Much is being jabbered about A.I. and its likely calamitous effect on the creative/filmmaking/writing and even acting process. There’s little reason to worry in my opinion; A.I. is hear to stay and will soon supplant the methods by which movies have been made for one-hundred plus years. And in some ways it only makes sense. Making a movie is a herculean effort–and that’s before you even start shooting. Once the impossible has been achieved–money, actors, script, director etc all coming together somehow–the real  work starts; a movie-in-progress is a large, cumbersome machine that drags itself about, behemoth-like, clunking along with gaggles of people, cars, trucks, equipment etc. all to tell a story that has likely been told in some form before. The big question here is: is it truly necessary to start from scratch each time you want to make a movie and do it from the bottom up? What if you (or an algorithm or whatever) simply mined the gazillions of hours of film already shot and pieced together your story with clips of other films. Computer enhancement would replace the old actors faces with new actors faces so there would be a modicum of continuity and an overall look and polish and veneer would smooth things over. The story would be created by a person, the screenplay generated by A.I. and the final version would receive a humanizing polish by an actual writer. In this scenario, we’re not really getting rid of the people who make films, we’re just assigning slightly different activities to their job titles. The director chooses from the multitude of clips that are delivered and shapes the final look of the composite film, along with a cinematographer. A writer comes up with a basic plot and does a final polish. Actors re-voice parts rather than make live appearances, though their faces may be superimposed on older footage.What has all this to do with Jay Ward? Well, in 1963 the visionary creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle created a short-lived but much-loved show called ‘Fractured Flickers’ which more or less accomplishes exactly what I’m suggesting above. Using very old silent movie footage, new voices and plots were super-imposed upon the existing film and to create something very different and certainly much better than its source material. Naturally its all done in a comedic vein and a very successful endeavor it was. I’ve been enjoying the handful of ‘Fractured Flickers’ that are up on YouTube and recall with nostalgia the period in the summer of 1974 when KTLA in Los Angeles broadcast them around 11PM every night. (I believe it was followed by an episode of ‘The Honeymooners’ which was also new to me at the time). The F.F. host was the great Hans Conreid and that’s all the info I’m giving you. Or perhaps this isn’t me writing but some A.I. bot. Who cares? We’ll be past all of that in a nano-second–and soon we so-called ‘creatives’ will simply be semi-conductors. (Har). Enjoy the above segment and don’t worry so Goddam much. The future is here. For the moment, so are we.