# Transcript: Keynote: The Big Picture with Steven Spielberg Live from SXSW

**Date:** March 13, 2026 · 10:00 PM  
**Session:** [Keynote: The Big Picture with Steven Spielberg Live from SXSW](/sessions/2026-03-13/pp1150590-keynote-the-big-picture-with-steven-spielberg-live-from-sxsw)

## Summary

Steven Spielberg sits down for an intimate keynote conversation at SXSW, reflecting on his 50+ year career from childhood fears that fueled his imagination to the making of Jaws, ET, Close Encounters, and his upcoming film Disclosure Day. He discusses his filmmaking process (intuition over intellectualization), his belief that we are not alone in the universe, the importance of theatrical moviegoing as communal experience, and why he refuses to use AI in his creative process.

## Topics

`steven spielberg` · `filmmaking` · `science fiction` · `ufo disclosure` · `movie theaters` · `directing process` · `intuition` · `storytelling` · `ai in film`

## Key Takeaways

1. Spielberg's creative process relies on intuition over planning — he shows up to set without storyboards on many films and discovers the blocking in the moment, calling intuition 'my best friend on any movie.'
2. He has a 'very strong speaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now' — the 2017 New York Times Navy UAP article rekindled his interest and led to Disclosure Day, his first UFO film in nearly 50 years.
3. On AI in filmmaking: 'I am pro AI in many different disciplines. I am not for AI that replaces a creative individual' — his writers room has no empty chair with a laptop.
4. Movie theaters create irreplaceable communal experiences — 'at the end of a really good movie, we are all united with feelings we walk into the daylight with. It happens in movies, it happens at concerts, and it happens in battle.'
5. He watches Lawrence of Arabia every year to stay humble: 'It reminds me you will never be as good as David Lean' — and still spots new details, including a possible gum wrapper in the desert.

## Full Transcript

Hello, hello, awesome, Austin. I I'm so excited to speak with you today. I thought we could start with your youth. Okay, do you remember the first time you saw a movie or a piece of media that made me think about a world beyond our own, something another, life force, another, something else,

smart ass answers. When I was really little, I had, you know, had an abundance of fears, and the fears actually came from my imagination.

I didn't realize until later that the abundance of fear kind

of like overdose over abundance of imagination. So whenever I saw something, it was I would I would extrapolate and make it much worse than it actually was. So my first experience in the world of legacy than just a fantasy or science fiction that's more scientific, more fantasy films I grew up with as a little kid, and 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, it is nice to be released 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 it 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 that I was seeing.

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 sister to scare them. And so if somebody scares me, turn around and scare and Sue Nancy. And that's that's kind of how the whole thing started, with me wanting to find some kind of an outlet to be able to exorcize the demons of fear and and put it off someone else, right? Take it out of me and put it on someone else. And that's where the whole home 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 on the watch I never I grew up with the Jackie Gleason show with Sid Caesar's show, shows with Milton Berle. That's sort of what I grew up watching. All the cool things I wanted to watch, like the old Jack Webb dragnet series, where any squad wasn't allowed to watch, but they also break their mid century kind of movies I was allowed to see as well. And sometimes, when you're when you're denied media, you'll create your own? Yeah, I was wondering even your imagination as a young person.

Paradoxically, a lot of people say, well, movies, tell me how many movies? Maybe just being able to sit alone and think about what you might make help you in some way. I think you did. I think, 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 Spanish, you know, for an a big experience. So I remember the first movie I saw, I made a whole movie about it, the first movie I saw, it's movie I

saw in the theater was created show on earth and and whenever that was 52 I think.

And I was, 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 and 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 that's pretty soon is on revisiting all your work and all of the stories so far are all about this experience for human eyes. Talk about why I'm always centering those stories through the experience of people, and not being on a daily world and seeing trying to imagine that experience I never really I could relate to.

