t is a chilly night in early spring, and Ste-ven Spielberg is doing something he hasmade a career of: imagining what’s out there.

The director is sitting under a small tentin a hilly farmland-like area of the SantaClarita Valley, 45 minutes north of LosAngeles, pointing with V-shaped fingers at avideo monitor he uses to view the action as ithappens. With him are his closest collaborator,

Janusz Kaminski, the cinematographer on his Oscar-winning films Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’sList, and his visual-effects supervisor, Pablo Helman.They are inspecting a replay of a just-completedscene from War of the Worlds, his new $133 millionalien invasion movie. In the shot, Dakota Fanningwaits nervously by a tree for her dad, played by TomCruise, as hysterical people rush past. Explosions andgunfire flash around her.

Spielberg calmly puffs on a Davidoff cigar. “Moresky,” he says, gesturing to the top of the frame. “Thecamera needs to come down and stop so we can seethe effects.” There is nothing out there, of course —only the vast, clear sky. But Spielberg is planningahead for his visual-effects team, who later will addthe A-10s and F-16s battling the alien attack.

Aliens have shown up in earlier Spielberg films,including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, his1977 phenomenon about the arrival of a mother shipon Earth, and five years later in E.T., the story of alonely suburban boy who befriends a child-size spacevisitor. Both immortal sci-fi classics introduced celes-tial creatures who wanted to get to know us, not oblit-erate us. They were sweetly benign, even lovable.

Yet here is Spielberg, surrounded by hundreds ofextras, several tanks and a dozen Humvee-mountedAvengers manned by real-life soldiers, putting a con-temporary spin on H.G. Wells’ 1898 best seller. Spiel-berg grew up on Wells-inspired cinema. He was bornin Cincinnati on Dec. 18, 1946, and came of age withthe ’50s sci-fi explosion that produced B pictures likeInvaders From Mars (one of his favorites). As a kid,he was particularly struck by Atomic City, and after-ward went around the house filling tubs in case a nu-

clear catastrophe contaminated the water supply.It was his father, Arnold, an electrical engineer,

who nurtured his love of science fiction. “My dad wasthe one who got me my first telescope,” he says. “Hebuilt it by hand. And he’s the one, when I first beganreading in earnest, that turned me on to AmazingStories, Analog and other periodicals that were allabout science fiction.” Spielberg wanted to make amovie that would recall the heyday of sci-fi, whenaliens were presumed sinister. “In my heart, I don’t

8 USA WEEKEND • June 17-19, 2005

“IMAGINATIONIS INFINITE”

BY CRAIGH BARBOZA

Hitmaker Steven Spielberglaunches War of the Worlds,a century-old tale retold fortoday — and designed toscare the wits out of you.

I

Cover and cover story photographs by Brad Trent for USA WEEKEND. Grooming by Helen Robertson, Celestine.

USA WEEKEND • June 17-19, 2005 9

believe that,” he tells me, “but I stepped out of char-acter to make a really scary summer movie.”

A t 58, Spielberg is still boyish, with a slightlylarger-than-normal cranium and a neatly clippedwhite beard. He has a wide, easy smile, and his

manner is surprisingly disarming. Between cameraset-ups, he sits with Kaminski, singing a cheerfulYiddish tune and joking with the crewabout needing a “non-caffeine drink.”Spielberg has never liked coffee. “Howabout a Mountain Dew?” someone offers.

“That’s nothing but caffeine,” hesnaps, with mock indignation.

“Red Bull,” says the next guy.“Maybe a Jolt,” another crewperson

says, causing a group chuckle. Spielbergsettles on a Sprite, and work resumes.

During the 85-day shoot, Spielbergroughed up his actors. They were coveredin mud and water, sometimes in frigidtemperatures. But they played just ashard as they worked. During scaryscenes, Cruise would tickle Fanning. Andoff camera, everyone acted out scenesfrom Napoleon Dyna-mite. “The scarier anddarker a film becomes,the more giggle roomyou have,” Spielbergsays. On Jaws, “whenwe weren’t homesickand throwing up overthe side of the Orca,we were laughing hys-terically at how sillyit looked to have twoboats tugging a 26-foot, non-working modelof a great white shark through the water.”

Jaws, which turns 30 this summer, is themovie that made Spielberg famous — andpeople afraid to go into the water. But it wassuch a production disaster he thought hiscareer was finished. “I had little idea I wasmaking a good movie until I put it in frontof an audience and got the happiest shockwhen they were screaming and tossing popcorn intothe air — some running for the exit,” Spielberg laughs.

Over the years, he has had his share of failures, be-ginning with 1941 and as recently as The Terminal.But when his movies work, they’re a license to printcash. The 21 films he’s directed have a total estimatedbox office of $3.2 billion, the most of any director.

Part of what has made him so successful is his flair

for storytelling. He seems to know by instinct thevisual language audiences speak. He can create char-acters that are instantly empathetic (Raiders of theLost Ark), or invest machines with personalities (the18-wheeler in Duel). Another part of his genius de-rives from his uncanny capacity to identify the zeit-geist, the spirit of the times. Few directors have beenable to tap into this vein of energy flowing through the

culture and give it form the waySpielberg has. Even Amistad,hardly a hit, is credited with fuel-ing the national debate on slav-ery reparations. Henry LouisGates Jr., the Harvard intellec-tual who worked as a consultanton that film, calls him “an almostpoetic kind of director.”

Cruise still recalls the time hewent around recruiting people ata family picnic in Kentucky to eatearly so they couldstand in line to seeJaws before it sold

out. When E.T. previewed, Cruise says,“I saved 14 seats with my sister, LeeAnne, because I wanted my whole fam-ily to see Steven Spielberg’s new movieas soon as possible.” Waiting for them toarrive, “I almost got into a fight withsome guy. He was like, ‘Where are thepeople?!’ I said, ‘They’re coming. I’ve

got tickets!’ I had to bring the usher down to verify it.It was hilarious.”

