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The Thinking Machines series concludes with the April member bonus: "S1M0NE," Andrew Niccol's satirical science fiction comedy about Viktor Taransky, a fading Hollywood director played by Al Pacino, who inherits a program capable of generating a digital actress—and unleashes her on an unsuspecting world alongside Catherine Keener as his producer ex-wife and Winona Ryder as the star she replaces.
Pete and Andy take apart the film's central failure—Simone is a puppet, not an AI, which means the Frankenstein premise the film keeps setting up never pays off—and debate whether Niccol's Hollywood satire ever finds its blade. Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we conclude the Thinking Machines series with a member bonus conversation about "S1M0NE." We have a great time talking about it, so check it out then tune in—The Next Reel on TruStory FM, when the movie ends, our conversation begins!
If You Liked This Conversation, Try These from the Next Reel Family:
The Next Reel: Thinking Machines series—keep going with the full arc; this conversation fits best in context of where the series has been
The Next Reel: Thinking Machines series—keep going with the full arc; this conversation fits best in context of where the series has been
This is a member bonus episode. The movie ends—and for members, the conversation keeps going. Monthly bonus episodes like this one, ad-free listening, early releases, exclusive Discord access, and a vote on future member movies. Become a member of The Next Reel family and always know what to listen to next.
Creators and Guests
Host
Andy Nelson
With over 25 years of experience in film, television, and commercial production, Andy has cultivated an enduring passion for storytelling in all its forms. His enthusiasm for the craft began in his youth when he and his friends started making their own movies in grade school. After studying film at the University of Colorado Boulder, Andy wrote, directed, and produced several short films while also producing indie features like Netherbeast Incorporated and Ambush at Dark Canyon. Andy has been on the production team for award-winning documentaries such as The Imposter and The Joe Show, as well as TV shows like Investigation Discovery’s Deadly Dentists and Nat Geo’s Inside the Hunt for the Boston Bombers. Over a decade ago, he started podcasting with Pete and immediately embraced the medium. Now, as a partner at TruStory FM, Andy looks forward to more storytelling through their wide variety of shows. Throughout his career, Andy has passed on his knowledge by teaching young minds the crafts of screenwriting, producing, editing, and podcasting. Outside of work, Andy is a family man who enjoys a good martini, a cold beer, a nice cup o’ joe. And always, of course, a great movie.
What is The Next Reel Film Podcast?
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When the movie ends, our conversation begins.
Pete Wright:
I'm Pete Wright.
Andy Nelson:
And I'm Andy Nelson.
Pete Wright:
Welcome to The Next Reel. When the movie ends,
Andy Nelson:
Our conversation begins.
Pete Wright:
S1M0NE is over. Our ability to manufacture fraud exceeds our ability to detect it. This movie, Andy.
Andy Nelson:
Here we are.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, here we are.
Andy Nelson:
Andrew Niccol. Andrew Niccol, a director we genuinely, genuinely like. Writer-director.
Pete Wright:
Yes, absolutely.
Andy Nelson:
I mean, Gattaca is fantastic. The Truman Show, which he wrote, is fantastic.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Andy Nelson:
Lord of War, fantastic. In Time, but In Time is really interesting.
Pete Wright:
Strains a little bit, but wonderful. Lord of War, you said it, man. Commit to the grit, Lord of War.
Andy Nelson:
Got a sequel to that coming out that he's working on. I've missed a few of his films, like The Host, Good Kill, and Anon, but—
Pete Wright:
The Host—I mean, for what it was, an adaptation of a YA dystopian book.
Andy Nelson:
Good old Stephenie Meyer. We've talked about plenty of her.
Pete Wright:
Right. It's good.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I mean, it does what it needs to do.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah. It does its job.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Andy Nelson:
And he wrote the story for The Terminal. So I genuinely enjoy what Andrew Niccol is up to. And then there's this one, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Yeah. So to say this movie was—I don't know—ahead of its time in many respects. It was a conceit that I think was very much prescient. And I think that's a totally fair assessment of the film. And I think to treat it as a satire, and to lean in on the audience's impression of what they want being manifest in cinema and advertising and TV and all of that—I think that's an interesting conceit. It is an interesting thing to take on. And maybe it's that much more difficult. I mean, I don't think the movie was great when it came out. I'll just say it's a competent film. That wasn't a great film. But I think it's made even harder by seeing the cultural adaptations that have come since, and how the movie ended up being wrong about some really key points. And as a sociological experiment, I think it's fascinating. This movie is maybe one of the most interesting that we've talked about in our Thinking Machines series, if not one of the best. Is that too gentle? Am I being gentle on it?
Andy Nelson:
One of the best in what capacity?
Pete Wright:
Of the series. If it's not one of the best of the series, it is one of the most interesting.
