Screenwriting : Paul Schrader Says He Asked ChatGPT for Film Ideas and They Were All ‘Original’ and ‘Fleshed Out’ by Tucker Teague

In my experience, it's ideas that really excite producers. If this means they get excited faster, about something a lot better, and they want to pay me to take it all a step further, I can live with that.

I know of an actor who's keen to get a studio interested in a project based on a real story. He asked AI to write him a quick synopsis so he had something to walk in with.

AI can't do the bit that makes or breaks a story though. That's where things are going to fall down for anyone thinking they can automate all of this. Expect a lot of soulless and derivative content that says absolutely nothing in the next few years.

I saw this earlier today, Tucker Teague. Sighs and shakes head "Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?" Because it's about the excitement of coming up with an idea, not speed, theft, and laziness. I don't think AI is a threat to idea generation. AI can't come up with ideas like I can and like millions of human writers can. And I definitely don't sit around for months searching for an idea. I come up with ideas in seconds, minutes, and hours. Sometimes days.

Maybe someone from the WGA needs to give him a call. I don't understand why he'd want to be on the pro-AI bandwagon but he has a history of undermining the value of writing. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Maurice Vaughan My problem is that I end up with too many ideas than time to actually turn them into screenplays. Also, after reading the article I gave google gemini a try to test Schrader's comments, and it did come up with an okay plot idea but I felt I would have to do a lot of work to make it an excellent idea. It felt to me like the idea was a kind of "standard" story and lacking depth and life.

I have the same problem, Tucker Teague, but I personally won't turn to AI for help writing my scripts. You could do what I do sometimes. I write a feature idea into a short script to either get it out my head so I can focus on my main project(s) or pitch it as a short (marketing it as a script that has potential to be a feature or show). And it doesn't have to be a short script. It can be a short story, poem, etc.

CJ Walley I think you're right. AI will likely be used (is being used) in a lot in scenarios like you described and it will lead to a lot of soulless "content." But... quite a lot of what's being made today isn't all that interesting either (imho). Too many people will likely think the AI stuff is just fine. Sad.

David F. Schwartz I have very little knowledge of where the WGA stands with regards to a writer, on their own, using AI to generate story ideas. My guess is that it's not covered in their contract, but I could be wrong (and it wouldn't be the first time). Regardless, Schrader probably doesn't give a damn, especially at this point in his career. Ironically, the idea for (most likely) his best screenplay, TAXI DRIVER, came directly from his own experiences; something that cannot be duplicated with AI.

Hi Tucker, Take one story at a time. One that makes you excited to want to write it. Ignore everything else and then, sit down and start writing. It doesn't have to make sense at first. If you have an idea for a scene, then write it. Keep adding scenes that pop into your head and eventually it will all come together. That's what makes this so rewarding. The fact that YOU created the story. Anyway, I hope this helps.

Maurice Vaughan Yes, I have notebooks filled with story ideas, worked out scenarios, outlines, bits of dialog, etc. Just yesterday I had to write down a bunch on thoughts for a mystery story involving chess players that's been pestering me for some time, just so I could get back to my current screenplay project.

Christine Capone Yes, it's the joy of writing and creating that keeps me going, even when it's not joyful at the moment. I would rather end up with something I made myself, especially something personal. The process of discovery is what has always driven me in the arts.

A Mystery story with chess players sounds interesting, Tucker Teague.

Tucker Teague, you took the words out of my mouth. A lot of writers are going to find out the hard way that they're just as derivative as a robot, and we're also going to find out just how much the industry actually cares about real human artists.

A sad commentary of a once great filmmaker.

did he give examples? – or are just gonna have to take his word on it, that they were all original and fleshed out?

Robert Bruinewoud A great question. He did not give examples.

I agree, but you must master the Prompts!

He will keep those close to his chest for sure Tucker Teague because the prompts are everything. Sucking Prompts = sucky material.

