By Tommy Acosta
Sedona, AZ — It took years in the making and the effort finally paid off with Sedona movie maker, producer and writer Paul Davids’s “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom,” picked up by Amazon Prime Video as a nine-episode AI series based on the exploits of a beautiful trailer trash Southern Belle who is lured into the adventure of her life by a phony Email scam telling her she had inherited millions and must travel to Africa to collect her bounty.
The AI produced movie is a saucy, sassy, sizzling and satiric parody, and a part of movie-making history because it is the world’s first TV series with all-AI characters, as no TV series with this AI visual style has ever been done before.
One might view the movie as a sort of contemporary Southern take-off on “Little Annie Fanny,” a comic that was popular in Playboy years ago.
Because of the sometimes low-brow adolescent humor and sharp word-play, the story has been described as something a contemporary Mark Twain could have come up with… on mushrooms!
The scenes were created not with a camera, not with sets and locations, but with months of computer labor using multiple AI programs utilized by Paul Davids and his partner in crime, art director and executive producer Ron James (producer with Paul Davids of “Accidental Truth – UFO Revelations”) a Los Angeles film-maker who also now lives in Sedona.
Also noted, Mrs. Hollace Davids, Davids’s wife, who is also president of The Sedona Women and is on the board of Keep Sedona Beautiful, is also the executive producer of the Scarlett series, along with Russell Metzger.
For Davids, cinema has been a lifelong adventure, an adventure he has lived with passion and a professionalism born of a deep-down commitment to cinematic excellence.
He is also quite proud and grateful to be a Sedonan, drawn to Red Rock Country by the same magic many of us locals have been.
“I grew up in Garrett Park estates, near Kensington, Maryland, he said. “When I was very young my family lived first in Arlington, Virginia and then the District of Columbia, which was a convenient location when my father became a professor of American Diplomatic History at Georgetown University. He was one of the “Founding Fathers” of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and during his career had some very famous students including Jacqueline Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
“My parents moved to Bethesda, Maryland, while I was an undergraduate at Princeton, University. I moved to Los Angeles in 1969 after graduating Princeton with a B.A. degree in Psychology. Immediately after Princeton, I was accepted as one of the first group of students at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies, which was then located at the Doheny mansion in Beverly Hills. This was quite an honor at the time, since only 18 students from around the world were accepted. I had a full Fellowship / scholarship, and I studied writing and directing and met many of my heroes of the film business, some of whom became my mentors.
“I was married in 1972, and my wife (Mrs. Hollace Davids) and I lived and worked in Los Angeles in the film business for many decades. We have now been married 53 years. She was Senior Vice-President of Special Projects at Universal Pictures (managing all the major movie premieres), and I was production coordinator of all the early “Transformers” animated shows for Marvel Productions (as well as a writer of episodes) and went on to produce and direct films for television and wrote books (and also created a large body of work as an artist).”
Initially, he purchased a home in Sedona as an investment property and had not yet made a decision to move there permanently.
“In 1989, Hollace and I purchased a 2-bedroom house in West Sedona as an investment property, which we rented out and still rent to tenants,” he said. “However, between renters we would come to Sedona for many years, and our two children experienced a great deal of Sedona during summers when they were in elementary school.
“In the 1990’s, our daughter Jordan took art classes in Sedona from accomplished water-colorist Adelle Earnshaw, and Jordan and her brother Scott were exposed to secrets of jewelry-making from then-Sedona-resident Robert Shields, the famous mime and artist. However, it wasn’t until Hollace retired from Universal in 2018 that we could even think about going to live full-time in Sedona.
“It happened in 2021 when we discovered that a magnificent West Sedona home owned by a long-time Sedona senior agent at Coldwell Banker was for sale in Thunder Mountain Ranch. We fell in love with his house, and we decided to purchase the home, which proved to be large enough for us to host well attended events and parties for The Sedona Women, Northern Arizona Health Care, Keep Sedona Beautiful and others. Our production offices are in our Sedona home, as we continue to create films and television shows from Sedona. We did keep our house in Highland Park, Los Angeles, however, and we try to return there for visits to our son’s family at least twice each year.”
After a while living in Los Angeles became too cumbersome and it was time to pull the trigger and become a Sedonan full time.
“My then 8-year old son Scott and I saw Sedona for the first time after descending the Grand Canyon and staying at Phantom Ranch there,” he said. “We passionately loved Sedona ever since our first visits in 1989.
