The Big Picture - The Steven Spielberg Conversation

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Sean is joined by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg for an extensive conversation about his illustrious career; what excited him about making his upcoming science fiction film, ‘Disclosure Day’; and how he feels about the current state of the industry (6:20). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Steven Spielberg Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan®️. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there®️. Drivers wanted. Learn more at https://vw.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Steven Spielberg. On today's episode, I'm thrilled to share with you a conversation I had with the legendary filmmaker at the South by Southwest Film Festival last week, which was Spielberg's first big interview ahead of the release of his new movie Disclosure Day, which opens June 12th. We talked about his six-decade-long career, several of his films, his fascination with science fiction, his thoughts on the possibility of alien life, the future of movie-going, the big missing piece from his filmography, and so much more. needless to say, this was a personal thrill and career highlight as someone who has revered Spielberg's work for as long as I've been a conscious moviegoer. We'll share that conversation as well as some quick movie news updates right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by State Farm.

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This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day to day, but our favorite films, with stories that make us change the way we think, that weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the world pass by. This is your sign that you shouldn't either. From us, from VW, and the other drivers out there, grab the wheel. Do what you love, even if it means taking the road less traveled. Learn more at VW.com.

Okay, forgive me for delaying the Spielberg chat just a little longer, but I have some news. We're back. Project Hail Mary's $80.6 million domestic box office, $140.9 million worldwide came in over the weekend. It's the biggest non-franchise opening since Oppenheimer's 82.5 million in 2023, which of course was paired with Barbie. For context, this is bigger than Alfonso Cuaron's gravity, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar,

The Martian, which also comes from novelist Andy Weir and director Ridley Scott, even if you ingest for inflation for these movies. So this movie opened like basically a mid-tier MCU movie. And before that, you have to go back to Avatar, I Am Legend, and Jordan Peel's us to find films that even if based on source material are still relatively new to modern audiences. It got an A from Cinema Score, it's got a 77 on Metacritic. This is a big, fat, original-ish hit.

And why did this happen? Well, I've been talking about the familiar but new mantra for pretty much three years now, and this is something the movie audiences are really looking for. It's a funny coincidence that this is our Stephen Spielberg conversation episode, since the film openly invites comparisons to close encounters of the third kind, and ET, among other sci-fi chestnuts. Audiences want events and a ride, but that doesn't always mean superheroes and giant robots, of course.

So premium large formats and IMAX together, they generated over 55% of the film's total US revenue. And that's something that is happening more and more at the box office this year. Four $100 million movies thus far this year, Hoppers, Goat, which I just saw, which was quite charming, Project Hail Mary and Scream 7. Only one of those movies is a sequel, the not very good Scream 7.

Plus, there's been amazing carryover success this year for The House Made. I can't remember the last time this was happening. It does feel like something is happening. And then when you look forward to the rest of the year, we've still got The Odyssey, we've got Digger, we've got Hext, we've got Robert Eggers' as Werewolf, also originalish movies, not necessarily original, but sort of original, that audiences seem to be excited for. And most pertinely to this episode, we do still have Disclosure Day coming.

So this is a huge win for Amazon MGM, which is fully attempting now, I think, to fill the gap, they will be left by Warner Brothers and the Paramount Merger. They're trying to be a full-service movie studio that theatrically releases 10 to 12 movies per year. And after the kind of rocky start of Mercy and Crime 101 in January and February, they've got the sheep detectives,

Is God Is, Masters of the Universe, David Leeches had a rob a bank, the Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity. They've got Peter Farrely's I play Rocky, which is a docu drama about the making of Rocky. And then their big awards play this year is Luca Guadino's Artificial, the Sam Altman Open AI,

biopic starring Andrew Garfield. Then there's also a Nick Stoller comedy starring Will Ferrell and a bunch of other movies in the works from the studio and Amazon is starting to look like maybe a mid-2010s, maybe even mid-OO's legacy movie studio and the kinds of movies that they're making.

It's pretty cool. This is even bigger for Ryan Gosling. This movie is bigger than the Fall Guy, bigger than Blade Runner 2049. It almost instantly becomes one of his signature roles alongside the notebook, La La Land, Drive, Barbie, crazy stupid love. And now he has entered a very rare atmosphere.

He is a star who can open a rom-com, a musical, a pure romance, a drama, an action comedy, science fiction. This is a generational star. They're very, very rare. He said recently that he's focused on making warmer movies, more fun movies while he's raising his kids. So that has created this stretch of Barbie the Fall Guy, Project Hail Mary. Next spring comes Star Wars Starfighter. I have some doubts about that movie, but if he's going through, for a crowd pleasing, I suspect it will be.

We've rarely seen Astargo this pop without shattering his critical bona fides in the process. I thought of Will Smith. There's not very many people you could put up there with where Gosling is going at the moment. And we can look at First Man, his great film with Damien Chazel, is kind of a turning point. It was a really special movie,

but he took a four-year break after that film. He emerged after it with the Netflix movie The Grey Man, which was a total dud and a miscalculation. But since then, he seems to really be putting the pieces together in a way that is unusual for a guy in his 40s. So keep watching Gosling. That guy might have something.

It's a special time for movie fans. Speaking of, without further ado, let's talk to the master of movies. Let's go to my conversation with Steven Spielberg. Please help me give it up for the one, the only Steven Spielberg. Hello, awesome Austin. Hi, Sean. I'm so excited to speak with you today. I thought we could start with your youth.

