JJ Abrams teams with his childhood hero Steven Spielberg.pdf

							    on film




                                                                                                                                                                                      McClatchy photos
             From left Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Ron Eldard star in “Super 8,” written and directed by J.J. Abrams.




             Sci-fi legacy                                                                                                         J.J. Abrams teams with his
                                                                                                                                  childhood hero Steven Spielberg
                                       ,BY GEOFF BOUCHER                      2009 film “Star Trek.” “The more you know                      ’81” and, as the name suggests, it put the spotlight on
                                        Los Angeles Times                     about the story, the crazier it is to see this movie coming   acne-aged auteurs who made backyard movies but
                                                                              out now.”                                                     dreamed of studio soundstages. The most ink was
                SANTA MONICA, Calif. — There are plenty of sto-                  “Super 8” was written and directed by Abrams, but it       given to Abrams, then just 15, who said: “I see stuff
             ries with Hollywood endings — this is one with a Hol-            was produced by his childhood hero, Steven Spielberg,         by Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter, and I want
             lywood beginning.                                                and at times feels like a $50 million valentine to that       to do it, too. I’ve always wanted to be a director. I did
                A new J.J. Abrams film called “Super 8” reaches the-           older filmmaker’s movies about aliens, family and family       a clay animation thing on my parents’ home movie
             aters Friday with a coming-of-age story about young,             alienation. Their cross-generation collaboration on the       camera when I was 7, and I’ve been making films
             amateur filmmakers who film a spidery space alien on               film began, technically, two years ago when Spielberg          ever since.”
             the loose in Ohio during summer 1979. For people who             took a call from Abrams, heard the proposed title and            The newspaper reached the office of Spielberg and
             know the 44-year-old Abrams, that plot seems only                agreed on the spot. But, as Lindelof alluded to, the proj-    his assistant, Kathleen Kennedy, who soon was reach-
             slightly more fantastic than the real-life, three-decade         ect also has a spiritual history that traces to 1982 when     ing for the phone. Kennedy, who would later be one of
             story that led to the film.                                       an article was published in this newspaper under the          Hollywood’s elite producers, had an unlikely job offer
                “The craziest thing is that it’s true, it actually did        headline “Beardless Wonders of Film Making.”                  for Abrams and his pal Matt Reeves, another teen film-
             happen,” says Damon Lindelof, who collaborated with                 The story was pegged to a festival at the Nuart            maker quoted in the article. Would the pair be willing to
             Abrams on the landmark ABC series “Lost” and the hit             Theatre called “The Best Teen Super 8mm Films of              do the frame-by-frame repair work needed to save the

6             Thursday, June 9, 2011                                                                                                                                                 Go! Magazine