War of the Worlds opens with Cruise, a dock-worker too busy being a kid himself (he keeps theengine for his ’66 Mustang in the kitchen) to be afather. His ex-wife brings the kids for the weekend.Shortly after, aliens hurl an electromagnetic pulsethat shuts down the planet. This makes the populous

much more manageable for the aliens,who then come out of the sky and ground.“It’s more terrifying when it’s a life formof great intelligence,” Spielberg says,“and I think we emphasized how well co-ordinated these attacks are.”

Science fiction, at least the best of itskind, is a metaphor for contemporaryissues. No wonder each iteration of Warof the Worlds has arrived in a period ofpublic angst. At the start of the Cold War,audiences saw George Pal’s 1953 movie

about aliens crash-landing on Earth and thought onething: The commies are coming to get us! Fifteenyears before, as the Nazis menaced the world, OrsonWelles created a panic with his radio broadcast. “After9/11,” Spielberg says, “War of the Worlds is [again] areflection on how scared we are. This movie turnsAmerican families into refugees; it’s somethingAmerica has never experienced.”

There is another way to read the movie, one closerto H.G. Wells’ intentions. The novel was an allegoryabout the death of over-reaching British colonialism,where Wells cast the English as the invaded instead ofthe invaders. “You can read our movie several ways,”says screenwriter David Koepp. “It could be straight9/11 paranoia. Or it could be about how U.S. militaryinterventionism abroad is doomed by insurgency, justthe way an alien invasion might be.” Audiences will

have to decide for themselves.

O ne afternoon in April,I sat with Spielbergfor 70 minutes and

chatted casually about whatforms him. Spielberg is elec-tric to be around. He’s wittyand gracious, a man whothinks about many subjects.

From top: In Spielberg’s latest alienpic, with Tom Cruise, the visitorsaren’t as friendly as in CloseEncounters and E.T. His terrifying TVmovie Duel jump-started his career.

SCIENCE FICTION OFTEN IS A METAPHOR FOR CURRENT EVENTS.

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Yet, as his closefriend RichardSchickel says,“there’s a part ofhim that can plugback into the 10-year-old kid hewas.” Spielberghas an insati-able passion forvideo games (“Iplay them on theset, at home or atthe office betweenmeetings”), collectsmovie memorabil-ia (a few yearsago he bought theRosebud sled fromCitizen Kane) and says geeky thingslike “Everything about 2001 was withinthe grasp of scientific probability, exceptfor discovering the monolith.”

Later, we talk about his old friendGeorge Lucas (“My big boss man”) andmovies. Spielberg is already planninghis next three, including Lincoln, a bio-pic with Liam Neeson. “What I like di-recting above everything else are moviesabout history,” he says. “Second mostfun is science fiction. With sci-fi, theimagination is the storyteller, and aswe all know, the imagination is infinite.It stretches your thinking almost to thebreaking point, and then you haven’teven started thinking yet.”

To say Spielberg has a hyperactiveimagination is an understatement. Whenreading, he puts himself so squarely inthe story that if it starts not to work, ora character does something he doesn’tbelieve, he actually gets mad at thecharacter. He tends to see the world 24frames per second and could probablyform a movie out of the back of a cerealbox. He still reads them over breakfast.“It would be a short movie,” he quips.

Between films, Spielberg spends a lotof time with his family. He and his wife,Kate Capshaw, have seven children, whokeep him in stitches. “I have a daughterthat is so not aware she’s following inthe footsteps of Jim Carrey. She getsinto a routine with my 13-year-old son,

and I am onthe floor. Then

I’m going forthe video camerato try and cap-ture lightning ina bottle.”

By all accounts,Spielberg is thec o n s u m m a t emensch. He car-pools in his LexusSUV, is generouswith friends, andtells bedtime sto-ries. “I alwaysmake them up,”he says.

Spielberg wasan energetic, am-

bitious child wholoved an audience.

He was 12 when hebegan making amateur films. At 16, hedirected his first feature-length film,Firelight, about aliens abducting hu-mans for an extraterrestrial zoo. Forthat movie, he asked his mother for apressure cooker explosion, so she boughttwo dozen cans of cherries in heavysyrup. “He had the scene set up in thekitchen with the camera and the light-ing,” mom Leah says, “and, on cue, Ihurled the contents all over my newcabinets.” She’s chuckling, now. “I livedthere for eight years, never got thejuice out of the cabinets.” (A clip fromFirelight, which only recently was re-discovered by Spielberg’s personalarchivist, can be seen on the upcomingTCM documentary Watch the Skies!)

“I wanted Firelight to be a realmovie in theaters someday,” Spielbergsays. “But parts of it became Close En-counters and E.T. and, looking back,even War of the Worlds. So, I’ve kind ofcloned that movie three times now.”

Spielberg may be returning to oldground, but much has changed in thelast century. “We can’t go back to thatold Hollywood word I loved growing up,‘Martians,’ ” he says, then smiles. “I wasdisappointed to learn we didn’t have aclose neighbor. Happy at the same timethat [no one was] going to do anythingabout us!” W

As the head of anentertainmentempire that in-

cludes movies, TV andmerchandizing, Spiel-berg wears many hats. Infact, he collects them — the guycould probably open a museum

one day. For now, theyare scrunched up inan armoire. Onefavorite (he wore itfor about seven

years!) is from Classof ’61, his failed pilot for

ABC. Most are gifts fromfamily, friends orcivic groups he’sworked with.

MAN OF A MILLION HATS

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