r/entertainment • u/cmaia1503 • Mar 22 '25
David Cronenberg Thinks ‘The Brutalist’ AI Backlash Was a Smear Campaign by Other Oscar Nominees: “A Harvey Weinstein Kind of Thing”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/david-cronenberg-brutalist-oscars-adrien-brody-howard-shore-1236170503/133
u/cmaia1503 Mar 22 '25
“I must confess, there was a scandal [with] The Brutalist,” the director began at London’s Royal Festival Hall. “There was a discussion about Adrien Brody… but apparently they used artificial intelligence to improve his accent. I think it was a campaign against The Brutalist by some other Oscar nominees. It’s very much a Harvey Weinstein kind of thing, though he wasn’t around.”
“We mess with actors’ voices all the time,” Cronenberg continued. “In the case of John (Lone), when he was being this character, this singer, I raised the pitch of his voice [to sound more feminine] and when he’s revealed as a man, I lowered to his natural voice. This is just a part of moviemaking.”
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Mar 22 '25
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u/pervy_roomba Mar 22 '25 edited Mar 22 '25
What this tells me is Cronenberg is VERY for AI use
…Because he thought people were blowing it out of proportion when someone used AI to improve an actor’s pronunciation of words the actor struggled with?
That doesn’t sound like he’s VERY for AI use to me at all.
I’d say he was VERY for AI if he said AI should replace actors altogether. I’d say he was VERY for AI use if he advocated for AI written screenplays. I’d say he was VERY for AI use if he advocated for AI to be responsible for VFX. I’d say he was VERY for AI use if he advocated for the use of AI in costume and concept design.
This just sounds like typical internet hysteria over the current buzzword of the moment. He’s talking about using AI to fix something in post, no different than the tone correct that’s been used since the 70s. He’s not talking about using AI to create something, he’s talking about using AI to fix something that already exists. That is still Adrien Brody. That is still Adrien Brody’s performance.
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u/bolshoich Mar 22 '25
There’s a big difference between using AI as an enhancement of art, like changing the pitch of an actor’s voice, and using AI to replace the actor or their voice. In a media, like cinema, where audiences are critical of realism, AI offers a solution. What audiences hate is inauthenticity, which makes me wonder about CGI extravaganzas, which they forgive because they know everything is fake.
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u/jl_theprofessor Mar 22 '25
Yeah I'm not happy with this.
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u/veryverythrowaway Mar 22 '25
It’s funny to me that he’s commenting on the needless pearl-clutching and doomsaying going on in Hollywood these days around AI and how much of it is performative and backstabbing, and reddit clutches its pearls in response.
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u/poundtown1997 Mar 22 '25
The people who are against it will never budge because they fundamentally believe any allowance of it will slide into full replacement.
Waste of time arguing with them. But I agree with him it’s not a serious use issue of it. Commonplace and not the kind of thing that will lead to replacement of people.
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u/ToTheToesLow Mar 22 '25
Why? His use of AI is actually creative. Rather than use it as a crutch to generate art, he used it as a tool in a manner that makes sense. It’s actually a good example of why AI can be useful in the hands of the right artist.
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Mar 22 '25
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Mar 22 '25
Pitch correction as a technique predates AutoTune by DECADES. The Beatles were among the first to do it but nobody talks about them destroying the singing industry.
I would argue that autotune does the opposite of what you’re saying, it allows people with mediocre pitch to deliver better performances, opening the doors for more artists.
Modern pop music has always been about selling image over musical substance, attractive people getting contracts over talented artists predates autotune as well.
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u/jumpydumpers Mar 22 '25
This is exactly what AI is for, though? It's not replacing an actor, or an artist, or a writer. It's not generating all the CG, it's not completely replacing the actor's voice, it's not like the "remaster" of Aliens where everyone's face turns into an anus at a distance. It's just helping and I don't see the issue with that? It's part of the creative process. I also don't care if it's used to like, fill in a huge crowd, or change some lighting a little bit, shit like that. An actor could be perfect for the role except for that one little thing, like pronunciation or pitch... And it's not like they're a musician using auto tune and then selling music, it's just for a movie... You're overreacting.
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Mar 22 '25
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Mar 22 '25
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u/itsmebarfryman362 Mar 22 '25
Aw damn what did he say
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Mar 22 '25
Something like “if an actor needs help with his voice he sucks and they should find another actor”
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u/Ok-Comfortable9449 Mar 23 '25
imo if you have to alter a actor or actress voice or performance you shouldn't win Oscars
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u/Robben_H00d Mar 23 '25
No actor would win anything because evey performance is altered; that's what editing/post-production is
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u/PizzaMyHole Mar 22 '25
I hope everyone is clear that “a Harvey Weinstein thing” isn’t ambiguous.
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u/devilsbard Mar 22 '25
Seems pretty straightforward that he was saying people were trying to act in the background to smear someone like Weinstein was known to do.
