GO JUMP IN A SHARK TANK

Pete begs not to be
replaced by A.I.

One of the most annoying movie trailer tropes of the last 20 years is a dog tilting his head while making a Huh? reaction to a stupid remark, something that was funny when Pete the Pup did it in an Our Gang short over 90 years ago. 

Soon, that hoary old gag may become even more annoying. And as usual, we have A.I. to thank. With each day, more of our furry, winged, and bristled friends are being outsourced to computer wizards to save a few kibbles, bird seeds, and acorns. Which isn't much different from the craft table at low budget movie shoots. 

Just listen to what Benay Karp, the owner of an animal rental company, has to say. “I don’t think I’ve had a call for a woodpecker in probably three or four years, maybe five years. I have a flock of seagulls. I think I’ve only gotten one job for them in the last year, where they used to work all the time.” 

Welcome to the club, my animal colleagues! That A.I.-generated dog in the latest Superman movie proved that you're even more expendable than humans, even if the latest technology didn't convince anybody with the IQ of a chipmunk that it was real. And as I noted in a previous post, neither did A.I. humans in a Disney+ movie.

Try telling that to Kevin O'Leary, who you may know from the series Shark Tank, where budding entrepreneurs do a 21st-century version of Oliver Twist's "Please, sir, may I have some more?" O'Leary was cast as Gwyneth Paltrow's husband in the upcoming movie Marty Supreme starring Timothy Chalamet. His takeaway from the experience: too many extras!:

“Almost every scene had as many as 150 extras. Now, those people have to stay awake for 18 hours, be completely dressed in the background. [They’re] not necessarily in the movie, but they’re necessary to be there moving around. And yet, it costs millions of dollars to do that. Why couldn’t you simply put AI agents in their place? Because they’re not the main actors. They’re only in the story visually. [You could] save millions of dollars, so more movies could be made. The same director, instead of spending $90 million or whatever he spent, could’ve spent $35 million and made two movies.”

O'Leary laughs at the how the extra on the right
will be replaced by A.I. one day.

O'Leary misses a few important things. Like, as I've said before, today's A.I. "actors" don't look like real, honest-to-gosh humans, even in the background. Second, there is no way hiring those extras cost an extra $35-million. And third, since O'Leary probably tells inventors to do their research, he should do the same. The reported budget for Marty Supreme was $70-million -- still a lot but 20-mill less than his guesstimate. And perhaps a quarter of that budget went to Chalamet alone. Funny how O'Leary doesn't accuse rich actors of contributing to bloated movie budgets. 

O'Leary's favorite character from
It's a Wonderful Life.

But that's how the well-heeled roll (or walk). O'Leary -- estimated to be worth at least $400-million -- probably applauded Amazon's plans to lay off 600,000 human beings in favor of robots because it increased the company's stock value. You can bet he'll turn around and bitch about those same 600,000 collecting unemployment and voting for politicians who want to lower the price of healthcare. And fatcats wonder why young people are embracing socialism!

Bob the Duck, Maude the Squirrel, background actors, Amazon workers -- they're all the same to Kevin O'Leary. As long as he and his brethren can watch their bank accounts swell like the Goodyear blimp, life is good. Hey, wonder how much he made for being in Marty Supreme. Whatever it was, you know he wasn't worth it.

    

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