Disclosure Day” director Steven Spielberg on aliens: “I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here.
It’s one thing to watch “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in a theater. Watching it with Steven Spielberg? That’s a master class. Viewing a scene with Richard Dreyfuss, the conditions of filming came back to him: “It was, like, 95° in Mobile, Alabama, and, like, 80% humidity. I remember that!” he laughed.
Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), haunted by a mysterious vision following an alien encounter, puts two and two together when he sees a TV news report from Devil’s Tower, Wyoming – information that is first revealed to the audience via Spielberg’s widescreen composition, information revealed very slowly, and effectively.
“Right there you say, Wait a second, did I see what I think I saw?” said Spielberg. “And then, who are you gonna watch? Are you gonna watch the [TV] screen, or are you gonna watch the actor? Richard’s great, but you’re watching the [TV] screen now.”
Watch: Steven Spielberg gives commentary on a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (Video)
“Close Encounters” ends with the arrival of the aliens. Forty-nine years later, Spielberg imagines they never left, but their presence has been systematically denied and covered up, in his new film, “Disclosure Day.”
“‘Disclosure Day’ is about how, if somebody had the power and if somebody had possession of the entire archive of visual evidence of what’s been happening for the last 80 years, what would happen if they decided to do a data dump across the entire world all at once?” Spielberg said. “And the people who are trying to stop that data dump from happening, that is basically the core of this chase movie.”
It’s part chase flick, part ’70s thriller, and part big tech conspiracy, all colliding to make “Disclosure Day’ a sci-fi story for a modern audience.
With faith in institutions lower than in the post-Watergate 1970s, is it a better time to release “Disclosure Day,” to have buy-in from the audience that such a conspiracy could exist? “Oh yeah,” Spielberg said. “I can’t speak for the entire audience, but there are certain things that unite us. And one of the things that unites us, one of the places we can find common ground, is our united belief that the extraordinary is possible, and the impossible is possible. And I think UAP, UFO, the whole phenomenon is something that everybody across any spectrum – culturally, politically – can agree on.”
The cast is led by Emily Blunt, who plays a weathercaster in Kansas City – a meteorologist who inherits sudden gifts and skills that she does not understand.
“The movie takes the position of the believers, or the curious, the ones that have been deeply affected by this,” said Spielberg. “The Emily Blunt character (Margaret Fairchild), you know, something has happened to her. She has no idea what it is. She has to try to understand why this has upended her life.
“And the movie also takes the position of the church. What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet? Or is God a god for every system where there’s civilization and intelligent life, and even developing life?”
This is the 34th feature from a director who altered the Hollywood landscape, with blockbusters that electrified us, and classic stories that seeped under our skin. As for “Disclosure Day,” Spielberg calls it a bookend to “Close Encounters,” but the universal curiosity he expresses in both movies dates all the way back to a starry night about 70 years ago in New Jersey.
“I was about five or six years old,” he said, when his father came in the bedroom and woke him up from a sound sleep and him in a car. “Just my father and me drove through the night. Not long. I kept saying, ‘Dad, what is it? What is it?’ He said, ‘It’s a surprise.’ And he stopped at a big park. And it was the Perseids meteor shower. And that was the beginning of my love affair with the sky.
“I remember how shocked I was,” Spielberg said. “But I also remember seeing these points of light darting across the sky. And I just remember thinking that was one of the most extraordinary things I had ever seen.”
He’s been exploring the extraordinary ever since, finding it as a boy in science fiction magazines, like the one we shared with him. “Oh my God, because that is what my father read! Galaxy, Analog, and Amazing Stories, those three periodicals – and our bathroom was piled high. You know, on the little, behind, right? This high with these magazines!”
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What started with magazines has gone digital. The 79-year-old filmmaker began shaping the “Disclosure Day” story in the Notes section of his phone. “That’s where I wrote it! And then I printed it out and would read it and then go back to my iPad again. I mean, my handwriting is so bad. As I’ve gotten older it’s gotten so bad I can’t read it myself. I used to, when I was much younger, I used to write everything out longhand.”
The film is fiction, though Spielberg sort of sees that as a technicality. “Think about this: When the Great Unknown is actually known by some, but not known by all of us, it’s that inequity that got me to write the story for ‘Disclosure Day,'” he said.
Since Spielberg believes in this version of the Great Unknown, I had to ask: “Have you ever had any sort of paranormal event in your life?”
He shook his head no. “Isn’t that terrible?” he laughed. “I deserve that! I deserve a sighting. Ben, I need a sighting. I mean, I’m an ambassador to these guys, and they haven’t shown themselves to me? I don’t get that.”
“Well, they’re listening now – “
“I hope so!”
“That leads to – I mean, this seems a crazy question, I can’t believe I’m asking it, but I’m asking it seriously. Have aliens been here, and do you think they might still be here?”
“Based on the circumstantial evidence of everything that I’ve gathered throughout my whole life, everybody I’ve listened to and every documentary I’ve ever watched and all the testimonies in Congress that I’ve heard, I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here,” Spielberg said. “And who knows, maybe they’ve always been here.”
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Steven Spielberg (Video)
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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