Driverless imagined a world where AI does the work of 23 people, the CEO is nowhere to be found, and the only humans left are stuck answering phones. Its makers told me what they think the movie is really asking of us, and the answer got me right in the chest.
I had my intro ready and my questions lined up, and then one of my guests held up a Curious George from the early 2000s, one of the originals, a gift from someone at Universal, with human eyes and a mouth that doesn’t open. I lost the room completely. That’s the energy Charles Pelletier (I call him Chuck) and Stephen Foster brought to our conversation about Driverless, the comedy with 35 festival awards that calls itself the first road movie with no drivers. Chuck wrote and directed it. Stephen produced it and plays three completely different people. I expected a funny chat about a funny movie, and I walked away with a much softer heart.
Not the Cars, the Company
The premise: a company lays off nearly everyone, an AI is supposedly doing the work of 23 people, and the two programmers left behind start messing with the code like gremlins. Chuck told me the technology was already on the horizon when they wrote it, so the biggest exaggeration was the characters, two likable guys who, pushed by mean people, turn a little nefarious. He also thought driverless cars were funny, a steering wheel turning with nobody behind it, and he started out wanting a road comedy in the spirit of Gumball Rally. Somewhere in the writing it became a story about mean bosses and who gets taken advantage of, and the line arrived: “It’s not the cars that are driverless. It’s the company that’s driverless.”
That’s where the genre came from. Chuck calls it a screwbyte comedy, his tech flavored twist on screwball, which grew out of the Depression and flipped the idea that rich means smart and poor means not. Sometimes the greediest and meanest just rise to the top. He started a genre with exactly one movie. Stephen loves it because he’s spent many years in corporate America, where he learned that the people at the top can be jerks and the people you actually work with can be kind. As for the number 23, Chuck’s lucky number is 22, so 23 is a hair funnier, and he hunts for a number that’s a little too much of an exaggeration to be real. As a creator, I nearly cheered.
Three Roles, a Crew of Two, and 35 Awards
Stephen playing three roles started as a happy mistake. In test shoots he read Woodrow’s lines in costume, and Chuck couldn’t picture anyone else in the part. Stephen teaches acting and wrote a book on it, so he took his own advice, which is to act from your source material, yourself. Glenn came from his years as a temp in corporate offices. Randy, a rough redneck with a beard and mustache he grew out for months, came from his uncle Wade, who said whatever he wanted with no filter. Woodrow, a sensitive Quaker, came from the multilevel marketing jobs where he had to force himself to talk to strangers. I told him I need a signed copy of that book on my nightstand, and I confessed I needed his getting unstuck advice that very day.
Chuck’s philosophy is to cast the right people and give them room to play in his sandbox, and Driverless only confirmed it. The budget was small, so he wrote something they could actually film, which means no cars got smashed. It was all hands on deck. The cinematographer climbed onto a roof while the assistant camera held her by the arm, and in the car scenes with Stephen, Chuck was the entire crew, driving, filming, and running audio. In their words, they don’t say cheap, they say practical. The hardest shot was the ending, where cars converge and almost hit a woman, and they had one day and plenty of rehearsal at other locations to pull it off safely.
When I brought up my line that validation is for parking, Stephen said he’s not a Honda, he’s more of a Pinto. I told him he’s long lasting, good on gas, and gets us from point A to point B. Chuck called the 35 awards creative equity, proof that they finish what they start, and it’s helping them chase a budget for a feature.
The Bad Influence Who Nailed the Boss
Will Roberts plays Miles, and he’s a good friend of the magazine. They met at a film festival for their previous film and hit it off, and at an awards show the three of them were the bad kids in the back, cracking jokes like the old men in the Muppets balcony. Stephen admitted Will is a bad influence, and I told him I was quoting him. Will was the first person they told about the idea, but Chuck didn’t want to say it in the restaurant, so they walked to a park where nobody could eavesdrop.
Stephen handled casting, and he believes you learn more about someone outside an audition, because an audition gives you a filter and a public moment shows the real person. He liked Will’s quirky energy and tenacity. Miles is Glenn’s uncle, a jerk boss who shrugs off the layoffs while Glenn panics about the job and the money, and Stephen wanted comedy beyond the jerk, which Will delivered. Chuck says it’s against type, since Will is the nicest guy in the world and great at his craft, while Miles is mean and bad at his job. Mean and funny at once is very hard to play.
Human, AI, or Both
Renee Laramore, Steven Morana, C. Stephen Foster, Charles Pelletier
I played a rapid fire game with them. AI earned two wins, cleaning up background noise from a great take and generating poster versions for brainstorming. Everything else went to humans, including scheduling a 20 person shoot, telling an actor a performance isn’t working, choosing the final cut, customer support at two in the morning, driving across Los Angeles in rush hour, and writing the final joke in a comedy scene. I mentioned that Waymo doesn’t come to Burbank yet and I’m still an Uber and Lyft girl.
Chuck offered a thesis. The problem with driverless cars, AI, and the technology in their movie is the same: “It’s greed.” If truly good people who weren’t in it just for the money were running AI, he thinks everyone would be fine. He pointed out that even if most of America voted against driverless cars, we’d probably still get them. Stephen added a question I loved. He doesn’t rehearse in front of a mirror, and he wonders if mirror rehearsals and self tapes make actors self conscious the way the film says technology makes everything superficial.
Be Kind, Be Human
For my closing question, I asked what Driverless is really asking people to value more. Chuck answered in one word: kindness. We could live with phone trees and long waits, he said, if someone finally picked up after 45 minutes and said they were sorry you had to wait. His heart would melt. In the movie, if the boss had just asked his two stressed employees if they were okay, everything changes, and instead they get a crucible. If the people building AI and driverless cars simply had kindness, maybe somebody would skip a price hike, and a lot of our frustrations would melt away.
Stephen kept it just as simple. “Be human,” he said. We’re all in this race together, so be yourself, and remember that real human connection is what we need more of.
I ended that recording promising spaghetti, Cajun shrimp, cornbread, and collard greens, plus a private tour of that Curious George collection, and I meant every word. My closing line on air was that sometimes the fastest way to a serious conversation is to make people laugh first. Chuck and Stephen proved it, and I look forward to all the great things they have in store.
Press play on the trailer, then do one human thing today: send this article to the friend who just spent 45 minutes on hold. Follow @driverlessthemovie to keep up with the film, and follow @newhollywoodmagazine and newhollywoodmagazine.com for more conversations that go beyond the press release. Tell us on Instagram which part felt too real, and if you know a filmmaker who deserves a spotlight, slide into our DMs.
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