The PG-13 Rating and Film Preservation

Stehven Spielberg Devin McCarthy, it's good to see you again. Good to see you again. This is actually the tenth time. Yes, it is. Warhorse It was the first time I think I met you. twenty eleven I want to shout out Christy Krieger, who's absolutely incredible, who is also part of this relationship over the years with movies and filmmaking. But welcome to my podcast. And this is truly an honor to have you and I've been prepping for this for weeks and I have so much I want to cover. Well, I haven't. so you're going to get me fresh. Well, I'm very excited. And just an honor. And one of my favorite times I ever spoke to you was we were in the White House. You just just got the presresidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. and I caught you on the way out and I was like asking you what that meant to you. And I was like, real quick, Stehven, how'd you do the moon scene in ET? I shot one thousand millimeter lens and we were geeking out in the White House. wasool. But I want to start off talking about empathy, which I find really interesting as I rewatched a lot of your films over the years and even in prepping for this. empathy has been such a huge theme in all of your storytelling. And obviously with Disclosure Day, it's massively a huge theme on the table. It's all in the eyes. It really is all in the eyes. But I think back to a moment in Jaws, which I think is one of my favorite moments of empathy in cinema is when Alex's mother goes up to Chief Brody and she's grieving. and she slaps him and instead of him defending himself and blaming the mayor He takes her grief and listens to it and doesn't interrupt her. That to me was such a beautiful way to empathize with what she was going through and he takes that guilt in that way from her. I was wondering if you can speak to your perspective on empathy throughout the years you've made movies, how empathy and your storytelling has changed your own personal perspective on it and why it's so important for you as a director. For me, empathy goes without saying. mean it's part I think it's part of the equipment that I was brought into the world with. I think that's because of how I was parented and how my mom and dad's values were kind of transferred to myself from my three sisters. So Epathy is just something that has been part of, you know, I guess if you're going to make a really good Soup, you have to have a broth, right? You have to start with a chicken base. And I think in a way, it comes in the broth of upbringing. and just listening and being aware of all the things that some people find corny like the golden rule. But I was brought up that way I don' I haven't really, when I make a movie, I don't separate empathy from characterization or the plot. If I select a book that I want to turn into a film, I'm sure the book has all kinds of opportunities to be able to you know give those feelings out to audiences without my being really aware of it But disisclosure Day, empathy was a conscious part of the plot of the story of the characters. It's so interesting. I even look at Sugarline Express, by the way. I'm rooting for Goldie to get her son back. Yeah, evenven though they're breaking the law. And I think there's something beautiful about the way we go along these journeys with these characters who are flawed in certain ways. Yeah movies do a really good job in being able to encapsulate empathy in you know, very few minutes or hours and ort to dispense it to an audience. It just goes without saying that movies are sort of the greatest medium, and so' theaters, so plays, for being able to accept empathy without calling attention to itself. And that's just when you feel something. when you just feel a character that We're not in relationship with and you feel divorced from the character, and suddenly you get closer and closer to that character, until your eyes fill up, until you feel that you know that character as well as you know yourself. That happens all the time in everybody's movies and plays But Disclosure Day sort of makes a fine point of that. I want to take a look at the technical way you've made films over the years, but how the technical services the emotional and narrative. Every decision you make with your collaborators, your editors, your cinematographers, your your first AD, everybody who's working on these films and the audience, we're a collaborator as well. It's all important and those decisions service that story and that emotion Looking at cinematography, the first time you work with Kaminsky is Schindler's list. That's right. Wh you know, the cinematography in that film shooting on black and white the way you did the scene with the girl in the red coat. I mean, it's just absolutely remarkable. That The memory of first working with him and building that collaboration, do you have specific memories from that set that you looked at and go, that's where we really bonded and became this force of storytelling