First, some good news on the home release front: both Jaws and the Jurassic Park trilogy will be released on Blu-ray by the end of this year (fingers crossed). No release date has been announced yet, but in an interview with Ain’t It Cool News, the director of both films, Steven Spielberg, says that while the films will be cleaned up for higher quality, he will not be making any changes to update the special effects (which was done to E.T.). This is such excellent, refreshing news, and Spielberg talks even more about his work on his blockbusters.
The AICN interview is epic in length and covers a lot of ground, but here are some highlights concerning the Blu-ray releases and also this quote on Bruce the Shark having bits of Quint stuck to his teeth in Jaws:
Exactly! Exactly because sharks don’t have toothpicks! There was a lot of raw chicken that contributed to that sequence.
Okay, on to the Blu-ray stuff. On a total refurbishment, George Lucas-style, Spielberg says that going forward, that will never happen to his films.
(In the future) there’s going to be no more digital enhancements or digital additions to anything based on any film I direct. I’m not going to do any corrections digitally to even wires that show.
If 1941 comes on Blu-Ray I’m not going to go back and take the wires out because the Blu-Ray will bring the wires out, that are guiding the airplanes down Hollywood Blvd. At this point right now I think letting movies exist in the era, with all the flaws and with all of the flourishes, is a wonderful way to mark time and mark history.
Because when it comes to E.T., he says to please refer to the original:
When people ask me which E.T. they should look at, I always tell them to look at the original 1982 E.T. If you notice, when we did put out E.T. we put out two E.T.s. We put out the digitally enhanced version with the additional scenes and for no extra money, in the same package, we put out the original ‘82 version. I always tell people to go back to the ’82 version.
He cites George Pal‘s War of the Worlds and its visible strings of the early Hollywood era as a part of cinematic history:
If somebody put out George Pal’s War of the Worlds and took the strings off the machines I’d be very upset. When that machine crashes in downtown Hollywood, and you see the strings going from taut to slack, that’s the thing that allows me to both understand this movie is scaring the hell out of me and at the same time this movie is a creation of the human race.
Spielberg also talks about why he won’t do commentaries on his own films (“It just takes you totally out of the movie because you’re not really watching a movie, you’re listening to a radio show.”) and his experience showing E.T. to President Ronald Reagan, who joked that some people in the White House screening room knew that “everything on that screen was absolutely true.” And contrary to rumors, Reagan was not ushered out of the room and had only one complaint: the credits were too long.
… [T]he President said to me, “I only have one criticism about your movie,” and I said “What’s that?” He said, “How long were the end credits?” I said, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe three, three and a half minutes?” He said, “In my day, when I was an actor, our end credits were maybe 15 seconds long.”
The whole interview (which has been posted alongside audio clips) is well worth your time to read, and you’ll be so relieved to read about someone who truly loves everything about making movies.
(AICN via /film, Screen Rant)
