Set Visit
In 1898 a well known author by the name of H.G. Wells wrote a book that over a century later would still be the influential source of material for other science fiction writers and filmmakers. The War of the Worlds took its readers not into the vastness of outer space, but right here on our own planet, fighting off an alien invasion that seemed impossible for us to win.
In
1952 War of the Worlds was released as a major motion picture. While straying
from the original source material, it was still the benchmark for future alien
invasion movies to try and live up to. Over fifty years later, the man who
brought us Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
will show the world that he hasn’t forgotten what brought him to the dance.
Teaming up again with Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg is going back to the
original book as his inspiration in bringing the classic tale of man vs. war
machine for this and future generations to enjoy.
It was day 58 out of a 72 day shoot that I trekked up to
Upon
arrival we all gathered into a small bed & breakfast called Rancho Temescal
which was just across the street from where shooting was taking place. If you
were to open up an issue of Country Living magazine, I’m pretty sure this place
would be featured somewhere within its pages. After gorging myself
on cheese squares and unknown crackers with corn on them, we then walked over
to the set which was enormous and built to look like
The scene being shot tonight involved some of the 700 or so extras that were wandering around. All of them dressed like they had thrown together whatever warm clothes they could find. Most of them were carrying luggage and umbrellas, with some holding signs that had their loved ones names written on them. Kids, dogs, men and women of all ages and races were getting ready for the director to yell “Action!” The cranes I had mentioned earlier were brought to life as walls of rain came pouring out of the attached sprinklers drenching everyone below. Once the camera started rolling, the extras were in the middle of the street, holding umbrellas and lanterns while grabbing onto and shaking a blue Plymouth Caravan that was being driven into town by Tom Cruise with Dakota Fanning in the backseat.
According
to one extra I had spoken with the people were desperately trying to get Tom
Cruise’s character to stop and help them, since they hadn’t seen a working car
in about four or five days and were trying to get away from the alien invasion
that had destroyed their homes. Once “Cut!” was yelled, the extras went back to
their starting points and Tom Cruise, obviously using his Days of Thunder
experience, backed the van up while trying not to run over anyone who wasn’t
paying attention. It’s amazing to watch the amount of teamwork and coordination
between the studio hands trying to make sure everyone was set before each
scene. This was done about three or four times before we finally headed back to
Rancho Temescal to talk with Producer Kathleen
Kennedy and Director Steven Spielberg.
Little did we know that we’d also have a special guest joining us as Tom Cruise himself walked into the room right before Spielberg did. We were treated to some great tidbits from Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy as to what we can expect from this blockbuster feature. But as you’ll read, a lot of things about the film we’ll have to just leave to our imaginations until its release…
Cruise: Hey you all. Thanks for coming out
here. This is wild, isn't it? I have never done this while shooting. Have you
ever done this?
Spielberg: Never. Ever.
Cruise: Yeah, we've never done this. No, in
the middle of shooting to do this, never.
Spielberg: Everybody shoots the movie, then
we do it.
Cruise: I never talk about it until it's done really. I don't
answer any questions. We're kind of doing everything different on this one,
aren't we.
The story's been
told so many times. Why this movie and why now?
Spielberg: Well, I would have made this, if
I could have, I would have begun this movie 12 years ago. It's not that I
suddenly had an interest in this 12 years ago, but I
bought, at an auction, I bought the last surviving War of the Worlds
radio script that had not been confiscated by the police department. Because
when they raided the Mercury Theater and they took and destroyed every single
radio play, the only copy that survived was at Howard Koch's house, because you
know Howard Koch wrote it, with Orson Welles. And
Howard Koch had been on a three day, it was like a three day crash, you know,
schedule to get it ready for air. And he just crashed, himself, and went to
sleep and was not at the theater when his play was performed on the radio. And
when the world panicked and began, you know, racing away from
So I bought, I purchased that radio show, and I had a chance to read it and it
was amazing because it was a real, I guess you could say, a distillation of the
novel, which I had read several times, starting in college, the first time I
ever read it in 1966, was probably the first time I read, '67; And so 12 years
ago I had an idea, after I bought the radio show, I said, 'Oh man, this would
make an amazing movie. And then a bunch of kind of, I call it, you know, the
scavenger films came out that sort of picked the bones of H.G. Wells over the
years, and when Independence Day came out, I said, 'Well, maybe I won't
make it.' Because they kind of picked the bones of that, you know. They didn't
pick it clean, and they picked different bones than I would have chosen to pick
from the original H.G. Wells book, but that kinda put
me off for a while.