Let's go all the way back, okay? Do you remember the first time you saw a movie or a piece of media that made you think about a world beyond our own? Something, another life force, another, something else. There's a lot of smart-ass answers I could give to that question right now, but I'm not going to go there. Well, look, when I was really little, I had, you know, I had an abundance of fears. and the fears actually came from my imagination. I didn't realize until later that the abundance of fear was because I had this, you know, kind of like overdose over abundance of imagination.

So whenever I saw something, it was, I would extrapolate and make it much worse than it actually was. So my first experience in the world of, like you could just say fantasy or, science fiction, not so much science fiction, more fantasy. The films I grew up with as a little kid that my parents felt it was safe to take me to a Walt Disney film. When it was, that was the least safe thing they could have done, you know, to take me to see Fantasia. And it's ninth re-release when I was only about seven years old was a big mistake. And because that's where the imagination kind of gets the best of me because it was, I didn't, I saw Fantasia and there was a sequence called the Night on Bald Mountain sequence and it just

destroyed me for the next year. I couldn't sleep. It was the scariest thing I ever seen. But what I wanted to do, my impulse was when something scares me, I want to create some kind of talisman to protect myself. So I would do things to my sisters to scare them. And so if somebody scares me, I'm going to turn around and scare Ansu and Nancy. And that's kind of how the whole thing started with me wanting to find some kind of an outlet to be able to exorcise the demons of fear and put it on someone else, right?

Take it out of me and put it on someone else. And that's sort of where the whole movie thing started for me. I've heard you say that your parents didn't show you a lot of films and you weren't allowed to watch a lot of television as a young person. Not TV. We were only allowed to watch. I remember I grew up with the Jackie Gould. Leeson Show with Cesar Show of Shows with Milton Burrell. That's sort of what I grew up watching. All the cool things I wanted to watch, like the old Jack Webb Dragnet series or M Squad, I wasn't

allowed to watch. But they also very carefully sent to the kind of movies I was allowed to see as well. And sometimes when you're denied media, you create your own. Yeah, I was wondering if that aided in your imagination as a young person in paradoxically, a lot of people say, well, movies taught me how to make movies, but maybe just being able to sit alone and think about what you might make helped you in some way? I think it did. I think the, you know, the denial or the parental denial of my urge to live in a movie theater and not go to school, just live in a movie theater.

That sort of made me so, I guess, famished, you know, for a big experience. So I remember the first movie I saw. I made a whole movie about it, you know, the Fableman's. The first movie I saw was, so you saw in the movie, you saw that that was the first film I ever saw in a theater, which is greatest show on Earth. And whenever that was, 52, I think. And I was, you know, I was six, seven years old. That was it. And then after that, my parents started in a regular way taking me to see movies.

but films that they wanted to see, not films that I wanted to see. I'm curious about your relationship to science fiction over all these years. Obviously, Disclosure Day is coming soon, and so I've been revisiting all your work. And all of the stories so far are all about this experience through human eyes. I was wondering if you could talk about why you're always centering those stories through the experience of people and not being on an alien world and trying to imagine that experience. You know, I never really, I could relate to, one of the first movies I saw, it wasn't original, it came out in 1950, I think I saw it when it was re-released on a weekend. We used to have a theater that had Saturday matinees, and they were all older films, maybe only five, six years older. But I remember when I saw a movie called Destination Moon, I think it was the first film that George Powell, you know, got his career off to a start. And, and, and, um, It was a terrestrial film about, you know, humankind's first trip to the moon.

Not the melee film back in the turn of the century, but it was the first, it was in color. And I went to see it in the theater. And it grounded me because it was as realistic as science or at least Hollywood consulting with scientists knew how to tell that kind of a story. and it was full of suspense. I'll never forget the scene where they couldn't, the big fear is you get to the moon. How do you get back to Earth? If you've spent too much fuel landing on the moon, what do you do?

You know, you got to strip everything out of the spaceship. You got to get rid of everything that's heavy in order to. So it was the first time I had ever felt something called suspense. I never felt that before. And so in a sense, that movie was a big influence on me. It was the first, you know, I used to collect soundtrack albums when I was a kid. I still do. But it was the first soundtrack album I ever got, asked my dad and mom to buy for me by by by by by by by by by Stevens. And it's a it's a real piece of symphonic classical music unusual

of those days for a score. Um, I've heard you mentioned earlier this week when we spoke that you wanted to make close encounters of the third kind before Jaws and no one would let you do it. I was wondering if you could just kind of what if with me for a minute. If someone had let you do it, what would that movie have been like? Would you be here today? How do you? I don't know. Nobody would let me make close encounters because it was a fringe.

It was kind of a sort of, it was on the fringes of science and mythology. And so no one really got it. When I said, I want to make a UFO movie, everybody thought, well, You want to make a movie about the National Enquirer. That's what you want to do. You want to make a movie about crack-pock reporting of things that aren't really occurring. And you want to make a completely crazy fantasy film about something that isn't happening. So when I went around to pitch, it wasn't called Close Encounters in those days.

It was I just called it a UFO movie. And I couldn't get any traction from the studios. Nobody was really interested in that at all. And then when George came around, you know, and after, Jaws was released, everybody came to me and said, you know, do you have an old diary? We'll shoot anything you have. I mean, it was great. It was like suddenly the, they opened the doors and opened the vaults and said, what do you want to do next? And I had this on standby. This is all I wanted to do after Jaws. At that time, did you have a notebook, though, full of ideas of these are all the things

that I want to do in my career? No, only, only close encounters. That was the thing that I really wanted to do. I wanted to make a movie. I wanted to make close encounters even before I directed the Sugar Land Express. So this was something that I really had always, it was my dream film. Going back and looking at all the science fiction films in your career, there's a real divide, it feels like, and I'm curious about that. It seems like over time you've grown increasingly suspicious, concerned. That's the sort of the warmth that we remember from close encounters and from ET has kind of turned a bit when you look at AI and War of the Worlds and Ready Player One. Has that reflect your feelings about our future, where we're going?

