Producer Steven Spielberg, right, and director J.J. Abrams on the set of Super 8
Surely the most eagerly awaited film of the summer, J.J. Abrams' Super 8 whisks the viewer back to a night in 1979, when some Ohio kids shooting a zombie movie witness a terrible train crash. What escaped from the train, and what the kids do to find it, are just two of the secrets that fans of Abrams's Lost, Alias, Cloverfield and the Star Trek reboot have tried valiantly to unearth. All will be revealed Friday, June 10; but as we've told you in the magazine, one secret that needn't be kept is that Super 8 is a terrific movie, bending and transcending the science-fiction genre into a fable about the power of innocence.
In an extensive interview with TIME last week, the writer-director discussed his teen days making his own super-8 movies, his early brush with Steven Spielberg and his then-assistant (later producer) Kathleen Kennedy, and the influence of Spielberg's early Amblin films on Super 8. If you're wondering what Abrams has cooking over at Bad Robot, his own production, that's here too.
TEEN AUTEURS
This idea doesn't go back to your own Super-8 filmmaking youth, does it?
The idea doesn't. I had the notion of doing a film called Super 8 about a group of kids making films, and called Steven immediately — this was a few years ago. But the film was obviously inspired by my childhood experiences doing these movies.
In the early '80s, when you were about 15, you and Matt Reeves had won attention at a Super-8 festival. Would you briefly describe your early work, and have you released it on DVD?
I have not put my Super-8 films on DVD, because seriously, why do that to The People? Most of my first movies were excuses to test things out: primitive visual effects accomplished by backwinding the film and exposing it twice, or testing out makeups on my family and friends, or doing fight scenes or chases. Later I started telling stories with a narrative, though viewers of those films might question that statement.
At this time, you and Reeves were asked to restore the three films Steven Spielberg had made when he was about the same age.
Yes, we received a call from Steven's office after an article about the festival appeared in the LA Times. His assistant — Kathleen Kennedy at the time! — asked us if we would be interested in repairing the films Steven had made when he was our age. Of course we were convinced this was a prank phone call, and to this day it makes no sense to me why Steven would put the original prints of Firelight and Escape to Nowhere in the hands of two 15-year-old strangers. I mean, have you ever seen 15-year-olds? Don't give them things if you want them back. Especially repaired. But Matt and I did it. In 1982 it was especially rare, if not impossible, to have access to the early works of a director, let alone Steven Spielberg's. But while his films were, of course, far better than ours, it was an inspiration to see how he began.
And now, 30 years later as a Super 8 producer, Spielberg is your helper, inspirer, first critic ... what exactly did he do on the movie?
It was such a privilege to work with Steven. We had countless story meetings before I started writing — finally ending with him telling me, "JJ. Go write." He was encouraging and critical in the most constructive ways. And because Super 8 is a Spielberg-produced movie — literally an Amblin film — it gave me license to embrace story elements that were in the DNA of the piece. Things I may have otherwise been too self-conscious to include, not wanting this film to ever feel like it was aping earlier works. But it was like when I directed Star Trek; I remember thinking, "Can we actually do lasers in space? Can we get away with spaceships flying around like this?" But then I remembered: "Idiot: it's Star Trek. YES YOU CAN DO SPACESHIPS." This film was always an Amblin film in spirit — partially because that period in my life was so profoundly impacted by American cinema of the era.
Steven helped at every stage, including editorial. He spent hours with me in the editing room — he would offer suggestions but never mandate a thing. He'd say, "What I would do is..." and give a suggestion. It would always make me laugh inside, because I can't tell you how many times I would work on something and wonder, "What the hell would Spielberg do here?"
Super 8 is, among other things, a smart medley of motifs and moods from the films of Spielberg's early prime. You make all the references from Duel and Jaws and E.T. and The Goonies feel organic; but, as you wrote, were you also pleased to have fit them so naturally into your script — as well as fitting in your own twists of kidnapped people and the mysterious box(car)
Super 8 was never intended as an homage to any films in particular. Before we were shooting I told our cinematographer, Larry Fong — who I met at 12 making Super-8 films — that I didn't want the film to look like it was made in 1979, but I wanted it to look the way we remember films looking from 1979. That is to say, it needed to be its own thing, with visual and rhythmic motifs that allude to a different era of moviemaking, but made using tools and techniques of today. I sort of wanted to build a bridge between then and now. The story worked the same way: it needed to stand on its own, but with nods to its origins and conventions of the genre. But I never had a checklist of shout-outs that I wanted to make.
THE STORY
The film is a master class in the hoarding of plot information: allowing droplets of the central mystery to seep through the scare sequences. You really do believe in the fine art of withholding, don't you?
I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective. I'll never forget seeing a deleted shot from Alien, where Veronica Cartwright's character is about to be attacked. The shot Ridley Scott chose not to keep in the film was a wide frame of the actress and the alien, which was completely contained within the frame and therefore the least scary thing imaginable. It's a remarkable lesson when you watch the final scene, given how terrifying it is. But withholding anything in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial; it becomes foreplay without the main event and no one wants that.
In a TV serial like Lost, you can spread out the plot and insert red herrings for years and years. But a stand-alone project like Super 8 demands a stricter discipline: keep building the mystery while administering jolts every few minutes. Did it take you long to work out the film's story-telling architecture?
It was much harder than I thought it would be. Somehow, in script, but even more so on screen, if events occurred outside the main characters' experience it still felt as if they should be reacting to those events. It took forever to structure this thing — mostly act two — both in script stage and post-production. I think this was mostly because it was the nexus of the film — the greatest fun and challenge: balancing a coming-of-age love story character piece with, essentially, a monster movie.