There are few movie directors who feel more aligned with the topics we discuss on the Daily Grail than Steven Spielberg – from the ultimate UFO movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and other excursions into alien contact in E.T. the Extraterrestrial and War of the Worlds), to an archaeologist searching for the Holy Grail in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Philip K. Dick’s precognitive policing in Minority Report, the de-extinction of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and the fusion of tech and Forteana in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, to name just a few!
So it was fun to see the great man sit down with Stephen Colbert recently and chat briefly about UFOs – and also to see that he obviously retains great enthusiasm for the topic that he has covered in multiple award-winning movies. In the fourth part of an interview series (embedded below) that discusses his career, his most recent (semi-autobiographical) film The Fabelmans, and his long partnership with master composer John Williams, Colbert asks Spielberg for his thoughts on “what’s going on right now” in terms of all the UFO stories that have hit the headlines in recent years.
“Ohhhh, it’s exciting,” Spielberg replies, as his eyes light up and a deep laugh emerges, providing a glimpse of that inner child that he never seems to have lost.
Despite his enthusiasm for the topic, Spielberg clarifies that he wouldn’t call himself a true believer in the UFO phenomenon – “I don’t think I’m a believer, in the sense that I’m kind of a person that would think I’ve gotta see something like that to believe it…I would have to have my own close encounter….[and] I have never seen a UFO.”
He does note though that he finds all the recent UFO news that’s come out over the past few years “absolutely fascinating”, and a few comments he makes about government secrecy and the Freedom of Information Act suggest he is more than just a casually interested person.
I just know as a person that makes movies and uses his imagination and also as a person that is insatiably curious about UFOs – or UAPs – that there is something going on that’s not being disclosed to us.
Spielberg even throws a curve ball into the discussion, asking Colbert to consider that the UFOs might not be aliens from a faraway galaxy, but instead ourselves traveling from a faraway time: “What if it’s us 500,000 years into the future that is coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century because they’re anthropologists, and they know something that we don’t quite know.”
But if the phenomenon is actually alien in origin, Spielberg believes they must be more ‘E.T.’ than ‘War of the Worlds’, given what they must have witnessed about humanity over the last century. “The fact that they have been this patient with us, and haven’t turned the Earth into a burned-out cinder, is extraordinary,” Spielberg chuckles. “You have to applaud them for their patience.”
Watch the full interview:
