Barbarella Talks AI With SUBSERVIENCE Director S.K. Dale

Hi friends, Barbarella here. Sci-fi film Subservience, starring Megan Fox, Michele Morrone  (his name’s Italian so the “ch” is pronounced like a “k”), Madeline Zima, and Matilda Firth, just came out on Demand and Digital, so let’s talk about AI. Do you think artificial intelligence will bring about major medical advancements, or do you envision more of a Terminator situation evolving? I tend to think it’s not the AI itself but whoever’s behind it that should be on whom we focus our concern. When it comes to cinema, filmmakers always hold technology responsible, because let’s face it, that makes for a more entertaining movie. I would argue Will Honley and April Maguire’s screenplay puts at least some of the onus on the humans. Maybe don’t say certain things to a Sim that’s constantly evolving and learning; that’s all I’m saying. If it weren’t for one comment made to Alice (Megan Fox), the attractive Sim acquired to help out around the house, perhaps a lot of mayhem could have been avoided. 

 

I appreciate that the conflict in Subservience primarily occurs within the family unit, as this makes it more believable to me. Favoring older technologies, Nick (Michele Morrone) isn’t the biggest fan of artificial intelligence, but when he and his sick wife (Madeline Zima) can’t keep up with managing the household and children, he caves and gets Alice, the best new Sim on the market, to help out, and you know that’s not going to work out quite how everyone expects, well, at least how everyone in the movie expects. It goes pretty much exactly how those of us watching might predict, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. 

I had the opportunity to speak with director S.K. Dale, and after a brief chat about Melbourne, Australia, where he lives, we moved on to talk about the film. 

Barbara: In your opinion, is AI leading us towards improvement in our quality of life or towards total annihilation? 

S.K.: It’s a very simple question to start with. No, I think there are so many benefits with AI, and I think seeing it get more involved into the medical world and being able to do research on things in far quicker ways than we could ever do, I think that’s exciting. I think the death and destruction is more on a personal level where I think if we start to rely on AI as a creative force, we’re going to lose something in humanity. I’m a very big proponent of being creative to some degree, whatever that may be, whether it’s a crayon drawing or whatever it is. I think it’s a muscle that we are using, and if you start to rely on technology for that creativity, I fear what happens to a society without creativity. 

Barbara: Yeah. I don’t see that going away. I don’t see real artists relying on AI much for that stuff. 

S.K.: It’s true. It is true. I think it’s one of those things where we were in post-production for this film. We had a lot of union strikes happening, and it was the first time that I thought about AI in our world and the reality of it all. It was kind of fascinating to be shooting films about people being replaced in their jobs, and now you’re starting to question, well, how long do I have left if they’re going to do it? So look, I’m trying to be positive about it. I think there are some incredible benefits of AI, and I think it’s just a matter of us cautiously moving forward with it. I think if we rush into things, that’s where things can go awry. 

Barbara: How did you get your hands on the screenplay? 

S.K.: We finished Till Death with the same production company, and we just had a really great relationship, and we really enjoyed that. We were trying to find another project to see what we could do, and we were looking at a few other smaller things. They were developing this with the screenwriters April and Will at the time. At some point, they just thought maybe I’d be interested, and they sent it through. It’s just hard to say “no” to a sci-fi; that genre is just so exciting, I couldn’t say “no.” Reading the script and everything, there was some stuff I really enjoyed; there’s some other stuff that I wanted to take in a different direction, and ultimately it was about pitching what my thoughts were and how I would do it. Everyone agreed, and we kind of went down that path. The rest is history. 

Barbara: What appealed the most to you about it – just the fact that it was sci-fi or was there more? 

S.K.: What was interesting was that it was a sci-fi movie, or particularly that it was an AI movie that was exploring it through a much more intimate lens of a family. I felt like at that point when we were getting the script, it felt like a lot of AI was being explored from this kind of larger scope of the world’s going to end and all that, and I really found it fascinating seeing a robot come into this family and slowly tear it apart. Particularly, there’s a moment where the wife comes home and starts to feel like she’s been replaced. That just excited me, and I wanted to explore that further. 

Barbara: Yeah. What kind of discussions did you have with the casting director about what you wanted for these roles? 