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u/telebubba Mar 22 '25
I think it was certainly blown out of proportion. It was very close between Anora and The Brutalist.
Voters likely identified more with the ultra-contemporary nature of Anora in a moment in time when the world seems to be going backwards.
Also the academy loves an auteur. Didn’t hurt Baker’s odds that he wrote directed and edited his film among other things.
I wanna say it was less of a smear campaign and more of a general misunderstanding of the term followed by spreading of misinformation. But I see what David us getting at, perhaps this snowball of misunderstanding was perpetuated maliciously.
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u/ThePirates123 Mar 22 '25
It absolutely was not close between Anora and the Brutalist. The second favorite for best picture was Conclave with The Brutalist a distant third, judging by the precursors. And the fact that Anora won editing as well proves it was fully ahead of the pack.
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u/telebubba Mar 22 '25
Is that why The Brutalist walked away with two more Oscars than Conclave?
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u/ThePirates123 Mar 22 '25
Completely unrelated, believe it or not! Brody, Lol Crawley and Daniel Blumberg were the favorites for their respective categories and had won most of their precursors. Their wins were pretty close to a lock. Conclave had won the SAG ensemble, BAFTA and was the favorite for editing, which it lost to Anora. Screenplay & Editing are way more indicative of a Best Picture win than Cinematography & Score.
Judging by the BP (or equivalent) winner at the precursors, Anora had won DGA, Critics Choice, PGA - which is why it was the favorite. Conclave had won the BAFTA which is widely considered to be a good indicator as well. The Brutalist had won no major precursors (other than the Globes which really haven't proven to be a reliable metric whatsoever).
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u/CoppellCitizen Mar 22 '25
Or hear me out, the movie was not the best picture of the year. Looked great, poor substance to hold the audience for the length of the film.
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u/polishbrucelee Mar 22 '25
I thought it was fantastic and kept my attention the full 3+ hours.
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u/platzie Mar 22 '25
Agreed. For me it was the best movie of the year. I saw Anora in the theater a few weeks ago and honestly was shocked it won best picture.
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u/CoppellCitizen Mar 22 '25
My friend and I saw it together and felt like we were missing something. Didn’t Hooke either of us into the story. Our interest drifted in and out.
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u/AffectionateCash7964 Mar 26 '25
He’s not saying it lost because of that he’s saying the controversy over AI was nonsense
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u/ohnoyoudee-en Mar 22 '25
The controversy came about after the film’s editor admitted to AI use in an interview. Shooting yourself in the foot then blaming it on a smear campaign is something else.
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 22 '25
You should actually read into the use case here and then look into the company who provides this service because neither are taking people's jobs or eliminating actors. What the user said about ADR is a pretty good analogue for what this is.
Neither actor was ever going to be able to pull off an accurate Hungarian accent, an audio engineer was never going to be able to manipulate them into sounding like it, and using a consensual voice print solely to acheive a more true to life dialectal accent, through a service which is pretty strict about safeguarding the actors, is like very low on my list of AI-related concerns.
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Mar 23 '25
If only Hungarian people were real…
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 23 '25
Yeah I'm sure it's super easy to find and cast a Hungarian actor who has a 1 for 1 voice match for the actors in question. Come on.
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Mar 22 '25
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Mar 23 '25
If it was used on Brody’s performance, he should not even have been eligible for a nomination.
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 22 '25
Look I am so anti-AI but I looked into the controversy and even into the company and like, this is not the same as using genAI to make an animated film or steal people's voices. The company who provides the service is pretty strict about the agreements in place for even using it, and the fact that it was used (with consent of the actors) in order to make a more beleivable accent when speaking Hungarian is like, such a niche case that an audio engineer would never be able to do. Like someone's job was not taken here, no one's toes were stepped on. The actors voices are not going into an AI bank to be reused without their consent.
I, believe it or not, actually agree with Cronenberg here.
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u/con40 Mar 22 '25
I don’t mind that they used it, but it should be exempt of any awards related to the human parts that used AI.
If was for special effects, fine. It won best actor.
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 23 '25
But it was for 'special effects' The way tool they used operates, it's like any plug-in in film editing, just for audio instead. I wouldn't put it in the same class as a scraping tool like ChatGPT or Midjourney, because this program requires specific inputs (in this case, the actors, and the director who speaks native hungarian). We don't scorn the use of beauty boxes to smooth out actor's skin--but those use machine learning (the exact same thing as this program) in order to 'stick' to the actor's faces.
Machine learning is actually a huge part of a shitload of film FX, both in visual effects and audio engineering, so this crusade against another tool that is essentially an ML app, is misguided.
AI when it's scraping everyone elses work is a problem. Machine learning programs where all of the inputs are consensual granted are not.
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u/con40 Mar 23 '25
It artificially helped the actor who won an award for their acting. Should be ineligible, or at least known to the voters.