I think everything, any filmmaker would not be completely honest if they said that there's a lot of the subconscious that rubs off on every choice, every choice that we, every choice that we make to decide genre or decide on a particular book or a script that we find or I've always wanted to do it. It always comes out in the wash, you know. And as I've gotten older and I've become more aware of the world as it was, as it is currently, and as I hope it could be someday, that's going to always rub off on the work. And I remember the only reason I wanted to make war of the world is because I thought

that George Powell and Byron Haskin, the director, made it perfectly great. film in the first War of the World with Gene Barry. That was a great movie. I didn't need a remake, but 9-11 affected me in a very profound way. And I wanted to find some metaphor for 9-11, and that's why I resurrected War of the World, because it's much more analogous to that. Do you see ET as a demarcation point? Because as I charted that shift in sci-fi storytelling, you know, you weren't a parent at that time, and then you had kids after that film. And it's unusual to be slightly more pessimistic once you've had children, but I wonder if that affects you too. Well, ET may be want to have kids. I mean, it really did. I mean, I was such a opportunist in terms of everybody get away. I got to tell this story or tell that story. I didn't have much of a personal life.

And I remember after making ET, there was something about that, that for me, I didn't want those kids to go home. I didn't. I just didn't. I mean, Drew Baramore never really went home. I kind of adopted. when the film was over and helped, you know, co-parent her over the, oh, gee, right until last week when we were on a text together, you know, so I'm still very much in that sense in Drew's life, but I love those kids. And the movie I shot in continuity, I thought it was unfair for child actors to have to shoot part of the third act, the first week of shooting because you're trying to save money to do everything in the same set before you strike the set and move on. So I had a really good production manager that was able to get the budget where I can make the film for $10 million and still spend the extra money to shoot the whole thing in continuity, which gave the kids a continuity about who they were inside these characters.

So by the time the film was over, we shot the goodbye with E.T. I mean, the last scene, they're saying goodbye to E.T. is the last scenes we shot in Hollywood. And so it was, it just compounded the sadness of separation for all of them and for me. And I just remember when that was all over, I said, I think I've discovered how great it's going to be someday to be a parent. And that's where it all began for me. Do you always have a sad feeling when you've completed a shoot? Not always. Sometimes I can't wait to get off the movie.

Like which one? I'm not going to say. Which ones, you mean? Oh, that's for you to say. You know, President Obama recently either spoke or misspoke about the existence of UFOs or UAPs on a podcast like we're doing right now. And I'm curious how you're feeling about the real life existence of UFOs, and especially since you're back in this world in the last couple of years. Well, I think that for one thing, when President Obama made that comment, I thought, oh, my God, this is so great for Disclosure Day. This is amazing.

And then two days later, he stepped back the comment and said what he believed in was life in the cosmos, which, of course, everybody should believe in because no one should ever think that, that we are the only intelligent civilization in the entire universe. So I've always believed even as a kid that we were not alone. So that just goes without saying. The big question is, are we alone now? And have we been alone over the last 80 years? And really have we been alone over the last 3,000 years?

I mean, you've got to go back to Von Danikin to be able to go into those theories. But my feeling is that what reinvigorated me in wanting to make the first UFO movie I've made in 50 years, because it'll be almost 50 years since Close Encounters, was at least in 77, was when the New York Times came out in 2017. and it was an article written by Halene Cooper and Rosenthal and I believe Leslie Keen. And it was an article about the Navy pilot who was flying a Navy-F-A-18-F fighter jet off the Nimitz, or the aircraft paired Nimitz, and had seen something on his flare and had essentially recorded it, and basically reported it. And the New York Times, and I believe it might have been, I forgot who leaked it to the Times,

but it was leaked to the New York Times. And they wrote this very serious article about, is there a cover-up? Has the government or the military, Air Force, the Navy, been covering this up? And it was just a fascinating story, and it completely rekindled my interest in this subject matter. And then, of course, there was a subcommittee hearing in 2023, which some of you might have seen, with three former, one person worked in intelligence.

One was a Navy pilot, and two were in the military. And it was a fascinating Q&A under oath, by the way. And so my feeling right now is this. I don't have any information exclusive to me that all of you hear. if you read about this and have seen the plethora of documentaries about this, dating back to 2018, where these documentaries really started to roll out. I don't know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong sneaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now.

Maybe even today. And I made a movie about that. There are interviews with you in 1977 and 78, after close encounters where you say, there's a whole other movie in the exploration of the government cover up. But that's not what Close Encounters is even about. And I could have explored that. Did you think about that as these stories were unfolding? No, because, well, one of my consultants on Close Encounters was the former head of Project Blue Book, the Air Force investigation. It was a it was a it was a it was federally funded the Air Force was investigating, you know, these anomalies in the sky.

And Jay Allen Heinek worked for them until he sent to the Air Force on those sightings he had investigated and could not explain when he sensed there was a cover up of even his efforts to investigate that he quit Project Blue Book, went into the private sector. And he consulted with me a bit on close encounters. and he was very helpful because he introduced me to some people that have had that had close encounters of their own. Now here's the thing that I just want to say right now. I've made close encounters. I've made E.T. You're about to see Disclosure Day very soon, June 12th, it comes out. You know, I'm really into this.

