The iconic (and often-memed) fight scene from “Marriage Story” is now being used by the U.S. government to save animals.
Noah Baumbach’s Academy Award-winning 2019 film stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as a couple enduring a divorce; the pivotal climax amid their custody battle includes Driver’s character punching a wall. Both Johansson and Driver earned Oscar nominations for their respective performances.
The Wall Street Journal reported that six years after the film was released, the United States Department of Agriculture selected the audio of the scene in question to scare off wolves from killing cattle and livestock on farms across America. The process is wolf hazing, and loud music such as “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC is used to do it. Now, also “Marriage Story.”
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“Riding to the rescue are drone cowhands, whose quadcopters have thermal cameras that can reveal any wolf lurking in the darkness and bathe it in a spotlight. A loudspeaker broadcasts alarming sounds like fireworks, gunshots, and people arguing. One recording is of the fight between Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in the movie ‘Marriage Story,’” the WSJ reads.
An Oregon-based USDA district supervisor told the outlet, “I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad.” The best example of humans being bad, apparently, is Johansson and Driver yelling while in character.
IndieWire has reached out to Netflix to confirm whether the snippet was licensed by the USDA.
Johansson’s voice has been at the center of a slew of projects, including even a possible lawsuit. Johansson famously lent her voice to Spike Jonze’s “Her” to play a sentient AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later asked the actress/director to voice ChatGPT Sky; after she declined, Johansson alleged that her voice was mimicked by the company instead.
“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Johansson said in a statement. “In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity,” Johansson continued. “I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
OpenAI CEO Altman denied the claims, saying, “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”
A company statement also read: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”