Mike Childress, most of them just looked at what was #1 in the moment and had the incredibly creative idea of mimicking it.

Mike Childress, there's a lot of fear in the business. A lot of people wanting to play it safe. A lot of changing things so nobody will complain. Distributors want content that has broad appeal, sales agents want content that will sell easily to said distributors, producers want to supply content that said sales agents are happy with, because they have investors already taking a risk with film. This is where art hits its hurdles, because what's bold and brave strikes fear into decision makers who have to face the repercussions of getting it wrong.

There's the old adage in the music industry that the best way to keep your job as an executive was to say no to everything.

At the bottom of the chain, writers want to offer stuff they think people want, which rarely works because writers typically have no insight other than the box office, which is two years behind the curve. As above, the writers artistic enough to write for themselves and their potential audience are feared more than embraced - unless they get lucky, and then we get a cultural shift.

Most of the work out there is producers with half an idea that looks like it would sell and the need for a writer to turn into something produceable. A lot of those times, the ideas are pretty terrible and poorly thought out. If AI means these guys get excited about something better, perhaps more often, and still have the smarts to go have a human writer develop it into something worthy, I don't hate that.

Mike Childress, that's where the books come in really useful. Not so much the craft books but the biographies by filmmakers. They give a lot away about the process, the pitfalls, and the unexpected wins and losses.

AI can't train itself on the human experience. It can't get at our internal dialogue. It can't experience our emotions directly. I have no fear about it at a true storytelling level. It's only a threat to those operating like robots themselves. I don't use it in my creative process at all, but don't like to see things as black and white, so I'm open to any way it can actually make things better rather than worse.

You can worry about something you can’t control and not even try. or you can keep creating. Choice is yours. I can only speak for myself but I know a robot can’t out create me.

If a screenwriter needs months to come up with an idea he's not a screenwriter. He's a Wannabe screenwriter

Tucker Teague has Paul Schrader been replaced by an AI unit? What a load of rubbish. Why should we writers sit around sit around for months searching for a good idea? Because it’s part of the process and there are no viable shortcuts? But then I’m thinking that it sounds like a very jaundiced view of a writer’s life.

We have to let the story come to us, dwell in our imaginations, take root and grow. After all, man cannot live by AI alone! Said the Messiah, in some gospel or other!

Imo he's thinking like a marketer or a merchant not a writer. Again, imo the idea comes from experience, even the far fetched ones. Taxi Driver couldn't have been written by AI, nor could anything the recently late David Lynch has done. It can probably put together a good movie, not necessarily a good story.

I'd rather be truly inspired. Life is too short.

Seems lazy to me. As long as he gives credit to AI and waives his fee.

Where was it written that 'all the stories have already been written, it's up to today's writers to put a new spin on them' - I can't remember where I saw that, but it's almost true.

There are new, personal stores being created daily, but the tried-and-true human experience stories are being recycled but with new spins on them, which is great. I'm just tired of cookie-cutter reboots that's all - especially if the original was a masterpiece (Carrie, The Manchurian Candidate)

Maybe that's why I'm still on the outside looking in - as a screenwriter (my scripts are too original) and an author (I don't write fantasy or murder mystery thrillers).

AI is no replacement for nuanced, personal human experiences.

AI may be able to come with plots, which it extrapolates from plots already in existence. It may come up with ideas, which it only knows from gathering data on all the ideas that came before. However, AI has no life experience to draw from. When I write a script I take conversations I had, experiences I had, humorous moments in life, tragic moments in life, my deepest and most complex thoughts and feelings and find a way to use it in a script. AI can't do any of that. On the surface an AI script seems fine, but beyond surface level there is nothing deeper. There never can be because AI can never have life experience.

I find it ironic that any writer or director or filmmaker would embrace AI. It was filmmakers that have been warning us about AI my entire life, in movies like The Terminator, 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Ex Machina, Westworld, and countless others. It would be like Michael Crichton funding a real life project to bring back the dinosaurs. Weren't you the one that warned us about this in the first place?