“By the time Hollace retired from Universal Pictures in 2018, five decades of our very busy and hectic existence in Los Angeles had become sometimes wearying, as the traffic, rising prices, spreading graffiti and other difficulties of day-to-day life intensified. However, it was the opportunity to purchase a beautiful home in Sedona that clinched our decision to become Arizona “refugees” from Los Angeles. Many of our friends and contemporaries were down-sizing, but in our move to Sedona, we up-sized.
“Being surrounded by Sedona’s incomparable beauty every day, and opportunities for healthy living among some very successful and spiritually open, creative people, was a tremendous gift for our senior years. Living in Sedona, we hardly think of ourselves as seniors since we retain our health and youthful energy, and neither of us is anything close to what people usually consider being retired.
“One great pleasure for us in Sedona has been the Sedona International Film Festival. It has been a thrill to have the festival screen almost every production we have ever made at the Mary Fisher Theatre and to have our films become widely known and appreciated by Sedona residents.”
Like other successful cinema professionals, Davids’s love for the craft started at a very early age.
“I wrote an entire book, a photo-filled memoir, about what triggered my passion for cinema and how it evolved” he said. “To find the book you have only to Google the title: “Growing Up Sci-Fi in Garrett Park.” Much as Steven Spielberg dramatized his years as a childhood filmmaker in “The Fabelmans,” I was a very junior Steven Spielberg beginning in 5th grade, from the time my family fulfilled one of my dreams by buying an 8mm movie camera and projector.
“The childhood films that I created all had sci-fi themes. I was obsessed with monster movies and the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. By the time I was in junior high school, my amateur films of dinosaurs, dragons and robots were being shown by the Washington Society of Cinematographers.
“When I was in 10th grade, a major newspaper (The Washington Evening Star) did a full page about my 8mm films in a TEEN feature article called “Making Monsters Grow.” Soon afterwards, I was one of the winners of the Famous Monsters national amateur film-making contest. At that point, there was no stopping me, much as some of the adults in my life tried.
“My parents thought that I was destined to become a distinguished doctor or lawyer, and they patiently awaited the day (that never came) that I would give up my childish dreams of going to Hollywood. The “die was cast” the day that George Stevens, Jr., President of the American Film Institute, accepted me as one of only 18 students worldwide being granted Fellowships for the opening year of the AFI film school in 1969.”
His influences were widespread, mostly those who excelled in the industry.
“There were many greats in the film business who inspired me, and the irony of my “storybook life” is that I got to meet nearly all of them and actually worked with many of them,” he said. “The first one was Forrest J. Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters magazine, who “discovered me” when I was about 14 years old.
“I was a passionate fan of Ray Harryhausen, the genius pioneer of so many motion picture special effects, and he was the designer of classic monsters for films.
“I also idolized the fabulous science-fiction producer George Pal, producer of the original “War of the Worlds” and producer/director of the original “The Time Machine.” George Pal got to know me when I was a student at AFI, and he gave me the opportunity to write a treatment for “The Hobbit” for him, a few decades before Peter Jackson made his three “Hobbit” films.
“I was close to George Pal up to the day of his death in 1980, and he tried in many ways to bring me into “the business” but it did not happen then.
“I also got to know Ray Harryhausen well and visited him repeatedly in London. He was part of my film “The Sci-Fi Boys,” which NBCUniversal released to international television, which was about the pioneers of movie science-fiction and how they inspired the generations of sci-fi filmmakers who followed them. That film won the coveted Saturn Award for Best Science-Fiction Genre DVD of 1996.
“Another hero of mine was the great director William Wyler who made “Ben-Hur” and “Funny Girl” and almost all the great films with Bette Davis. I was actually employed by him for several years, working in his home watching his films to help choose clips for the night he would receive the AFI Life Achievement Award.
“I worked for Mr. Wyler’s agent, the wonderful and immortal Paul Kohner, for five years. I got to know and visit the great actor/director John Huston several times in Puerto Vallarta while I worked for Paul Kohner. (I will never forget the day I went snorkeling in Mexico, side by side with John Huston).
“Another mentor was George Seaton who met me at AFI (who wrote “The Miracle on 34th Street” and directed many films). He helped me with my AFI student film called “Examination.”
“There was actor/director Cornel Wilde, who gave me the first writing deal that got me into the Writers Guild of America, and Terence Young, director of the first James Bond film “Dr. No,” who also gave me a screenwriting deal along with Carlo Ponti, producer of “Dr. Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia.”
“There was also Stan Lee, creator of “Spiderman” and many of the Marvel Universe characters, who worked at Marvel when I was employed there.
“Lastly, I must mention George Lucas, who gave me and Hollace a break by having Lucasfilm commission us to write six of the sequels “Star Wars” novels in the 1990’s.”
