kicks down the door and
Speaker 3: he points his gun and then the hacker turns around
Speaker 3: and it's a child, and Cole realizes, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 3: this is the hacker. This is the person who's been
Speaker 3: creating all this chaos. And he gets this word on
Speaker 3: his earpiece, kill the hacker, and he says, I can't
Speaker 3: kill the hacker.
Speaker 1: This is a child.
Speaker 3: And there's this long pause and they say, look, we've
Speaker 3: run all the numbers. If you don't kill the kid.
Speaker 3: This is going to happen again. Pull the trigger and
Speaker 3: he stands there in the moment. Can I pull the trigger?
Speaker 3: Can I pull the sugar? And then he doesn't do it.
Speaker 3: He doesn't pull the trigger, He drops the gun, he
Speaker 3: grabs a kid, and what essentially happens is he dies
Speaker 3: saving the kid's life. There's a fireball that blows him up,
Speaker 3: but the kid goes on and the kid lives.
Speaker 1: And because that fireball incinerates him.
Speaker 3: He can be brought into the future without changing time
Speaker 3: because he was essentially eliminated from the timeline. So if
Speaker 3: you reach into the exact moment just before he dies
Speaker 3: and pull him into the future, time isn't changed. And
Speaker 3: so he's the perfect person to bring back because he
Speaker 3: has demonstrated the ability to say no to the computers,
Speaker 3: and also because taking him doesn't change time.
Speaker 2: Oh I see so in the Fruit, when we meet
Speaker 2: Cole's he's part of the present, he's not. He's He's
Speaker 2: just a guy who's standing up to the tyranny of AI.
Speaker 2: Here's an action hero who's AI has been corrupted by
Speaker 2: this hacker. He's started to solve the problem. He fails
Speaker 2: as an incident. How much time passes between that initial
Speaker 2: encounter with the hacker and then when our story is
Speaker 2: taking place.
Speaker 3: Well, this is part of the twist because when you
Speaker 3: get into the future, you think that an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of time has passed because the future is radically different
Speaker 3: from when Cole disappeared, and it's so different that he
Speaker 3: can't believe it.
Speaker 1: But we start to.
Speaker 3: Learn that actually a very small amount of time, much
Speaker 3: more less time than you might suspect, has passed between
Speaker 3: when he died and when he was brought back because
Speaker 3: these computers, as Gary was saying, have accelerated human decision
Speaker 3: making to the points that our.
Speaker 1: Society has started to run on this.
Speaker 3: Utopia cycle and everything is just going much faster and
Speaker 3: much better than anyone could have imagined in our time.
Speaker 1: And it's because of this great genius who was the kid.
Speaker 1: The kid is is the thing that made the difference
Speaker 1: because he didn't kill him. Because Cole didn't kill him,
Speaker 1: he survived and he became the great genius that ushered
Speaker 1: us into this accelerated utopia.
Speaker 2: Now, why one thing I don't understand. If we are
Speaker 2: in accelerated utopia, why do we need saving? Why would
Speaker 2: utopia have a kind of expiry date. Isn't the definition
Speaker 2: of utopia that it keeps going in perpetuity?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, so this is part of the great
Speaker 3: middle of the beginning of the story is why is
Speaker 3: it exactly that we're going to die? What could possibly
Speaker 3: go wrong? Everything seems like it's perfect. What is going
Speaker 3: to destroy the world? Well, nobody is able to identify
Speaker 3: exactly at the beginning of the movie what's going to
Speaker 3: go on. All they know is that the computers are
Speaker 3: quite insistent that is going to happen in the next
Speaker 3: twenty four hours. And what happens over the middle parts
Speaker 3: of the screenplay is various different alternatives start to emerge.
