Paul Schrader Turned to AI for ‘Three Guns at Dawn’ After Black Actors Rejected Its Criminal Characters: “We’re Making Them!”

If you want some comic relief on this Sunday, then let me point you in the direction of Paul Schrader, who — a few years back — wrote a screenplay titled “Three Guns at Dawn” that he wanted Antoine Fuqua to direct. Set in Los Angeles’ South Central, the story concerns three Black brothers — a dirty cop, a serial killer, and a drug dealer — who hate one another.

Fuqua, who is also the producer, sold the script to Netflix and wanted Schrader to direct. The problem was that Schrader feared he would be accused of “cultural appropriation” if he directed a film about three African Americans in an all-Black neighborhood committing crime.

Schrader thought he had resolved the issue by deciding to co-direct the film with an undisclosed Black filmmaker. You can’t make this up … A few days ago, Schrader mentioned that this ever-morphing project no longer had Fuqua involved. Oh, and it would now be made with generative AI.

Schrader intends to populate the entire movie with “AI-generated human prototypes” rather than recognizable actors. “Those jobs are gone, babe,” Schrader told THR while discussing Hollywood’s resistance to generative AI. “You can scream ‘Stop AI’ all you want, but you can’t stop it.”

Now, Schrader explains why he decided to turn his Black crime movie into a fully AI film. He tells The Playlist that because every Black actor rejected the original version, the only solution was to make the film without them.

“We sent it out to actors, and no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people,” he said. “And it sort of died. But then AI came along, and I didn’t need Black actors […] We’re making them!”

For Schrader, AI solves the curious practical filmmaking problem he had. How about just creating Black people? No casting calls, no agents, no actors turning down the roles, no accusations of cultural appropriation, and apparently no need to explain to anyone that the characters are fictional human beings rather than a demographic focus group. It’s the perfect Hollywood solution: when nobody wants to be in your movie, simply manufacture the cast yourself. Schrader has essentially gone from worrying that he might appropriate Black culture to appropriating Black people — digitally, of course.

Somewhere out there, Spike Lee is probably staring at the ceiling.