And then, I guess I got interested in it again just in the course of trying to
find something to do with Tom. We had been on our own crash course to find a
movie to make together after we had such a great time doing Minority Report.
I mean, you know, the old
Cruise: Actually, I came by. You were doing
Spielberg: I was doing Catch Me If You Can, right...
Cruise: And we were sitting back in a car and you said, 'Okay,
here's three...
Spielberg: Three ideas for movies.
Cruise: Three ideas. And I went...
Spielberg: I pitched them out.
Cruise: And I went, 'Oh my God, War of the Worlds,
absolutely.' That day it was done.
What were the other two?
Spielberg: Exactly. Oh the other two?
Cruise: Not worth talking about. (Laughs)
Spielberg: One was a Western.
Cruise: Which hopefully one day, we will do together.
This completes your alien trilogy. The first two were nice aliens and
these were mean ones. What does that say about your filmmaking and does it fit
the time now?
Spielberg: No no.
I'm just an equal opportunity director, you know? You know, I gave the
benevolent aliens a couple of shots, and now I'm going to try my hand at the
worst kind. (Laughs) You know, the kind that's just
bent on ending civilization as we know it and beginning their own if you read
the original book. You know, they reap and sow, and so I really have great
respect for the book, but not to the extent that I would set the movie back in
1898. I was not going to do a Victorian science fiction movie.
There's been others out there very successful and others maybe less successful,
but we've seen the sci-fi Victorian period done before, we've all seen the
contemporary sci-fi film done before. I feel more at home today, in today's
world. And I think, in the shadow of 9/11, there is a little relevance with how
we are all so unsettled in our feelings about our collective futures. And
that's why I think, when I reconsidered War of the Worlds, post 9/11, it
began to make more sense to me, that it could be a tremendous emotional story
as well as very entertaining one, and have some kind of current relevance.
Are you shooting this film differently because
of the time constraints?
Spielberg: No. Not at all.
Big scenes first?
Spielberg: Okay, yes. That's true. We shot many of the big
effect sequences first so ILM could get a jump on their shot list...
Cruise: We probably would have had to do that anyway, because
the set that we shot in...
Spielberg:
Cruise: Was all the big effect scenes, and that would be
weather prohibitive shooting in February...
Spielberg: We didn't want snow, because you can't be
consistent with snow. You can get a great day and it's beautiful, and it's
snowing, and then three days later it's gone. And then it's hundreds of
thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars, a combination of digital
effects and physical effects, to snow in, you know, 50 acres of city streets
and farmland. So it was good that we shot it when we did, but we did front load
the movie with effect shots so ILM could have a head start and we could make
our June 29th release date. There's 400 digital shots
in the movie, but I'm not rushing it. This is my longest schedule in about 12
years, so in that sense, I'm not like, this isn't a cram course for War of
the Worlds, we're really taking our time with this.