Speaker 3: We start to see all of these different moving pieces,
Speaker 3: and we start to realize, oh, sure, you know it's
Speaker 3: a utopia, but there's still humans in it, and there's
Speaker 3: still other things going on. And I don't know how
Speaker 3: many of the twists you want me to ruin up, Malcolm.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that starts to become a
Speaker 3: question that haunts the hero is is he the one
Speaker 3: who's going to destroy the world? Is what the computers
Speaker 3: saw that he would get brought back and that by
Speaker 3: not listening to the computers. He was going to be
Speaker 3: the one that blows everything up.
Speaker 2: You know what this is, if I might reduce your
Speaker 2: whole premise to an axiom. This is the cinematic version
Speaker 2: of the famous adage in the Land of the Blind,
Speaker 2: the one eyed man is king right. Yeap, your coal
Speaker 2: is your one eyed man who is asked to be
Speaker 2: king right. And what you're describing just there is he
Speaker 2: knows he only has one eye right. He's wrestling with
Speaker 2: the fact that he can't see it all. It's sort
Speaker 2: of beautiful. Let me give you a little recap of
Speaker 2: where we are. There's a perfect utopia where AI runs everything.
Speaker 2: People do what computers tell them to do and are
Speaker 2: better for it. For reasons we don't quite understand yet,
Speaker 2: this utopia is in danger. In order to save it,
Speaker 2: the AI named Plato no Less brings back to life
Speaker 2: a guy who defied its commands in the past. After
Speaker 2: the break, Gary and Angus try to get the movie made.
Speaker 2: So tell me about your tell me more about your goal.
Speaker 2: So does he who who do you imagine playing your goal?
Speaker 1: So we actually had we had quite a lot of interest.
Speaker 3: We had interest from Bradley Cooper's people.
Speaker 1: We had interest from Mark Wahlberg's people. But the one
Speaker 1: thing that was always common.
Speaker 3: Was that people became increasingly disturbed about the paradox at
Speaker 3: the center of Paul Psyche, because if you're going to
Speaker 3: play this part, you have to wrestle with all of
Speaker 3: these sort of profound questions, And one of the most
Speaker 3: profound questions is that what the computers are doing is
Speaker 3: they're saying, trust us. And the reason they get us
Speaker 3: to trust them is by being able to predict our
Speaker 3: most intimate choice.
Speaker 1: They're able to.
Speaker 3: Predict our heart. They're able to know our heart better
Speaker 3: than we know our heart. They're able to say, you're
Speaker 3: going to love this person, and when you meet this person,
Speaker 3: your entire life is going to be changed. And the
Speaker 3: computer does this to Cole when he gets into the future.
Speaker 3: Is he picks the perfect person for Coal and they
Speaker 3: fall in love immediately. In fact, they fall in love
Speaker 3: so fast that they don't even know that they were
Speaker 3: set up by the computer.
Speaker 1: They only figure it out after the fact.
Speaker 3: So now Cole knows that the computer has told him
Speaker 3: this is who you're going to love, this is your soulmate.
Speaker 3: And the computer has also told him the world is
Speaker 3: going to end, and so essentially the existential choice facing
Speaker 3: Coal is is my heart wrong.
Speaker 1: And I don't love this woman and the world is
Speaker 1: going to be fine, or.
Speaker 3: By following my heart and accepting that I love this woman,
Speaker 3: is everyone going to die?
Speaker 1: And that he has to listen to the computer when
Speaker 1: the computer gives him a mission, and the computer's mission
Speaker 1: for him is to kill someone. Is to kill the
Speaker 1: person who's going to trigger the singularity.
Speaker 2: Same mission as was given him before he was incinerated.
Speaker 1: That's right, but on a much bigger and more advanced scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the twist is that the person who he has
Speaker 1: to kill is, of course the person that he saved
Speaker 1: when he was a child. And the further twist is
Speaker 1: that that person is the father of the girl he's
Speaker 1: been matched with, who he's fallen in love with, and
Speaker 1: that he's been set up to be with this girl
Speaker 1: because she's going to bring him home to Daddy and
Speaker 1: that's the only way to get through daddy's security.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, so good, it's so good. Why let's
Speaker 2: go back. So you had the interest from these actors
Speaker 2: in playing Cole, But why did they have when you
Speaker 2: said they had trouble with that twist. It sounds to
Speaker 2: me like this is an extraordinary opportunity for a skilled actor.
