[ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit!

[Benjamin Goertzel]

Unfortunately, I think the hardest part of getting a good H+ movie made
would NOT be convincing a producer to take on a good H+ script (though that
may be very hard), but rather keeping it from turning into something idiotic
in the course of the movie-making process.

The history of SF films is rather more dismal than the history of SF novels,
I suppose because good SF is about ideas at least as much as human
personalities and emotions; whereas mainstream film is almost entirely about
human personalities and emotions and can barely deal with ideas at all.

So, as I see it, the real key to getting an H+ film of any positive value
(artistic, memetic, political or what have you) out there would be to find a
producer, director and scriptwriter who ALL were sympathetic to the H+ set
of ideas.  If this happened, something really cool could come out of it,
with potential to change peoples' minds as well as entertain them.

But don't fool yourselves that simply putting the right script in the hands
of a producer with money is gonna to it.  Don't underestimate the degree to
which the film industry can dumb down, and totally lose the point of, a
great book or a great script (in SF, but not only in SF).   We've all seen
it happen time and time again.

So if y'all are serious about this, the first step IMO would indeed by to
find producers and/or directors who fundamentally "get it."  Without that,
it's not worth bothering.

A distorted, confused, conceptually misleading H+ movie might still be
popular, and might well leave the movement worse off than had it not been
made.

-- Ben G

On 5/6/07, John Grigg <desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Why do any of us have to write an original screenplay if we really don't
> feel up to it?  There are already so many great science fiction stories
> which I bet could be adapted to this cause (with permission of course).
> Also remember that *DAMIEN BRODERICK* and *CHARLES STROSS* are among us, and
> so we have just the people we need to help get the ball rolling.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> John Grigg : )
>
> *"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience at pobox.com>* wrote:
>
> A B wrote:
> > Now personally, I pretty
> > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no
> > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is
> > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a
> > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the
> > result could be pretty abysmal.
>
> You're correct, it will suck. And I'm too slow a writer, I've tried.
> You are essentially stuck until a writer comes along.
>
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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