'The Last Screenwriter' review: A creative playbook for the future
Peter Luisi's effort prevails through provocation
I’d been following the developments surrounding the world’s first known AI-scripted feature-length film after its London premiere on June 23 was cancelled due to a fierce backlash. It’s the story of a celebrated screenwriter who hesitantly uses AI to write his next film—then finds the script not only surpasses him in skill, but also in human empathy and emotion. The ensuing battle posits an existential crisis for creativity and the greater role of machinery in future human endeavours.
Prince Charles Cinema got over 200 complaints from the public, criticizing the use of ChatGPT in the making of The Last Screenwriter. It remains a highly contentious topic, one that impacts integrity and livelihoods as demonstrated in last year’s Hollywood writer’s strike. AI is a topic creatives still often avoid, because they fear its impact on their careers, and the technology and its effects seems difficult to grasp.
Peter Luisi, who made The Last Screenwriter, set out to provoke a conversation:
“This is exciting but also incredibly frightening.
”It has long been predicted that computers will make more and more jobs obsolete. However, until now we screenwriters thought to be exempt from this danger. After all, how creative can a computer be? As it turns out: astonishingly creative!
”It now almost seems like screenwriters aren’t going to be the last to be replaced by machines, but rather one for the first.”
Few creatives are brave enough to bear the brunt of criticism in the face of so much animosity. But because he felt this was too important a topic to be censored by fear, The Last Screenwriter has been released online for free, along with documentation about which prompts were given to ChatGPT, and the script that those generated.
I watched the film and was pleasantly surprised by both its achievements and its shortcomings. The dialogue was very straightforward and transactional, driven solely for steering the plot, with no evocative flourishes. But the plot intriguingly addressed the greater context of the film, its creation, and its public reception.
I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to hide from uncomfortable things. I like to explore them, analyze them, and discuss them with other stakeholders. As someone who’s also been on the receiving end of criticism for starting THE GRAIN, a platform to talk about the complexities and impact of AI in our creative industry, I feel a kinship with Luisi. As artificial intelligence becomes more prolific and pervasive, we are going to be faced with it whether we like it or not. The Last Screenwriter put creatives central to the conversation, and watching this effort empowers them to harness AI and adapt its possibilities to serve their own creativity.