Well, it really helped that I'm making a movie in Poland about you know Polish and you know basically Polish and Jews and Jews from Hungary, Jews from everywhere in easastern and Western Europe that were sent to the death camps. And my cinematographer was born in Poland raaised in Poland, speak flluent Polish and could talk the entire crew in his native tongue. And so it was really helpful. And I didn't hire Janerskaminsky because he was Polish. I wasn't even going to assume that he was first generation Polish. I just had seen his work when Diane Keaton directed her first film for a lifetime called Wildflower And I had seen his work and I called Diane to tell her how great her directing was and asking who was your cinematographer? And she gave me all of Yanish's information. And that's how Yanish and I met through Diane Keaton. Wow. But specifically the shot where we see the girl in the red coat, that you shoot black and white for the film, how do you achieve that? Do you also shoot that in color? And then how does that work Well, it was yeah, I mean, I think essentially, you know, we shot, you know, we shot the movie in black and white stock. I mean, it was not color stock that we did, black and white printouts.ed I didn't want studios later that own the IP to come in and release Chandlers's List and color Because I wanted it to be in black and white su to ensure that nobody had any record of you know the sort of could do any of the separations and preserve the color and release it later on cassette or television. I shot it really, andast and Eastman had to make black and white stock for me, Back and white raw stock negative. They had to do that and they did And the color was sometimes achieved by shooting those scenes in color. printing everything in black and white except holding out the color part of it, just her just her clothes. And then we had to wet splice to the release prints, just the scenes that were shot on color stock into the black and white print. So if we went out with one hundred and seventy five prints of Sindrra's list initially, We had to make undreds of edits while the film was at the different movie houses. This is the craftsmanship I want to highlight because these are all so many individuals have to come together and make this work. And the collaborators are amazing. Staying in the cinematography lane, the way you use light is fascinating to me. I'm watching Disclosure Day and you have characters who will move in and out of like a spotlight in a way. I look back at ET, when Dee Wallace opens the clothes in the closet, Elliot gets up and gets in front of the sunlight coming through the window And then beaiful these flares you have in the film and even the people in Disclosure day with their cell phones and that beautiful light Yeah,, horizontally going out. What is it about light that is such an interesting piece of storytelling that is part of the world, a part of the movie, It's a character. Well, light is why movies light is where movies came from I mean, movies are really light and shadow. You know, if you cast a light on a screen and you do puppet show with your hands in silhouette. kind of, you know, I can do the bird You know, you basically are playing with light, you're altering light. You're basically blocking light occluding it to be able to project onto the screen the hand shadows you're trying to make. It's the basic principle of motion pictures and any photography is about the use of light. And I have always loved light and I'm always aware in my conscious everyday walking world where light's coming from just because I'm fascinated with how the day shifts. and I can sit in one location. I can sit on a chair in a yard. and that yard changes wondrously if you just sit and exist in the changing light as the earth as the earth turns. so I've completely infatuated with light and shadows. Speaking of shadows and reflections and mirrors, shadows are really fascinating. I look at Douglas Sloum's work on Indy. He did one R on the Indy film. Oh, brilliant. but when we first see Indy and Marion reunite in that first scene they have, Indy's shadow is looming over her It's like a dark element of her past. like we're narratively understanding what that means through the shadow. But then you look at reflections, even in Disclosure D, when we see Hugo, Coleman Domingo's character reflected on the glass at Wardex as Colin is standing behind that door. These are really interesting ways to play with story and narrative. Yeah it's a way of including a character without cutting away to the character And it was a shot that I found. I was just trying to figure out because Boy had had to take Scanlon to another room to tell him something privately. And when he takes someom, I just noticed that that Adam Stockhusen had built this This miraculous set, no digital. It was a complete set he built. stunning. With screens that were like twenty five feet high and wrapped around the entire stage at