Why haven't I seen anything? Half my friends have seen UFOs now called UAPs. I haven't. I made a movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I haven't even had a close encounter of the first or second kind. Where's the justice in that? But have you considered that that's why? If you're listening out there, I'm talking to you.

They know about you. They can't show themselves to you. You don't seem to be afraid of the idea of aliens. You don't seem to be concerned. Are there things that you are afraid of? What are you afraid of right now? I'm not afraid of any aliens, you know, there or here. You know, I have no fears about that whatsoever.

You know, I think our movie does, you know, take into consideration without giving too much away the social dislocation that could occur, you know, you know, theologically, if it would be announced that there's evidence, not only evidence, there is interaction that has been going on for decades

that we are not just now finding out about. It's going to cause a disruption in a lot of belief systems, but I don't think it is a lethal disruption at all. You know, I've been thinking about your films in their relationship to technology, And a lot of contemporary filmmakers, celebrated filmmakers, have been spending a lot of time making period pieces in the last 15 years. And the reason they cite for that frequently is smartphones, that there's something essentially un-cinematic about someone looking at their phone.

And you've been making some period pieces recently, but Disclosure Day seems to be contemporary. I'm just kind of curious how you feel about that. I haven't made a lot of contemporary films. I mean, most of my films do take place in the past, a couple in the future. Disclosure Day and Minority Report. But I'm, no, I don't do a lot of contemporary stories. I'm drawn, I'm drawn, really drawn like a magnet to history. And so I love history. I love reading biographies and history was the only subject I was any good at in high school, actually. It was really was. and so that's from my fascination inspired by my dad who loved history himself and brought me.

My dad was a science fiction reader, but he also was a history reader. He brought me into the importance of reading biographies and stories about, you know, the Holocaust or the Civil War. And, but I don't, in a way that I'm not, I don't, nothing's anathema about, you know, present-day stories for me, but I just found so much rich, rich, in stories about the past. I was really struck re-watching E.T. by how patient the movie is. And I feel like contemporary movies and the expectations of contemporary audiences is for more speed.

Have you felt in the last 25 years that your films have started to move faster? Have you been affected by how fast life is? Yeah, films move really fast. I mean, films move so fast. Sometimes I have to actually, you know, well, it's good if you see a film again because it moves too fast. We like that. But that's not the reason you should see a film a second time. You should see a film a second time because you were profoundly moved in some way by it.

But films are moving faster. And it all started with the music video, the whole music video generation of that propulsive action and cramming in two and a half minutes. A lot of cuts, a lot of montage. two and a half minutes. And then that, then commercials, television commercials began moving faster. This is before film started at pick up speed to keep abreast of music videos and commercials back back in the 80s. And, and now there is just with everything available, TikTok and, you know, and Instagram and, and I'm not on any of these things, by the way.

Me neither. Not that I don't, not that I have any kind of a personal thing to it, is just that it eats up the clock. I mean, I mean, I put Instagram on my phone for two weeks and I had missing time as if I had been abducted by aliens. I mean, I was going through that missing time dilemma, you know, where did that time go? And so in a way, and that's all moving really fast because these are just visual sound bites. And so I find the things are speeding up a lot. So that's why, like this year, a film like train dreams, a meditation on an entire life covering nearly 75 years, but done under two hours, just made me so happy to have that film in the world this year. Do you feel that speed getting in your films at all, though?

Been getting into my film? Yeah. Have you felt like your films are moving faster in any way? Well, Disclosure Day moves really fast. it's fast, yeah. Okay, I've been trying to figure something out, and I've talked to a few people about this, and this is something you hear about your work, that you are the single greatest visual designer in movies,

that when it comes to blocking, moving the camera, that is something that you have a preternatural ability to. But then I've also recently heard Tom Hanks say that on the set of some movies, you'll show up one day, and you'll sort of know what you want to do, but you won't have it really mapped out. And you'll say,

I kind of have to figure out how I'm going to do this. I thought that was really fascinating that he said that. So can you just kind of talk us through how you do what you do, from storyboard to showing up on the day to knowing where you want the camera to be? Well, it depends on the film. If it's a film that has a lot of VFX, everything's storyboarded. It has to be because I'm dealing with a very large budget on a special effects film, so everything has to be planned ahead of time.

but there are other films that I've made where I didn't do any planning at all. I never had a single storyboard on Shindler's list. I didn't have a single storyboard on Saving Private Ryan, which we shot mostly in continuity. And those are the most fun for me because I surprised myself. I wake up in the morning and I know the page count that I need to cover, but I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to cover it yet. And that's what's exciting. getting on a set with no real plan except to tell the story in the best way I could possibly tell it. And I love doing that in collaboration with crew, but also especially with actors.

Because the thing that I love about actors, if you cast your film right, you're not just getting someone who is going to give you a great performance. You're getting someone who has a deep, meaningful understanding of the film that all of us are making together in this collaborative art form, which is movies and television. And so that way I can be more collaborative with Tom Cruise. And, you know, Tom Cruise showed up every morning when I showed up. I show up before the crew. So I'll get to the set signs sometimes at 6.30 in the morning.