My wife always jokes, "Why does every conversation we have have to end up in a script?" I have used our conversations and experiences we shared in almost every script I write. AI can't do that. For example, I bought some groceries,. When I was putting the groceries in the fridge, I just put them in the front of whatever was in the fridge already. So she complained that I need to put the newer groceries BEHIND the older groceries, so the older stuff gets used first. She reached in the back of the fridge an pulled out a block of cheese, "See! This is almost expired and you were going to put the new cheese in front of it " I used that conversation in a comedy horror about a cannibal serial killer family. When they kill another victim and put the body parts in the ice box, the Father cannibal tells the son the same thing my wife told me, referring to the body parts they cut up. "Ribs from 5 months ago! Liver from 3 months ago! A whole head from almost a year ago! You gotta put the new meat behind the older meat. That way the older stuff gets used first before it goes off. We don’t waste food. It ain’t Christian." I doubt AI would ever come up with that, because it came from a real life conversation.

I've used AI to help me with some of my stories that I hope to get out into the world, it's a tool to use to give ideas for a story, expand on details that you would otherwise miss, and add things too. You can see if your story would work or not in a real setting. If you want to try something nuts, find a public domain story, and change the genre of it with AI, I'm sure it will be fun.

AI is a tool, as long as it is used like a tool instead of a replacement of human beings, it's fine in a limited capacity, coming up with quick plots and whatnot. AI is not going away. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. I see it as an opportunity to concentrate on adding the human experience, life experience, and real emotion in scripts and not worry as much about plot and story structure, which I can let the AI do quickly.

Schrader's comments were a joke, he clarified later on. He was literally mocking AI. Which illustrates the importance of hearing comments in context and not biting on juicy out of context quotes clipped out for sensationalist purposes.

Pat Alexander I'd love to see his clarification. Do you have a link? I can't find it. However, his original FB post, with many comments by others, and responses by PS which are all here: https://www.facebook.com/paul.schrader.900/posts/pfbid02kPazgZY9pzBR5KQbaWZgmuzLMYQJr5GKzbGowGBoGP38yxXaiMUARTXWcAuspqmdl?comment_id=8828506173942208&notif_id=1737134315479504&notif_t=feed_comment&ref=notif

From what I can tell he's playing it straight all the way through. But it wouldn't surprise me if he was trolling us all.

A "good idea" is still subjective and currently has to channel through multiple people to be developed and produced. Like other technologies, AI is in the process of infiltrating many aspects of our lives and gets exponentially better as it progresses. I envision AI generated scripts and produced movies being generated outside the established movie industry and distributed through streaming services. I can even picture a consumer AI product where users can enter their own details and AI will make their movie for them. That won't keep me from writing because I enjoy the hell out of it, experiencing story and characters as I discover them, and I will continue to strive for earning a living with my creative talents ("talents" also being subjective). .

They're setting AI to cure cancer...inventing fiction should be a walk in the park...

Mike Childress Above all else, the barrier to entry into the industry is the #1 issue. I've dealt with it in screenwriting. I've dealt with it in publishing. I also have ZERO interest in fame or even fortune. As a writer (especially a creative writer), all I've ever wanted to do was to make a living at what I know I'm best at doing. Period. Maybe I should have followed more trends or wrote more commercially attractive writing - but that's not me. I write because I love the story process.

Everyone wants to be a writer. I really don't know why. They only see dollar signs and the success enjoyed by the very few. For all the rest of the legitimate writers out there who want to make writing their life, it's an incredibly difficult and soul-crushing experience filled with rejection and only small victories that end up being tiny carrots on the ends of very long sticks.

I spent an hour playing around with ChatGPT as Paul Schrader had done. I found the film ideas it generated to be highly derivative and formulaic. But I didn't find the exercise fruitless. It was like bouncing ideas off another person, and it helped me to develop an original idea of mine.

"Highly derivative" is the best description of AI I have heard. Cheer Eric.

