Lights, Camera, Inaction

1001 Movies To Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 50
Andrew Niccol (writer-director), S1m0ne

Veteran movie director Victor Taransky has grown disillusioned with Hollywood: with demanding actors, interfering producers, and insatiable audiences. He got into movies to create art, but he’s become beholden to the money. Then one day, a computer programmer approaches Taransky with a priceless invention: a completely digital actress. Taransky thinks he’s found his artistic salvation. But controlling the perfect actress simply creates new problems he never anticipated.

This movie garnered lukewarm reviews and barely broke even upon release in 2002; it lacked studio support, and never found an audience until its home media release. Yet it’s received a new lease on life with recent developments, real and proposed, in computer learning heuristics. Promises which this movie made in 2002, Hollywood wants to fulfill today. It’s almost like the studios didn’t understand this movie’s parable of artistic control.

Simulation One, whom Taransky rechristens Simone, is the filmmaker’s ideal: a beautiful, graceful, and infinitely adaptable actress who makes no demands. She exists entirely as she is and follows Taransky’s directions without question. Her human costars, who have frequently grown indolent in their fame, find themselves inspired to resume improving themselves. Studio executives count their receipts. Nobody ever questions why they’ve never met Simone, who gets inserted in postproduction.

Al Pacino plays Victor Taransky much like he played Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, as a frazzled wreck whose failures push him to take extreme measures. Like Wortzik, Taransky doesn’t know how to control the monster he’s created. (For purely plot reasons, the programmer who wrote Simone’s code is excluded from the story.) He simply wants to finish his latest big-screen extravaganza after his designated star abandons the set.

Canadian model Rachel Roberts plays Simone as an Anglo-American icon of fair-skinned beauty. Roberts had done some advertising campaigns, but had no prior acting credits, making her, like Simone, a complete cypher. To enhance the illusion, the theatrical release didn’t include Roberts’ name; she wasn’t added to the credits until the home media release. Perhaps learning from this movie’s message, Roberts chose to avoid stardom, pursuing only occasional guest roles.

Rachel Roberts in her only starring role, as the title character in Andrew Niccol's S1m0ne

Simone salvages not only Taransky’s picture, but his foundering career. Audiences, costars, and studio execs love her. Taransky struggles to handle the sudden demand for his newest discovery, whom he cannot admit is phony. Managing Simone’s career quickly becomes his full-time job, one that keeps him away from the family whom he already barely knows. Taransky invented Simone to control her, but before long, she controls him.

Everyone seemingly loves Simone. But the longer we watch, the clearer it becomes that nobody really loves Simone; they imbue her with their favorite virtues, and idolize the myth they’ve created. The movie includes a post-credits scene, a relative rarity pre-MCU, encapsulating this perfectly: a moon-eyed fan watches rigged footage of Simone and locks onto one insignificant detail. From that, he deduces they’re star-crossed, if only he could meet her.

Again, Taransky initially loves Simone because she makes no demands whatsoever. Contrast this with his snippy studio-chosen star, played by Winona Ryder, whose ever-shifting demands become costlier than his actual shooting budget. But the fewer demands Simone makes, the more demands Taransky starts receiving from other stakeholders. Everyone wants something from her: money, art, public morals. Taransky, the only one who knows how to operate her program, has to deliver.

These aren’t fiddling issues. The exact reasons Victor Taransky initially loves Simone are the exact reasons the AMPTP recently threatened to replace background extras with scanned images. Hollywood wants compliant actors who don’t expect to be paid, respected, or kept safe. Lucasfilm, a Disney subsidiary, owns James Earl Jones’ voice, ensuring he’ll continue performing Darth Vader, for free, long after he’s laid in clay.

The whole point of Simone is that the Hollywood mogul thinks he’ll control her; the whole lesson is that he’s wrong. The traits of compliance and adaptability which Taransky loves, increase the demands laid upon him. His attempts disavow Simone only create new problems, as not only do studio execs resent the lost revenue, but audiences resent the lost icon who saw their own supposed virtues in her.

Writer-director Andrew Niccol’s previous filmography includes Gattaca and The Truman Show, movies about the futility of chasing perfection and control. This is Niccol’s first attempt at comedy, which perhaps threw reviewers, who didn’t always grasp his dry, understated style. Though Niccol offers only occasional laugh-out-loud moments, his deft irony underscores the absurdity of his situation. And it presciently foreshadows the path Hollywood has taken since.