Cruise: Nobody else could have, you know, I mean literally
when we decided that was it, we're gonna go, Steven and I have worked together,
Steven makes movies, they're not rushed, but he just is fast. But it's not, see being accurate and telling a story, you know, it's
just he works at a different pace that, it doesn't compromise story or
character at all. Some people think, well, I gotta take a lot of time to figure
this out. No, we show up on the set and he's just deadly accurate in his
choices and direction. And it's even more fun as an actor working with him on
this one, because we are friends for many years, and just to be this, we had a shorthand
on the first one and it's even a shorter shorthand, you know, so in working
together; I've worked with David Koepp before, he's worked with Koepp before,
the crew, it really doesn't feel like we're rushing the film and, I remember on
Minority Report, massive action scenes that he can adjust and fix and
change the whole thing, if he finds an idea, on the spot. And it was the same
thing when we were shooting, we shot a sequence in
Spielberg: It is fun, it really is fun working with Tom and
working with this entire cast, but if you know my movies, you know that I'm
more interested in concept shots and money shots than I am in tons of MTV
coverage, which certainly takes a lot of time. But if I can put something on
the screen that is sustained where you get to study it and you get to say, 'How
did they do that?' That's happening before my eyes and the shot's not over yet,
it's still going and it's still going and my God, it's an effects shot and it's
lasting seemingly forever. I enjoy that more than creating illusion with
sixteen different camera angles, where no shot lasts longer than six seconds on
the screen. To pull a rabbit out of a hat, because you are really a smart
audience and you're in the fastest media, the fastest growing new media today
and you know the difference between slight of hand visually and the real thing.
I think what makes War of the Worlds, at least the version that we're
making, really exciting, is you get to really see what's happening. There's not a lot of visual tricks. We tell it like it is,
we shot it to you, and we put you inside the experience.
Cruise: And it's such a strong story, the characters...
Spielberg: That's great. Let me mention, that's great you say
it, because this wouldn't have happened this fast if it hadn't been for David
Koepp. You know, we go through the whole development process all the time in
making movies, and sometimes you really are intent on making a picture, you
know, like I was with Indy 4, in which case my producer didn't like the
script as much as I did, but in the sense of, you know, my intention was to
make Indy 4 ago and it didn't work out. I'm hoping to make it a year and
a half from now, maybe less. But the idea is, you gotta have the screenplay,
and David Koepp, had he not delivered on paper, we
would still be in development on War of the Worlds.
Cruise: It was the best birthday gift I got...
Spielberg: It was, it was on your
birthday.
Cruise: He read it first, he goes, 'I'm going to send it to
you,' and I was jumping up and down reading it. First draft, you go, 'This guy,
it's just so accurate.'
What did attract you to it, Tom?
Cruise: The story? The same things. I
mean, for me, War of the Worlds was always a book that I really enjoyed
and I felt that the story could be relevant, that the opportunity for
character, it's, all the elements are exciting. Obviously to work with my
friend again...
Spielberg: And you're a dad in this...
Cruise: Yeah, I'm playing a father in this, you know. How much
of the story am I allowed to give away? (Laughs) All of it! You know, to play a
father, the things that are very important to me in my life. It's the biggest,
smallest movie that we've made.
Spielberg: I agree, that's very accurate.
Cruise: It's, as an actor very challenging...
Spielberg: When I first saw Lawrence of Arabia, I thought that
was the biggest smallest movie I'd ever seen. It has the most intimate,
sensitive, personal, up-close story, and yet it was told against some of the
greatest sneaks we'd ever beheld in 70 mm. In a sense - I'm not comparing our
movie to that movie, because I've never made a movie as good as
Are you shooting this on widescreen?
Spielberg: No - 1.85.
What's going to be new and what's going to be an homage?
Spielberg: They're going to have to see it and figure it out
themselves.
Cruise: They're going to have to experience it.
Spielberg: It's nothing you can really describe. The whole
thing is very experiential. The point of view is very personal - everybody, I
think, in the world will be able to relate to the point of view, because it's
about a family trying to survive and stay together, and they're surrounded by
the most epically horrendous events you could possibly imagine.
Although the George Pal version is considered a
classic, a lot of people today are bothered by the "God Saved Us" ending. What have you thought about in terms of
your own version of the ending?