On my Nordi report, N-War the world's Tom would insist on getting there when I got there so we could map out the whole day, which was really helpful to me. So there were films like that with Hanks and I where I'm really collaborative with the person who is carrying the film. And there are other films where it's just kind of myself going into a bit of a, I guess, a little bit of a meditation to really figure out. And what's good about going into meditation, I also meditate, but that's a different kind of meditation. When I get to the set in the morning, there is something that happens, which is beautiful.

There's an entire day of possibilities as yet undiscovered, but what possibility will I choose first? And that's the most excited thing about this. I get a little bit bored when I do a heavy VFX film, when I know what the day is going to be like. It's all ready, mapped out. Everybody knows what we're doing, it's so much better getting out there like I did with a movie like The Fablements, which was, you know, my own story, where I could actually go into a deep communion with my younger self to figure out how to tell that story in a way, because that film I made, I've often said that film was, it was, it was $40 million of therapy. That DreamWorks paid for, Ambley paid for.

but something like that was exactly the example I'm giving. I'd show up in the morning and I would just say, I know the camera needs to be here, but don't ask me why I know the camera needs to be here. It just does. So there's something about when you're flying by the seat of your pants, our best friend is our intuition. That's our best friend on any movie.

Any filmmakers should tell you that your instincts, your intuition is your best friend. And if you listen to it, if you let it carry you through the day, it's a lot better than intellectualizing and thinking something through too thoroughly. You know, you were asked some years ago what the key single theme of your work is, and you said communication, which I thought was a really interesting answer. And I'm wondering how you communicate, because you just described this process of something dawning on you and following your intuition. But on a film set, there are dozens, sometimes hundreds of people.

you've got those millions of dollars from Amblin and DreamWorks to think about how do you talk to people? How do you get them to get what you want? Well, I don't do it by explaining why I want it because then you sit around in a circle and I don't know why I want things. I just said the intuition is often my best friend and I listen to the whispers more than I listen to the loud voice of the brain. The whispers of the intuition speaks stronger to me than my brain, which is always trying to take over. and get me to listen to it. It's a fight between this and that often. And so when I'm racing around and I put the camera somewhere

and I know what the blocking needs to be, I just need the cast to trust me. So if I say this is where I think you should stand and I think this is why you should go, when you should go to the door. Later I'll tell them why, but I got to get it out of me first. So I'll do a whole blocking with second team. The actors are still in hair and makeup,

and I'm blocking the entire shot with second team. So when the actors come out having work with me before or having known my process, they'll know to kind of stand where I'm kind of asking them to move and when to move and why the camera is moving with them. And then later, as we're lighting it, I'll sit down and say, okay, here's why I want you to do something that you probably weren't preparing for when you were memorizing your lines the night before. But this is why I think it needs to be this way. And every once in a while an actor will come up more than every once in a while and they'll say, but I just feel, here's why I think I need to sit here for at least these five lines without

getting up. And they'll convince me that they're right and they'll get to be able to do it their way. But I need to, I need to be able to do the first pass at the blocking. Because blocking is so important on movies and television shows. And if you want to watch great blocking, just go back and look at anything that Elia Kazan ever directed. Go back and look at Mike Nichols, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf and the graduate. Look at that blocking.

Look at the blocking of Casablanca. Look at basically Michael Curtis the way he blocked the camera. And watch TCM. Ladies and gentlemen, watch TCM. Because you're going to see storytelling

the way I wish everybody would be telling their stories in these modern times. Some of the best stories were told a long time ago. There are great stories still being told today, by far, like sinners and one battle after the other. I mean, my God, you know, so many films are from Hamnet, Chloe Jell. But I really, you need, I always say to film students, you know, yes, learn from your peers, Learn from your heroes today. But don't forget to learn from my heroes, our heroes, that taught me my stuff.

And all of my heroes made movies in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Related question, because this wasn't as true for those filmmakers. But now, I'm always curious when you're shooting a big scene, a complicated scene, the truck chase and Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the initial invasion in War of the World. and answer this like I'm five years old. How do you know you're getting it? How do you know that what you're capturing on film is actually going to work on a big screen? Only when you tell me it does.

All of you. That's it. That's it. That's not going to be enough. I need more than that. It's only, it's when I hear from the audience, you know, and when I hear from the general feeling of how the film is landing, do I know that the things that I thought were going to work are working or the things that I were certain would work aren't working sometimes? I don't make a lot of

comedies, so I don't have that gauge. I don't like preview my movies because you have to preview a comedy, because you have to see if it's funny. If it's not, you have to call it something else. You can't call it a comedy anymore. But I pretty much think, that, that's the most important test of the film. I didn't know what we had on Jaws. I don't because I was underwater on that film for nine months, both literally and figuratively I was underwater on that movie. And I did the best job I knew how to do with what I had available.

And because, as you know, the shark didn't work. It made it a better movie. If the shark worked, it would have only been half as good. If I hadn't met Johnny Williams, it would have been good at all. But I didn't know what I had until we previewed the picture in Dallas. Texas in the medallion theater in Dallas, Texas. And that was my lucky theater for like my first four films. And I took all my films at Texas, including ET, we previewed in Houston. We previewed all my films in Texas. And I didn't know what we had until the audience told us what we had.

I, you know, I didn't know what we had until when that little boy was killed on the raft, a man got up and I went, oh my God, our first walkout. I've gone too far. It was blood coming out of the water. This guy came out and he started walking up the aisle and he started running. And I watched him go out the curtains into the lobby. And he was heading for the bathroom and he vomited all over the floor of the lobby. And I looked at that guy and then about five minutes later he came back and took a seat. And that's when I said, we've got a hit.

