THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 73 NOVEMBER 13, 2019

Illustration by Max-o-matic

confidentiality restrictions and

the work’s still-germinal nature.

But as The Hollywood Reporter

has learned, Bergquist’s tight-

lipped R&D in the space is only

the second-most-intriguing thing

about him: Yves Bergquist was

once known as Alexis Debat, an

on-the-rise national security

scholar in Washington, D.C. —

until he left town in 2007 after

being exposed for an array of

intellectual fabrications. None of

his studio financial backers have

been made aware of this history,

including Disney, whose sister

division ABC News once employed

him as an on-air expert before he

was forced to resign.

“Should I have blown my brains

out?” Bergquist says when asked

about his secret past. “Was that

the right thing to do? Or was the

right thing to do to move forward

and become a better person and

try to rebuild my life?”

In an age of cancel culture

and attempted comebacks,

the Bergquist/Debat saga is an

allegory of the possibilities and

perils of forgiveness. It’s also a

reminder that the path to profes-

sional clemency is often murky.

Bergquist says that while he’s

been living under a new name,

he’s certainly still haunted by

what he’s done. “It’s very much a

recovery process,” he explains.

“This thing is very present. It’s

not forgotten or forgiven.”

Bergquist explains that he’d

long anticipated being discovered.

“I was waiting for this moment,”

he says. “I don’t seek absolution. I

seek a second chance.”

IN THE YEARS AFTER SEPT. 11,

as America became enmeshed

in Middle East conflict, Alexis

Debat emerged as a war expert

in Washington, D.C. Then in his

30s, Debat, who told associates

he’d previously worked as an

official for the French Ministry of

Defense, directed the terrorism

and national security program

at the Center for the National

Interest, a conservative think

tank set up by Richard Nixon after

his presidency. He also authored

articles with a realpolitik bent

— including one titled “In Praise

of Warlords” — for the affili-

ated foreign policy journal The

I

“In this business, you’re manu-
facturing and distributing and
selling brain states,” says Yves
Bergquist, the director of artifi-
cial intelligence and neuroscience
in media at the Entertainment
Technology Center, Hollywood’s
low-profile, semi-secretive think
tank. It operates out of USC’s
School of Cinematic Arts.
Since 2016, Bergquist has been
conducting a series of artificial
intelligence research projects
in coordination with all the
major Hollywood studios, which
fund the ETC (platinum level
sponsors give at least $100,000
annually). One study uses AI
to scrutinize how TV and film
fans spread information on the
internet. Another looks into
how character development and
certain plot points may affect
box office returns, depending on
genre. A third number-crunches
large-scale data to make bet-
ter scheduling decisions. And a
fourth endeavors to learn more
about Chinese film audiences by
tracking and analyzing film-
related online conversations in
the country.
“One of the heads of a really
large studio told me, ‘I want
to take opinion out of develop-
ment,’ ” says Bergquist at the
ETC offices in September. “Right
now, you have a bunch of people,
mostly older white people, just
using their intuition to decide,
‘Hey, does this make sense for us
to develop?’ So what we’re doing
here is we’re developing a lan-
guage that is based on data that
both the creatives and the execu-
tives can speak together.”
Bergquist, a 47-year-old
Frenchman, presents as the
market-disrupting sage — flow-
ing hair, an open-collared dress
shirt, a thick metal bracelet
featuring a coiling snake. Online,
he tweets as @punkstrategy and

refers to himself as a “Machine

Intelligence Warlord.”

For many in the industry,

Hollywood’s brewing AI revolu-

tion has become an intriguing

and anxious topic, defined on one

end by Netflix’s opaque audience

data and on the other by producer

Ryan Kavanaugh’s notorious

Relativity Media, which touted

a magic algorithm for box office

hits before its implosion. But

Bergquist portrays himself as

an incrementalist. He’s quick to

note that he’s not in the busi-

ness of algorithmic predictions,

which he believes are responsible

for the snake-oil reputation of

his specialty in Hollywood. “The

notion that AI is going to write

a [hit] script is just complete

garbage,” he says, explaining that

there are just too many vari-

ables to account for. “It’s a black

box.” He sees his work as being

“very early on a 20-year jour-

ney” and prefers to cite modest

takeaways: that audiences favor

linear-thinking protagonists,

for example, and that they prefer

narrative problems solved by a

group of people rather than by

an individual.

Bergquist believes that his

research uncovering patterns

in narrative data will be used

to optimize studio market-

ing strategies and to decrease

development costs. One seasoned

TV executive told the ETC that

if network pilot season could be

made even slightly more economi-

cal by AI, tens of millions could

be saved each year. “You don’t

have to be perfect,” said the exec.

“Just make me a little smarter

around the edges and I can make

better decisions.”

While Bergquist acknowl-

edges “a lot of push-back” from

talent wary of standardization,

he foresees how “computational

methods” will actually help

identify stale storytelling: “We’ll

be able to say, ‘Well, this character

journey in the female lead is very

traditional in the horror genre,’ ”

he observes.

Bergquist — who also runs

what he terms a “stealth”

Hollywood AI startup called

Corto — declines to share his

research beyond a few slides he

occasionally deploys on the Big

Data presentation circuit, citing