After he was criticized for a report that he plans to use AI for a new film because “no Black actors” would sign on, Paul Schrader is clarifying that he is using AI because he couldn’t find three “BANKABLE” Black actors.
In an interview with The Playlist, Schrader, the writer of the classic Taxi Driver and director of such acclaimed films as American Gigolo and First Reformed, said his new film Three Guns at Dawn would be made with with AI because Black actors passed on the script.
“I had originally written it about three Black brothers, all of whom are bad guys: a corrupt cop, a drug dealer, and a sexual criminal,” The Playlist quoted him as saying. “And they were all trying to kill each other. And Antoine Fuqua was going to produce it. … We sent it out to actors, and no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people. … And it sort of died. But then AI came along, and I didn’t need Black actors.”
The director spoke to The Playlist while at the Venice film festival with his latest film, The Basics of Philosophy.
MovieMaker reached out to Schrader for comment, and he clarified: “The Playlist article was inaccurate. Anton Fuqua and I couldn’t find three BANKABLE black actors to sign on. Of course we could have found three black actors. So I switched it to white actors. Still couldn’t find three BANKABLE actors. AI actors need not be bankable.”
He did not dispute the central thrust of The Playlist story, which is that he plans to use AI in place of human performers.
“It’s an AI film,” he added via email. “I also have three non AI films lined up, the first of which begins principal photography October 12. I’m doing an AI film not so much for the story but because I’m fascinated by the technological possibilities.”
Fuqua, director of Training Day, the Equalizer series and the new blockbuster Michael Jackson biopic Michael, is no longer involved with Three Guns at Dawn.
“Anton dropped out when we couldn’t find bankable actors six months ago,” Schrader said.
Boots Riley Responds to Paul Schrader, and Paul Schrader Responds to Boots Riley
I Love Boosters director Boots Riley, a lifelong advocate for workers, was among those who responded to The Playlist article. Riley, whose I Love Boosters is about three Black women who steal high-end retail and sell it at a discount, rejected Schrader’s explanation that Black actors refused to play criminals.
“As a director who has just made a movie where all three Black leads are criminals, I’ll tell you that this… is a F—ING lie,” he wrote on X.
Riley also said he was “f—ing furious at every aspect of this” and that “if this is a practical joke — he got me.”
Schrader responded, via email to MovieMaker: “The brothers in Three Guns are a corrupt cop, a drug lord and a serial sex criminal — who are, in fact, trying to kill each other. I don’t think Boots’ comparison to the fun-loving shoplifters in I Love Boosters applies.”
Riley, a labor activist since he was a teenager, formed the hip-hop group The Coup in the early ’90s and uses the group’s music to make bouncy, witty arguments for communism. He began using movies to advocate for workers with his debut film, Sorry to Bother You. That 2018 release imagines an exploitative corporation going to extremes to optimize the output of laborers.
But even the satirical Sorry to Bother You didn’t anticipate a world where actors would lose roles to AI.
Riley went into Schrader’s back catalogue to argue that the filmmaker has long had a questionable outlook on labor. He called out Schrader’s 1978 directorial debut, starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto.
“Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar was an anti-organized labor movie put out near the end of a huge strike wave. Schrader put out ‘unions are corrupt!’ agreeing w the bosses of the time,” Riley wrote. He said Schrader and the film offered the anti-labor argument: “unions were a mafia scam trying to bleed the workers. Don’t join em”
For our recent cover story on Boots Riley and I Love Boosters, writer Celia Mattison asked him: If the entire system is rigged against workers, what’s the solution?
“A mass, militant radical labor movement,” Riley answered, without hesitation. “The withholding of labor as a tactic and strategy to demand the policy changes we need, by attacking the ruling class at their base of power. That’s the beginning of a movement that can reshape society and reshape the world.”
Main image: A file photo of Paul Schrader attending the Taxi Driver 40th Anniversary Celebration during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival at The Beacon Theatre. Shutterstock.