Spielberg: We have our own version of the ending that neither
strays nor mimics the original book. So I think we've hit a very satisfying
compromise.
How dark did you want to get?
Spielberg: It doesn't have the...
Cruise: Gore
Spielberg: ...the sense of blithe adventure of Independence
Day. It's not a wonderful kind of gung-ho...it's not
Starship Troopers and it's certainly not Independence Day, you know? We take it
much more seriously than that. The film is ultra-realistic, as ultra-realistic
as I've ever attempted to make a movie, in terms of its documentary style. But
at the same time, it's full of the kind of
Cruise: very original
Spielberg: - approach to the material.
Cruise: Really exciting. I like stories. I like adventure
stories; I like stories that will take you somewhere personally, but also will
entertain you. It is-
Spielberg: This is funny, too. There are parts of it that are
very funny.
Cruise: I like movies, no matter how dark they are, I'm always
looking for humor and character, because I think when I hit those moments, it's
like moments that affect me, because I find families and life to be quite
funny. Even though I've always had a life that...when I was growing up, things
were really tough but we always laughed. There's always things
that you find, the darkest moment, humor. And I think that when I look at
Steven's movies - you look at Close Encounters, you look at Jaws - that kind of
character, it just releases...I love a filmmaker when he does that, because I
can identify with it. I relate to it. And they're not pushing it so far that I
lose an emotional connection with the film.
Spielberg: I felt that way about Jaws. When I made Jaws, I
felt that if I didn't create the humor, the audience would find inappropriate places
to laugh. And I felt the same with this picture. We've created a humor, but the
humor comes out of the natural insanity of this family that's simply on an
odyssey for survival-
Cruise: Now, maybe some people - here's the thing: maybe we're
the only ones who think that it's funny. (laughs quite
loudly) There is those moments on the set where you're
going, "Maybe we are the only ones who are laughing at this moment."
And that's ok. We'll always know.
Super Bowl ad - Yankees fan lives and Red Sox
fan dies.
Spielberg: There's a lot of little
moments throughout the film just like that one.
Are you a Yankees fan in real life?
Cruise: Yes, of course I am.
Spielberg: I'm a
Cruise: Yeah, of course I'm a Yankees fan.
Spielberg: But it's very contemporary, the film. It's very
much today's news, I'm hoping.
Steven, are you going to have a small part in
the movie?
Spielberg: No. Me? (laughter ensues)
Well, then it would be really funny. Oh my God, no.
How much violence will be shown and how much
left to the imagination?
Spielberg: Oh, we absolutely show the aliens. Sure.
And the violence?
Spielberg: There's a lot of violence in the movie, but it'll
be PG-13. It's not an R-rated film; it's PG-13, but there's a lot of violence.
Are the machines tripods?
Spielberg: Yes.
Aliens practical or CG?
Spielberg: That's the only secret I'm going to give you,
because you know what?
Cruise: I was shocked that you said that!
Spielberg: I know.
Cruise: I was shocked. I went, "He just said that!"
Spielberg: I know.
Cruise: You and I had a conversation. You said, "Don't
say anything (inaudible). Are you going to say anything to anyone? No, but you
tell me if you're going to say anything to anyone. I'll tell you if I'm going
to say something to someone."
Spielberg: You know what? We have so many surprises in this
movie that that is just assumed. I've read on the internet that everybody
assumes there'll be tripods anyway. (Sounds like: "There's not one
message") that assumes we'll be doing George Pal's boomerangs with the
green lights on both wingtips, you know? There's not been one mention that
maybe there'll be flying saucers. Absolutely I wouldn't do that, because that's
one of my homages, certainly my respect to the
forward-thinking H.G. Wells.
Tom, what can you tell us about your character?
Cruise: He's a Yankees fan. (laughter)
He's a father. (To S) What can I say here?
Is he a mechanic?
Cruise: Yeah. He's a mechanic. He's a dockworker; he's a
mechanic.
