THE SPIELBERG REPORT HOW THE MOST SUCCESSFUL DIRECTOR OF ALL TIME IS KEEPING HIMSELF INTERESTED WITH PROJECTS LIKE 'MINORITY REPORT'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

I'm trying to convince Steven Spielberg that his new movie, the rapturously acclaimed ``Minority Report,'' sums up the major theme of all his serious works through the key stylistic element that has made him the most popular filmmaker who has ever lived.

I don't think he's buying it. But the 55-year-old director graciously tries to indulge me when I mention that an obsession with captivity and freedom runs through most of his realistic movies. That's evident from his first feature, the 1974 outlaw-couple-on-the-run carnival ``The Sugarland Express,'' and it extends into ``The Color Purple,'' ``Empire of the Sun,'' ``Schindler's List,'' ``Amistad,'' ``Saving Private Ryan'' and even the upcoming crime caper ``Catch Me If You Can.''

It also manifests, in different ways, in the fantasy pieces: ``E.T.,'' ``Close Encounters of the Third Kind,'' the ``Indiana Jones'' and ``Jurassic Park'' series, ``A.I.'

``I haven't really made a movie that dealt with those issues as much as this one and, also, with 'Saving Private Ryan,' '' Spielberg admits, with qualification. ``This movie isn't so much about losing one's freedom as it is about losing your privacy. The story is more a balance between, are you predestined to follow somebody else's map of your life, or do you believe in self-determination. I've never really made a movie about whether you can override the destiny that has been assigned to you.''

From a rich source

Based on a 1950s short story by ``Blade Runner'' and ``Total Recall'' visionary Philip K. Dick, ``Minority'' takes place in a thoroughly believable Washington, D.C., circa 2054 (to get the details right, Spielberg convened a three-day brainstorming meeting of futurist thinkers at a Santa Monica beach hotel).

Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, the chief of the city's controversial Pre-Crime unit. Three mutant children of drug abusers are kept in a nutrient bath dream state, where, through their precognitive powers, they ``see'' murders before they occur. Hooked up to see-through screens in the Pre-Crime operations room, the precogs' visions are ``scrubbed'' for clues as to the time and place of the killing, which Anderton's team then prevents (by, not so incidentally, technologically incarcerating the non-guilty future perpetrators). Rights, and whether the precogs are right, are naturally a question. But in the few years of its local operation, there hasn't been a murder in D.C.

Himself the survivor of a terrible crime against his family, Anderton believes in Pre-Crime with near-religious faith. And then the precogs finger him as the city's next killer.

While ``Minority Report'' boasts any number of intricate visual inventions, its core image is Cruise in front of the Pre-Crime screens, using laser gloves to separate elements of the precogs' visions to isolate clues. Looking for all the world like a conductor of pictures instead of musicians, he comes off as a metaphorical stand-in for Spielberg himself, that most effective of visual manipulators.

Like choregraphy

``He's sort of hand-dancing,'' Spielberg explains. ``I thought of Johnny Williams all through those scenes, because I've been watching him conduct for almost 30 years on my and other people's movies. When Tom got those gloves on, he had to memorize all the different hand signs that the A.I. inside the computer would read.

``That was fun, but what was not fun was that there was nothing on those screens when we shot them. Everything had to be backed into. Tom sort of had to know what he was looking for; then, when we created imagery that went on those screens, we had to fashion it exactly to his hand movements so it would be in sync.''

``We created a language,'' Cruise adds, working forearm and fingers. ``This moves things up; this switches the files back and forth. Steven would light the fingers. We worked on the language beforehand; then on the day, he would have me do it a bunch of different ways.''

Instructive that Cruise should use the term ``language.'' Beginning with his mid-'70s superhit ``Jaws,'' Spielberg is often credited (and not always positively) with changing the language of American cinema from a more literary and verbally based art form to one of visceral spectacle - in short, with making movies more visual.

Ironically, the narrative values of Spielberg's later works have made them stand out in a sea of superficially impactful but empty images. At the same time, his own frames - the savage butchery of ``Saving Private Ryan's'' D-Day landing, or the myriad ways in which what is seen and who's watching influences action throughout ``Minority Report'' - have grown infinitely bolder, meaningful and more sophisticated than, say, real-looking dinosaurs get.

``I think it's very important,'' Spielberg says of the arresting movie image. ``But I always feel that I'm selling stories.

``It's probably true that we're all part of changing the way people see in everything we do,'' he adds, getting to the core of ``Minority's'' visual message. ``But, of course, I was changed by the way David Lean and John Ford and (Akira) Kurosawa and (Francois) Truffaut saw their worlds. The visual image was, really, first invented by (Georges) Melies and D.W. Griffith; you have to go way back then, before sound, when all they had were pictures to tell a story. There were many more visual images coming at us in the early 20th century.

