Paul Schrader says he turned to AI after Black actors declined roles

moviesSep 6, 2026713,379

Paul Schrader said he turned to AI to populate his upcoming film Three Guns At Dawn after, he said, "no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people." Schrader told interviewers that when performers declined the roles he responded by using artificial intelligence to create the Black characters, adding "We’re making them." The remark has drawn sharp online criticism, with commenters calling the rationale racist and saying AI enables filmmakers to manufacture and control portrayals of marginalized people. The disclosure follows coverage of Schrader’s recent activity as a director and comes amid broader debates about use of AI in casting and representation.

Derek Powazek

@fraying.bsky.social

A perfect example of what AI is really for: removing consent, removing the social safeguards that used to keep the worst ideas at bay, and doing racism at scale. theplaylist.net/paul-schrade...

109110h ago

Derek Powazek328

In a more civilized age, the fact that actors refused to be in your racist movie might have forced some introspection, but now, thanks to AI, you can just do digital blackface.

Dana Delibovi36

It never dawned on this guy to rethink his racist movie full of stereotypes, did it?

20th Maine Volunteers32

I hope it bombs so hard it puts him out of the movie business.

Bryanna/Brioche, Angry Noodle32

I love that he acknowledges why Black actors didn't want to participate and still went, "Nah, I'll do it anyway. In fact, now I'll use AI so I don't have to pay any Black people to make a mockery of them."

The Gowl Triangle17

Digital Blackface This is a digital blackface, AI minstrel criminals

karinchu12

Don’t then it doesn’t occur to him there is A Problem with his movie?

Quoting this

Mike Rugnetta65

Does Paul think AI will watch his movie, too, I wonder?

Danny Lore46

This is so unsurprising in terms of ai usage

Serial Experiments Abigail32

talking about how excited you are that nobody can stop you from making racist garbage really kind of gives away the game

Wolfy D. Lucca 🌘🐺29

any theatre that screens this movie should get FNAF pizzaria simulator'd

Theodore Hill (he/him)25

My jaw is genuinely on the floor. Speechless. He said all of that, out loud, and saw no issue. I am not sure I've ever felt this kind of moral and aesthetic revulsion at the same time before. It has taken me several minutes to even...what the fuck? Ok, maybe I should have just opened with what that.

Magpiebones19

Definition of Hack and Tone Deaf wrapped into one fuckass human. Dont even hate watch this thing folks.

A’ine Evergreen 🏳️‍⚧️19

Bruh, he could have just… not said anything. Why do these people self-report so willingly? Its like Ai just fries their brain and takes away any sense of reasoning or social consciousness. Like if I was to somehow in his place you could not waterboard this info outta me. ☠️

Chris “Chance!” Brown17

I think that if this is how you respond to a question, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to make movies anymore.

Candice Frederick12

Good grief. This... is a bogus way to defend *sigh* using AI.

Anna Orridge12

Well that is extremely repulsive on multiple fronts.

nadezhda the cockroach 🪳

@antiwhimsybrigade.bsky.social

he's saying the quiet part loud here, ai allows white filmmakers to control racial and ethnic minorities in an attempt to make them appear complicit in their own racist slander. paul schrader likes ai because it allows him to have a black actor that he owns.

3638h ago

nadezhda the cockroach 🪳86

in the past, if you had a script so racist that no black actor would act in it, you got a white actor to do blackface. this is essentially the same thing except it doesn't reveal which white actors are hateful or slimy enough to get out the shoe polish.

Quoting this

🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾31

And let’s keep it a band it’s why a lot of folks like social media

Mark Harris

@markharris.bsky.social

Paul Schrader has been doing "AI isn't going away so get used to it" on his Facebook feed for sometime now--but this is so, so, so much worse. I don't think we'll ever see this movie. I hope we don't. theplaylist.net/paul-schrade...

2528h ago

Kevin M. Kruse54

I can understand the studio appeal here -- no actors! no headaches! no big salaries! -- but they've got to realize that no one is going to pay to see a movie that stars literal nobodies

Tim Carvell9

I don’t follow him but for some reason the algorithm recently showed me his post whining about how he was sick of being catfished by AI women and I had to double check to make sure it was *that* Paul Schrader.