Spielberg: He works with the...what was it called?
Cruise: Cranes. These big cranes. These huge, giant cranes.
Spielberg: They move the cargo containers off the ships and
into the trucks.
In the Pal film he was a scientist.
Spielberg: Gene Berry was the scientist.
Cruise: Yeah, no.
Spielberg: But not really in the book. We don't go back to the
Pal film - we have some obvious homages to the Pal
film that I think the audience is gonna love, but not many.
Cruise: The people who know the Pal film, they'll appreciate
some of the moments.
Spielberg: But we really didn't go back to the Pal film. One
of the great things that the Pal film did do was, it
did create, before it's time, in 1953, a tremendous sense of dread. A tremendous sense of tension and dread. Contemporary
dread. And I don't think a science fiction movie had ever done that
before, because I believe that was before the Day the Earth Stood Still.
No, it was just after.
Spielberg: Was it just afterwards? But it really made me feel
that this event was actually happening. When you look at it today and you
measure it against everything that just came before, everything in contemporary
science fiction that came before, sure there are things that are corny - you
know, when they walk toward the cylinder holding the cross and there's three
cultures; there's Irish, there's Latino and...(laughter).
It's a different mind-set then.
Welcome to
Spielberg: Welcome to
Tom, are you still doing Ironman?
Cruise: It's not happening. Not with me, no.
Why?
Cruise: I don't know. It just...they came to me at a certain
point and...when I do something, I wanna
do it right. If I commit to something, it has to be done in a way that I know
it's gonna be something special. And as it was lining up, it just didn't feel
to me like it was gonna work. I need to be able to make decisions and make the
film as great as it can be, and it just didn't go down that road that way. It
was two years before we decided to make this. There's a commitment. Obviously,
I trust Steven - he is the greatest storyteller, the most prolific storyteller,
cinema has ever known. So working with him, there's a trust and an excitement
just in that. What is Steven gonna do with that? And I want that with all my
films. I've never just made a movie to make a movie. I've always made it
because I was really interested in the story. I wanted to make that kind of
picture and see what it would take. And it was an adventure for me. And for
that it just wasn't panning out, so far. As of yet.
Transformers?
Spielberg: It's happening. We'll announce the director in
three weeks, three or four weeks.
We now had the chance to speak with Kathleen Kennedy. A woman who’s name is almost always right next to Spielberg’s in the opening credits of his films.
You managed to miss the
floods huh?
Kennedy: Actually we've had knock on
wood, such amazing luck with the weather cause we were back East and we though
winter could approach us at any moment. Then we got back here and we had mostly
interiors when the rain hit. It was meant to be, the movie was meant to be.
Can you talk about the challenge of starting
about a movie in November that's coming out in July with big movie stars and
visual FX shots?
Kennedy: I don't think there is any
way we could have done this without having Steven as a director. He's so clear, we've been using "pre-vis"
extensively on this in a way that I think it's a tool that he uses as
effectively as anybody I've ever seen use it. It's really been a fantastic
communication tool. I also feel that we have the unique situation that almost
everybody- and I've been making movies with Steven for 25 years and there's a
handful in excess of 15020 years involved in this movie- so that's another key
component.
What's pre-vis?
Kennedy: We did a very down and
dirty "pre-vis" on '
For example we went out in August we scouted all the locations of the movie and
scanned everything into the computer. Then we actually built the sequences
around the actual locations we were going to shoot into. So if there was a
building on one end of the street and Steven knew he was going to stage a key
action moment around that building we can see exactly what we were going to
actually need to either rebuild or add or destroy or whatever was necessary for
the scene. So it's a really really valuable tool now
used in filmmaking.
As I brought up before it's so important to have someone like Steven because a
lot of people allow the artist to go off and do their own version based on the
script without minute to minute input from the director. Steven literally lived
in the same office with the guys who were creating this on the computer. He
would stand there over their should and say, "No no
I want a 35mm on this, I want the camera down here," it would be very
similar to what he would do on the location. It's an extremely accurate
representation of what he is shooting.