Originally, the idea for his AI movie, came from a book he and a collaborator had written.
My recently completed 9-episode TV series called “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom” (which has just premiered on Amazon Prime Video) began as a humor book published in 2009 called “Scarlett May Blossom’s Diary: Ceilings I Have Seen,” he said. “I co-wrote the book as a collaboration project I took on with a very talented and funny lady who is the real inspiration for Scarlett May Blossom, but she must remain anonymous and still goes by the pseudonym Scarlett Farmer.
“The reason she remains anonymous is that she has a job with a high security clearance! The fact is, she’s the one who knew a great deal about “southern trailer-trash folks.” She wrote all of Scarlett’s dialogue and narration, and most of the dialogue for Scarlett’s mama and daddy. I wrote dialogue of the other characters – all the men in Scarlett’s life who were pursuing her, including an FBI agent and spies and secret agents. We came up with the convoluted conspiracy story together.
“The next development was when I thought of doing the production either as an audio book or as animation, and so I had my production company, Yellow Hat Productions, Inc., hire comedy actors to do all the voices. Scarlett Farmer did the voice of Scarlett May Blossom as she understood the character better than anyone else.
“I even commissioned about four minutes of cartoon animation of Scarlett May Blossom from animator Carolle-Shelley Abrams, who did cartoon illustrations for the published book.
“However, the project sat and I never completed or released the audiobook version. I had tried but had never been able to get backing for the millions of dollars it would have cost to produce the entire book as an animated film or series.
It wasn’t until the advent of commercially available AI video programs that the idea struck me in 2024 that AI could be the answer. With help from fellow producer Ron James of Sedona, who had become very adept at AI visuals and video, I realized the entire story of Scarlett May Blossom could be made as a TV series using AI visuals for all the characters.
“I was way ‘ahead of the game’ because I already had the comedy actor voices recorded. I also had 4 minutes of animation I could incorporate.
“Instead of needing a production budget of 15 to 20 million dollars, I realized the whole show could be made for tens of thousands of dollars instead. Ron James taught me all the AI programs he knew, and then we were off and running.
“I was also very enthused to do this because it had never been done before. I knew that if I wasted no time, I could essentially make TV history. I had a gigantic head-start on every other filmmaker, because I already had the book it would be based on; I had all the dialogue and narration recorded, and I had made great strides with the Metzger brothers for music the series would require, as well as some animation of Scarlett to augment it. You can see, therefore, that I became quite obsessed with the idea that I would be the first filmmaker in history to make an entire TV series using AI visuals, and that I would arrange distribution before anyone else. And the amazing thing is that I have succeeded in doing just that. The nine hours of episodes comprise about three and a half hours of TV programming.
“The first public exposure was a theatrical premiere of the first 4 episodes in Sedona at the Mary Fisher Theatre on Oct 27th. The audience howled with raucous laughs. The cackles were so loud and frequent you might have thought they were watching “The Hangover” or “Young Frankenstein.” I began to dream of success.
“As of December 30, 2024, the entire 9 episodes of Season One became available at Amazon Prime Video in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom through an online distributor (Filmhub) that handled streaming for many of my other films. I even created Spanish subtitles as an option for the Spanish-speaking audience. Perhaps we will soon have subtitles made for Japanese, French and other languages.
“I read recently that there is a Bollywood company in India that says it is making the first AI feature, and that it will be ready for release in about one year. However, here I am with “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom” and I have done this as the first TV series with all AI-characters, before anyone else has done it. Will this make it into the Guinness Book of World Records?”
The music for the movie breathes like true country compositions, capturing the spirit of Scarlett’s adventures.
“The principal music creators are the brothers Russell and Martin Metzger, whose style of country music is perfect for this project,” he said. “The Metzgers drove me in their pickup truck from Albuquerque to Nashville, where we recorded lots of music in the Kelly Wells Studio, a very famous studio there.
“I wrote lyrics with the Metzgers for two of the songs: “Scarlett May Blossom” and “Ceilings I Have Seen,” and they wrote the melodies and performed those songs in studio. Scarlett is credited with singing “Ceilings I Have Seen.” We also recorded some of the Metzgers’s pre-existing songs: “Gonna Buy Me a Bottle of Whiskey,” “The Bottom Half of Rock Bottom” and “Lazy.” They also created instrumental music they called “Robin’s Salvage” and “Hillbilly Conquistador,” and Russell created a lot of interstitial guitar music.