And one of the first movies I saw, it wasn't original, came out in 1950 I think I saw it when it was re released on a weekend, we used to have a few 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 was the first film that George Powell, you know, got his career off to a start and and it was a terrestrial film about, you know, humankind's first trip to the moon,

not the Bailey film back in the turn of the century, but it was the first. It was the color. And I went to see it in a theater, and it grounded me, because it was as realistic as science or it is Hollywood, consulting with scientists. Knew how to tell that kind of a story, and it was full suspense.

I'll never forget the scene where they couldn't the big fear is, get to the moon. How to get back to Earth? If you spent too much fuel landing on the moon, what do you do? You know, you got to strip everything out of the spaceship. Gotta get rid of everything said.

So it was the first time I had ever felt something called suspense. I never felt that before and and so in the sense that movie was a big influence on me. It was the first, and 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 blade Stevens, and it's a it's a real piece of some coffee classical music, unusual in those days for a score you mentioned earlier this week when we spoke that you wanted to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind, more jobs and no one would let you do it.

I was wondering if you just kind of what if would be permanent if someone didn't let you do it? What would that movie have been like? Would you be here today

make close encounters? Because it was, it was a French it was kind of a sort of, it was on the 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, what you want to make a movie about the national choir?

That's what you want to do. We want to make a movie about crackpot reporting of things that aren't really occurring, and you want to make a completely crazy Madison film about something that isn't happening. So when I went around and pitched it wasn't close called close encounters in those days, it was, I just called it a UFO movie, and I couldn't get any traction from the studio. So nobody really interested in that at all. And then when Josh came around, you know, and after Josh was released, everybody came to me and said, you know, you have an old diary.

We'll shoot anything you have. I mean, it was great. Suddenly, the they opened the doors and opened the box 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 door?

Notebook full of ideas that 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 close encounters, even before I directed the sugars.

So this is something that I really and always 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 closing calendars for ET has kind of turned a bit when you look at AI and more of the worlds and Ready Player One, and does 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 runs off on every choice, every choice that we make to decide genre or decide on a bigger book or a script that we find or have always wanted to do, it always comes out in the wash, you know. And as I've gotten older, I've become more aware of the world as it was, as it as it is currently, and as I hope it could be someday, that's going to always run 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 a perfectly great film in the first war of the world with Gene Barrett. That was a great movie. I didn't need a remake, but 911 affected me in a very profound way, and I wanted to find some metaphor for 911 that's why I had resurrected more 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, weren't a parent at that time, and then you had kids after that film.

And I was, you know, unusual, because something more pessimistic once you've had children. But I wonder if that affects him too well, he made me want to have kids. I mean, it really did. I mean, I was such a opportunist in terms of everybody get away. I gotta 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 Barrymore never really went home. I kind of adopted, Drew and helped help her with

a know, oh, she 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 caught the movie, I thought it was unfair for Child child actors to have to shoot part of the third act, the first week of shooting, is you're trying to save money to do everything in the same set before you struck the set. 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 divide with with et. I mean the last scene they're saying goodbye ET is the last scenes we shot in Hollywood and and so it was. It just compounded the sadness of separation for all of them and I just remember when it was all over, I said, I think I've discovered how great it's going to be some day to day, and that's what we're all beginning. Do you always have a sad feeling when you complete a shoot? Not always.

Sometimes I can't wait to get off the

booty. The fact,

which was,

you know, President Obama recently either spoke or misspoke about the existence of UFOs or UAPs on a podcast, like you're doing right now. And I'm curious how you're feeling about the real life existence in UFOs, and especially since you're back in this world in the last couple of years. Well, I think that for one thing, when, when President Obama made that comment, I thought, Oh, my God, this is so great for explosion day. And then two days later, he stepped back to comet and said what he believed, it was life in the gospels, which, of course, everybody should believe in, because no one should ever think that that we are the only we are the only intelligent civilization in the entire universe.

So I've always been, 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 having been alone over the last 3000 years.