Jon Danziger4

Oh, I just really want to see the script, it must be his Song of the South

Meredith Berg3

I can't believe, honestly can't believe, I didn't realize this is where it would go: That AI versions of marginalized people would be created to represent stereotypes a human would refuse. What a horrible fresh new hell.

Jamie Hardt3

Oof dah that pull quote.

Kelly Thompson2

This is so bad it makes more sense why he was trying to soften the ground up and hint at his position. Grotesque. "...or live long enough to become the villain" is feeling very apt for a lot of behavior we're seeing these days.

Quoting this

Drew McWeeny38

Any festival that books this is dead to me.

Gayracula18

já faz um tempo q esse aí virou a ministério etrom de hollywood mas pqp isso já é Outro nivel

Bela LuGoza8

uma informação que vale a pena ser comentada é que ele começou a namorar com uma IA e tempos depois ela deu um pé na bunda dele

Steffani Cameron 🇨🇦6

When Black actors won’t play your terrible roles, maybe you should rethink your obviously racist script. AI “because Black people thought it was too racist” is a really interesting choice. The modern Blackface is digital. Cute.

Peter Paige5

If NO BLACK ACTORS want to do your movie, you need to reevaluate your movie, not the casting pool...

Mathew Buck

@filmbrainbmb.bsky.social

I'm sure Paul Schrader turning to AI has nothing to do with the accusations of sexual harassment made against him, but readily admitting that your script is so racist no Black people want to be involved is certainly a choice. Throw it all in a bin.

17111h ago

Todd in the Shadows26

In my opinion, the obvious right answer is that he's just lying. I do not believe for a second that, unless it's a movie version of The Turner Diaries or something, a film could be so racist that all these Black actors would turn down working with the writer of Taxi Driver.

Mathew Buck19

Antoine Fuqua was involved for a while, so clearly that wasn't issue so much as who he was working with, and decided to jump ship when Schrader decided to make it a slop-a-thon.

JoJo Walker1

That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. You're an idiot, Paul.

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

Yikes. “We sent it out to actors, and no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people. And it sort of died. But then AI came along, and I didn’t need Black actors.” Asked if that meant he would create the actors himself, Schrader replied, “We’re making them!”

17410h ago

Don Moynihan80

Uh, AI will also come for writers and directors. But if you are 80, then not really committed to long-term thinking.

Brooke Harrington34

AI obliterates consent & basic human rights. This appeared 1st in uses of AI to abuse women via "nudify" apps & deepfake pron. Like all things degrading to women, esp involving sex, it was met with a tsk-tsk. But as the process degrades men & obliterates their consent, policy makers may finally act.

NerdyKris11

“I had originally written it about three Black brothers, all of whom are bad guys: a corrupt cop, a drug dealer, and a sexual criminal,” Schrader explained. “And they were all trying to kill each other." Good lord, I wonder why no black actor wanted to be attached to this Birth of a Nation sequel.

Walter Mondial8

That’s considerably worse than the first headline I saw which was just he’s using AI

Susieus Maximus6

Ah, yes, Mr. Schrader. At no point should you question whether maybe the reason other human beings don't want to join you in what you're doing is that doing what you're doing is a very bad idea. Heavens, no. That way sanity lies.

Dinosaur Bob4

The writer of Taxi Driver couldn’t find any black actors to participate in a movie produced by Antoine Fuqua?

Movies Silently

@moviessilently.bsky.social

The current Discourse about Paul Schrader (look it up, but yikes) reminds me of why some cultural gatekeepers are underrated Those actors who refused the script knew exactly what they were doing and will soon be proved right

1186h ago

Movies Silently32

Tangentially, something that happens every year is some established who has fallen into “oh I see humor is illegal now” will say they were forbidden to tell a joke by the soulless minions of orthodoxy. It was too raw, too real, too honest And the audience is imagining wild and raunchy truth telling

Sabermane5

It can't be that *Googles* Oh. Oh no. *expands headline* oh NO!!

