Nadia: Sure, I'll use AI... but definitely not to generate any content.
Nadia: I'm Nadia.
Russ: And I'm Russ.
Nadia: And you're listening to Feed Drop for Friday, October 23rd, 2026.
Russ: We've got three stories for you from the wild world of what everyone's making and watching.
Nadia: We're starting with a legendary filmmaker drawing a hard line on AI-generated movies.
Russ: Then, the creator of one of the biggest shows in years is saddling up for a Western with Batman.
Nadia: And we'll end on why the stories behind the scores for Jaws and Psycho are now winning awards of their own.
Nadia: So let's start at a film festival where acclaimed director Peter Chan just made some serious waves.
Russ: Right, from the cold open. He says he'll use AI, but not 'AIGC'. What's the 'GC' I'm supposed to be worried about?
Nadia: AI-Generated Content. And that distinction is everything right now, Russ. Chan says he might use AI for post-production, for tools... but he's ruling out having an AI generate the actual scenes or scripts.
Russ: So he'll let a robot paint the house, but not design it. Is that the idea?
Nadia: Exactly. And it's a huge statement from a director of his stature. He's behind 'Comrades: Almost a Love Story,' 'The Warlords'—he's a giant. Where he lands on this, others will follow.
Russ: The article also said he thinks feature films will 'survive the rise of vertical dramas.' What in the TikTok is a vertical drama?
Nadia: [laughs] It's exactly what it sounds like. Short, serialized shows shot vertically, for phones. They're huge in some markets, and they're a direct threat to the traditional movie experience.
Russ: A threat? Or just... a different thing? If people want to watch little phone-shaped dramas, let 'em. Why does the feature film need to 'survive' it?
Nadia: Because it pulls investment, talent, and audience attention away from the cinematic format. Chan's point is that there's still value in a two-hour, widescreen, human-crafted story.
Russ: Okay, but if an AI-generated vertical drama is more entertaining than a boring human-made feature film... I know which one I'm watching. The 'how' doesn't matter if the 'what' is garbage.
Nadia: And that's the debate right there. Does the artist's hand matter? For a creator like Peter Chan, it's the only thing that matters.
Russ: So the takeaway is, the next big movie you love might have been tweaked by AI, but the director really wants you to know their soul is still in the machine.
Russ: Speaking of putting your soul into things, let's talk about Richard Gadd, the creator and star of Baby Reindeer.
Nadia: He's joining the cast of Rode to Ruin, a Western thriller. And get this—it's being directed by Michael Keaton.
Russ: I know! This is the most 'wait, what?' casting I've heard all year, and I am one hundred percent here for it. Bill Camp and Ray McKinnon are in it too, which is just an embarrassment of riches.
Nadia: [excited] It's a killer cast. This is a textbook example of how to capitalize on a breakout moment. Gadd is maybe the most talked-about writer-performer in the world after Baby Reindeer.
Russ: So they just stick his hot name on the poster and hope for the best?
Nadia: It's more than that. It's about a specific kind of buzz. You're not casting him to be a generic cowboy. You're casting Richard Gadd. You're buying his specific, intense, slightly-unsettling energy. It tells you what kind of movie this is going to be.
Russ: An intense, unsettling Western directed by Beetlejuice. Okay, I can see it.
Nadia: [laughs] It's just a smart package. You attach a white-hot talent to a prestige project with veteran actors, and it makes an indie thriller feel like an event.
Russ: So the lesson is, if you create one intensely personal, deeply weird, and wildly successful thing...
Nadia: You get to go make a weird Western with Batman, yes.
Russ: That's the dream.
Nadia: For our last story, we're talking about the composers behind the music that lives in all of our heads. ASCAP—the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers—just gave out its awards for music writing.
Russ: And the winners are... books? About guys who are already famous?
Nadia: Yep, books! And they won because they're outstanding pieces of writing. One is a biography of John Williams...
Russ: Okay, Star Wars, E.T., Indiana Jones. The soundtrack to my entire childhood. Got it.
Nadia: And the other is a biography of Bernard Herrmann.
Russ: Herrmann... Herrmann... refresh my memory.
Nadia: The shrieking violins in Psycho. The moody, swirling score for Vertigo. The jazzy dread of Taxi Driver. He was Alfred Hitchcock's go-to composer.
Russ: Oh, THAT guy. Right. So we're giving awards to books for writing about music. Seems a little meta.
Nadia: It's to honor the craft of music journalism and scholarship. It's celebrating the work of telling the stories behind the music. The 'how' and 'why' a piece of art gets made is a story in itself, and that's worth recognizing.
Russ: So you're telling me the biography of our theme song could one day win an award?
Nadia: [laughs] In theory, yes. It's about appreciating the entire ecosystem around the art, not just the final product.
Nadia: Alright, let's run through the headlines again.
Russ: Filmmaker Peter Chan says he'll use AI as a tool, but never to generate the movie itself.
Nadia: Richard Gadd of Baby Reindeer fame is joining Michael Keaton's new Western, Rode to Ruin.
Russ: And books about the composers of Jaws and Psycho are winning major writing awards.
Nadia: Before we go, Russ, speaking of Bernard Herrmann and iconic scores... did you see that clip making the rounds of the cat playing a tiny piano?
Russ: [laughs] The one that looked like it was plinking out the theme to The Addams Family? Yes. It's a masterpiece. A modern marvel of an animal being forced to do something for treats.
Nadia: It’s high art. That cat deserves its own ASCAP award-winning biography one day.
Nadia: And that's our show for today. This is Feed Drop.
Russ: We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, give your cat a tiny piano. You never know.
This show is made with AI: the hosts’ voices are synthetic and the scripts are AI-assisted. Every story links to its original source.