I mean, you got to go back up on dedicated 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 made in 50 years. Almost 50 years since close counters was placed in 77 was when the New York Times came out in 2017 there was an article written by Helene Cooper and Rosenthal and I believe Leslie Keane. And it was an article about the Navy pilot who was flying a navy fa 18 F fighter jet off the Ninas the aircraft air Nimitz, and had seen something on his player and 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. Leaked to the New York Times, and they wrote this very serious article about is there, is there any cover up?

Has the government ordered the military, Air Force, the Navy, been covered 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 here in 2023 which some of you might have seen with three,

former person works in intelligence, one was a Navy pilot, and two were in the military, and it was a fascinating Q and A under earth, by the way. And so my thing right now is this, I don't have any information exclusive to me that all of you here, if you read about this and have seen the documentaries about this, date 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 speaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now.

We're going to use it. And I made a

movie about that,

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.

Well, one of my consultants on Close Encounters was the former head of project the Air Force investigation. It was, it was fairly funded. The Air Force was investigating, you know, these anomalies in the sky, and J Allen Hyde 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 flex approval going into the private sector, and he consulted with the event on Close Encounters. And he was very helpful, because I even listened 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 of ADT.

You're about to see disclosure date very soon. You know, I'm really into this. Why haven't I seen anything? My friends have seen UFOs, now called UAPs. I have and then we've called Close Encounters for the third time.

Close encounters the third time close

encounter in the first

or second, you don't seem to be afraid

of the idea of aliens. You don't seem to be considered. Are there things that you are afraid of? What are you afraid of? I'm not afraid of any aliens.

You know, there or here. I have no fears about that whatsoever. You know, I think our movie does, you know, take into consideration about giving too much away the social dislocation that could occur, you know, theologically, if

it would be announced that there is evidence, not only evidence there is interaction that has been going on for decades that we are not just not 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 and 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, the display seems to be contemporary. 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 of future like Disclosure Day and Minority Report. But I know I don't do a lot of contemporary stories. I'm drawing.

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 getting good at in history was and so that's my fascination, inspired by my dad, who loved history himself and brought me. My dad was a scientist reader.

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, and. But I don't, in a way

that I'm not, you know, present day stories for me,

but I just found so much richness in stories about Contreras. I was really struck when you're watching et by how patient movie is, and I feel like contemporary movies and the expectations of contemporary audiences is more. Have you filmed 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 you see a film again because it moves too fast. We like that.

But that's not the reason you should see it from a second time. You should see your film second time because they were profoundly moved in some way by it. But films aren't really faster, and it all started with the music video. The whole music video generation of that repulsive action and cramming two and a half minutes, a lot of cuts, a lot of montage for two and a half minutes, and then that commercials, television began moving faster. This is before film started to pick up speed, to keep abreast of using videos and commercials back in the early

and, and, and now there is just with everything available Tiktok and, you know, Instagram,

and I'm not on any of these things, by the way,

not that I don't any kind of a

personal thing to is just that he 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 hadn't abducted my aliens. I was

going through that missing time. You know, where did that time go? And so, in a way, that's all moving really fast to teach in those visual sound rights and and so I find that things are speeding up a lot. So that's why, like this year, I felt like train dreams, a meditation on an entire life, recovering nearly 75 years, but done under two hours.

Just made me so happy to have that talk in the world this year. Do you feel that's beginning of your film, yeah, if you feel like your films are moving faster, anyway, 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 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. You'll say, I kind of 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 is that has a lot of VFX, every storyboard has to be because I'm dealing with a very large budget on a special effects film. So everything that people had, but there are other films that I've made didn't do any kind at all. I never had a single storyboard on shutters list. I didn't have a single storyboard on saving forever Brian, 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 age count that I need to cover, but I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to cover it yet, and that's what it'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 were making together in this collaborative work for 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 show I show up before the crew, so I'll get to the set time sometimes at 630 in the morning on my priority report, and world's top with insist on getting there when I got there, so we can map out the whole day, which was really helpful to me.