Wardex and And when I suddenly saw reflected I had a few storyboards for that scene And the storyboards had cutaways to to a still photograph on the screen of Hugo's character played by Calma Domingo. But the second I saw the reflection, I said, I don't need a cut away becausecause when he closes the door, let's make sure when he closes the door. Cuomo Domingo's reflection comes into the shot and is right between The character of a boy and the character is scan. which is like it's such a narrative way to explain it too and the character is incredible. I mean, I think about the one in ET when Keys is standing over Elliot. And you have Elliot reflected in the Hazmat suit. Yeah. It's such an interesting way to mean, did you remember designing that shot? don I didn't storyboard that shot, but but I found that shot. I mean, I mean part of half of what I do, more than half what I do is is discovery littleittle teeny moments of discovery. and you just do that by suddenly going away from the abstract where I'm at home storyboarding, but I'm not storyboarding based on a set that we've already built I'm storyboarding in the imagined abstract of trying to figure out what the film should look like. But when I get to a set Everything changes Now they actually built this thing and I could walk through it and make these little discoveries. And so it's more fun for me, actually, not to storyboards. It's more fun for me to make a movie without any storyboards whatsoever and just discover things every day. I can't do it with a film of the epic size of disisclosure dayay But I can do it with Schindler's list In terms of of I could do it with a lot of movies like Sven Private Ryan, there were no storyboards on that. Which which is incredible to me because I've re watching the opening scene this morning, the shutter angle that you're messing with the shutter and all that. how is that not storyboarded? I mean, I'm watching the scene going every single shot's all handheld the way you move the camera, but like how is that possible? Well it's because when those kids hit the beach at six thirty in the morning, you know, and on Omaha Beach You know, the rangers hit the beach. They didn't have storyboards. Nobody gave them a battle plan of what to do. just, just, just don't don't die and get to the get to what they call the the shingle you know, before you start climbing the hill to the top of the, you know, to the high ground. And they didn't have storyboards. And I also felt that I would have a more If put it this way, I would have a more meth method a method experience if I kind of shot the whole thing of continuity, starting with the Higgins boats and working my way up to the top of the Virville Pass. And to do that, storyboards would have made it feel antiseptic and kind of planned and not spontaneous. But without storyboards, there were hundred As Arthur Penn termed it, happy accidents that kept happening every day because it wasn't storyboarded. Yeah. I mean, happy accidents have been a big part of your career. look at jaws, like the shark breaking down that made it way more intense because it was like a happy accident that found that narrative. And that was a very storyboarded film too. Interesting. Camera movement and placement. I was rewatching Del We learn so much about the character in the beginning through the POV of him backing out of the garage and driving. It reminds me of what Hitchcock did on strangers on a train when we meet the characters byy the shoes for the first time.. We know who those guys are based on the way they walk and the way their shoes are. But then you also move your camera, you push in in very amazing sequences. or in Disclosure dayay, when Josh gets into a car, you'll go around, you'll get in the passenger seat, like we're on it for the ride with him How do you decide when you're going to move your camera or keep it still? I think because when Josh when his character, Daniel Kilner at the beginning, escapes with the entire archive of you UFO secrets for the past eighty years all on video, all on different formats, but he's got it on on these drives when he's stolen all this, it's like a heist of eighty years of the truth. And the people chasing him are trying to stop that truth from being told to the world. That's basically the outline of our story. But I wanted to keep it moving. I wanted to start this film the opening shot And basically say to the audience, you need a seatbelt and you need a harness I almost put my seatbelt on To watch hisclosure day. And you know, so to begin the movie that way, I didn't want to stop the cameras. So when he takes off And it's very boring car scenes. I find it really boring to have people talking in cars. There's not a lot you can do. But I wanted The camera while they were driving at sixty miles an hour on residential streets, I wanted the camera to be active and alive and moving inside the car at times. And when I couldn't move the camera physically I was able to get