Someone posted a treatment AI had generated for a Mission Impossible type script. It was good and pretty well detailed. It was easily inline with what most screenwriters would probably submit themselves, and highly derivative.

It all comes down to what AI is trained on. That's typically existing libraries and what's public on the internet. This is currently where a luge limitation will be almost impossible to overcome. AI cannot be trained on what goes on in our heads or know about all the experiences that have led up to that point. That's the part that separates a good writer from a bad one.

Worse still, the internet, particularly social media, is kinda one big idiocy of crowds machine, with screenwriting being one of the most obfuscated professions, since so few of those talking about it are actually doing it. AI doesn't know how to separate the opinions of amateurs from stalwarts, especially when the former are boosting advice with likes and upvotes.

As ever, those failing to dig deep into their psyche, those failing to pull from colourful life experiences, those not pushing themselves artistically, and those refusing to study the less talked about areas of the craft are going to get the rug pulled from under them.

In all of these posts I see a great deal of fear: mostly about livelihoods being threatened. However, writing is so much more than a royalty check. Writing is what helps me define who I am, what my purpose is, and how I can live a life of intention. AI will never be able to replace that. When I write and it's really flowing everything else just fades away. I don't just imagine the story, I live it. How many times have I cried, laughed, and been terrified along with my characters? More than I can count. When I write, I feel empowered and peaceful in a way that makes every other endeavor pale. That's why I write. It is a gift I unwrap for myself every day.

Mike Childress, if people knew the reality of the average screenwriting career, I imagine there'd be less than 1% of the break in scene left. People would be writing novels instead. Don't get me wrong, screenwriting is a wonderful way to earn money, and there's certainly a rare sweet spot where it's a dream come true, but it's, generally speaking, nothing like the way it's portrayed within communities. Same goes for producing, directing, and acting.

I once wrote a blog about how earning minimum wage doing this is a privilege and it was shared around by none other than the head of the American Film Market.

Mike Childress, sadly there's a bit of a cult and that cult has been in an exponential feedback loop now for some time. Blind leading the blind and all that. I'm far from a veteran with only four films to my name, but it's weird to be part of such a small percentage of people with provable credits. What gets weirder is how much more of an outcast you become for simply sharing your reality.

Mike Childress, I actually haven't sold a single spec. First film was an assignment, second and third films were ideas that got funded, and the forth was a rewrite. I got close once, but pulled out due the degree of changes the script would have needed. Also got asked if I'd like to rewrite two optioned specs last year, one was written by a member here and another by a producer in the pitch sessions. It's small world once you get into it.

Mike Childress, almost all screenwriting work is assignment work. There's little point fighting over specs since it's so cheap (even free) to just get a competent writer to churn out what a prodco specifically wants. You don't hear this because 99.9% of the people your communicating with within break in communities have never even spoken to an industry member.

Specs are pretty much just calling cards now, examples of work that get you assignment gigs.

Shoestring budget specs do sell, but few people are writing those because they want the big seven figure deal they see once every ten years or so.

Thanks for sharing this CJ Walley

This discussion has gone off the rails from where it started, about AI. I'm enjoying it anyway.

Zee Risek yes, it has gone off the rails, but it's great. And, I suppose, it's all interrelated anyway.

Mike Childress, I took a massive break from writing specs for myself. Over fives years. During some of that time, I wrote specs with other people's involvement. An unseen side of the low budget indie world is that there can be chicken and egg situations with scripts and funding, plus producers at that level often don't have the money to pay writers and make the most of every opportunity available.

My only issue with specs is they typically never reach an audience. Last year, I converted all my specs into novellas and that's been a great experience. I'll continue to do that moving forward.