So there are films like that at Hank denial, where I'm really collaborative with the person who is carrying the film. And there are other films where it's just myself, went into a bit of a, I guess a little bit of a meditation to really figure out 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 exciting thing about this. I came a little bored when I do a heavy VFX talk, when I know what the day is going to be like, it's already mapped out. Everybody knows what we're doing, it's so much better getting out there like I did with a movie like, like the families, 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 the way that film I made. I've often said that film was, it was, it was $40 million of therapy.

That dream was paid for. But something like that was exactly the example I'm giving. I show up in the morning and I would just say, I know the camera needs to be here. Don't ask me why I know the camera needs to be here. So there's something about when you fly by the seat of your pants, our best friend is our intuition.

That's our best friend on any movie, any film director to tell you that 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. 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 ambulance 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 the 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 speak stronger to me than than my brain, which is always trying to take over and get Melissa it to fight for who this medal.

And so when I'm racing around and I put the camera somewhere, and I know what the blossom wants to be, I just need the cat to trust me. So 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 gotta get it out of me first. So I said I'll do a whole blocking with second team. The actors are still in hair and makeup, and I'm blocking the entire shop with second team.

So the actors come out, having worked 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 they're moving, why the camera's 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, 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 of 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 Michaels, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the graduate. Look at that blocking. Look at the blocking of Casablanca. Look at which look at basic Michael critis, the way he blocks the camera, and and, and watch. TCM, ladies and gentlemen, watch.

You're

going to see storytelling the way. I wish everybody would be telling their stories in the modern in these, in these modern times. So the best stories were told a long time ago. There are great stories to be told today, by far, like sinners and one battle after the other. So many films are from Hamlet closure.

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 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, complicated scene, the truck Chase and Raiders of the Lost Art, or the initial invasion in War of the Worlds, 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, only when

I 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 comedy, so I don't have that Gage. I don't like preview my movies, because you even have to preview a comedy because you have to see if it's funny else. But I pretty much think that's the most important test in the film. I didn't know what we had on jaws.

I don't because I was underwater on that film for nine months of both literally and figuratively, I was underwater in that movie and 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. The shark worked. It would have been that was good if I hadn't met Johnny Williams, it would have been good at all but, but I didn't know what I had until we preview the picture in Dallas, Texas, in the

medallion

theater for like, my first short films. And I took all my films in Texas, including 18.

We previewed Houston. We previewed all my films in Texas and 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 this little boy was killed on the raft. A man got up, and I went, Oh my God, our first walk out, I've gone too far. There's blood coming out of the water.

This guy came out and started walking up the aisle, and he started running, and I watched him go out the curtains into the lobby. He was heading to the bathroom, and he vomited all over the floor of the lobby. And I looked at that guy, and then about five and 30, he came back and took a seat, and that's when I said,

I've

got a five year old who's very fond of going to the academy

Museum. There's big jaws exhibit there right now, and she's been begging me to watch jaws, and I will not let that happen yet, but I wonder what it's like to have the burden of other people's nightmares as

well as what? Because all my movies come from my

nightmares, even terrible thing, I know that obviously Jaws is a very challenging issue.

Do you remember what was your most joyful time making a movie? ET was my most joyful. I had two really great joyful memories. ET was a joyful pioneer film, because I discovered, you know, my love for parenting, not just directing, and then, and then the fable members, even though it was painful and highly personal, nothing more personal to

me. It was, it was just a joy to be part of that.

And also with this closure that I probably stayed, I made such there were such friendships for forge Contreras, there one, you know, with the cast and myself, I had walked away into the shelf way was glad to keep very close after the fable wins, and of course, they were true, became like my other church a kid before I even had kids, but I came away with five true friends after Disclosure Day. That's very important to me. This has been a very vital period for you. The last 1015, years, you 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?

You know, I think once you start once I've been telling stories my whole life. I mean, my best stories have never been released, by the way, because I have seven kids, and I put them all dead. By the stories, I go from room to room, like a doctor, making houses, making calls, and I

so my best story is actually my kids have benefited from not the audiences. But I just can't stop. I just, I just love that,

and that's never going to stop.

