Plus: Speed, a murder comedy, and a gaggle of late-night hosts

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when Taylor Swift created a new wrinkle. It was the week when Adam Driver talked solidarity. And it was the week when a big book prize named its finalists. Let's get to it. How an interactive romantic comedy makes the case against AI writing During the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, one topic of interest has been AI, or artificial intelligence -- really, more accurately, machine learning. Nobody seriously believes that AI is currently in a position to write its own movies with any success, but there have been scenarios floated in which perhaps consumers could use AI-generated scripts and digitally stored copies of actors to essentially choose their own film: "I want a romance starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone where she's a bank robber and he's a cop" or something like that. Honestly? Sounds terrible! Into this landscape comes the movie Choose Love, Netflix's most recent experiment in making "interactive" films. The highest-profile effort up to now was probably the Black Mirror episode "Bandersnatch" in 2018. While it was interesting to see the technology at work (you make a series of choices using your remote, which drives the story forward), it didn't really work narratively. And it doesn't work narratively here, either. Cami (Laura Marano), left, Jack (Jordi Webber), Rex (Avan Jogia) and Paul (Scott Michael Foster) / Netflix Directed by Stuart McDonald and written by Josann McGibbon, Choose Love is about a woman named Cami (Laura Marano) who works as a recording engineer. She has a boyfriend, Paul, played by Scott Michael Foster. But when she gets a tarot reading because she feels something is missing from her life, she learns that she has three possible suitors. One is Paul. The other two, who quickly turn up, turn out to be her old boyfriend, Jack (Jordi Webber), and a rock star she meets at work, Rex (Avan Jogia). So in one scene (a scene that is not at the end of the movie!), Cami has to decide between Paul, Jack and Rex. And then she ends up with one of them. That's the story. Now, you might ask yourself why a woman with a lovely boyfriend would suddenly leave him for either an old boyfriend she's been apart from for years or a rock star she met at work with whom she's spent a few hours. I asked myself that too! That's why Paul was my choice, so I picked Paul, so Cami picked Paul, and she ended up with Paul, and ... there you go. I did not watch every minute of the other two ways for the story to go (it doesn't really lend itself to any particular linear or completist viewing in any handy way), but I explored the other possible storylines enough to learn that there's no particular cleverness -- it's not as if you pick one but end up with another one, or no matter who you pick, you end up with the same guy, or something like that. You pick the ending you want, and it gives it to you. I didn't count, but I would say I probably made ... a total of 15 or so choices over the course of the movie? Something like that? Some of them matter a little, some matter almost not at all. It's profoundly unsatisfying, and I think it conceptually fails to understand how much of fiction is about letting a creative person make creative choices and experiencing them as a viewer/reader. But I also think it fails to understand that interactive storytelling already has some very successful models, and they don't look like this. They look like the wonderful and haunting video game Kentucky Route Zero, a seemingly simple point-and-click game over the course of which you make many, many choices about where to go next, what to say, what to do. What you do not do is get an endings list from which you get to choose. There is one ending. You will get there. The same is true of the beloved game The Last of Us, which not only has a single ending, but has a single controversial ending. That's not to say there aren't beloved games with multiple endings; there absolutely are. But successful interactive storytelling has models to learn from, and they generally involve iterative choices that take you down branching paths, not "which guy do you want to end up with" questions that just kind of ... serve you whatever outcome you ordered. That's why this might have worked if your choices had not gone as you anticipated -- picking Paul in that moment led you to end up single, something like that. But this? Picking an end point and watching yourself get there because ... you asked to get there? If people want to do that, they can just buy a set of finger puppets and play the thing out at home. If you want people to write their own endings, you're getting into the realm of fanfiction, and fanfiction requires people to have a lot more creative options, a lot more ways to go. In other words, you can write the ending of your story or I can, but for you to write a menu and me to order from it feels like an uncanny valley of creation that satisfies nobody. I mean, I didn't think Ross and Rachel should have ended up together on Friends, but do I want to watch an AI-generated ending where she doesn't get on the plane? No! What would be the point? This is why I cannot get excited about the idea of a bespoke, AI-generated movie that I order up like a pizza. The enjoyment of fiction lives in the meeting of your mind as a reader or viewer with the specifics of other people's brilliant, weird, flawed, unexpected minds. Even in a genre with rules like murder mystery (the crime will be solved) or romance (there will be a happy ending), there is always discovery. Without discovery -- without the possibility of frustration, in fact -- there are no stakes in the act of reading or watching. There are a lot of ways that machine learning could harm actors and writers; that's why it's an issue in the strikes. But any idea that boundless customization is the way of the future seems to me to misunderstand the relationship between creator and audience and the negotiation that goes on between the two. When I watch your movie, I want to like it. You hope I like it. I know I might not. You know I might not. But you have your role to play, and I have mine, and we both hope for the best. It's terrifying, but the joy of fiction lives in that uncertainty, and it's not a problem for technology to solve. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend I've started listening to 50 MPH, which is -- yes -- a planned 50-episode podcast about Speed from film journalist Kris Tapley. Does this sound wildly unnecessary? Yes. Am I extremely excited to hear the many voices promised across the series? Yes. Do I think you should get super-pumped about it and throw yourself into a long story of craft and culture? I do. Very high on the current Netflix charts is the thriller series Who Is Erin Carter?, which is about a woman whose mysterious past unfurls after she and her daughter are caught in a robbery. Do I think it's great? I do not. But do I think it's highly watchable for people who read that description and think "that sounds like it's up my alley"? Sure. Strike Force Five, the new podcast from late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, is a little rough around the edges (a couple of those guys need better mic setups, I'm just saying). But it's fun, and they seem to all like each other, and they do tell some pretty good stories in the opening episode. The series Deadloch is a comedy that's a sendup of grim small-town murder mysteries like Broadchurch, but it also kind of is a grim small-town murder mystery, while also being extremely funny, and I don't know exactly how they pull it off. It's an Australian show set in Tasmania, and you can stream it on Amazon. It's exceedingly hard to describe in a way that does it justice, but give it a shot. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Natalie Dew and H. Jon Benjamin voice the characters Zara Kahn and Sterling Archer on FX's Archer. / FX We revisited Stephen and Glen's discussion with Kathy Tu about Archer. Gene Demby and I talked about two great HBO scammer documentaries: Telemarketers and BS High. Stephen talked to Sheldon Pearce about the K-pop sensation NewJeans. And I was joined by Kristen Meinzer and Ronald Young, Jr. to talk about the streaming sensation of the summer (for whatever reason): Suits. Stephen was quite busy this week over at NPR Music. If you're not reading the NPR Music newsletter (which he's now usually writing), you might not have seen his review of a new box set from Bon Iver and Megafaun members. And did you see the Speedy Ortiz Tiny Desk, which he wrote up? Maybe you heard him this week on New Music Friday! Suffice it to say, a musical week. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Ronald Young, Jr.: Telemarketers Kristen Meinzer: Celebrity Book Club with Chelsea Devantez Linda Holmes: Once More with Feeling by Elissa Sussman Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy