The Rest Is Entertainment - Steven Spielberg on Aliens, Young Directors and Being Turned Down for Bond

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Richard Osman and Marina Hyde are joined by the master filmmaker himself - Steven Spielberg. The Hollywood icon answers your questions on the existence of aliens, being rejected for Bond and his advice to up and coming directors like Backrooms' Kane Parsons. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at ⁠therestisentertainment.com ⁠ For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to ⁠www.goalhanger.com⁠ Video Editor: James Clayden Camera Op: Graham Howe Camera Assistant: Edward Lee & Harry Swan Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Neil Fearn & Sam Psyk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest of entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, fan mail is one of entertainment's strangest bargains. You send total devotion one way and the understanding that nothing may come back. Certainly in our day, you would write to a film star or a singer. I wrote to Howard Jones. And maybe three months later, a sort of signed photo comes back that's clearly pro forma, you know, that you know Howard's never really looked at. Steve Martin used to have the performer sort of thing,

which we just leave blanks, like insert, like small detail, to make a joke about how completely impersonal, his personal reply to you was. It was just like a standard thing. Impersonal is interest. That's why we're talking about this, because with Octopus Energy, you always can reply to their emails. And not only can you reply to them, they will go to the same small group of people who always deal with you.

That's like unbelievable. It's almost unprecedented that a company you're giving your money to will actually respond to you. Yeah. Are contactable in some way. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Best is Entertainment, Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyne. And I'm Richard Osmond.

Now, bad news. We are not answering your questions this week. Good news. Mr. Steven Spielberg is answering them. This is a big honour. Isn't it just? We're quite nervous. We are waiting for him to come in.

Quite excited. Apparently he's going to be on time, which is almost unheard of. We got loads of questions. Thank you so much for all of those. Some brilliant ones. Apologies we can't use all of them. But I think we've got stuff that will go across his career. But also we're talking about Disclosure Day,

which is his new movie, which I think is absolutely terrific. Can I also tell you a little secret? Yeah. I have an absolutely mental question I want to ask him. Oh, that's good. Which I hopefully will drop in about halfway through. I'm sure it will just be very cool and we won't even notice. Yeah, you might do.

Yeah. You might do. Listen, shall we do it? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Stephen Spielberg. Performance Auto Group's 37th annual sale event is back. Now for three days. lease or finance from 0% plus loyalty incentives and maximum trade in value. Shop thousands of in stock new, pre-owned and demonstrator vehicles.

June 11th to 13th across all Performance Auto Group retailers. Make your move this summer. Performance Auto Group's three-day sale. 72 hours of savings. Shop now at performance.ca. Driven by Performance Auto Group. Stephen Spielberg. How lovely to see you.

Hey, Richard. Good to see you again. Thank you. Last time I saw Stephen, he was taking off an hour. helicopter. That was on the set with Richard. Exactly. On Thursday Murder Club. Now, but we are here to talk about all sorts of things, but first I want to talk about Disclosure Day, because, as

I've just told you, I thought it was magnificent. I was trying to work out which of our listener questions would lead us into it best. There's lots to talk about. So we're going to go very, very root one from Dan Young. And Dan says, do you believe in aliens? I do believe that we are not alone in

the cosmos, in the universe. as far as do I believe that aliens are here and have been here, 50 years ago to make close encounters, I would have said, seeing as believing, and I haven't seen one, I've not even seen the UFO. But today, I'm more inclined to say with all the smartphones that are out there and all the things that I've seen and all the people who I believe, I believe the believers, I am absolutely ready to say that I do believe that we are not alone here on this. planet. Is that one of the things that prompted you? I don't know how much you want to give away about the plot to disclosure day, but is that one

of the things that prompted you to make it? Well, one of the thing that prompted me to make it was just that whistleblowers were now coming from higher levels of authority. They were coming from the United States Air Force. They were coming from Navy pilots. They were coming from our intelligence community in Washington. People were blowing the whistle and saying that the government has been hiding for decades, the truth that we are not alone.

And I started believing those believers, not just the people, the rank and fire people who have had close encounters of all kinds throughout all of these years that we've all been reading about, documentaries have been made about them, the aerial school in Zimbabwe, where those 60 kids had that phenomenal encounter with beings from off world. So many things have happened that I am now really in a position to, I think, tell a story about it. Well, our next question is from a boy called Luke Esther Hides. He says, I'm 11 years old. My favorite film of all time is Jurassic Park. I was wondering what your favorite film was when you were 11 and why? Oh, that's a great question. When I was 11 years old, what was my favorite film?

My goodness. Probably when I was 11, I would have to say my favorite film was something that you've never seen. It was called Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. with Fess Parker and Buddy Epson, and it was the first cultural phenomenon of a motion picture that appealed to kids. There have been a lot of cultural phenomena that appealed to adults like Gone with the Wind

prior to that. But when I was 11 years old, that was the bomb. That was the movie that we were reenacting in our backyard. That was a film that they started selling merchandise, coon skin caps, and powder-honed and plastic models of his rifle old Betsy. That was for me the first Star Wars of films that really reached my 11-year-old neighborhood.

And is there still a bit of you that puts all of that in your films? If you know, I mean, the film we like most at 11 kind of stays with us. Is that something you try and recreate for people watching your movies? I just try to tell a story as effectively as I know how to do.

I've not really settled on one genre in my career. Science fiction, perhaps is the most consistent genre. of all the films I've directed. I was funny for watching Disclosure Day. I was thinking about Stephen King, and I think one thing both of you have in common is, you can go anywhere because you're so rooted in reality.

When you're doing reality, when you're doing a street, I believe I am in a street, and therefore, you know, there can be a time portal, there can be aliens, there can be whatever you want. And that's the thing, it's starting with the real and then going outwards. Well, I'm devoted to Stephen King's work. I know Stephen.

Stephen knows me. We've done some things together throughout our careers. I'm an eternal admirer of his. And like Michael Crichton as well, they both operate under the theory that they must make the incredible credible in order to get us to believe the characters in their stories. So they don't allow themselves to untether weightlessly and spinning yarns that have no relationship with our reality. and because their reality is my reality.

Their reality is our reality, which is they tell terrestrial stories, and they put a spin of fantasy, science fiction, science, Jurassic Park wouldn't have worked unless Michael Crichton could make all of us in his novel believe that dinosaurs could come back from amber, from biting insects that bit dinosaurs 65 million years ago

and can be cloned. And it's good science. And that's the important thing about the kind of movies that I make. If I'm going to make a movie that is stranger than fiction, then there has to be some bedrock science to let audiences believe it's credible. Well, I think you nail that with Disclosure Day. I'll say this. Here's one of our listeners. This is not a question, but Declan Costello says, many years ago, I auditioned for the role of Jim in Empire of the Sun. I got down to the last five boys considered for the part, but it obviously went to Christian Bale.

said you wrote me a beautiful letter which I treasure. But then he says, here's the kicker. You definitely made the right decision, by the way. I am a much better doctor than I would have been an actor. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, listen, Declan, you have saved lives. You found a career where you are able to bring peace and health to people who are ill. What a wonderful thing to devote your entire life toward.

He's still got your letter, which he's sent to us, and it's absolutely lovely. I love that. I have to say that you've managed to get so many great performances out of children and young people, and you have a lot of children. Did directing teach you anything about parenthood, or did parenthood teach you anything about directing? Parenthood actually keeps me young and relevant. Because my kids are on the first line of saying,

Dad, you don't know what you're talking about. Oh, my goodness, Dad, you don't know what that phrase means. You've never heard that before. Dad, have you listened to this piece of music? What do you mean you haven't listened to this piece of music? I mean, my kids have at least kept me current. Do you ever able to say, guys, I'm Steven Spielberg? I don't have a reality about that.

Yes, I'm sure. I don't even have my name on my directing chair on sets. I don't put my name on directing chairs on sets. The thing that my biggest challenge when I'm working with actors who haven't worked with before is to get them to forget every movie I ever made. So many people asked us about that. And just completely divest yourselves of everything you think I am

and let's just get down to the business at hand, and let's make a great movie together, and let's tell a great story together, because whenever I make a movie, I have a family. It's a film family. It's an ensemble. It's a company of actors and crew as well. And we need to be a family for a long time,

sometimes months on end, we're working together, and I can't let anything distract them. And look, it's fine if they want to talk about what E.T. meant to them when they were eight years old, I'm happy about having that conversation, but just not to forget that we're all the same telling this story. We're all on the same page. Yeah.

Even when he was doing The Wolf of Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio said he came on set one day, and he was so nervous that whole day. You were doing something to do with Scorsese that day. And he tells the anecdote in an interviewer saying, oh, my God, I was so nervous. I even saw it on Thursday Murder Club. Even Helen Mirren's like, oh, man, he just feels like. The only guy who kept his call is pissed, Brosnan,

because he always keeps his cool. Well, Pierce Brousen was my neighbor on the beach for 20 years. Oh, there you go. So Pierce, when he saw me coming along, it was kind of like, why did you sell your beach house? You stopped being my neighbor 10 years ago. Why'd you put your bins out on the wrong day, Stephen? Betsy Rourke has a question. She said you were almost as young as Kane Parsons, the director of Backrooms, and Curry Barker,

the director of obsession when you made drawers. What advice would you give to up-and-coming young directors? Don't let success go to your heads. Do not let wild success go to your heads. your heads because when you make your next movie, you're starting from scratch. It's always good to have a big hit to shore up your reputation and you're going to get a lot of respect from the executives, from the film world, from the studios, giving them the advice that I have had to learn the hard way, that we all start over again. And if you get a chance to make 20, 30 films in your career,

you will discover, maybe on your second or third film that you're beginning your career all over again at the outset of every single project. Did you feel that with disclosure date? I did, absolutely. Every movie I've made, I feel like I'm going back to the beginning. Yeah. Well, you passed. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Here's one from Anil Patel who says, Gauvidal once said, every time a friend succeeds, I die a little. Did you experience any pangs of jealousy for George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola in the pre-Jaws 1970s? No, never.

Francis was our godfather. Francis, we looked up to Francis. He was our leader throughout the 70s and the Godfather. And I have said this before. For me, it's the greatest American film ever made. The first Godfather film is the greatest American film. I was going to ask you that next. And I've always believed that.

And George and I were best friends from the day we met. And yes, we were competitive with each other, but it made us better at what we do. Because I was always trying to top George. And George was always trying to top me. And then we would be together and joke about that and be honest with each other. And so George gave me inspiration. and I gave him inspiration, and we have all of you who's been feeding off each other.

And do you still think that the Godfather is the greatest film of all time, and you've never, there's a quote from the 90s where you said, I've never made a movie anywhere near as good as the Godfather. Do you still think that? For me, Godfather, the first Godfather, is the greatest American film of all time.

I'm not saying it's the greatest film of all time. And you feel that you have made nothing close to it? It's very, very hard for me to be objective about my own work. Very hard. Julian asks, were you ever approached to make a Bond film? Do you have any regrets about not doing that? I have regrets that they didn't approach me to direct a Bond film.

They never approached you. I approached Cubby Broccoli after Jaws was a big hit. I'd always want to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr. No. So I called Covey Broccoli after Jaws. And I volunteered. I said, if you need a director, I would love to direct one. And he said, no. And he moved on.

And then Cubby called me again after Close Encounters came out. And that was a big hit. and Cubby called me a few years after close encounters and said, we'd like to use the five notes in Moonraker. Dan, dan, dan, dan, dun. And I said, I'll make you a deal. I'll give you permission to use the five notes if you let me direct a Bond film. And he said, nope, but I gave him the five notes anyway.

Yeah, you have to, right. They consistently turned me down. Why? He never explained why he wasn't letting me in the Bond family. But when I told that story to George Lucas in 1977, when we were in Hawaii together, getting ready for the release of Star Wars, A New Hope.

We all went to Hawaii together to just relax and get on the phone and figure out how much money it made at the 10 o'clock shows all over America. And when we found out that every single 10 o'clock AM show had been sold out, George was just a bullion. And Marcia, his wife, was a bullion. We went back down to the beach,

and I told my sad company broccoli story. They wouldn't let me direct bond. And that's when George said, I have something better than Bond. It's called Indiana Smith, which is what it was called at the time. And he told me the premise of the Indiana Jones series, and that's how I got that job. So if they ever asked me to make a Bond film now, my answer would be, you can't afford me. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's.

Now, I love it when characters are part of the club. You wouldn't know anything about that. Would you, Richard? The Thursday Murder Club in some ways. reminds me of the A team. I would now like to map each of those characters onto the A team and feel I probably could. I mean, Elizabeth is Hannibal and it's not even close. That's exactly right.

And Ron is howling Mad Murdoch. Well, there are definite perks to being in a club. Just ask the members of Club Lloyds. Because with Club Lloyds, you can bank on Lloyds to give you more wherever you are. If you join Club Lloyds, there's all sorts of benefits you can choose between. There's, for example, six free cinema tickets. They've got an annual coffee club and gourmet society membership, which would be mine. And also something that the Thursday Motor Club would enjoy very, very much indeed.

To top it all off, you have fee-free spending abroad, which means wherever you are, you won't be charged by Lloyds to use your debit card when you're travelling. Now, joining this club costs £5 per month, but that is refunded in any month that you pay £2,000 into your account. Now, that is a club that's worth being part of. Check out Club Lloyds today. You'll need to be a UK resident and aged 18 or over to apply. It's nearly that time, everyone. The rest is football will be on Netflix every day for the.

the world's biggest tournament. Join myself, Alan and Micah for daily debates, unfiltered takes and the most special of guests, all from the heart of New York City. Yeah, that's right. We're excited too. See you soon. I think we'll have Shane Murray's version of this question.

You've shaped modern cinema like nobody else, but whose film do you secretly wish you had your name on? Is there a story that someone beat you too that still haunts you, apart from Bond stories? Oh no, there's the only film that, It's not even a regret, but I did my friend George Lucas a favor, and I actually, we needed to move up the start date of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I was all about to direct Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise had already committed when they sent me the script. I worked on the script with the writer Ron Bass for a while, and I was getting ready to make the movie in about five or six months, and I had to drop out to do Last Crusade instead, which I was.

was previously obligated to do. And that was the only fish that I felt got away. And I love what Barry Levinson did with it. I thought it was a great movie. It stands the test of time. It's still one of my favorite films. Can I ask you, going back to disclosure day for a minute, can I, can I present a thought experiment to you? Okay. Which is, there is biological life out there, somewhere in the universe, and amongst the trillions of stars and the trillions of universes. is somewhere there will be a life force that is something like us and is more advanced than us so can study us and may at some point come to visit, may have already visited. If they are to do that, they will do their research into Earth.

Do you think there are aliens out there that have seen Spielberg movies? I would certainly think that by whatever form they could, let's say, commune with our art or with that medium, Whatever form they get, I'm sure it's not going to be a Blu-ray. I'm not sure exactly. I'm not sure the 1990s are going to go into a blockbuster and get a Blu-ray, although that would be a great fodder for a good comedy that maybe Seth Rogen should make. But I would think that had they seen E.T., this is only my conceited hope, they would have somehow made themselves known to me, and they didn't.

I've been waiting to see UFO my entire life. Do you know what, Disclosure Day is another letter to the aliens, right? is another one that's saying, look, I get it. Because I do think if they do come down, who are they going to talk to? I think if you look around the world, if I'm an alien, the first person I say, could you get me Spielberg? Well, gee, wouldn't that be neat? Yeah, that would be lovely.

Wouldn't that be lovely? But I think that a higher intelligence, or let's say, more advanced intelligence, where the physics are different, obviously they've learned how to circumvent the cosmos in they've found shortcuts to get here, whether they're interdimensional beans, whether they have found ways through wormholes to find shortcuts here. However it is, I think the thinking,

their thinking would also be almost unrelatably more advanced. You don't think they would still love stories. Yes, they would probably have their own narrative form of storytelling. And I'd be curious about that. I was always wondering what would an alien life form coming here? How would they interpret art? What would their art be? How would they express their art?

Yeah, what would they be pointing to? I love that. What if they come down and just say, so we tell you the movie we love, Rain Man? Oh, God, there we go. That's absolutely difficult. As long as it'll come down and say, you know, the best movies we've ever seen

is everything Roger Corman ever produced. That would be really fun. Lucas and Coppola, they came out of Roger Corman to some extent. that he, those cheap ways of doing things. I was thinking about him a lot this week because of the backrooms or obsessional, his people coming out of YouTube. Roger Corman was one of the greatest believers in young storytelling and young storytellers. He gave so many breaks to my colleagues that are still working today.

Marty Scorsese and George Lucas and others wouldn't, Francis Coppola wouldn't have gotten their early starts without Roger. I keep thinking that Roger Corman and the son, Dance Institute have done more to put new blood into this industry than any other individual or Robert Redford, any other individual that's created an institute that believed in new storytellers. I have a question from Darren Saker. He says, do you think there's a single moment from one of your films that sums up your view of the world? No, there isn't because I'm really an eclectic moviegoer, you know, I find value in everything I see. I've never seen a bad movie.

I've seen movies I don't like but I've never seen a bad movie I always find something I like about films that maybe are universally not spoken highly of I always find something good and do you think it's exciting that all these people can come up

via YouTube now in a way that it was obviously so expensive for you to make something even like Amblin or one of those really early things that you made was obviously still very expensive to produce and that now people can come up through this different medium and that they still I guess want

to put their stuff in theaters. You can't believe how many young people come up to me and say, how do I get started making movies? I just say, do you have a smartphone? And they say, yeah, right here. I said, you just found your way of getting started. But you encouraged now that people seem to be, this new generation, going back into actual theaters.