Andy Nelson:
I mean, it's an interesting one. It's also a tricky one for this series, because in the scope of actual thinking machines, it's the only one that doesn't actually fit.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Andy Nelson:
Right. Like—and we put it on the list for our members to vote on, and they picked this one. I think when the trailer came out—I had never seen it before—I thought it was more of an AI creation that he had made. I didn't realize that no, it's just a shell of an actress created digitally that he essentially performs. Like, Al Pacino's character is a digital puppet that he performs for everything. He's doing all the lines, all the programming, all the movements. And so I think in the scope of Thinking Machines, it actually doesn't fit. But in the scope of where we are today with AI creations and AI performers, it's actually a very interesting seed to see how things grew and changed.
Pete Wright:
Okay. I just want to talk through a couple of points, because my memory of the movie was that it was much more of a creation.
Andy Nelson:
You had seen it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. But there are two bits in the movie where Simone is acting with agency. And the movie does not lean in on those things at all. One—he is in the audience at the Academy Awards, and she's giving her speech, and the speech that he programmed does not thank him. And the way it could be interpreted when he says, "Why did she not say that?"—she was expressing agency. The other time was the whole setup with the interview, where she was talking on her own, and he had to run back into the studio. And why the hell do you put the computer in the middle of a thirty-thousand-square-foot sound stage? Put it by the door, man.
Andy Nelson:
Or put it in a little room, right?
Pete Wright:
Or put it in a small room.
Andy Nelson:
Like—
Pete Wright:
Yeah, what are you doing? Anyway. So I feel like those are expressions of agency that the movie never commits to. The story never commits to them. This was, for all intents and purposes, a mashup of Pygmalion and Frankenstein. And in either of those cases, the creation outshines the creator. This movie doesn't commit to the bit. It's like the central conceit is that Simone should have exceeded the abilities of her creator, and she never does. She only gives hints to it. Those didn't hit you the same way?
Andy Nelson:
I think maybe it's just sloppy construction, as far as how he created those moments. Because the way I interpreted both of those specific situations—the Oscars: it was clearly a pre-programmed creation that he had made to play at the Oscars, right? After the whole thing, it cuts to him sitting in front of his desk talking to his creation. He's like, "Why did I leave that out? What was I thinking?" It makes it sound like—he was so much in her head as he was recording it that he didn't even think about putting that in there. And so it seemed like—because it's him who's doing it—it might be weird to say, "Oh, and thank you so much, Viktor," even though he does it plenty of other times.
Pete Wright:
Plenty of other times.
Andy Nelson:
Right. So that's how it came off to me. Like he had just kind of forgotten that was an important part of the speech. The second one—the way that is set up, this is when it's a table read with the other actors for a script they're all going to be working on. And the way it plays is she starts the conversation in a way where everybody is going to go around the table and introduce themselves. It seemed like a pre-recorded start that he had set up: okay, you're gonna go—this is how it's gonna go. Hi everybody, so nice to meet you. I really—tell me all about yourselves. Let's go around the table. And that was essentially the setup. And that gave him time to run and get to his computer station before everybody got through their turns, so that he could be in front of his computer as soon as that initial program ended and continue the conversation. That's how I read both situations. I didn't see any AI activity coming from her at all.
Pete Wright:
Okay, but did you expect the AI activity to come from her? Because I think you said it—it's sloppy construction. I think the movie would be better if she leaned harder into the Frankenstein adaptation. That she becomes the thing that has outpaced her creator and becomes the actress. That's the story I wanted.
Andy Nelson:
Well, that's the story I wanted too. So I think it was a surprise to me that that's absolutely not the story we get. It's just a story of a puppet master. And that's all the story is. So it was a real surprise to me that there is no AI in the film. And I think it makes it less interesting when it's just a puppet. But maybe in 2002, that was about at the level we were ready to think about, you know?
Pete Wright:
I don't know, man.
Andy Nelson:
I don't know.
Pete Wright:
We've been talking about movies in this series from the seventies. Like we were talking about this stuff.
Andy Nelson:
That's true.
Pete Wright:
That's why this seems like such a whiff.
Andy Nelson:
Yeah, it really does.
Andy Nelson:
You've just heard an excerpt of our Thinking Machines conversation about Andrew Niccol's S1M0NE—the story of a director who builds the perfect digital actress and then can't figure out how to make her disappear.
And here's where things get a little meta: what you just heard is our public version. Curated. A performance. Real enough to feel like the whole thing.
The full conversation—where we go deeper into the film, the filmmaking, and what Niccol is really getting at about celebrity, authenticity, and the things we choose to believe—that's in the member feed.
To get in, head to trustory.fm/join.
Membership gets you monthly member bonus episodes like this one, including special series picks voted on by members; early access to ad-free episodes across the whole Next Reel family—The Next Reel, The Film Board, Sitting in the Dark, Movies We Like, and Cinema Scope; additional pre-show and post-show segments on select episodes; and access to members-only areas in our Discord community, plus the ongoing film talk in our showtalk channel.
It's $5 a month or $55 for the year. Head to trustory.fm/join—that's T-R-U-S-T-O-R-Y dot F-M slash join.
What's real anymore? The conversation in the member feed is.
The Next Reel—when the movie ends, our conversation begins!