Is this latest treatment of extraterrestrial
life by Spielberg- is it pure imagination or does it come from science or
theory in any way?
Kennedy: First it comes from HG
Wells. He wrote an extraordinary story in 1887 that has aspects today that are
amazingly relevant, so we have to give him a tremendous amount of credit.
Clearly staging the action sequences - yes Steven is making that up, but so
much of the story was inspired by what was in the book. Almost the entire
cellar sequence for instance is right out of HG Wells.
So what's relevant to today?
Kennedy: Wells write the story ads a
reaction against British imperialism and colonialism and the whole superpower
issue going on in politics today, there is a kind of relevancy to what he was
reacting to. This is similar to what people around the world are reacting to
today, not to suggest that we're doing a political movie in any way. But it does
give a kind of subtext, what is also interesting about Wells is that the story
had a very strong personal point a view and that's something that Steven and
David kept immediately sending on to bring into this contemporary version.
You've got a real sense of this man and his family and who he was and what he
was fighting for and how he was trying to protect his family and survive.
That's all inherent in the structure of HG Wells' story. That's also what is
also unique about a movie like this is that it's not designed to be just a
special FX film, it's really much more about the humanity and people in the
story and the FX is in many ways this gigantic backdrop. But the story that's
compelling is watching what is happening to this family.
How have you seen that Steven has changed from
ET to people being killed by aliens?
Kennedy: I don't know if that's to
suggest that Steven has changed. This is a movie that he knew about a story
that he knew about from when he was in college. So before he even became a
filmmaker this sort of was the epitomized as the best sci-fi story out there.
So that's what draws him to this. Does the world today impact the way he might
be think about this story? Yeah I think it probably does. ET was ground in a
kind of innocence that doesn't necessarily exist as it did then today. Steven
is still an everyman making movies. I think that he views the world in much the
way we all do, he has the unique ability to translate that into storytelling
and to big mass appeal movies. I think that the heart of his filmmaking and
heart of his storytelling he is always influenced by the subtext of what's
going on in the world.
You just spoke about all the things that make
Wells story relevant after 107 years. What do you guys bring to the table to
make this similarly ageless 107 years from now?
Kennedy: I think that what we're
doing is trying to ground it in what's familiar right now. I know that one of
the images that Steven was particularly attracted to was that for instance
there has never really been an attack on American soil. There's never been a
war certainly this generation can relate to- seeing refugees and people
displaced is imagery that we're not familiar with in this country and he's
going right at the heart of that and trying to take a lot of the imagery that were
seeing today in the world and applying it to this story- and granted a big fun
scary movie. But at the heart of it, it's grounded in the reality of that
familiar imagery and hopefully you'll come away from this movie scared and
feeling like you saw a big summer movie but at the same time making you think.
I think that's how he's been so successful as a
filmmaker, being able to do something that isn't just empty entertainment but
it actually has substance to it.
Do you guys use the black smoke from the novel?
Kennedy: We didn't really stress
that as an element, the tri-pods the red weed- that's been the
predominate iconic imagery. We're going with the red weed...
Practical and CG or all CG?
Kennedy: It's predominately CG. CG
is getting so good today that the argument we made years ago what we did in
'Jurassic' is we build a lot of things for reference, lighting reference, that
kind of thing- but its just not practical financially anymore to try and do
both anymore.
Same for the weaponry?
Kennedy: No, were trying to build as
much as we can. It's mainly the tri-pods that are CG.
What about the superbowl
ad, where the bridge explodes, will something be added later on?
Kennedy: Well I don't know (laugh).
We are trying to be very true to the story. We are trying to do it in a very
realistic way if that makes sense.
How important was it for you to get someone
from the '53 movie? You already have Ann Robinson?