It's critical for the longevity of motion picture exhibition, without which everything will be a home experience or basically a smartphone experience. And I don't think anybody, you know, should watch a first-run movie on a very teeny screen. I mean, it's okay to come home and watch a first-run movie

on like a screen in your home. But I prefer movie theaters. I prefer the movie-going experience. I was raised that way. That Gen Zed they want to go in and they want to be together because I suppose so much of what people experience now is solitary, completely solitary, on a phone

and actually to want to go into movie theaters and have the experience together is something quite all-fashioned. I don't think people liked being isolated during COVID. I don't think people liked the fact that they were denied, you know, social entry into, back into society because we were all, essentially, we went within, we went underground, we took shelter. We all got into our own bomb shelters during COVID. And I think people are now starting to realize the importance of big group communal experiences

by getting our communities back together again watching concerts, watching plays, watching movies, watching opera, or going to the New York City Ballet Company. I mean, this is people getting back together again

is the greatest way to bridge our differences. And I would say to, in order to do that, you need great art. And having watched Disclosure Day in the cinema, I said to you when you came in, I felt like a child again. It's a proper, you have to watch it in the cinema.

I was leaning for, forward almost the whole way through that film. And it just felt like a communal experience, but that doesn't exist without the thing that you do. So I don't have a question. That's just to say thank you for doing it. Thank you, Richard, so much for that. It was such a treat. Thank you. What were your parents' favorite films? My mom and dad loved musicals. They loved the Hollywood musical, and they would take me with them to see Hollywood musicals in 1950s and 60s. I got to see some of the great musicals

and first run in theaters. When you're a kid, the only way you see a movie is your parents have to drive you unless you've got a movie theater within safe walking distance from home. And that was their favorite films. They just loved that. And Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Sid Chorice and Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds. I mean, that was, I never saw a singing in a rain in a movie theater.

I saw it on television when it came on television. But I saw a funny face at a drive-in. You know, there's a lot of things that I saw in first-run theaters. And that's, in a way, what drove me to make West Side Story eventually. My wife cried from second one to the final second, and they're literally the whole way through. She was every time I looked at her. She was in tears. David adds, what was your parents' favorite movie of yours?

Did they have one? Schindler's list. Amazing. My dad's favorite movie of mine was taping Private Ryan because my dad's of the greatest generation. He fought in World War II, and that was his generation. and my mom's and my dad's was also a Schindler's list. And there must make you feel very proud. It does.

It does. Stephen, thank you so much. We have so many questions we could have asked you. We picked a hideout, so thank you to everyone. And I answered every question. You did. These were all great questions. Unlike Tom Hanks, he was past, pass, past.

No. He was. Everyone was great. Stephen, thank you. This is absolutely wonderful film. I said to someone at Ambyn, and I said it was like watching a great Spielberg movie. And it really, really was. So thank you. Thank you so much. So much. Thank you. This was just such a pleasure.

That was extraordinary. What a dude. Yeah. I mean, we have had some pretty amazing moments in the last few weeks, but there's something about people who I think at that stage in their career that are able to remain childlike and innocent and so kind of excited by the world. You understand what they've done. It's just, yeah, it was, I mean, gosh, what a career. And, you know, I always say beforehand that if, there's any questions you want to pass, you above zero passes. Yeah. Just went straight in on every single question. And I got to ask my one about whether he thought aliens had ever watched a Spielberg on. So I was every, did you spot that was the mental one? Oh, he properly engaged with it.

He did, didn't he? He felt, they didn't watch the first one, but maybe they'll watch the new one. Well, that's what I was thinking. I think, but surely they must have done, surely when they come down, who were they going to ask to speak to? Yes. But you know what I mean? Take me to Spielberg. Take me to Spielberg.

Yeah. Take me to Barry Levinson. That's what I wanted. But that was an absolute treat. Once again, thank you so much for sending in your questions. We love doing these interviews. And people love the fact that it's listener questions. Because, by the way, journalists always ask the same.

I know. And we can be really cheeky as well, and it's your fault. That's the absolute joy of it. We need to go and decompress, I think. We do. God, next week I could just be me and you talking. Oh, God. We'll make it special.

Yeah, we'll make it special. All right, then. See you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.