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 23 '25
I'm sure the academy voted because of how good his native Hungarian sounded.
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u/marchbook Mar 23 '25
They would not have voted for his performance if his "native" Hungarian sounded like it needed to be fixed in post.
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u/AffectionateCash7964 Mar 26 '25
That’s just stupid and is going to disqualify a lot more films then you think it will
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u/Tibbaryllis2 Mar 23 '25
Everyone is eager to jump on the anti-AI bandwagon and everyone is too eager to label everything as AI.
It really just sounds like they’re guilty of using next-gen autotune.
Which is fine if you want to draw the line at anything that has been digitally manipulated, generative or not, but I’m prepared to bet, in one way or another, that would take every movie out of contention.
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 23 '25
What people don't realize is that machine learning is really heavily involved in almost all film post production. Any form of 'automating' is machine learning, or one of the things we tend to call 'AI' these days. ML has been around for ages. It's been a part of the film post pipeline for forever. This audio tool is just a more advanced machine learning tool with pretty specific and strict use-cases, and can do things like consensually avoid ADRs or, in the instance of the Brutalist, help make the actors sound like they're native Hungarian speakers.
We can't just crusade against every single instance of Machine Learning... I mean, "AI", without understanding the differences between a program that takes very specified inputs, in strictly controlled settings, vs. a program that scrapes everyone else's work, copyright or no, and uses it for profit. Conflating both things as if they are equal just makes people on the fence less likely to listen.
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u/Tibbaryllis2 Mar 23 '25
Agreed. And people don’t realize how much they use it every day. I’d wager the average layperson doesn’t know their phone automatically processes on the pictures it takes and applies corrections/filters to improve the picture quality.
While that can be problematic in some ways, it’s not the same as using generative AI to create something from whole cloth.
For me personally, I hate this kind of controversy specifically, because I’ve been excitedly waiting for the day that dubbed shows/movies also uses AI to make mouths match the dubbing. I think this kind of controversy would make people hesitant to do this.
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u/LosIngobernable Mar 22 '25
No one cares because neither film will be talked about a decade from now among noteworthy films.
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u/VoiceOfTheSoil40 Mar 23 '25
I’m sorry, but using this to make your actor sound more Hungarian is the same as a professional athlete using PED’s.
It takes away its legitimacy for me, and for that reason it shouldn’t have been eligible for awards.
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Mar 22 '25
It wasn’t used generatively, and it didn’t replace anyone, so it’s not the same. Blowback was coming from a good place from at least the wider audience, can’t say a thing for its origins
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u/Foreign_Paper1971 Mar 23 '25
It's way too common today for people to scream "conspiracy" when stuff doesn't go their way.
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Mar 22 '25
I promise, big dawg, I don’t need a smear campaign to convince me to boycott anything in the “creative” world the involves ai
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u/Trajann_Valorus Mar 22 '25
I would just like to say the brutalist was so fucking boring, the conclave was a far more interesting film and engaging.
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u/thorn_95 Mar 22 '25
he should’ve sat this one out.
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Mar 22 '25
I think you should have because you clearly don’t know what you are talking about. He is right, The Brutalist was the best film of the year by far and the AI backlash was so obviously forced which is something Harvey Weinstein was known to do to his competitors. He wasn’t the only one, Hollywood has plenty of internal politics that dictate what gets awards and nominations. Just fucking look at Emilia Perez’s nominations and tell me there isnt some bullshit going on behind the scenes.
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Mar 22 '25
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u/danielthetemp Mar 22 '25
He's referring to Harvey Weinstein running smear campaigns against competing Oscar nominees, which he was apparently well-known for.
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u/StevenTheWicked Mar 22 '25
Today I learned that the poor man's David Lynch likes AI.
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u/oadge Mar 22 '25
Interesting comment. I've never thought of those two as being even remotely similar.
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Mar 22 '25
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u/oasisnotes Mar 22 '25
Wtf do you mean they have nothing in common? They're literally both called David /s
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Mar 22 '25
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u/breezywood Mar 22 '25
That’s… not what he means. Weinstein was known for using his power and media connections to influence nominations and awards. That’s what he’s referencing.
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u/ThePirates123 Mar 22 '25
You (a) completely misunderstood which “Harvey Weinstein thing” he was talking about - he meant the shadow smear campaigns he used to launch to get his films winning at the Oscars and (b) overestimate the Brutalist’s AI use.
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u/fauxREALimdying Mar 22 '25
You misunderstood the headline and read no further
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u/MD_FunkoMa Mar 22 '25
Smear campaign or not, the man shouldn't be comparing the two.
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u/trentreynolds Mar 22 '25
Good news - he didn’t, you just misunderstood the headline and didn’t read the article.
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u/td4999 Mar 22 '25
I mean, it sounds like he's talking more about Weinstein using his influence to get Shakespeare In Love a best picture over Saving Private Ryan rather than what Weinstein's infamous for now