t's got blockbuster written all over it: Steven Spielberg directing Tom Cruise in a $100 million adaptation of Philip K. Dick's classic SF short story "The Minority Report." The film, entitled Minority Report, casts Cruise as Detective John Anderton, who, in the year 2054, heads up the Precrime unit of the Washington, D.C., police force. As such, Anderton and his team arrest criminals before they commit their crimes, relying on the seemingly infallible visions of three humans referred to as Precogs, as in precognitives.
Anderton's a troubled man—his young son went missing years
earlier, and his marriage subsequently fell apart—and his troubles worsen considerably when the Precogs determine that he's about to kill someone. Suddenly, Anderton finds himself on the run and trying to prove his innocence before his own men track him down. If the film sounds vastly different from the Dick short story, it is; screenwriter Scott (Dead Again) Frank utilized the 30-page story as a springboard from which to fashion a thinking person's SF/action-thriller/whodunit that also stars Max von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Tim Blake Nelson, Neal McDonough, Lois Smith and Peter Stormare.
Spielberg, of course, is arguably the most successful director of his time, and his status as a genre icon was long ago secured. As a director, writer and/or producer, he's given audiences E.T., Gremlins, the Back to the Future features, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, SeaQuest DSV, Earth 2, Jurassic Park, Men in Black, the upcoming SCI FI Channel miniseries Taken, and many, many more. Cruise is arguably Hollywood's top gun, the industry's biggest star, and he's not exactly new to the genre, either. His appearances in Legend, Interview with the Vampire and Vanilla Sky attest to that. Science Fiction Weekly met up with Spielberg and Cruise at a New York City hotel, where they were on hand to promote the June 21 release.
Tom Cruise, what led you to Minority Report?
Cruise: It takes a long time to develop material and develop things that are interesting. The first screenplay of this I didn't find very interesting, so I went to the short story.
I've always wanted to make a sci-fi film. I enjoy the genre. When I read the short story I thought, "Oh, this has got great potential, not just for science fiction, but there are also some really good ideas about the personal story of the character and the journey that he goes on."
And then Steven and I sat down and started talking about using the story as a template for a film noir. We wanted a bit of The Maltese Falcon. We have the structure of Hitchcock, like North by Northwest. We had all those elements and weren't limited by saying, "OK, we're making a sci-fi film." He was interested in turning this picture into something that could happen in the near future.
It's a prophetic story, if you've read Dick, if you've read that story. I was doing Eyes Wide Shut and I thought, "Look at where we're really headed as a society." When Steven came on ... he's an incredible storyteller.
You and Spielberg had been friends for a long time, but what did he bring to Minority Report as a director?
Cruise: Steven has given the audience and me so many unforgettable moments, and he's changed film. But Steven Spielberg is a storyteller. You just see the movies and you know that. We were friends before, but having the opportunity and the time to develop this piece of material with and be there while that imagination was just on fire was very exciting. He was just on fire.
There seems to be a sense that Spielberg isn't an actor's director. What's with that?
Cruise: I don't see why he's not [considered an actor's director]. Look at the performances he gets in his movies. Look all the way back at Duel and the performance that [Dennis Weaver] gave. Look at Jaws; there were great character scenes. Look at E.T. and the performances from those kids. They were incredible, incredible.
You came up with the notion of filling in Anderton's background by having him be a man whose son vanished, causing him great personal anguish and driving much of his behavior that we see in the film. What led you to suggest the loss of a child as a story point?
Cruise: It just came to me. I wanted to know, "Why would he do this? What would happen that would bring a guy to this place?" Do you have children? Well, could you imagine? These things just evolve. When you make decisions, sometimes it's analytical and sometimes it's instinctual. I don't sit back and go, "This for this." You just get ideas and they tend to spark other ideas. It just evolves like that. I can't tell you why and how. I don't know. But it just seemed to work.
Steven Spielberg, do you think your vision is getting darker?
Spielberg: No, I don't think so. My optimism and my hope are still there, really strong. It's just that this particular story, the nature of the characters, required a darker vision.
Is there a different dynamic working with someone like Tom Cruise, whose fame and power as an actor rival yours as a director?
Spielberg: No. Tom is an actor. There is no rivalry for power. Everything that Tom is to all of us and to me, too, just evaporates the second you get down to work. When you do a project and you do it in partnership with each other, there's no intimidation. Tom doesn't bring his past with him. Tom's
greatest love is his children and that comes first in his life. We have that in common. It was a great working relationship. We had a wonderful time.
What makes Cruise a movie star?
Spielberg: We do. We make him a movie star. We see a lot of faces and a lot of people and for whatever personal reasons we needed to bring Tom into our world. We crowned him. He didn't crown himself. I certainly think he's a movie star because he's got tremendous presence and he's honest. He looks the audience right in the eye and is truthful. He's dynamic. He takes chances.
As he gets older he gets more eclectic. The part he played in Magnolia was brilliant. I would never have imagined Tom saying yes to that and he just blew me away. Here's a guy who, I guess, feels like he has nothing to lose. I feel like I have nothing to lose. We've both achieved so much in our lives and we're so happy about what we've done, so the fact of the matter is it's fun to experiment. And I think we both saw Minority Report as a grand experiment. We sort of walked the edge of that experiment and we tried different things and messed with the formula a little bit.
Cruise/Wagner Productions, Cruise's company, recently acquired the rights to remake War of the Worlds. Has he discussed it with you? Would you consider directing that?
Spielberg: We've talked about it. I don't know. I've got a whole bunch of things on my plate right now. I've got a musical I'm thinking about. I've got a love story I'm thinking about. I've got a bunch of things I'm thinking about, so I don't know what I'm going to do.
You took something of a critical hit with A.I. Does criticism just slide off you?
Spielberg: Pretty much. For one thing, A.I. was one of the best-reviewed films of my career. I think at the end of the year we were one of the top five movies, when they measure [the opinions of major reviewers]. We were really well reviewed on that movie. It was the audience that kind of didn't come to see it. I was really happy with the reviews. It got some very good reviews and some very good bad reviews. But the audience didn't stay. They weren't interested.
Having done A.I. and Minority Report back to back, have you had it with the future?
Spielberg: No, not really, but I have no other ideas about the future except my own. I don't really have anything at all that deals with the future. I was only going to make one movie about the future, and that was Minority Report. I was supposed to direct Minority Report two years ago, and then Stanley [Kubrick] died and [his widow] asked me to get involved. So A.I. kind of came up and tapped me on the shoulder.
But I haven't had it with the future. I still love the Back to the Future movies. I think the future is great, whether you make a comedy out of it or whether you take it seriously and try to make it a morality play. Whatever you do with the future, it's an interesting place to go, but I'm sure I'm not going to go back to it for a long time.
Also in this issue: Peter Weller and Manny Coto from Odyssey 5.
