In this life, when we bear the weight of so much uncertainty, there is one hopeful fact that we can be sure of, something that can help us sleep better at night and go about our days breathing a sigh of relief whenever we call upon its constancy: Natasha Lyonne is Mama Poot.
Don’t believe me? Just have a look at this poster for Lyonne’s character in the upcoming “Smurfs” movie due out next month, where Lyonne voices some shih tzu-looking animated beast named Mama Poot. Mama Poot even looks like Lyonne, had Lyonne crossed the wrong malevolent witch and been turned into a Koosh ball. The poster’s copy, “Natasha Lyonne is Mama Poot,” is such a silly, objectively hilarious line of text that it’s already racking up swaths of likes just by people repeating it verbatim online. When I saw this image of the would-be Poot matriarch for the first time the other day, my first reaction was a hard cackle. My immediate, second reaction, however, was to stifle that laughter. It’s sort of like when you get into a fight with a friend, but then the next day that friend sends you a really dumb meme to break the tension. But I’m not ready to laugh at Mama Poot or Lyonne, I’m mad at her right now!
Lyonne isn’t riding a “new wave,” she’s surfing a tsunami, and she’s too high up to notice all of the little people whose careers are in jeopardy for the sake of cheaper, less artful filmmaking.
In April, Lyonne announced that she’d be directing her first feature film, titled “Uncanny Valley.” What would normally be a cause for celebration in my house came with a big, fat, thorny asterisk attached in the form of seven little words in the press release, describing how the film would be made “combining ‘ethical’ AI and traditional filmmaking techniques.” The news arrived a few days before the Season 2 premiere of Lyonne’s hit Peacock show “Poker Face,” and caused an immediate backlash, one that Lyonne has breezed past every chance to be sympathetic about. In the weeks since, she’s only doubled down with mystifying half-comments and quotes of questionable veracity in other publications. Lyonne’s stubbornness would be mystifying if it weren’t so familiar. Her obstinacy represents the larger unwillingness of those in power to listen to the public, digging their heels in rather than trying to maintain an air of understanding. For someone like Lyonne, who’s built a brand on her moxie-rich relatability, this defiance is a mask-off moment, making her suddenly look less like an artist and more like a suit.
“Uncanny Valley,” about a teenage girl who loses touch with reality when a popular VR video game starts to glitch, will be produced by the AI production studio Lyonne co-founded, Asteria, using Moonvalley’s “clean” AI model, Marey, which produces “artist-led, ethical AI.” In other words, the film won’t feature copyrighted material that has been scraped from civilian data worldwide to create the most ghastly, godawful images you’ve ever seen in your life — the ones proliferating your social media feeds over the last two years. The film will ostensibly have its video game elements constructed using the Marey, while Lyonne says the rest will be shot with “traditional” filmmaking techniques.
Lyonne has spent much of the press run for Season 2 of “Poker Face” openly defending the film and its use of AI, telling Variety, “It’s all about protecting artists and confronting this oncoming wave,” adding that it’s not a film made entirely with generative AI but that AI will be used for things like “set extensions,” as the trade notes. But that statement alone reveals a fundamental dissonance about Lyonne’s film and her understanding of what’s happening to technical artists in Hollywood. Normally, features like set extensions or digital effects would be created by CG and VFX graphics artists, paid laborers in an industry that is only just beginning to unionize. But with “Uncanny Valley,” the need for those workers is being replaced by generative AI, slashing jobs in a time when the industry is already in dire shape. Lyonne even referenced using concept storyboard artists to “build out a world” in the Marey model. While Lyonne is seemingly trying to incorporate technical artists into an AI process, that doesn’t mean other studios emboldened to use AI in their filmmaking by Lyonne’s movie will do the same — at least not until industry-wide restrictions are set in place. Lyonne isn’t riding a “new wave,” she’s surfing a tsunami, and she’s too high up to notice all of the little people whose careers are in jeopardy for the sake of cheaper, less artful filmmaking.
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In the same interview, Lyonne referenced the blowback to the film, stating: “It’s comedic that people misunderstand headlines so readily because of our bizarro culture of not having reading comprehension. Suddenly, I became some weird Darth Vader character or something.” And while she’s got a point about the lack of reading comprehension, the public’s reaction to her announcement was well-earned and measured, considering how quickly AI is being adopted everywhere we look. That Lyonne has chosen to position herself as a victim and a villain in this conversation is telling. She’s the one with the power here. No one is trying to cancel Lyonne or topple her empire or blow up her Death Star. Her detractors are simply asking for a little bit of empathy and a back-and-forth conversation. The last thing we need is to be lectured about artificiality by someone whose cartoonish accent drops out every fifth sentence.
Lyonne’s consistently myopic defense demonstrates an almost childish reluctance to listen, one that has painted an increasingly confusing picture now that Lyonne is moving into directing.
Instead, Lyonne took a hard right in the other direction, giving a tasteless quote to New York Magazine” for their cover story on Hollywood’s move toward AI earlier this month. Lyonne, who was once neighbors with the great David Lynch prior to his death, told the magazine that she asked him about AI before he passed. Lynch purportedly responded by holding up a pencil and saying, “‘Natasha, this is a pencil. Everyone has access to a pencil, and likewise, everyone with a phone will be using AI. It’s how you use the pencil.’”
Aside from the fact that it’s loathsome to quote a dead person who isn’t here to corroborate their words, using one of the greatest artistic minds ever to live to promote the tech for your upcoming film is just plain tacky. (Never mind the fact that the quote sounds like a Lynch parody.) Lyonne’s consistently myopic defense demonstrates an almost childish reluctance to listen, one that has painted an increasingly confusing picture now that Lyonne is moving into directing. “It’s fascinating that someone so well-versed in great movies and so appreciative of filmmaking could co-found an AI film and animation studio,” one user wrote on X after Criterion posted a video of Lyonne grabbing movies from the Criterion Closet. Another replied, “That’s why I’m not watching ‘Poker Face.’”
Knowing how Lyonne has responded to the smallest bit of backlash has repelled me, too. I devoured the first season of “Poker Face.” But after watching the Season 2 premiere, I don’t have it in me to keep going. The cumulative time and energy I could spend watching the show could also be spent doing something creative, something that demands thought and imagination. Or, I could pay to go see a movie made by artisans and creatives, or a bit of theater where I can watch people perform their craft live. Maybe I’d rather go to a club and dance to music that someone made by painstakingly putting all of the pieces together to create something irresistible, forgetting about the existence of AI entirely in the thrill of the human crowd.
Granted, AI is here and, sadly, there is no stopping it — at least not right now. And while Lyonne’s curiosity about the “right” way to incorporate AI is somewhat admirable, curiosity should come with an equal amount of hesitation; those two things never achieving a balance is what almost got those kids gobbled up by raptors in “Jurassic Park,” after all. And I don’t know about Lyonne, but I’d prefer to stay outside the belly of the beast as long as possible.
