Filmmakers At Hamptons Film Festival See More Labor Angst Ahead Despite WGA Gains, With Uncertainty Surrounding SAG-AFTRA Talks And “Really Scary” AI Risks

Dade Hayes
·5 min read
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Three filmmakers assessing the impact of 2023’s dual strikes took a less-than-upbeat tone, citing uncertainty about the state of SAG-AFTRA negotiations with the AMPTP and the ongoing threat posed by artificial intelligence.

While the WGA’s gains from its 146-day strike are noteworthy, producer Sam Bisbee acknowledged during a Hamptons International Film Festival panel, SAG-AFTRA “is an even bigger part of the equation.”

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Bisbee, a producer of documentary Rule of Two Walls, was joined on the panel by Jennifer Esposito and Tonje Hessen Schei. Esposito, best known for her acting credits on The Affair, The Boys and many other series and movies, wrote, directed and stars in fest selection Fresh Kills. Hessen Schei directed current fest title Praying for Armageddon.

“The writers have been underpaid and really absent from the conversation for a very long time,” Esposito said. “The powers that be are making all of the money off the backs of these people. When you’re out on your yacht saying times are tough, I know a writer who’s been writing for 25 years taking babysitting jobs. Don’t tell me times are tough. You can share the pie.”

Hessen Schei, whose 2019 film iHuman anticipated the current conversation around AI and included interviews with the architects of ChatGPT, said AI is justifiably on the guilds’ bargaining agenda but also has far broader implications. “This is just the beginning. AI is going to change everything, and already has,” she said. “We’re at this watershed moment right now, and it is really up to us what kind of rules we lay down for our industry, for our work. AI, what it really does is that it makes everything more efficient. But there are processes in the creative work of the filmmaking industry that really shouldn’t be efficient.”

Esposito said the notion of AI upending the entertainment business “makes me so upset. At the end of this long line is money and greed. Some of it can be great, but without regulation, you’re going to replace people and art. What keeps us connected as human beings and keeps us aware of our behavior and culture and life and the differences between each other? To put this in a machine and create something with it is frightening to me.”

One of SAG-AFTRA’s stated concerns, the use of AI to replace background artists, is “obscene,” she added.

“We always thought, ‘The one thing they can’t replace is human creativity. But ironically, it appears that it’s one of the easier things for AI to attempt to replicate,” Bisbee said.

“Not to get too dark here, but we have this technology run by technologists” whose pleas for government intervention are going unheard, Hessen Schei said. “The problem with new technologies is that the people in charge of putting in new policies for these technologies are so far behind. And one of the things with AI is that it’s developing so fast. … We don’t have policymakers with enough knowledge to put the regulations in place. We are the ones who have to decide if it matters whether something is made by humans or made by a machine. A couple of years from now, people are not going to care.”

To that last point, Esposito said she was taken aback when an audience member approached her after a Q&A for her film and told her she should “really just try to embrace it because it’s coming.” She marveled at the headlong embrace of technology and social media in the entertainment business despite its well-documented downsides. “I don’t think it’s helping us. We see where young people are today: they’re struggling,” she said. “We’re at a really scary moment.”

Throughout the recent months of labor unrest, Esposito said has been encouraged by industry colleagues to take to the picket lines. “I don’t know if it’s a place for me,” she said, because “the system is so completely broken. I think we should all take our energy over here and try to figure out a new system.”

Bisbee observed that the music business — where he began as a singer-songwriter before his producing career took off — provides an unsettling sign of where film and TV may be headed. Instead of encouraging consumers to seek out individual releases and anticipate and immersing themselves in albums, the industry instead promotes the “experience” of music. Fans listen to it in a more ambient way that ultimately dulls its impact, gathering playlists from an endless array of titles stored in the cloud. Streaming, similarly, has pushed viewer habit in a similar direction, where viewers are inclined to consult the algorithm of Netflix and allow themselves to be served what it recommends rather than tracking down an individual show or film.

“The motion picture and television industry has been working really hard not to become the music business, but it seems to be happening,” Bisbee said. “The streamers have just weakened all of the distributors. They came in six or seven Sundances ago and overspent, spent so much that none of the other distributors could keep up. And now, they’ve turned that faucet off, and it’s brutal.”

The panel came just past the halfway point of the Hamptons event, which wraps up Thursday. The 31st edition of the fest featured a handful of world premieres as well as screenings of a number of major titles from the broader festival circuit, including Anatomy of a Fall and American Fiction. Paul Simon, who has a home in nearby Montauk, took part in a conversation about his career and work. May December director Todd Haynes, who was to receive a tribute award, had to cancel his appearance due to illness.

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