I can't I, in other words, I can't envision what it be like not to do what I do, and that would be the worst by fire in my life to not get to do what I'm doing. I think he was the 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? Can Kate has made such a life for me, and we brought seven kids into the world. Two have adopted.

We now have six grandchildren. And that is, that is the real stuff, that it is not the stuff that I fall back on when I'm not directing. Directing actually has in the last 20 years any second position to my family and to all of their needs. And so I said that paradigm really changed, and it changed very quickly for me

and and so that's really my life, and I'm able, and also they keep me relevant, because I'm out on social media, and my kids are. They tell me the stuff I need to know.

It really occurred

when I saw you earlier this week, you were more about the news than I was. You were you're like 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 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

and Olivia at the

big theater. Greek

theater, and that

was probably the first time I can remember saying before I saw Lord, I was making movies when I started running for radio and said, I'll read that.

Way, way average for me. I'm 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 age of restored Lawrence larabia to the original vision, David Lee man, before the producer sends, people covered in the metal and started to hit it without telling David whole seeds out to get more screening in theaters of that picture, we were able to restore the film, and I was given a senator by Don Steele, who was the head of hobby at the time. He came to the restoration. And plenty of time, and I wash that film on Saturday

once a year, but especially before

you said, the reason I watch that film every year, it keeps me humble.

It reminds me you will never be as good as David. How does

it compare the first time you saw it? You are you still discovering things in I'm still seeing things in it. And there's a big history from Lawrence and maybe, which I can't figure out, there would not be a History in the Digital Age today, we just take it out, it costs $6 and 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 this guy, are going to see, you know, you know, Faisal, and Faisal is camp, and they just start and the camera, they're on the sand dune.

The cameras flow 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. Is it crazy,

that kind of detail? Well, okay, if you do it back, 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.

I was certainly humbled on the set. I was humbled many times. And the thing that humbled me on the set is always an actor as always a performance and I've been humbled, likely, I've been humbled a lot on this day. I don't want to hear one performance to the other, because a lot of things like Anthony Hopkins salvation to the Supreme Court and Amistad Humboldt

and Tom Hanks seen where he cries in the crater, you know, you know, wiping out totally hallow 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 four minutes each. And then with one kind of way to Davis traythorn, Secretary of State, Seward, the camera then goes into a close up mode and finishes on his close up and I had to stay talking to you about never gotten over that scene, or how he played Lincoln, and how he became wicked, for all of us 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 doesn't does it work stop? Does the movie stop?

What is it like at the end of that scene? At the end of that first take, I had to leave the set. Daniel was worried, because as Lincoln, he looked around, the director wasn't on the set, and he asked that. He calls me skip. He's called me Skipper.

He told you this day, he calls me Skipper. And he said, Where's the skipper? And Chrissy said He's Chris High movies, and is one of the greatest producers I've ever experienced crying and

the other crying, and Mr. Lincoln walked into the room. 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, 70s and the 80s.

Yes, that's the one that will

also tell them. What do you mean? Well, I can't, I can't reveal anything right now, but there,

in 1978

after Chelsea 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, when I came back for that kid,

hospital, yeah. And then when my next movie came out, 1941 the sine wave of our business. No, I never, I never want to quit, but, but the thing of it is, every movie is so different. I just remember that Noel Coward used to say to David Lee, never come out of the same hole. And directors like David Lee were 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 is a birth, a life and a death. Because at the end of every movie, it's like on the French call petite war a little death.

He died 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 here today.

It was good on

my iPhone when Terry Tristram said it to me, but when, but looking out ahead. You know, I always fear if I go back to my child, 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 a film that I love making and I love the story. It was a remake of a 1943

Victor Fleming film called a guy named Joe and I, which is Patrick Tracy and Irene Dunn and Dan Johnson and James Gleason.

And I remade it with Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter and John Goodman. It was called always, and it's a film this. Thank you. I love the movie. Thank you.

