Artificial is Luca Guadagnino's upcoming film.
It's a satire on the OpenAI co-founder, Sam Altman.
Andrew Garfield essays the controversial founder.
Luca Guadagnino is skewering artificial intelligence with Artificial, a film that chronicles the rise of OpenAI chief Sam Altman. Andrew Garfield plays Altman. Neon is campaigning him in the Best Supporting Actor Oscar race. Neon rescued the film after Amazon dumped it.
Speaking to Vulture, Luca Guadagnino was asked whether he was concerned about how Sam Altman or others featured in his film might react to the portrayal. "I don’t know — maybe they love the movie,” he said, adding: “I’m not afraid. I think that people that have a lot of power should be very much aware that you must be responsible for the community."
Luca Guadagnino Addresses Sam Altman Resonance
Guadagnino shared that he was “indirectly approached” by some of those portrayed — though he didn’t spill who exactly — “but we didn’t engage.”
Guadagnino also revealed what appealed to him about Altman was his relentless ambition. “I respond to ambition because I’m ambitious myself. The American Dream has been so important throughout history with ramifications everywhere in the world,” he says. “There’s some element of rootlessness in the desire to get there first. How do these people who have enormous power, wealth, and influence on the lives of everybody elaborate on that dream?”
In a new cover story in Vanity Fair, Altman addressed the film for the first time, “There were these notices on our street that there was going to be some filming or whatever. I didn’t realize what was going on. I paid no attention,” Altman said. “And then one morning, I was walking down the street to get coffee and there were all these cameras and there was a guy dressed exactly like me with my same backpack walking so much that I felt I was in some weird glitch of the simulation or something. It was very strange. And then I immediately figured out what was happening. It's like a strange thing to see someone that has nailed your kind of quirky mannerisms or whatever.”
In the Vulture profile, Guadagnino also stressed that he doesn't outright reject the idea of AI, "With everything that makes change, I’m very secular,” he said. “I welcome change and I witness change. To go against change, somehow it’s not an appropriate approach. You have to wait and see.”