S.K.: It’s all almost a domino effect where it was figuring out who Alice was. I felt like if we figured out who we’re going to have as Alice, that was going to dictate everyone around that. Once we had Megan Fox, it was kind of like, okay, now this is our level that we need to stick with. Madeline Zima, who plays the wife, I was trying to find a counterpart to Megan, and I feel like there’s something so innocent about Madeline. She’s so soft spoken, and I thought she kind of brought something really interesting to Michele as well. I thought she softened his character in a way that we needed because there’s a lot of stuff that he’s doing in here that is frustrating for the audience to watch. I always thought of Maggie [the wife] as the heart of this film, so that was probably one of the most challenging people to cast and going back and forth with our casting director about what aspects or what traits we are looking for, and when Madeline kind of popped up, it was pretty clear that this is the one. 

Barbara: Yeah, I remember her from “Californication,” and I was like, “Wow, she looks so different.” At first, I was going, “Who is that? I know her.” 

S.K.: Well, it’s interesting. I had the same thing hit me with “Californication,” and I thought to myself, “She’s a teenager in that, and that only came out a few years ago. Can she be a mother?” And then I was realizing, okay, first of all, it came out a little bit further back than I remember. And secondly, she’s young looking, but she can pull off being a mother. So yeah, she’s incredible to work with. And I mean, I’ve been a fan of hers since “The Nanny,” growing up watching that. So yeah, I got to tick that off the list, which was exciting. 

Barbara: How fun. So what kind of guidance or homework did you give the cast prior to production? 

S.K.: I mean, AI is so prevalent within our world at the moment and everything, so just having those general discussions and what they feel and everything. Particularly with Michele, it was kind of important to really phone in on how his character felt about the technology, because we see in his garage, we see this kind of old-school analog, whether it’s the record player or his car and all this kind of stuff. He really is hesitant about the future of technology, but at the same time at his work, we are seeing this transition where now he’s having to work with these Sims. So that was kind of exciting to talk through and everything. 

S.K.: I didn’t really want to have that kind of conversation with Megan because I really wanted her to approach this from a human point of view, if that makes sense. I didn’t want her kind of thinking about all the cogs and wheels necessarily happening. It was more we spoke about the physicality of it, and she had this idea of coming in as a ballerina and having slow and precise movements so that physicality informed the rest of her performance. I thought if we spoke about robots too much, she would become more robotic in her performance, and it was vital for us to have certain level of emotion there to make the more intimate scenes work.

Barbara: How many days was the shoot? 

S.K.: It was twenty-nine with, I think, an extra day of pick-ups as well. It was longer than the first movie I’d done with her, but it was also more action, more locations, more characters, and then you’re involving these children as well that have limitations on times and how late you can go and stuff like that. So there were a lot more challenges. 

Barbara: I like to acknowledge people who tend to get overlooked in filmmaking. So who would be like an MVP from your crew? 

S.K.: I always think of the first AD as the front of the ship. They are plowing through every wave that hits ’em. And when I say first AD, you’ve also got your second, your third ADs, and they’re kind of dealing with so much crap that I don’t have to, and it’s always freeing because you’ve got your cinematographers and all this kind of stuff. We always talk about it, but there are just so many people. God, honestly, I could go on forever because I think the script supervisors, the costume designers…and I’ll say this, caterers. If you have bad catering, the crew gets grumpy and everything. If they’re fed well, everything is so much smoother. And another factor for this particular film was the stunt crew. 

S.K.: We had so many stunts happening, wire works, all this kind of stuff. And I love working with stuntmen and stuntwomen. They approach it with this can-do attitude. Seeing people that are excited to fall down stairs, you don’t get to meet those kinds of people every day. They’re a wild group of people. I have so much love for ’em, and the fact that they don’t have their own Oscars yet is disgusting because they’re really putting their blood, sweat, and tears on film. As exciting as it is for them, there is this ultimate kind of payoff later on where they’re going to feel every bump they’ve done; it’s going to come back to haunt them. It is trying to approach it as safely as possible and do things as minimal as possible. But yeah, it’s amazing. 

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that there should be Oscars given for stunts. It’s shameful that those hard-working people don’t get the recognition that they deserve. Just know, if you work as a stunt person or stunt coordinator, we see and love you! We know the value you bring to cinema. Maybe one day the Academy will figure it out and correct this oversight. 

Subservience is out now on Demand and Digital. Check out the trailer!