Bo Bennett Turns Memoir Into Movie Magic

HOST: Bo, welcome back, thirty-seven episodes in. Last time we talked, you told me you and your wife sit down every couple of days to do a section of your memoir on MemoirMaker, and I've been thinking about that ever since, because I think I'm now looking at what you do with that memoir when it's done. MemoirMovies.com. Let's get into it. At what point did you look at what you were building there and think, "the memoir itself isn't the final product; the film is." Was MemoirMovies something you decided to build because of that memoir project, or did the idea come from somewhere else? GUEST: When I started my memoir, the idea was to turn it into a movie. Like that's the ultimate goal, to have somebody read it or look at it and say, "Yes, this would make a fantastic movie." And someday see it on the big screen. Uh shy of that actually happening, which is, let's face it, it's uh it's a pretty pretty much of a long shot for anybody's memoir to get picked up into a major motion film. Uh however, with the internet and the way AI technology works these days, we could get pretty close. And hopefully the video will catch on and become a viral sensation, which can be a lot better than a lot of uh autobiographies or or memoirs that go straight to streaming. So, it's kind of a um side-stepping the long traditional process of getting a memoir turned into a movie. That's what I had in mind from day one when I wrote my initial memoir, not the one that I'm working on with my wife, but uh my first one, which I did about five years ago. So, that was always on the back burner and now it has come to fruition. HOST: So, it's been on the back burner for years, and now with AI, you can get pretty close to that goal of seeing your life on film yourself. You mentioned the big screen, but the site also talks about the family couch, getting the whole family together to watch it, maybe long after you're gone. Do you see this more as a public project, or is it mostly for creating a personal, emotional legacy for your family? GUEST: Well, for most people, I think it's going to be the latter, because I don't think most people have the goal of making their story a major motion film. I think most people who write a memoir really do it for personal reasons, and they they realize that their story is is of course, it's unique, and it may be fascinating to them, but in terms of fascinating to everybody, or interesting to everybody, it's probably not. And I even had to face that reality as well. I mean, I'm I'm maybe a little bit different than your average person in terms of what I've done, but uh, I'm pretty close to it, compared to a lot of amazing people out there that have much more amazing stories than I do. So, um, so to be able to put something out that just my family watches, and everybody will have access to that knows me, that's a pretty good goal. HOST: It definitely sounds like a meaningful goal. Now, you mentioned one of your first memoirs was written five years ago, and presumably your new project covers a significant span of time. The site makes a point about character consistency, saying Uncle Joe ages correctly across the decades. That seems like a significant technical problem, and something you've grappled with before for BookBudKids. What's the actual mechanism here that makes a character consistent across a 1950s chapter and a 2010 chapter? Why was this impossible even a year ago? GUEST: It was impossible because none of the AI models that did graphics and images offered any kind of consistency plan. You couldn't feed it a reference image, but now you can, and that reference image that you feed it allows for the character consistency. Now, what I have found is that allowing the AI to do the aging is is okay when you're just telling like one single story. But if you're jumping around from chapter to chapter, section to section, and the ages bounce all over the place, I found that it's better to create a character that uh like one character for each age. So, when I created my memoir, I had um I had James, which is which is my character. I had him at 10 years old. I had one at 5 years old. I created one as a 14-year-old, one as a 19-year-old, one as an adult. So, I've got a range of characters, and the reason that works is because they are truly consistent. Uh anytime I use that James for say 1988, that reference image will always be used, and we don't have to worry about uh AI creating me again or James again from the reference image and doing the aging because that's not always consistent. Like uh it may age it one way the first time, and the next time it'll age it a different way, the character, and it could look very different. So um so we've got uh that nice technique that works very well. HOST: Interesting. So, rather than relying on AI to predict how a character should age over time, you create separate personas for each key era. You've got James at five, James at fourteen, James at nineteen. That guarantees consistency in every scene because you start with that reference image instead of letting it interpret it. It sounds like a smart way to get around that unpredictability. Now, you mentioned creating that character for each age. In "Documentary Mode," you do the same thing with photos — uploading one that then becomes three different interview settings. What does that process look like from the author's side, and does that feature really make it feel like a real documentary rather than just an illustrated audiobook? GUEST: Yeah, it sure does. And that's a kind of like the the glue that connects all the scenes together. You have the actual moving motion picture part of it where it's just amazing technology. You cannot tell the difference whether it it's a human actually behind a camera. Or if it's AI. And the amazing part about it is like that's me. You would think that if it's if it's you, you could easily tell. And whereas you probably couldn't tell that much from somebody else, but you can't. It's that good. And it gives the entire documentary a a more professional look. Not just like something that you whip together on on some old fashion Photoshop. software HOST: So, you can actually see yourself as a talking head in the film, set in these professional interview spaces and authentically narrated in your own voice, but without the need for a camera crew or studio. It really sounds like it closes that loop from memoir writing to film production. I'm curious, when all that footage is generated, how much control do you get over editing? Can you go in and tweak scenes if they don't quite look right? GUEST: Yes, not only can you, it's pretty much a must at this point. Um the reason is because AI doesn't always match what you have in mind. Now, we have a feature that calls that's called the suggest and you click that and automatically AI will suggest the prompt for the next scene. It'll write out the whole scene for you and that will give you a good idea of what it looks like. So when you do that, if you read it and you like it, then the image is is pretty much uh something that you're going to want to go with. Um however, if you just try to explain to AI what you want, uh most people don't do a really good job with prompting and it'll take like uh one or two times, three times maybe to get the exact image that you really have in in your mind. But the point is you will get it. And like virtually all the time, 100% of the time, you will get the image that you're you're looking for. or you're thinking of. It's just sometimes it takes patience if your prompting isn't good enough, which again, most people aren't that uh sophisticated in prompting, myself included. HOST: So, it's a fully collaborative process with the AI — you have total control over the final image, even if it takes a few rounds of prompting, and the "suggest" feature helps guide you there. That's pretty powerful, ensuring the resulting film looks exactly how you imagined it. You've built a complete pipeline: speak your story into MemoirMaker, and then feed the manuscript to MemoirMovies with one click. Does this film, for your personal memoir, replace the need to ever publish it as a book, or do both formats serve different audiences? GUEST: Yeah, they definitely both serve different audiences. I don't think that it'll ever replace a book because people do like to read. But I think that um I think that it it offers something to a completely different audience that isn't really interested in reading a book and sitting down for hours. But they will watch a yeah, an hour and a half video. HOST: That makes sense, catering to different preferences. You're co-writing your memoir with your wife right now, picking up your story from the day you met her. When that manuscript is done, is MemoirMovies the thing you actually run it through? And if so, is the version you make for your daughter the same film you'd share with the world, or are those two completely different edits of the same life? HOST: That makes sense that different formats serve different people and different audiences. Before we go, for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: You can find me at uh memoirmovies.com and also archieboy.com. HOST: Thank you, Bo. It was really interesting to hear how those two platforms connect. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon—there's plenty more we can cover. That's a wrap.