reflections on through the glass of the road going by. So it was Connecticut. it was Koninetic. So it would feel like the Chase movie that this is There's something interesting. I remember seeing children of men. And the way Chivo shot that scene with Chuateel and Julenne Moore as the and they were like ducking out of the way of the camera basically so it could move around them. Just really amazing. Wh I talk I talked to Alfonso before I made Disclosure Day about that scene. You're joking and joking. No, I'm not in and, you know, I said Because there's stuff on YouTube you can get and stuff on the internet. you get to see it. but I wanted him to tell me how he planned his shots and what he did. And he told me everything he did in children men to achieve that woner There were blends in the wonder. There were a number of blends. it's seamless And so that helped me Rrig a car as Chivo and Alfonso had rigged for their movie to get achieve those shots in my movie in that first sequence. Absolutely remarkable. Jumping into score, obbviously, he mentioned the thirtieth score with John Williams. Sugarland Express was his first, which one of my favorite scores of his. That's the harmonica one,. It's the Tut Stielman Harmonica player. Obsessed with that score greatest Monica player in history Brilliant. But I want to bkend it with Close Enouns and Dclosure D dayay because what I find interesting about score is score is a character in your film. Score can also lead us to answers, right. So you're posing questions in close encounters. You have that motif that exists within the actual world. I was like humming it this morning Now with Disclosure Day, you're getting answers, right? Right. But his score has an arc in Disclosure Day, just like characters do. He does. What catharsis did you find in his music? that gave you interesting insight into where you were in close encounters with your questions and where you are now with your answers. How did his music assist that catharsis and that journey for There's one huge difference between the music and close encounter. and there's a lot of differences. know the Cose encounter score is almost operatic. Yeah. But the Cose encounter score leads the film. It out in front of the movie. But I wanted John's Music and Disclosure dayay to be behind the film to be underneath the film, to lift the movie, but not too far, but just to be able to guide it, lift it, but not ever get in front of it Wow. I mean, it's remarkable to watch and the score itself really does give you those answers in a way. I kind of want to watch a double feature of close encounters and this. Have you watched them back to back? No. I know you made them, but I it'd be fascinating to know. it's interesting because cllose encounters, you know, Disclosure Day is for me not even close to being the sequel. And some people can take issues It's in conversation For me, it's in conversation with ET as well. It's in conversation with it's a summation of my three extraterrestrial movies, and I don't include Bar of the Worlds. That was more my reaction to night eleven. But so it was much more analogous to nine eleven. But close Encounters in ET, and now Disclosure Day is the summation. The difference is in close encounters, after all of this amazing I guess you would called the first communion between an off world civilization coming here and humankind After that operatic last sequence, is's still a secret. The world doesn't know On those matter of fact, I think Neri says to Gillian We're the only ones that know. And it ends there the world does not find out. Disclosure Day is what happens When the world really finds out? Michael Khan, Sarah Brocher. But Michael, obviously first editing on close encounters. edited every film except for ET up until now. Sarah is now your main editor on the film, but Sarah joined on the post as a co editor. Talk about your relationship with your editor and how that is also a relationship with the audience and how when we spoke for Warhorse, I asked you about the difference in the violence of a PG thirteen movie versus an R rated film. And you said the audience fills in the gore and the violence that you would have seen in Sving Private Ryan, but in the PG thirteen, you can do it with the audience collaborating in a way. Yeah, Draws is a much more violent movie because of what the audience has not shown. Yes. What the audience has imagined is taking place, especially underwater in that first scene Chrisy Watkin Chrisy, you know. And And so editing for me, you know, I shoot for the cutting room. I mean, I basically by putting scenes together. I already know where the shots are going to go. When I'm on the floor setting the camera, I know where I want the shot I sometometimes I know I don't know exactly what part of that shot I'm going to use or when I'm going to use it, but I know the area it's going to go When I storyboard something, obviously that's already a cut sequence. It's all in the storyboards. Frame