Speaker 2: What do you mean they had trouble with it.
Speaker 3: Well, so I think that when you think about why
Speaker 3: total Recall got made, Arnold Schwarzninger has the capacity to
Speaker 3: be himself and also be meta Ornald at the same time.
Speaker 3: So he's the capacity to kind of laugh at himself
Speaker 3: at the same time he's being himself. This part requires
Speaker 3: that ability to be yourself and be outside yourself at
Speaker 3: the same time, and it forces you also to go
Speaker 3: against the kind of core fantasy of Hollywood, which is
Speaker 3: that love saves the world.
Speaker 1: If you listen to yourself, that saves the world.
Speaker 3: And so this caused a lot of cognitive dissonance in actors,
Speaker 3: and the same reason that Gary was talking about that
Speaker 3: the sort of AI billionaire's daughter was caused cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 3: And so that was a real emotional sticking point for
Speaker 3: a lot of actors, and I think they were concerned
Speaker 3: about the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right, Angus. Ultimately we didn't want
Speaker 1: to say, oh, yeah, trust your heart and it's all
Speaker 1: going to work out. That's a lot of Hollywood endings
Speaker 1: manufacture that ending, and it's the Hollywood answer is trust
Speaker 1: your heart, and society is producing a new answer, which
Speaker 1: is trust the AI.
Speaker 2: Can you think of a Hollywood movie in previous to
Speaker 2: this where not the narrow question of don't trust your heart,
Speaker 2: but the kind of broader question of that love and
Speaker 2: the fulfillment of a real emotional need would have catastrophic
Speaker 2: consequences outside of it?
Speaker 3: Is?
Speaker 1: That is this virgin territory is what I'm asking for
Speaker 1: a Hollywood film. One example springs to mind Casablanca. For
Speaker 1: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergmann to get together will farm
Speaker 1: the world, and so they Humphrey Bogart makes the Rick
Speaker 1: makes the decision not to follow his heart.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, but you will.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's a crucial difference, though, and that is, do we
Speaker 2: ever really believe that Rick is madly in love with
Speaker 2: Ingrid Berkman? Not in what you've described as a situation
Speaker 2: where the two parties are genuinely and have powerful reason
Speaker 2: to believe that they are genuinely in love, they are soulmates.
Speaker 2: Was Ingram Bourkman Humphrey Bogart's soulmon in Casablanca or was
Speaker 2: it was like his heart is so kind of hardened
Speaker 2: and covered in scar tissue, we kind of accept him
Speaker 2: walking away because that's what he does. He walks away, right,
Speaker 2: But you just gotta be something a very different dynamic.
Speaker 2: You're talking about two people who are soulmates having to
Speaker 2: walk away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I will say I'm Malcolm my way.
Speaker 3: That's a very iconoclastic reading that you just delivered of Casablanca.
Speaker 1: But also, wait, wait, wait, wait what wait?
Speaker 2: But they know you don't think Humphrey Bogart's heart is
Speaker 2: covered in covered in scar tissues.
Speaker 3: I think the point is that even though it is he,
Speaker 3: he realizes that the romantic thing to do is to leave.
Speaker 3: And so that's the ultimate tragedy of that movie, Malcolm,
Speaker 3: which which you've just desecrated, is that he's a man
Speaker 3: who is reconnected with his heart and in doing so,
Speaker 3: walked away from it.
Speaker 1: You know. Anyway, I think that's the Hollywood schlock reading
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: But but the point is in that movie he walks away.
Speaker 3: He does the heroic thing, and and you know, you're asking,
Speaker 3: is there a movie where someone has basically willingly destroyed
Speaker 3: the world for their own love.
