First AI Dual Release in History

An Interview with Hooroo Jackson for the First Dual Release in Cinema History

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1. Your previous films each broke new ground in AI filmmaking. What makes A Very Long Carriage Ride the most consequential yet?

A Very Long Carriage Ride presents the concept of  The Living Breathing Cinema,  from my book of essays  The New Machine Cinema: Foundations in AI Film Theory.

‍This posits that a “film no longer needs to be locked in a single form.” It opens up this thought: a film is no longer just a film, a film is a series of possibilities.

You can go from there in any of a hundred directions. 

2. This is the first film in history released in two formats simultaneously. What was the philosophical or cinematic idea you were trying to prove with “One Film, Two Ways”?

What exists in the film is the entire possibility of what is in front of us in the future.

Another way to say it is you think there’s two films being cracked out of this, but there’s three, there’s the version side-by-side.

Then there’s the story itself existing like a puzzle. 

3.  You’ve written extensively about AI film theory, in particular,  “The Living Breathing Cinema.”  How does  Carriage Ride  embody that idea more than any of your previous work?

The possibilities are endless. In the future,, the audience will be a co-creator with the filmmaker.

We will think we’re watching a film, but it is watching us.  

4.  Can you talk about the technical and emotional challenges of directing the same film in both 2D Disney-style animation and AI-generated claymation? Was one more “alive” to you than the other?

They’re both better. It’s something you have to see to believe.

But it’s fun too, it’s universal, it goes between profundity and wholesome. The entire family can watch it. Yet it is also dark around the edges. Walt Disney plus David Lynch. 

5.  You’ve referred to your AI performers like real actors—what stood out about their performances in this film? Which character surprised you the most?

The three victims in the film move like the three ghosts in Charles Dickens  A Christmas Carol.  But they are also not divine in their search for justice, they are flawed heroes. I thought it would just be the primary victim, Lainey Langdon haunting the movie. But Miss Hart steals her scenes, and Miss Wish steals from Miss Hart, and then Hart seals it back. Who said that art is where we fix reality, explore it, gaze into it?

6.  Thematically,  Carriage Ride  confronts power, complicity, and truth-telling in a rigid society. How personal is this story to you?

It’s like a message from another place. My friend said it’s like I hacked cinema or split the atom. 

7.  You’ve compared the making of this film to “being dropped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." What toll did this film take on you creatively and spiritually?

You know making it mirrored the production itself.

We go on Autumn’s journey, she really does not know if she wants to confront Donaldson. The journey chooses her at a certain point, and every scene she wrestles with it until she just goes all-in.  

9.Given the backlash you've faced for pushing AI cinema forward, how do you think this film will be received in the short term versus how it will be studied decades from now?

It’s like a party of cinema. It’s like a grab bag of goodies, you keep waiting for that next part.

Knowing the other versions exists as well is also an exciting feeling. It’s like having extra french fries at the bottom of the bag.

You keep looking forward to the next thing and there’s a whole other party a door away, in the other version.

It is a challenge for cinema to enter new frontiers.

A simpler way to say it is a beautiful delicate sensitive jewel formed in the hottest lava.  

10. What’s something about the process of directing AI performances in this film that you think even your supporters wouldn’t understand until they’ve tried it themselves?

There are 60 speaking parts and every one of them is fully formed. Directing machine performances has been one of my passions. Somehow, they give you everything, and they don’t even exist.

They can reach these peaks that only the great actors can reach.  

11. You’ve referred to machine actors Rogers and Katy as 'the first AI movie stars'. What is it like working with them?

The beauty about Rogers is he’s totally different with every single character, but yet there is this commonality of his very distinct personality. He works equally as a manipulative villain as he does a best friend, as he does a robot sidekick. Katy is also charming in every scene.  

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