I've got a five-year-old who's. very fond of going to the Academy Museum. And there's a big Jaws exhibit there. Right now it is. And she's been begging me to watch Jaws. And I will not let that happen yet because I need her to like your movies. But I was wondering what it's like to have the burden of other people's nightmares as well as their dreams. Well, welcome.

I'd just say welcome to the club because all my movies come from my nightmares. Even the happy ones come from my nightmares. So it's not bad. It's not a terrible thing. One plus one equals more of the greatest story. Hulu on Disney Plus. Stories about Survivors.

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Just use the ones that come in the bag. Don't let the luxe go to your head. I know that obviously Jaws was a very challenging shoot. Do you remember what was your most joyful time making a movie? E.T. was my most joyful time. I had two really great joyful memories. ET was a joyful time making a film because I discovered, you know, my love for parenting, not just directing.

And then the fableman's, even though it was painful and highly personal, nothing has ever been more personal to me. It was just a joy to be part of that. And also with this closure day, I probably stayed,

I made such, there were such friendships forged on Ready Player 1 with the cast and myself. I haven't walked away. Williams and I became very close after the Fableman's. And of course, Drew became like my other surrogate kid before I even had kids. But I came away with five true friends after Disclosure Day.

And that's very important to me. This has been a very vital period for you the last 10, 15 years. You've made a lot of films. I'm curious to hear you talk about what keeps you motivated, what keeps you wanting to make more movies. Well, it's just, you know, I think once you start, once I, look, I've been telling stories my whole life. I mean, my best stories have never been movies, by the way, because I have seven kids and I put them all to bed at night with stories. I go from room to room like a doctor making calls, you know, from office to office. And I, so my best stories actually, my kids have benefited from, not the audiences.

But I just can't stop. I just love that. And that's never going to stop. I can't in other words I can't envision what it would be like not to do what I do and that would be the worst nightmare of my life

to not get to do what I'm doing I think of you as a person who is constantly always at work or working in some fashion but what do you do when you're not working when there's not a movie being made I actually have a life Kate

has made such a life for me and we brought seven kids into the world, two of them adopted. We now have six grandchildren. And that is, that is the real stuff that it's not the stuff that I fall back on when I'm not directing. Directing actually has in the last 20 years taken second position to my family and to all of their needs. And so I, and that paradigm really changed and it changed very quickly for me. And so, And so that's really my life.

And I'm able, and also they keep me relevant. Because I'm not on social media and my kids are, they tell me the stuff I need to know. And so they keep me, they keep me really current. When I saw you earlier this week, you were more up on the news than I was. You were like, did you hear about this? I was like, I actually did not hear about this. I'm curious, what are the movies that you return to when you want to be inspired or conjure that feeling you had? when you were shooting eight millimeter movies in Arizona?

Well, well, the movie that I remember the movie that inspired me the most when I was a kid was when my dad took me to see Lawrence of Arabia at the big, you know, theater in Phoenix, I think the Capri Theater,

I think it was called the Capri Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, where, you know, and that was probably the first time I can remember saying, because I wanted to, before I saw Lawrence, I was making movies. I'd make eight-millimeter movies, but I saw Lawrence Arabia. I said, I'll never get to do that. I mean, that's way, way out of reach for me.

I just so admired that film. So that film has been an annual tradition. And because Marty Scorsese and I and Bob Harris restored in the 80s, who restored Lawrence Arabia to the original vision David Lean had before his producer, Sam Spiegel, started a medal and started to edit without tell. telling David whole scenes out to get more screenings in theaters of that picture, we were able to restore the film, and I was given a 70-millimeter print of that by Don Steele, who was the head of Columbia at the time, and she paid for the restoration. And I'll watch that film on 70-millimeter

once a year, especially before I'm starting a movie. What do you see? And the reason I watch that film every year, it keeps me humble. It reminds me, you will never be as good. good as David Lane. How does it compare to the first time that you saw it? Are you still discovering things in it? I'm still seeing things in it. And there's a big mystery in Lawrence Arabia, which I can't figure out. There would not be a mystery in the digital age today.

We just take it out. It would cost $6 to take it out. But I think there's a silver chewing gum wrapper in the desert. on the shot where Lawrence has just gotten on the camel and he and his guide are going to see, you know, Faisal, in Faisal's camp. And they just start, and the camera, they're on the sand dune, the camera's low on a crane. And as the camera starts to rise up to show the great expanse of the desert, there is a silver object in the sand that is driving me crazy. and I cannot figure out what it is. That's the kind of detail I see from time to time.

So you've discovered a mistake is what you're saying. A little one. Well, okay, in keeping with that, then, you are among the most admired filmmakers in the world. Can you share with us a time when you were humbled on set or while making a movie? Well, I was humbled on the set. I was humbled many times.

And the thing that humbles me on the set is always an actor, is always a performance. and I was I've been humbled luckily I've been humbled a lot on the set and I don't want to compare one performance to the other because I was a lot of things like Anthony Hopkins

summation to the Supreme Court and Amistad humbled me and Tom Hanks seen where he cries in the in the crater you know you know

wipe me out totally humbled me but Daniel Day Lewis and Lincoln, when he's trying to explain to his cabinet, the urgency of passing the 13th Amendment into constitutional law is two shots. Both shots are moving. One shot starts at the end of the table and is slowly moving. It's a four-minute speech. And then with one cutaway to David Straiter, Secretary of State Seward, the camera then goes into a close-up mode and finishes on his close-up. And I have to this day talking to you about that I've never gotten over

that scene or how he played Lincoln and how he became Lincoln for all of us for for all that time. Can you describe that feeling when you, even though you're on set as the director running the show, when you see someone doing something that is moving you like that? Does the work stop? Does the movie stop? What is it like? At the end of that scene, at the end of that scene, at the end of first take I had to leave the set. Daniel was worried because as Lincoln, he looked around and the director wasn't on the set. And he asked, he calls me skipper, still to this day he calls me skipper. And he said, where's the skipper?