Speaker 1: Has someone willingly made that choice?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And that one that one did happen in the English patient?
Speaker 2: Oh tell me, tell me, I remember that film is
Speaker 2: not strong enough. Tell me how that happens in the
Speaker 2: English Patient.
Speaker 1: Well, in the end of the hero basically is a
Speaker 1: traitor to the allies out of love for a woman. Okay,
Speaker 1: and usually Holly would doesn't put the hero in that position.
Speaker 1: That's they don't decide to. I mean, what they will
Speaker 1: either do is say there's a greater good here. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of English movies, you know, even brief encounter,
Speaker 1: you know, people say I'm in love, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this, I'm going to stay with my wife
Speaker 1: and kids. Yes, so there is.
Speaker 2: There is English annoying kind of aristocratic English notion of
Speaker 2: remembering Tale of Two Cities at the end, it's a
Speaker 2: far far better thing than I've ever done.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: They love playing that role. They never play it in
Speaker 2: real life, but they love playing it in literature. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're like, are you kidding me? In real life he's good, No,
Speaker 2: he's not doing that. But no, but wait wait, I'm
Speaker 2: still I'm not satisfied. So it doesn't. Why am I
Speaker 2: am I wrong? Why does it seem to me like
Speaker 2: you have described in this movie a much more complicated
Speaker 2: and interesting as a problematic narrative scenario that exists in
Speaker 2: say Castle Plankt. Bradley Cooper's not having a problem doing
Speaker 2: a remake of Kazablanca. It's fine with that, but he
Speaker 2: clearly had a problem with this. So you described to
Speaker 2: me in your words, well, I can see how they
Speaker 2: are analogous, but they're not. It's not perfect. Why is
Speaker 2: it not perfect?
Speaker 1: It's I don't think it's perfect at all. By the way,
Speaker 1: I do, I do.
Speaker 3: Want to get on record as saying that you've also
Speaker 3: designated Charles Dickens, who's another sotemic figure of English literature.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, it's it's the reason that it's that,
Speaker 1: it's that it's different, is uh.
Speaker 3: I mean, imagine if the character chose his heart and
Speaker 3: the Nazis won.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you you choose.
Speaker 3: I mean, imagine the sound of music right in which
Speaker 3: he marries Julie Andrews, and the result of that is
Speaker 3: the Second World War is lost. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean that's the kind of that's the kind of
Speaker 3: crisis you're setting up. And so in order to establish
Speaker 3: free will, he has to reject Julie Andrews. He has
Speaker 3: to reject you know, his heart to save to to
Speaker 3: to save the world. Accept we haven't even told you
Speaker 3: the end of the movie, so you don't even know
Speaker 3: what's going to happen, right and when and when actors
Speaker 3: got to the end of the movie, the dissonance became
Speaker 3: so intense for them that, you know, I think that
Speaker 3: they started to say, how can I, in good conscience
Speaker 3: play this part? Because I myself don't even understand exactly
Speaker 3: the part that I'm playing.
Speaker 2: So you're in telling the story of why this movie
Speaker 2: doesn't get made. You we're listing, we're going to go
Speaker 2: through the list of culprits, but it's corporate number one
Speaker 2: that the actors themselves couldn't handle it.
Speaker 3: I think that's part of it. But I mean, I
Speaker 3: think the core of it is is is.
Speaker 1: Do we trust ourselves? Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: That's a hard place to go in the movies because
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, the movies basically no comedy,
Speaker 3: and they know tragedy, and in a comedy, you give
Speaker 3: yourself over to a fantasy, and in tragedy. You're like,
Speaker 3: it's all over from the beginning, and it's a chance
Speaker 3: for you to kind of wallow. So another way to
Speaker 3: say this is when we're born, in our brain, there's
Speaker 3: a kind of primordial story, and that story is that
Speaker 3: I'm good and that life is good. And that primordial
Speaker 3: story is so powerful that it allows us to.
Speaker 1: Be open to the world and to explore the world.
