The CO Threshold
“Casey. Look. The truth is. We’d love to produce this film. We love you. And we obviously have tremendous love and respect for your grandfather, but I gotta ask Casey. Did you create this? Is this a Casey Damon original? Is this a product of your mind? Because Casey, I swear to god man. I cannot. I cannot. Have another Sundance on my hands”
Casey sighed. It had been years since the “Sundance Incident” nearly a decade almost.
“Jessica. Yes. Yes. Yes. 1000 times yes. I’m beyond that now. I’m beyond what happened at Sundance”
Casey took a glance at the posters framed throughout the room. Good Will Hunting. The Departed. The Bourne Series. Some of his grandfather’s greatest films. He was thankful for the guidance he had received in those early years. In some ways he wished he could ask him for more guidance today. In other ways he was thankful his grandfather hadn’t been around in the immediate aftermath of Sundance.
Jessica stared at Casey directly in the eyes for what felt like for an eternity. “Casey,” she exhaled, “this story is incredible. But how do I know it’s true? How do I know you made it?”
“Jessica, I'm not the expert here. I just make films, you know that. Making films is what I love to do. I don’t know the latest tech”
Jessica flew into a tirade, “Do you think that I’m an idiot Casey?? Do you think that I don’t know that your mind only thinks in silhouettes and landscapes??? Do you think that I can’t comprehend that you are an ARTIST not an EXECUTIVE. I’m asking you Casey. I am point blank asking you, if this is a real piece of art. A piece of art that you made, a piece of art that predominantly came from your mind. Of course I know how to verify if this is true, I’ll just run it through Scorpio. I pay them an arm and a leg every year to do just that, root out bullshit AI generated stories. But I’m asking you Casey, I’m asking you. I’m asking you out of respect for our past, I’m asking you out of respect for our grandfather, and I’m asking you for the sake of our relationship because so help me GOD, if Scorpio comes out within even a percentage above the CO threshold I will blackball you from here to the Valley. And I do not give a single flying fuck about what happens to your career afterward!”
Casey’s mind wandered as was happenstance when faced with direct conflict.
The CO threshold. What good did it even do? The hundred billion dollar hit of the past three summers was Tomb Raider: Choose Your Adventure. It had originally gone viral at a high school in Indiana after a group of teenage boys realized they could request their favorite actress as Lara Croft and then ask for modifications on the fly. It started spreading across the US as the teenagers shared snippets of themselves fighting alongside their own personalized version of Lara Croft. Lara Croft now looked like Heather Haldren, Cassidy Daniels, and any other famous starlet you could think of.
The engagement went through the roof and from there the ALG (Actor’s Likeness Guild) went into hyperdrive when they calculated their cut of the royalties. A Lara Croft fighting lightsaber wielding aliens in a space age thriller? Coming right up. A Lara Croft in a rebooted version of Pineapple Express with a dash of Pulp Fiction? Why not? The weider and more nonsensical the better. As long as there was more screen time for more actresses under the ALG licensing agreement, there were no outer bounds. It was a never ending money pit fueled by teenage adolescence that extended across nation states and generations. It reminded Casey of the “Virality in the 21st century” history seminar he took back at USC. Just like Barbie and Taylor Swift in the 20’s, a global phenomenon, just magnified to the nth degree.
It was a bit wild considering it was all a mistake, an administrative error. The original headset release was not intended to be customizable, but apparently when it was submitted for streaming one of the production engineers forgot to turn off the customizations feature flag. I guess those things still happen when humans are in the loop.
“Casey. Casey! Are you - are you fucking listening to me?” Jessica snapped
“Yes, yes Jessica sorry.” Casey leaned in, his head tipping forward slightly, “Blackball me all you want. Run it through Scorpio. It will check it out. It will be under the CO threshold.”
Casey’s retort hung in silence for a moment, he glanced upward. Grandpa’s cheeky smile from Good Will Hunting hung directly above them. Casey was thankful for the reverence Jessica and the rest of her team had for true creativity, for human creativity. They built the Certified Original brand entirely around it. They had built a massively respected business and a community of artists, actors, musicians, and critics all because of their commitment to making movies by hand, and through the heart. All of the old ecosystem of Hollywood from the screenwriters to the set designers, many of those still in industry were employed by CO because they were the only game in town. The only studio that could compete with the Valley, the only studio that gave a shit about true art, human art, and didn’t want to mass produce bland fantasies. They were the last bastion of Hollywood, the pilot light for cinema.
Casey snapped back into focus. Jessica was still staring at him intensely
“It’ll check out Jessica. It’ll be a Certified Original through and through. You can count on it.”
“Excellent,” Jessica replied. “That’s all I needed to hear. Circle back with me in two weeks. Let’s get a fucking real movie made.”
Hey everyone! Thanks for reading this week’s story. I know I’ve been a bit radio silent here (got busy), but I’m glad I was able to share this story. I’ve had this 3/4 finished for the past few weeks and wanted to get this out. Let me know what you think! I wrote this story because I wanted to explore the question of what the world would look like if we truly could create fully personalized feature length films at scale using Gen AI. Who would be the winners? Who would be the losers? In the rooms that matter for getting movies made, what would those conversations look like?
In any event, I hope this post sparked some curiosity for you. More to follow in the coming weeks. I love you all.
Dez
I really enjoyed this!