NEW YORK ‒ Elon Musk is getting the Hollywood treatment.
The billionaire Tesla CEO is ruthlessly satirized in Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” (in theaters Christmas Day), a queasy new drama about the troubling rise of artificial intelligence company OpenAI.
Musk is played by comedian Ike Barinholtz (“The Studio”), who glowers and strides in exaggerated fashion throughout “Artificial,” which made its world premiere at the New York Film Festival Oct. 5. Along with Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield) and Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov), Musk was one of the early co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, before leaving three years later due to disagreements over the organization’s leadership and direction.
At a post-screening Q&A, Barinholtz talked about how he approached
Musk as the movie’s comic relief.
“I mean, when you're playing someone as universally beloved as Elon Musk, who everybody just admires and is a person who walks normally ...,” joked “The Mindy Project” star, earning raucous laughs from the crowd at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. “No, when I first met with Luca, I said, 'I have very complicated opinions on Elon.’ And he said, ‘It’s not about finding what you love about Elon ‒ it’s about finding what Elon loves about himself.’”
Barinholtz went on to explain that the Musk depicted in “Artificial” is very different from the lightning-rod political maneuverer that we know now.
“This is not him at the RNC with a chainsaw,” the actor said. “This is him in 2014 when a lot of people were like, ‘This guy is gonna save us! He’s amazing!’ The way we shot those scenes, where people look at Elon like he’s a god … is naturally a funny energy. We allowed Elon to be this bully.”
Set over roughly a decade, “Artificial” follows an idealistic Altman and Suskever as they imagine the possibilities of how AI could benefit the world. But their friendship splinters as the technology evolves and Altman purportedly turns a blind eye to its potentially dangerous implications.
The stylish Silicon Valley drama co-stars Monica Barbaro and Cooper Hoffman, with an original score and songs by Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn. The project was written by The New Yorker humorist Simon Rich, who called it “a last-ditch effort to warn mankind.”
In a Vanity Fair profile published Oct. 5, Altman said that he never interfered with the film’s production or release, although judging by the trailer, he does not believe it offers an “accurate depiction” of his life. He added that “Artificial” filmed outside his house and he once waved at Garfield, although the actor disputed the latter anecdote.
“If that happened, I must’ve blacked out,” Garfield said during the Q&A. “We didn’t see him at all that day we were shooting.”
Garfield’s take on Altman is both eccentric and deeply frightening, with a pair of striking blue-gray contacts that will burrow into your soul. The two-time Oscar nominee said he spent roughly three months studying footage of Altman, in an effort to nail his voice and mannerisms.
“The deeper responsibility [was] to try and do some interrogation of who we are giving all of our autonomy, power and data to,” said Garfield. “I remember seeing Sam testifying to Congress way back when and I was like, ‘Hey, this guy seems great! He’s clear-eyed, he’s honest, he’s transparent, he’s talking about regulation, he has no stake in OpenAI. We need more of these people in control!’” Garfield recalled with a shrug. “Then all of us, we learn more about a person.
“So I started with the first impression he made on me, which I found to be quite reassuring that a human being could be that hopeful,” he said. And now, “here we are.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Elon Musk, Sam Altman and the 'deeply frightening' film 'Artificial'