to frame to frame, It's cut to cut, angle, angle, angle. But when things aren't storyboarded, I'm still, you know, shooting the editing room. So we get at the editing room, the first assembly is not hard. The gift of Michael Chn for my entire career. and then Michael and Sarah working together on about a number of pictures. And now Sarah on her own. for the first time with me on this is that That's where the skill of the editor comes in because the editor has to challenge me has to show me something I haven't thought of yet. has to say I tried something. Sarah would always say I've tried something. Can I show you what I tried And I'll often say, wow, I never would have thought of doing it that way. So that's the relationship. Beautiful collaboration. I always think of what Verna Fields did in Jaws when before we get to the actual Dolly Zoom of Roy Scheider, the way the cuts are happening, corre me if I' wrong, but like people are walking across the screen as almost like a wipe. Yeah, but that's not really editing. That's that's a planned montage because you have to plan for somebody in a yellow bathing suit to walk left to right when you're shooting Roy Scheider. thenen that same person walking right to left has to cross in front of the lens to create the the I guess you call it the kind of wipe or the blend Yeah It makes the it cuts for us. joins it. It tells the audience this is exactly specifically what and what he's looking at And when is he looking at it? He's looking at it immediately because the person passing wipes off and wipes on his point of view. So that's planned. the sce doesn't work without those those sort of preparation to make the whole sequence hang together. Absolutely incredible. I mean the dolly Zo, I mean, there's a doll Zom in ET when we're sitting over the city, which I find is one of the coolest ones where like the city's pulling away. It's just absolutely incredible. You talked about the violence a bit in jaws. The PG thirteen rating is interesting to me, and obviously you're a bit responsible for that. You are responsible for that. I came up with the idea. Yeah. I want to share this because this is really interesting. I was re watchatching your films, but could you speak about that time? So Temple of Doom comes out You do you have the heart sequence, which is by the way, a very quick sequence. but it's still really brutal. But talk about that history of that because now your movie disclosedred APG thirteen. Well the history is very simple. When Temple of Doom came out, Ineanne Jones and the Temple of Doom came out, Gremlins came out the same year. Yeah. So it was sort of I got knocked twice. First, everybody came after me came after the MPAA for giving it a PG rating, but really came after me for Yanking the heart out of this dude's chest, you know? And then and and then I produce Gremlins and Gremlins has all this crazy green blood and mayhem and blowing a greml up in a microwave oven. that also got a PG. not not at all ready ready So there was a lot of real noise that everybody made and got really upset with both of those movies. So I called Jack Valenti was a friend, He was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America and a good friend. And I just said, Jack, I'm really in trouble. You could really help the whole industry and people like me who are on the border of a PG and an R Is there any way you would consider And Jack said, Yeahah, I' read all the publicity,. I said, Jack, is there any way you would consider going back? and figuring out can you either PG thirteen or PG fourteen, you figure out what the age would be that would be a mid ground between PG and R And Jack said, I think it's a very good idea. And he went away and he called me back two days later. He says, we're gonna to announce it next week. Red Dawn. Just like that. It was crazy And Red Don was the first, right? I think I first was it the first? I don't remember. My friend, John Mellius What an amazing. You know, we were talking before we started about seventy millimer. There's so many amazing things to see on film. I actively go out and watch films projected on film at the N Bev or the Vista in LA. What is it about we've talked about film capture, like filming a movie on film, but film projection. you and I both actually were at a seventy millimeter of two thousand one sppace Odyssey. You were at the early show and I I just missed you at the in New York. Yeah, Villa East. I actually still have my ticket for it What is it about film projection? It feels alive in a way. Well well, it's alive. It is alive. And look, you can probably get more foot lamberards. reflected off the screen when you're using a barco or Cisco system and a DCP is being projected in a very, very bright way or especially when you're projecting Digital Dolby vision projector. It's super bright There's something about a film out and and and threading the film and then turning on turning, you know, get the dower, you know, get