Speaker 3: And then what happens over time is that story runs
Speaker 3: up against our experiences of life, many of which are negative,
Speaker 3: and this other story starts to occur in our brain,
Speaker 3: which is actually, life is not so good, and I'm
Speaker 3: also not so good, and we start to believe that
Speaker 3: story more, and that story starts to become more primordial
Speaker 3: for us, and the good story starts to become more
Speaker 3: superficial and fantasy for us, and we get into kind
Speaker 3: of a dissociated place. And in that dissociated place, which
Speaker 3: I think most humans exist most of the time, they
Speaker 3: really believe that life is pretty bad and that they're
Speaker 3: pretty terrible, but they're always trying to actively convince themselves
Speaker 3: that life is good and that they're a nice person.
Speaker 3: And this is a product of you know, mindfulness, positive
Speaker 3: thinking all of these things which kind of infest our
Speaker 3: society now. And when people go to the movies, they
Speaker 3: want to indulge either the fantasy life of no, I'm
Speaker 3: a good person and everything works out, or they want
Speaker 3: to wallow in this negative space of no, you know what,
Speaker 3: this is a safe space for me to admit that
Speaker 3: everything's terrible and I'm a horrible human beings. And that's
Speaker 3: why we have like the Dark Knights and you know,
Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan and all this kind of stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of like the dark, sludgy stuff. And this movie
Speaker 3: is constantly forcing you back and forth across the threshold.
Speaker 3: This movie is not allowing you to say, you know what, yes,
Speaker 3: everything is bad, life is bad, life is awful. Nor
Speaker 3: is it saying there's a kind of simple easy answer here.
Speaker 3: It's pushing you back and forth to kind of reconfront
Speaker 3: and can you keep going?
Speaker 1: And at the bottom of.
Speaker 3: The movie is this idea that only intelligence is going
Speaker 3: to solve things emotion, not wishing, not wanting, but being smart.
Speaker 3: And are you the audience smart enough to solve this problem?
Speaker 3: Because if you, the audience, are not smart enough to
Speaker 3: solve this problem, the computers are going to solve it
Speaker 3: for you. And so the existential challenge for the movie
Speaker 3: essentially is are you smart enough to keep ahead of
Speaker 3: the movie, in which case you know what, you're smart
Speaker 3: enough to live into the future, or are you going
Speaker 3: to submit and become passive and be drawn into the
Speaker 3: engine of the story. And then that's the future of AI,
Speaker 3: in which you no longer have any autonomy and you've
Speaker 3: given up your will to the plot and the machinery.
Speaker 3: So I think that's why people find the movie unnerving,
Speaker 3: because it really does put you in that existential place
Speaker 3: that you feel that your autonomy is being stripped. But
Speaker 3: I mean there's also a lot of sort of funny
Speaker 3: and sort of dire studio stories they're involved, so I
Speaker 3: think ultimately the studios were also alarmed by this story.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a big budget movie, and the
Speaker 3: thing is, if you're going to do a big budget
Speaker 3: movie like Total Recall like this, you need to get
Speaker 3: that act on board to try and secure.
Speaker 1: The money.
Speaker 3: And then do you want to put one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty million dollars into something that has this premise?
Speaker 1: I think it was too demanding, But I think that
Speaker 1: our main problem here was really that we didn't get
Speaker 1: a director. We didn't get a strong director. A project
Speaker 1: like this requires a director who with a very strong
Speaker 1: vision and who the people with the money trust. And
Speaker 1: I suppose I had the hubris to think that after
Speaker 1: doing these three Philip K. Dick movies, they would trust me.
Speaker 1: But actually that wasn't enough. The movie's fate in the
Speaker 1: real world precisely parallels it's narrative on the page. In
Speaker 1: other words, that actually happens. So one of.