Lex2

Oh, yeah. We’re about to find out that *some* gatekeeping is perfectly okay

gingercat2024.bsky.social2

What was Fuqua thinking getting involved with this?

singular locus sarah

@scgriffith.bsky.social

man if this doesn't get across how ai fits into the intersection of white supremacy and disempowering labor, nothing will

“We sent it out to actors, and no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people,” he said. “And it sort of died. But then AI came along, and I didn’t need Black actors.”

Asked if that meant he would create the actors himself, Schrader replied, “We’re making them!” He also confirmed that AI will generate everything in the film.

879h ago

gpp5

so that's what people mean when they say AI empowers artists to create art that they wouldn't have the means to bring into the world otherwise

Kevin Korb2

He was going to use blackface, but then he got a better idea.

elias isquith

@eliasisquith.blog

i cant stop laughing at the 1-2 of paul schrader going on a two week vacation during which he took ayahuasca 8 times and then announcing that he's making an all AI movie because he could not find any black actors willing to be in it.

9310h ago

missingjigsaw.bsky.social24

Don't forget last week when he talked about being on an app meeting ladies who got really shifty whenever he tried to meet up with them in person until he realized they were all AI.

Louis10

my guy should have taken ayahuasca more times or fewer.

✨Directed by John Carpenter✨

@ourflagmeansbeth.bsky.social

We don’t need to give any of these projects our money. theplaylist.net/paul-schrade...

6410h ago

✨Directed by John Carpenter✨48

We should be boycotting every company that uses slop shit technology to replace human beings in EVERY industry.

The hottest dad on Bluesky2

That stuff reads like a guy describing his never finished hobby project over bong rips.

PictureTheSouth1

Fuck. The storyline reads like a steaming pile of horseshit even BEFORE mentioning AI. Bad ideas running in herds here it seems.

David Avallone

@davallone.bsky.social

You can update your opinions on Paul Schrader to include “lying racist piece of shit.”

628h ago

David Avallone23

I suppose the good news is he can’t sexually harass AI actors.

Gayer Than Thou 🏳️‍🌈4

“If Black people won’t depict the racist stereotypes I want to see I’ll just make up some Black people who will” is certainly a long-standing tradition in American entertainment.

Josh1

Not surprising at all. I'm not sure the last time I saw a Schrader movie, so I don't follow his career closely, but he's always had ick vibes.

Rory Blank

@roryblank.bsky.social

Another option that I haven't seen many people consider with this but feels genuinely possible considering who we're talking about, it's possible Paul Schrader was talking to a facebook scammer pretending to be Antoine Fuqua

624h ago

jeremy kaplowitz

@jeremykaplowitz.com

years ago i saw Paul Schrader do a Q&A and he talked about how he had written a movie about two black twins where one is a cop and one is a serial killer. but he said he won't make the movie bc he doesn't wanna "go into Spike Lee's house and rearrange the furniture" i guess he changed his mind?

538h ago

Schooley

@schooley.bsky.social

Paul Schrader never pops up in the news for any good reason.

596h ago

Shane Gilgamesh-Anaximander3

Not sure who needs to hear it - but we're full up on 80 year old cranks not shutting the fuck up in the USA.

web_rant2

"Schrader's work frequently depicts "man in a room" stories which feature isolated, troubled men confronting an existential crisis." "The protagonist in each film changes from an angry, then narcissistic, later anxious character, to a person who hides behind a mask of superficiality."

Tor Y. Harbin2

You’d think that the credibility afforded to the unspoken exclamation ‘I wrote Taxi Driver!’ would be everlasting, but, every so often, he finds a way to screw it up.

Dance: 10⁻¹, Looks: 32

Me when Paul Schrader is in the news

C C Humphrey1

He's always been a little off-kilter

Kylie Eleison

@gonebabygone.bsky.social

Much like I don't think Clint fully understands how many of his best movies are searing deconstructions of toxic masculinity, I think Paul Schrader has genuinely forgotten his best movie of the century is about the question of whether the climate crisis justifies terrorism

567h ago