CJ Walley, I think turning your specs into novellas is an excellent idea. It increases your online visibility and diversifies your portfolio. Add that to the satisfaction of being able to share your work with others equals a win win approach. I came to screenwriting late, after writing 9 novels, 8 published. I enjoyed adapting a couple of my novels to the screen and was thrilled to garner interest. That said, as a seasoned author, I also understand the immense competition in all areas of writing. It took me ten years to get a publishing contract! Thus, I look upon all of this as frosting on the cake I get to to live in.

Mike Childress, yeah, I actually started writing said spec a couple of weeks ago. Last time was 2018 I think. I have written seven scripts in that time, four produced and three unproduced.

Laurie Woodward, it's been a great and long overdue experience. Having my friends actually read my material, and react positively has really closed the loop on doing something artistic.

Mike Childress, I use scrivener. Love it. Final Draft is so limiting. As for AI novels. Yes, it's been done.

Mike Childress, I use Final Draft. I have not used AI in any of my writing, so I can't speak to its usefulness. I am old school: dream, write, revise, repeat. I journal a lot and outline and research extensively. For example, just the character sketches, setting notes, and outline for my current novel is now 30 pages. I also make a research file that can exceed 50 pages. I write every day, so even if I only write a page or two I still end up with a novel every couple of years.

Mike Childress, getting scrivener was the best thing I ever did. I do all my development and drafting in it until it has to go into Final Draft. I make my novellas in it too. I've been raving about it for ten years and it's great to see it finally getting traction with in the screenwriting community.

Laurie Woodward I began as a short story writer, then lost my mojo for writing altogether for about 15 years. It was a screenwriting course that saved me, got me back into writing, and I wrote spec scripts for about 10 years before turning to novels. So far, I've adapted 3 of them into novels with more to come. I simply use the screenplay as the outline. It's great.

Mike Childress: I use word for my novels, short stories, and poetry. I use Final Draft for screenwriting but it definitely has limitations.

Trevor Chittick: So glad you found your mojo! Hope you're having a blast doing both novels and screenplays. I think it's fun to genre jump back and forth: I get to use different parts of my brain and it keeps it all interesting!

Mike Childress, it's already there if you use Grammarly. I do like the AI summary tool in GMail though.

Mike Childress, certainly a turbulent time to come into things, but perhaps that will filter out the ones who lack passion. I've joked before that any script copyrighted before the age of generative AI might become like gold.

Grammarly is great. Much needed for someone like me with bad dyslexia. It can just get a bit much sometimes when you've got three different spellcheckers all correcting each other.

let's ignore issues like copyright, ethics, what it means to be human etc – that stuff is SO hard – just ask yourself this, next time you're thinking about using genAI:

"Is the task I'm asking the genAI to complete so crucial that I'm willing to set fire to a pile of truck tires just to see what slop it spits out?"

That feels like a bit of a reach, especially when you consider that AI can be saving days/weeks/months of combined human and machine effort. It's only going to get more efficient too, as we've seen in the past few days with the release of DeepSeek.

To generalise that every generative AI model out there spits out only slop too, that's just objectively not the case. Again, this feels like black and white thinking based mainly in emotion. The likes of MidJourney is great for generating posters and concept art.

Whether it's a painting, a drawing, a song, a novel, or whatever, the whole point of art is that the artist created it. A person looking at the art could say, "Wow! You did that?! It's amazing." I just watched an animated film made in AI called, 'Kitsuni' which looks like a Miyazaki film, beautiful. Had it been done by hand, I would be impressed. But knowing it was done with AI, my only thought is, "Meh." I have hundreds of art books, from Renaissance Masters like Michelangelo to the Art Of 'Into The Spiderverse.' I can't express how much I love drawings and paintings. It's why I became an animator in the first place. But now AI can create pretty much the same work in seconds. You may not be able to distinguish an AI piece from a hand crafted piece, but no one will get to say, "Wow! You did that?!' And when we've lost that, we've lost art.

Zee Risek, yeah the power of sentiment is under-appreciated in discussions like this. There's certain things AI cannot replace, not because it's necessarily bad at them, but because there's something very insincere about it coming from a machine rather than a human.