I love the movie. I really do, and I every couple of years, I'll take a look at part of it. About all that, it was Audrey hemmer's Very last film, The last film she ever did. She played a part in it, and that's a film that I hope somebody can get rediscovered. I was hoping you would say that, because I think that is one 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 feeling that made 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 that tree for the road,

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, it's an important topic to talk about because, and I look out at this auditorium with everybody here, and I just think that we're all we're all together. We don't thought, we don't know each other. And, you know, we probably agree with each other where we disagree with each other. We don't know that.

But the one thing I know is we're all watching something. It's 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 like to try those films. I mean, I really we make Netflix movies, and I like, like working in it, like they're a great company to work, 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 battle.

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, 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 asked this as somewhat of a self preservation, but in addition, about like, what else can't be done, you know, what else can be done to properly put that the center of the experience, as someone who is making, still making movies for that experience, well, there's nothing that I could do except try to make compelling movies that people want to go outside of house to see.

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 really good, healthy word about to get people to go out to the movies, which is, which is what I'm always advocating. So all I can do with my company, Apple and with my parent company, universal, Comcast, is to make the kind of movies that you would like to go on, to speak and and then our patient enough to see it first, then, and then, when it comes on SVOD, or, you know, B bot, then you, then you see it there, or you see it when it when it comes on the streaming services, the there's still the summit for This picture this year, called The Secret Agent.

And I know,

I was talking to a couple of people who know you, and they said that you're still very current on movies. You still watch a lot of contemporary films. I was wondering, is that true? How do you see films? I see every nominated film and every short, every document,

and I see it all, not just because I should see we should see Academy voters, all the folk and 40 vote, because it's kind of a rush to see them all, because I kind of cram, especially I write a little post production on my movie.

So I went a lot of time. But my wife loves movies. My kids love movies. We have a lot of Contreras viewing and 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, plus of officiantados who have seen movies that I haven't yet seen, but all of them still see every film we've made in contemporary vernacular. They still like the contemporary films. They're rare changes to include all the

books so you mentioned that close encounters will soon be 50, and this year, AI turns 25 and those are the two movies that you have sold screenwriting credit on, even though I know AI did not originate with you and you have a story credit on disclosure day one. We have these every 25 years. Know that kind of that Mark struck you.

Then you come back to this space every 25 Yeah, it's so weird. I've never thought about that. I never considered that wicked weird. Don't know it just, I guess it's the way you look. It's probably the way the dice are rolled in my life.

But whether I write on something or I'm supervising the writing on something, I'm very integrated with the writing process and everything I do. I often there have 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 with David kepp is David went off. I wrote a 50 page story in 19 2023 the

Disclosure Day 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, this is Davis. 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, in what part, what part can AI play in the filmmaking process, if any at all, which movie of this movie, in any movie, what AI could do. I've never used AI on any of my films.

Yet, we have our writers room, and all the seats are occupied. There's not an epic chair with a laptop in

front of it. So we don't, I don't, I haven't used AI that way. I want to go into a whole rant about AI because I am poor, AI in many different disciplines I am not for AI that replaces a creative individual. This is a creepy question.

In the event that alien life actually comes to our planet, the

aliens would like to see a visual record human creativity. Which film of yours are you sharing with them? My phone's one of yours and one that is nine years if an alien wanted to see one of

my can't you guess what

that one somebody came down to say, show me the film that represents

the the kindness of the human race and all of The, I guess you would call it the 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 Fernando, I try

to get a film because 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 don't, you won't share with us what you're going

to do next. There'll be no troops. I can just tell you that there are going to be no stereotypes, no troops.

Stevens builder, we end every episode of the 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,

any films we've all seen, or films? It could be anything. Damien Chazelle once said The Roman Coliseum, which is not a film.

But you could, hopefully you'll say, I think the last question, last great thing, actually, not a film. Last Great thing, actually,

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 I think the second greatest thing

I've seen or heard no one's ever done.

The second

was universal. Studios reaction To my new movie is noted here. Sit

down. You Kansas City, good can't

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*Source: stt · Language: en · Model: claude-opus-4-6*

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