Kennedy: Gene Barry is in this too.
We thought it was important to have an [homage] of the original. The
interesting thing is that this movie is in no way trying to be a remake of the
'50s movie it really is much more inspired by the HG Wells. We thought for the
moviegoers what was just a nice homage within our movie.
They don't have a huge role, but they'll be obvious.
You destroying
Kennedy: No it's all East coast.
Will you be destroying your writer?
Kennedy: No we tried to talk David
into a scene where he gets taken by a tentacle- but no [laughs].
Are these aliens recognizable as aliens or are
they reinvented in a way we've never seen before?
Kennedy: I think they've been
reinvented, but they're still inherently inspired by what Wells describes.
Well he had octopuses?
Kennedy: No they're not octopuses.
Are they Martians?
Kennedy: No they're not Martians.
The feeling was that we know so much about Mars now that doesn't really fall
into the realm of realistic expectations.
How realistic is this?
Kennedy: It's always interesting
when you try to arrive an attention and POV and try and get everybody on the
same page visually that's going to make the movie. We
talked a lot about 'Private Ryan' and for instance the reality of Private Ryan,
the feeling of being the mist of a real event. Essentially we're bringing the
fantasy element of aliens but were grounding it in a very realistic theory. It
has a look, I have to say, this movie looks like nothing you've ever seen. The
combination of the two is quite interesting. It really does have that kind of
realistic feeling of 'Private Ryan.' It's not going to look like 'Ryan' it has
its own look, but we are trying to do a lot of things to give it a very
visceral feeling.
You said that CG has come a long way, and 400
FX shots in that amount of time, is ILM working a massive shift?
Kennedy: We actually organized the
schedule so that the bulk of their work was up front so that we turned over
almost 125 shots before X-mas... We haven't
eliminated green screen, but augmenting things is much easier now and looks
much more realistic. Again it still goes to that it's still art and you have to
have people who are really talented at recognizing how the movie is going to
look and matching lighting and coming up with really clever ideas, it's like
anything- not everybody can create FX shots.
What's going on with Talisman? Is there a
director attached?
Kennedy: I wish there was. Well
eventually get around to doing that. We love that story.
How long?
Kennedy: We couldn't speculate
because its all about finding the right person.
How about
Kennedy: We're going to see a script
in about a month.
Who's the screenwriter?
Kennedy: Jeff Nathanson
Will Sean Connery be
back?
Kennedy: Until I read the script I
won't really know.
What is it like watching Tom and Steve
together?
Kennedy: They're great. They haven't
gone through the Minority Report experience. There's a real seamlessness to how
they approach everything and they have such phenomenal trust both ways that
they love working together and everything is a collaborative experience.
Tom has great ideas; they bounce things off one and another- every scene just
gets better. They're quite something to watch, Steven described something the
other day that I hadn't thought about it quite this way but he's absolutely
right, which is we sit around in this kind of hurry up and wait scenario and a
lot of levity and we all have a lot of fun and laugh a lot, and then the minute
we start to zero on what the scene is we're about to shoot, everyone gets
extremely serious and extremely intense for that moment that is captured on
film- and then is totally relaxed again.
That's the beauty of watching Steven and Tom- that razor sharp intensity on every
little detail on what's going on in that moment that we're trying to capture it
pretty amazing. They don't let anything fall through the cracks and
everything's discussed and everything's thought through and anticipated. Were
always very very clear as to exactly where we are
going with the storytelling. That's rare with an actor where it's not just
about their performance but it's a constant discussion about the whole movie.
What's the status on Benjamin Button. Is it dead?
Kennedy: No, Fincher. I was just on
the phone with everybody today on that. It looks like it may go forward this
summer.
So it remains to be seen whether or not the humans win in this new science fiction spectacular. But one thing may be certain, this summer, the war of the box office may belong to Steven Spielberg.
WAR OF THE WORLDS INVADES THEATERS JUNE 29TH!