And I think Christy said he's, Christy McCoscoe, who's produced my movies and is one of the greatest producers I've ever experienced in my whole life who's sitting right there today. Christy told Daniel where to find me, and I was in the other room crying. And Mr. Lincoln walked into the room, saw me, sat down next to me, and put his arms around me. That was a moment I will never forget to. I know you don't have a checklist, but I've been going through a lot of interviews over the years, and you have talked about kinds of movies you would want to make in the 70s and the 80s. A Western.

Yes, that's the one I want to ask you about. I want to make a Western. Well, so tell us. I want to shoot it in Texas. That's where I was leading you. We want to see your Western. What are you waiting for? Well, I can't reveal anything right now, but I have something in development right now.

Okay. Yeah. And it kicks ass. We like that. In 1978, after Jaws and Close Encounters, you said, quote, I'm still trying to make a career for myself. I'm still fighting so I can be good in my eyes. When I'm good in my eyes, I might even quit. Now, you say you're not going to quit because you want to keep telling stories, but do you feel that you're good in your eyes at this point?

What, you did I give that quote? Seventy-eight. Well, I was a kid in 78. What was I, what did I know in 78? A kid who made jaws and close encounters, though. Yeah, but, yeah, and then humble when my next movie came out in 1941. You know, You know, the sign wave of our business, up and down, up and down. No, I never want to quit. But the thing of it is, every movie is so different. I just remember that Noel Coward used to say to David Lean, never come out of the same hole.

And directors like David Lean had eclectic careers. Every film he made was different. Every film William Wilder made was different. Every film Michael Curtis made was different. I like the idea. Every film that Paul Thomas Anderson makes, has been different. Every film that Christopher Nolan makes has been different. That's the school I belong to. Therefore, every film is a world. Every film was a birth, a life, and a death. Because at the end of

every movie, it's like what the French call Petit Moore, a little death. You die a little bit when a film was over because you've experienced a full life. And this is what this industry and this art form gives us a chance to do. If we're just not making the same sequel over and over and over again, and it's not the same Marvel title over and over and over again, we all get a real chance to experience something which is precious. And that is why I don't judge my accomplishments based on a single film. But it's basically looking or letting all of you look at the body of my work. I try not to look at the body of my work. I didn't even watch the film clips that were playing up up here today.

It was good. There was some good stuff. Was it good? Yeah. Was it good? Okay, good. I saw a rough cut on my iPhone when Terry Presser sent it to me. But looking out ahead, you know, I always fear if I look back too much, I'll stop. I'll quit looking forward. and so I tend to just keep moving ahead. Is there a film of yours that you feel is underseen or misunderstood or that you think people should take another look at? Yeah, a film that I love making, and I love the story, it was a remake of a 1943 Victor Fleming film called A Guy Name Joe, and I, with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunn and Van

Johnson and James Gleason and. And I remade it with Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter and John Goodman. It was called Always. And it's a film that's, thank you. Because I love the movie. I really do. And every couple years, I'll take a look at part of it, not all of it. It was Audrey Hepburn's very last film.

The last film she ever did. She played a part in it. And that's a film that I hope someday can get rediscovered. I was hoping you would say that because I think that is one that is probably the most overlooked. And it feels like a film made by a much older person than you were at that time. Like, where did that have the feeling to make that come from? I don't know, but it was a film, it was a film that I used to show girlfriends, because if they didn't cry at the end, I wouldn't go out with him again. That and two for the road by Stanley Donnan.

Your career and your legacy, I think, in part is built on this idea of people coming together and experiencing your movies in large. groups and a lot of what I talk about on the show all the time is about the primacy and necessity of movie going and how important it is and what it means and you know it's been under a state of threat over the last 15 years it's been a complicated time like I'd like to just hear you talk about that where you think it is right now how we're doing well it's it's an important topic to talk about because and I look out at at at this auditorium with everybody here and I just think that we're all together.

We don't know each other. And, you know, we probably agree with each other more than we disagree with each other. We don't know that. But the one thing I know is when we're all watching something, it is going to hit us all independently, individually in different ways. But there is a collective impulse from a good story that hits all of us at the same time in exactly the same way. and there is something there that is about, for me, community and communication and getting along with each other.

And that happens in full movie theaters, not sitting around living rooms watching on television something that is up there on the screen to watch. And I don't decry those films. I mean, we have a deal. We make Netflix movies, and I like working at Netflix. They're a great company to work with. and it's but it's just for me the real experience comes when we can influence a community to congregate in a strange dark space all of us are strangers and at the end of a really good

movie experience we are all united in a with a whole bunch of feelings that we walk into the daylight with or into the nighttime with and there's nothing like that I mean It happens in movies. You know, it happens at concerts. And it happens in ballet and opera, by the way. And we want to keep that alive. And we want that to be sustained. And we want that to go forever.

