In December, Google announced that it would soon launch a new version of its generative video model, Veo 2. Among the promised features were a better understanding of real-world physics, more “nuances of human movement and expression,” and less unintentional “hallucinations” like extra fingers.
The surreality now, however, is intentional.
On Wednesday, at the Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas, the company demonstrated Veo 2 with a trailer for a new film, produced by the Dali Museum and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, that brings to life Salvador Dali’s unmade screenplay Giraffes on Horseback Salad.
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The screenplay was originally produced in 1937 in partnership with Harpo Marx with the idea of making it for the Marx Brothers at MGM Studios. Studio boss Louis B. Mayer didn’t like the screenplay and killed the project.
The screenplay, per the press release, follows “the story of a man who falls in love with a woman from a world where dreams are reality. She draws him into her universe, one that is vibrant, chaotic, and boundless. But as their worlds begin to merge, so does the conflict—blurring the line between imagination and destruction.”
This isn’t the first time someone has tried to make sense of the work. In 2019, writer Josh Frank, illustrator Manuela Pertega and comedian Tim Heidecker, developed a graphic novel based on the screenplay, which Frank told NPR was “crazy surreal and totally not digestible.” According to Frank, it was seemingly unfinished, with production notes that read simply “Insert Marx Brothers routine here.”
It also isn’t the first time that the Dali Museum has toyed with AI techologies. As ARTnews reported last year, the museum worked with Goodby Silverstein & Partners to create a version of Dali’s Lobster Telephone called Ask Dali, where museumgoers could “talk” to the artist via generative AI technology.
At the time, Kathy Greif, the museum’s chief operating officer and deputy director, told ARTnews, “We believe Dali himself would be playing with these technologies if they [had been] available in his lifetime. It is an absolute service to his spirit to be using these things. We’re here to not only preserve but to prolong his legacy.”
Meanwhile, in the press release for Giraffes, Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, described the new film as not a “replica” of Dali’s work, but a “reawakening.” Adding, “It’s one of the most creatively thrilling things we’ve ever done.”
For those hoping to see a resurrection of the Marx Brothers’ trademark humor in the film, as Dali seemingly intended, it’s not present in the one-minute of released footage. As usual with current generative AI technology, the “film” amounts mostly to slow pans over hypersaturated footage, though in this case it comes with a voiceover from “Salvador Dali.”