Speaker 3: The things that happened is after we went out to
Speaker 3: all of these actors, I then was on another screenplay projects,
Speaker 3: which is going well, and it was produced by Bob Shay,
Speaker 3: who did Lord of the Rings all these big kind
Speaker 3: of movies. And so I showed the script to Bob,
Speaker 3: and Bob was like, Oh, the script is amazing. I
Speaker 3: love the script. We got to get the script produced,
Speaker 3: and so I said, okay, great. But it all culminated
Speaker 3: in Bob calling me up one day and saying, Angus,
Speaker 3: we've got financing for this movie. I'm almost entirely in
Speaker 3: hisstry by financing for this this movie.
Speaker 1: I said, oh, okay, I said, what's going on? He said, well,
Speaker 1: there's this company in town.
Speaker 3: They have a computer that they feed all of the
Speaker 3: scripts into and the algorithm tells them how much money
Speaker 3: the script is going to make.
Speaker 1: And we've already given.
Speaker 3: The script to the executives there and they love this
Speaker 3: and they're going to give it to the algorithm, and
Speaker 3: I just know that this is going to work out.
Speaker 1: So I said, Okay, Bob, this sounds great. You know.
Speaker 3: And this company, I should say, they very wealthy, very successful.
Speaker 1: They've invested all these movies.
Speaker 3: You know, they had themselves the sort of top floor
Speaker 3: of the biggest luxury car dealership in you like, walked
Speaker 3: in through all these luxury cars to get in their office
Speaker 3: and sort of like typical high with stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So I get a call a week or two later
Speaker 3: from Bob. He's like and he's like, I, Unfortunately, I've
Speaker 3: got bad news for you. And I was like, oh
Speaker 3: my god. I was like, did the computers read our
Speaker 3: script and not like it? He goes, no, No, He's like,
Speaker 3: that's not the problem. He's like, the problem is the
Speaker 3: company just went bankrupt. And they went bankrupt because the
Speaker 3: last script their computers picked was a ball and so
Speaker 3: now they'd.
Speaker 1: Have no money.
Speaker 3: And so we were unable to make our scripts about
Speaker 3: the infinitely intelligent computer because a stupid computer was unable
Speaker 3: to pick the right scripts to make.
Speaker 2: A stupid computer. Is it any wonder Angus has gone
Speaker 2: on to become a pioneer in story science. In fact,
Speaker 2: Angus has gone on to become a leading critic of AI.
Speaker 2: He thinks only humans will ever be able to tell
Speaker 2: good stories. One of the papers that's published is called
Speaker 2: why computer AI will never do what we imagine it can.
Speaker 2: I'm reading now For the abstract, computers contain a hardware
Speaker 2: limit that renders them permanently incapable of reading or writing narrative.
Speaker 2: This article draws upon the author's work with deep neural
Speaker 2: networks Judaea, Pearls, do Calculus, GPT three, and other current
Speaker 2: generation AI to logically demonstrate that no computer AI, quantum
Speaker 2: or otherwise has ever learned or will ever learn, to
Speaker 2: produce or process novels or any other kind of narrative,
Speaker 2: including scripts, short fiction, political speeches, business plans, scientific hypotheses,
Speaker 2: technology proposals, military strategies, and plots to take over the world.
Speaker 2: So what do we have here? We have a script
Speaker 2: about AI killed by an AI company that went bankrupt,
Speaker 2: whose co author goes on to write the definitive debunking
Speaker 2: of AI. Who's writing that screenplay? Guys, this has been fantastic.
Speaker 2: If my vote is in all do all moguls out
Speaker 2: there in our listening audience, It's clear what the people want.
Speaker 2: The people want is did you call me with the
Speaker 2: variable man? Yeah, the people want the variable man.
Speaker 1: They do fingers crossed.
Speaker 2: Next week, we'll be back with another story from the
Speaker 2: depths of development Hell. This episode was produced by Nina
Speaker 2: Bird Lawrence with Tali Ellmen and Bendadaf Haffrey. Editing by
Speaker 2: Sarah Nicks, original scoring by Luisquira, engineering by Echo Mountain.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.