TG: I always grew up liking science fiction films. I never liked the wobbly ones. But I loved the ones like War of the Worlds that were technically well done. And I liked all the bug films as well … the ant and spider ones. So there were quality ones and then there were crap ones like Ed Wood’s films. You know, he was inspired but incredibly untalented. That was a problem. When 2001 came around, that was the moment I felt sci-fi was at its finest, because it was intelligent, and it seemed to be grounded. It wasn’t fantasy, but it was so wild and extreme, it was like fantasy, and that intrigued me. And then George came along and took all the stuff before 2001 and put it together in one film and made it really glossy, and off we went. The world changed. We reverted. But, unlike Star Wars, a lot of the earlier films raised questions.

SR: Well, science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It’s the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.

TG: Exactly. Again, it’s like going back to the question of Where is Brazil? In sci-fi movies, you move beyond the real world so you can abstract it and then comment upon it. Philip K. Dick was always my favorite sci-fi writer because it wasn’t so much about sci-fi as about the human condition.

SR: Yes, do you remember the original title of Blade Runner—which asks an intellectual question?

TG: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I mean, it’s the difference between 2001 and Close Encounters. 2001 ends with a question. You’re not sure what is going on. There’s been this strange room experience, and then the baby. You kind of feel there’s a rebirth, a new beginning, but you don’t know what it is.

Close Encounters ends with an answer. And it’s… little kids in latex suits that come out and go like that. [Flaps hands.] There’s a moment in Close Encounters before the kids in latex suits come out with the wrinkles on their wrists. When the door first opens, this blinding light comes out and this strange preying mantis figure rises. I would just cut to black at that point and [Gasps.] leave the audience with a gasp. [Gasps again.] And then your brain has to start working and fill in the gaps.

But that’s the problem with films we’re seeing now: they give you all the answers, they plug in all the holes, they don’t make you…

SR: Well, I thought that when…did you see the Kubrick-Spielberg Artificial Intelligence, AI?

TG: Oh God. [Whispers.] What was that?

SR: [Laughs.]

TG: Mr. Articulate speaks.

SR: Well, you answered the question. There’s a moment in that film about thirty-five minutes before the end when the little robot kid decides the world is not worth living in and dives off the building. Now, if the film had ended there, it would have been a lot better—a lot better. And you can’t help feeling that if Kubrick rather than Spielberg had directed the film, that would have been the Kubrick ending. But then there’s half an hour of Spielberg feel-good crap. Blue fairies.