The following is a transcript of Mark Levington's Academy Award speech for Best Director for The Stars Above Marseille.
Oh, wow, thank you! Um. Thanks.
Wow, that's a lot of applause.
I'm feeling quite out of my element here. You can probably tell from the sweat, ha ha. They say I've got forty-five seconds, but I'm hoping they'll give me some leeway.
I can't accept this award because, um, I didn't direct The Stars Above Marseille. I mean, I did. But, like, it wouldn't be appropriate. It's— well, I'll cut to the chase.
The film is AI generated. All of it. Not just the script like that Cannes scandal a couple of years back — everything. The actors, the filming — all digital, all rendered, no editing from us. Even the credits. We didn't even give our AI model a prompt aside from, "make a good movie, a really good movie".
And, um, yeah, it spat out The Stars Above Marseille. We knew we had something interesting on our hands, but we didn't expect it to get this far. We did a limited release, we got some buzz, the New York Times made that "human story for the ages" review, and then, well, here I am. I kept expecting the rug to get pulled out, but that never happened. Not for lack of trying from sleuths on social media — shout out to hashtag-the-stars-are-fake. You guys made a great effort, and the mistakes you pointed out will be fixed for future releases. Yeah, the teeth, ha ha.
But, um, yeah, there were a lot of questions about, "where did you find these amazing, unknown actors? Who played Lucille?", and, well, there's your explanation. They're not real. We tried getting Daisy Ridley or Anna Taylor-Joy's likeness, but their agents declined, so we thought, "fuck it—" sorry, "screw it, we'll do it all with digital actors". And—
Oh, I think that sound means I'm supposed to wrap it up.
Um. Yeah. I guess my thought now is, "what happens next?" Like, it took our team six years to develop this AI model, and that was based on decades of other people's technology, but now the system's in place it'll only take hours to make another film. Minutes, eventually. And it can do sequels, Marvel, Ghibli, TV shows, whatever.
I was honestly scared that, if you all knew it was AI, no one would care. The magic would disappear. That's why we hid it. But maybe audiences won't care? I don't know. All I know is you were clapping when I walked on, and now you're silent.
Sorry. I'll leave this here.