``Then, with the advent of sound, it became like little stage plays: We went back to the talking head and the written word. It was only individual directors, like Hitchcock, who began to play games with images to replace the words and deepen the stories. ... It was people like that who taught me everything that I know.''

That historical perspective, a quality that seems to be fading in the generations of filmmakers that have followed Spielberg, is a big part of what still makes him one of the most exciting directors around.

``He eats, drinks, sleeps and breathes movies,'' notes Harrison Ford, the star of the ``Indiana Jones'' trilogy and, it now seems, the fourth film in the adventure series, which he plans to make with Spielberg in the next year or two. ``He's got a visceral understanding of how the medium works and a wide-ranging ambition and imagination. And it's just fun to be around somebody who has so much enthusiasm for the past of cinema.''

Now Spielberg, the ultimate success story from the generation known as the Movie Brats, is sounding slightly fogeyish.

``It hasn't been so much the moviemakers as the television-makers - MTV, VH1, the whole advent of the rock video and the sort of temple of TV commercials that put a lot of imagery into 30 seconds - that's changed the way many filmmakers today are shooting their movies,'' he says of current styles. ``They're not shooting them in the classical style that I learned to shoot my movies by, because I had all the classical directors as my teachers.

``But the classical directors today are kids themselves, and they create a more staccato, almost nervous, quick tempo. In that sense, the imagery is a little more chaotic, not as organized as it used to be when the old directors were telling stories in a more conservative style.''

There's no rancor in that statement. How could there be when Spielberg himself, well past the point in his career when he needs to, is busy taking his own artistry to new and exciting places?

``I try to change and grow as much as I can,'' he says. ``That's the reason why I haven't done a lot of work in genres that I've already done. That's why I didn't do the 'Harry Potter' series when offered; I didn't do 'Spider-Man' when offered that. I know how to make those movies; they offer me no challenges.

``I'm just looking for good stories to tell that will keep me interested. If I have to spend two years on one project, I'd better be obsessed by it, because I don't work really well on things that I have no interest in.''

Amen to that. But Steven, about that freedom theme, and how what we see can trap or liberate our perceptions ...

``I think it's probably an unconscious kind of thing,'' he says. ``I mean, nothing's unconscious; when you think hard enough about anything, you can find a precedent for it in your life. You rub your palette off on everything you touch if you're a filmmaker. As hard as you try to divorce yourself from some genre you may become identified with, there will always be traces of that that will inform every movie you make. Maybe not to a great degree, you can even hide it a little bit, but it's always going to be there because we can't totally reinvent ourselves.''

Making the grade

Proud dad Spielberg says college degree was for kids' benefit

Winning a best-picture and two directing Oscars wasn't enough. Making a dozen or so of the most financially successful films in history wasn't enough.

So, last month, Steven Spielberg finally had to go back and graduate from California State University, Long Beach, the university he left more than three decades earlier to embark on the ultimate filmmaking career.

``I was always proud that I made it on my own without that,'' says the newly minted owner of, um, a bachelor's degree in film and electronic arts. ``I didn't think it would ever come back to haunt me. But as my kids grew older, they reminded me that perhaps they could get into an occupation that didn't require a full degree. So I began to worry, because that's very hard. I got into this business based on luck first, talent second, and I wasn't going to take the chance that my kids will be as lucky as I was.''

So, to set an example, he wrote his thesis (with no help from ghosting screenwriters, he proudly claims). It's typical of Spielberg, who doesn't hesitate to state that he's better at being a dad to the seven children he and wife Kate Capshaw have between them than he is at making movies.

``When I'm not working on a film, what I'm really, really good at is organizing a morning,'' Spielberg crows. ``I'm good at organizing all the kids and getting all their lunches packed and getting them off to school. In that sense, I'm Mr. Mom from 6:30 a.m. until the end of my third car pool, like 9. But then my wife is the real mom for the rest of the day and evening.''

The imaginative moviemaker does admit to one fathering flaw.

``I'm really bad at figuring out consequences for my kids when one of them does something wrong,'' Spielberg confesses. ``Not that I'm not tough enough, I'm just always short of ideas. My wife is much better in the creative consequence department.''

- B.S.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- cover -- color) future imperfect 

Steven Spielberg says he found the challenge he craved with `Minority Reports' dark vision of what's to come

(4 -- 5) no caption (Steven Spielberg)

Avik Gilboa/WireImage.com

Box:

Making the grade (see text)