And that's why theaters like IMAX are committed to audiences. You have committed to them and they have committed to you. and that is a marriage made in heaven, and other theaters are also just as powerful that have really good projection, really good sound, and really clean floors. I mean, I ask this somewhat out of self-preservation,

but in addition to that, like, what else can be done? You know, what else can be done to properly put that at the center of the experience? As someone who is still making movies for that experience? Well, there's nothing that I can,

do, except try to make compelling movies that people want to go outside the house to see. Because it's a, you know, it's an effort today because with the invention of the iPhone, it created a tremendous portable convenience. And when media became portable like that, it is going to get people focused on smaller devices. And so it's going to take a bigger idea, a bigger concept or a lot of real. really good, healthy word of mouth that get people to go out to the movies, which is what I'm always advocating. So all I can do with my company, Amblin, and with my parent company Universal Comcast, is to make the kind of movies that you would like to go out to see. And then are patient

enough to see it first then, and then when it comes on S-Vod or, you know, V-Vod, then you see it there, or you see it when it comes on at the streaming services. There's a film that's nominated for Best Picture this year called The Secret Agent. And Jaws plays a very big part in that film. And the idea of going to the movies is a big part of that movie. And I was talking to a couple of people who know you and they said that you're still very current on movies, that you still watch a lot of contemporary films. I was wondering, like, is that true?

And how do you see films? I've seen every nominated film and every short, every documentary short, every live actor short, every animation short. And I see it all, not just because I should see, we should see, Academy voters, all the film before we vote. Because, but it's kind of a rush to see them all because I kind of cram, especially when I'm right in the middle of post-production on my movies, so I don't have a lot of time. But my wife loves movies and my kids love movies, and we have a lot of communal viewing. And, yeah, I just think it's, I see everything I possibly can see. and I hang out with a lot of movie lovers.

I hang out with a real sort of movie club of officinados who have seen movies that I haven't yet seen, but all of them still see every film being made in the contemporary vernacular. They still watch the contemporary films, not just the rare gemstone movies. They watch all the films. So you mentioned that Close Encounters will see, soon be 50. And this year, AI turns 25. And those are the two movies that you have sole

screenwriting credit on, even though I know AI did not originate with you. And you have a story credit on Disclosure Day. And so now, one, we have these every 25 years. I don't know if that kind of, that mark struck you, that you come back to this space every 25 years. That is so weird. I never thought about that. I never considered that. That's wicked, weird. Why is, um, don't know. It's just, I guess it's the way you're, look, it's probably the way the dice have rolled in my life. But whether I write on something or I'm supervising the writing of something, I'm very integrated with the writing process and everything I do. I often, there's been other movies I made where I could have shared a credit, which I prefer not to, because I think

it's important for the person that originates the story. And the reason I didn't share credit what David Kep is David went off. I wrote a 50-page story in 2003 for Disclosure Day. It was very detailed. But David went out and wrote just the greatest screenplay. And I said, I got my fingerprints on the story. I'm happy with that. This is David's script.

I have to ask you about AI. I'm curious how you feel what part it can play. in the filmmaking process at this point? What part? What part can AI play in the filmmaking process, if any at all? Of which movie? Of which movie? Of which movie? No, in any movie. What AI could do in a move for? I've never used AI on

any of my films yet. I haven't. I mean, even when we do television, we have a writer's room and all the seats are occupied. There's not an empty chair with a laptop in front of it. So we don't, I don't, I haven't

used AI that way. I don't to go into a whole rant about AI because I am for AI in many different disciplines. I am not for AI if it replaces a creative individual. Thank you. This is a goofy question, but go with me. In the event that alien life actually comes to our planet. Whose question is this? This is from me. Okay, okay. I'm the goof. The aliens would like to see a visual record of human creativity. Which film of yours are you? you sharing with them? Of my films? How about one of yours and one that is not yours? Okay. If an alien wanted to see one of my films? Yeah. Can't you guess what that film would be?

It would be E.T. But one of the films that I would, if somebody came down to say, show me the film that represents the kindness of the human race and all of the, I guess you would call it, just the, you know, the basic intuitive good in people, even when you go off the rails, but you get back on, your rescue, you come back onto the rails again, I would say, well, I'm going to show you, It's a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra. Which is the kindest film I've ever seen. I try to get filmmakers to tell me what their next film is going to be. It sounds like you're not going to tell me that.

You're not going to tell me your next film. You won't share with us what you're going to do next. Well, I'm developing a Western. And it's going to have horses. And there will be guns. But there will be no troops. I could just tell you that. There are going to be no stereotypes, no tropes at all.

Okay. No troops. Steven Spielberg, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything great recently? The last great thing I've seen? You mean films we've all seen or films that just... It could be anything. Damien Chazel once said the Roman Coliseum, which is not a film. But you could...

Hopefully, you'll say a film. I think the last great thing I've seen, not a film, but the last great thing I've seen. I am not allowed to say this. I just remembered if I say this, I'm going to get, my wife's going to kill me. Oh my God. So what's the second greatest thing? What kind of a Spielbergian tease is that? Come on.

Oh, my God. What's the second greatest thing I've seen? Oh, no. I think the second greatest thing I've seen. or heard. No one's ever done that before. The second greatest thing I've heard was Universal Studios' reaction

to my new movie Disclosure Day. That is a very elegant segue. Please give it up for Stephen Spielberg. Thank you. Thank you. You're all great. Thank you to Stephen Spielberg. Thank you to everyone in South by Southwest for welcoming the big picture to the festival.

Thank you to Universal and everyone at Amblin and on Steven's team for their help on this event. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode and for making the journey with me to Austin. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for production support. We'll be back on Thursday with the 1988 movie draft with a special guest. We'll see you then.