“Another musician known as Memphis Piano Joe provided some Boogie-Woogie piano numbers. When it came time to complete episode 8, which takes place in Africa, I licensed some fabulous African drum music from a very talented Sedona musician who is originally from South Africa: Baba Vusi Shibambo.
“Baba Vusi has put on many very popular shows of his drum music live at the Mary Fisher Theatre in Sedona. Lastly, some music from the library of musician / composer Herman Beeftink was used in the Africa sequences.”
With a plethora of cinematic creations under his belt, despite his seasoned age, he has no plans of slowing down.
“My first screenwriting credit was in 1980 on “She Dances Alone,” starring Bud Cort, Max von Sydow and Kyra Nijinsky,” he said. “I was executive producer and co-writer of the story for the Showtime movie “Roswell,” which was released to DVD as “Roswell: The UFO Coverup,” starring Kyle MacLachlan, Martin Sheen and Dwight Yoakam. I also had a cameo role as the army photographer who photographs an alien corpse during an autopsy. The TV movie was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Motion Picture for Television for 1994.
“I also wrote, produced and directed the following films: “Timothy Leary’s Dead,” “Starry Night,” “The Sci-Fi Boys,” “Jesus in India,” “The Life After Death Project” (1, 2, and 3 – the original feature documentary plus two sequels), “Before We Say Goodbye,” “Marilyn Monroe Declassified” and “Professor Hack Harddrive Hacks the Universe.”
“I usually have chosen controversial topics that had the potential to create a sort of public firestorm. That’s how subjects such as psychedelic drugs, UFO’s and aliens, the mystery of the missing years of Jesus, life after death, the miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Marilyn Monroe’s death became main topics for me.
“I knew that “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom” would also be controversial, but I did not realize the furor would extend to much more than Scarlett’s sexual morals. There is a sort of movement in the entertainment business that opposes the use of AI in films. This originated partly from the fear of loss of employment in many facets of the industry, but there has also been concern as to whether AI at some level might violate copyrights of artistic works created at previous times for other purposes.
“As a result, there have been some vitriolic attacks on “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom” solely on the basis of its exclusive use of AI visuals. One critic absurdly said that this “is not much a TV series as a crime committed in broad daylight.” I am quite baffled at that quote, which borders on libel, especially since the crime is never defined. That critic even accused anyone who enjoys this series as being “part of the problem” in the entertainment industry today and warned ‘we’ll be watching you’.
“Is it a crime to make history by showing how a new technology can be used to accomplish a production that probably never could have happened any other way? By showing that using new technology, a project that would have cost many millions can now be accomplished for a fraction of that cost? Is it a crime to make a series that brings lots of laughter to many people, by whatever the means? I am reminded of the furor that the coming of sound to movies caused – the upheaval to the world of the silent film. I am reminded that when Disney produced “Snow White” the world mocked him for thinking that audiences would have the patience to sit for 90 minutes through an animated cartoon.
“I am reminded of the original skepticism about CGI, and how Steven Spielberg’s trailblazing “Jurassic Park” upset all those who were wedded to the world of what is called practical effects, where everything is physically built for movie sets rather than created in a computer.
“I am also reminded that today films with bloated budgets of 150 million dollars have hundreds or even thousands of credited digital effects artists, whereas in the 1950’s and 1960’s one man – Ray Harryhausen – was able to do all the special effects alone, all by himself in a darkened studio, using the technique of stop-motion animation.
“Today Ray Harryhausen’s films may not be the extraordinarily complex eye-candy we have become accustomed to, however as movies that were the cutting edge in their era, the films of Ray Harryhausen are outstanding classics that still entertain audiences today.
“Times bring changes and advancements, and the naysayers about AI cannot and will not stop the march to new methods of cinema and TV. There are some obvious limitations to AI in film today, and critics will note those limitations in “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom.”
AI is not best suited to all sorts of films. I cannot imagine stories such as Clint Eastwood’s excellent “Juror Number Two” or “The Conclave” being attempted with AI characters. Nevertheless, my comedy series with AI characters, with a sexually-themed story with almost cartoon-like qualities, uses AI to great advantage, and it has accomplished something never attempted before – and succeeded.
“It’s a nice thing to have done after having reached an age where most filmmakers have already retired. I will soon be 78 years old. Well, I can take solace in the fact that Clint Eastwood has many years on me and look at what he’s been doing lately!”
No doubt the world of movies has been made a better place thanks to the talents of Paul Davids and his contemporaries.
Take the time to see his “Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May” and have some AI fun as we step into the future of movie making at a whole new level.
To purchase “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May,” simply click HERE.
Photos above are stills of characters from “The Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom.”
To see more of Paul Davids’s works and creations, click HERE.
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