the dowser off and get that projector. with the film in real time cranking right behind the lens and being projected onto a screen. It may not be as bright A Doly Vision, notothing really is but it is classical cinema and you can even see the grain on the screen. and to me the grain is always swiming active. film itself. even in a static shot of somebody's close up. can you can see that somehow the molecules. of the film stock, the grain is still alive There's life, even in a tableau still frame, still life. I was lucky to see a seventy millimeter of Lawrence of Arabia earlier this year with my wife and her family. and the gentleman had it was thirteen reels and he was real to real, switching. Yeah. And it was the cleanest thing I'd ever seen. But that but David Lean's movie was alive Yeah on that screen. My kids have sometimes ask me when these movies came on TCM And they've somehow gotten rid of it now, but they used to say Dad, What's that Bright circle. comes on the upper right hand side of the screen. What is that? That a mistake? And I said, no, that's a cQ mark. so the projectionist knows when to douse one projector and undouse the next. It's where they do the changeovers. It's abbsolutely amazing. And I do w want to mention that people can see Disclosure Day in seventy millimeter and definitely check out the listings Before I end this, I want to show this to you. So I as a kid collected movie ticket stubs. and I've lost a few over the years, but there are these mean a lot to mean, I think're as geeky as me. Yeah. And I was one I want to show them to. Actually, this is the two thousand one show that I went to the day you went, which is weirdly enough t them it doesn't matter but I just wanted to show you these and see how you would react to some of the films. So what I find interesting about this is you got minority report? Yeah PG thirteen. Yeah That would have been an R in ninet in nineteen eighty eighty eighty three, Munich One of my favorite movies of your. Ithould have been an R. It was War of the World, PG thirteen. Wow, all look at this. Where is this one? Let me see. Where is this one? Catch me? Oh that's what's that Ar A. Amop. Yep. Amin. goodness Do you have an archive at home? I do stuff everyh. Yeah.. But as a kid, I saved these. And Saving Private Ryan. in the world? Yeah. I love this. And AI, Kevin, this is great. Sving Private Ryan? Yeah. Ready Player onene. Which is another one of my favorite movies, a movie that was brilliantly done where Kaminsky shot thirty five in the outside world, you go digital inside and that imperfection, perfection. Yeah. We even went more grainy in the real world. I love it because that's the real world. I know we have to end. The reason I wanted to show those to you is because I sat in a theater as a kid and I just saved those. and then to be here with you all these years later We were connected in that way as audience to filmmaker. And so I was wondering what you collected as a kid. I collected movie soundtracks. I collected vinyls. Didn't call them vinyls then. his records. to his records thirty three and the third R PM And I had a huge collection of motion picture soundtracks by all the great composers. You still have them? I still have them in my archive. I still have them. I was at a record store the other day and I found hundreds. really? I found John Williams's original Close Ecounters released vinyl. Yeah. and I bought it at a store. You can get that. can It's just that was my way of putting the record on and just closing my eyes and making up my own scenes, letting the music not remind me of the of the movie the music was written for, but the music put me on a journey to cook up my own story. Do you remember which ones were kind of impactful that you listened? Well justust all of them. I mean just so many of them. But I remember when I first my first soundtrack was Lith Stehven's Destination Moon. That was the first soundtrack I collected. Wow. And then the second soundtrack I think I collected was spepellbound, which was which was seventy eight R per min. It was like a collector's And I got that cost a few more bucks. I think my dad paid for it. That was the second one. That's amazing. Well, this has been truly an honor. I could go on for hours talking. So could I I just love talking to you about this stuff. I love talking to you about this stuff. and thank you for the technical decisions you make that make me feel the emotions I feel. And I know you don't want people to know the magic sometimes There' I can feel it every decision you make when I watch your movies. Thankk you, Kevin. And I don't ever want to be caught doing anything technically that robs you of a real organic emotion. with the stuff that I do technically is to bring out the emotions, but I can't fool you. you still get emotional. I know you still have a real audience you know, you know, storyteller response, but at the same time I hope, as I do, when you see a film for the first time