Steven Spielberg's
Homage to
Stanley Kubrick

An obsession of the late filmmaking auteur Stanley Kubrick, "A.I." focuses on a character that represents the future of thinking technology. "In the 1980s, Stanley Kubrick took me into his creative confidence to tell me an absolutely beautiful story that was impossible to forget," says Steven Spielberg, the Oscar-winning writer/director and longtime friend of Kubrick?s, who ultimately wrote and directed "A.I." "I think it was the careful blend of science and humanity that made me anxious for Stanley to tell it, and after he was gone, led me to want to tell it for him."

"Steven wanted to embrace and pay homage to Stanley," says "A.I." producer and Spielberg?s longtime associate Kathleen Kennedy. "So he took Stanley?s contribution and added that to his own. There?s no question that this is a movie that has Steven Spielberg?s sensibilities all over it. But the subtext is all Kubrick."

"?A.I.,?" says Jan Harlan, the film?s executive producer and Stanley Kubrick?s longtime colleague, "shows a new romanticism that hasn?t been seen on the screen so far: the idea of an artificial being feeling genuine love and a human truly loving an artificial being is quite new territory.

The film takes place in a future when starting a family is subject to strict governmental restrictions. Says Harlan, "Circumstances have changed; technology has increased to an extent that most normal work is performed by robots and we are confronted with the idea of programming a child robot so that he is able to love."

Haley Joel Osment stars as David, the prototype "feeling" robot, who is adopted by Henry and Monica Swinton (SAM ROBARDS and FRANCES O?CONNOR), a Cybertronics employee and his wife, whose own son (JAKE THOMAS) is so ill that he has been cryogenically frozen until a cure can be found.

"David is the top of the line in mechanical development," says Frances O?Connor, who plays Monica, David?s mother. "Unlike the earlier models, he can actually absorb information and images, and collate it in a way that is very human. He also connects these ideas to his emotions. And he starts to think about his own realness."

Jude Law, who has starred in such films as "Enemy at the Gates" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," stars as Gigolo Joe, a "love mecha" (for "mechanicals") that becomes David?s "scoutmaster," as Spielberg calls the character. Together with Joe, David lights out into the strange, new world to find their true place in the society that created them.

"In the world of ?A.I.,? mankind has started to rely a lot more on mechanical devices ? ?mechas? ? to take over very simple jobs," Law says. "Over the years this has developed into more sophisticated jobs, whether it?s just a robot to make you laugh in the same way that normally a TV entertainer would, or someone might have a masseur robot in their house. And it goes even as far as robots for pleasure-seeking. Joe is there to entertain and to fulfill the needs of his customers. He is the male version of the sex mecha."

"Jude Law?s robot is five or ten years old," Osment explains. "Robots like Joe are built with a specific purpose. But David meets up with him by chance. David becomes very attached to Joe. And Joe also undergoes a change. As David becomes more human, Joe does in a way as well."

But David and Gigolo Joe also find that the robots? gradual assimilation into humanity is met with resistance from humanity itself. "The more human the robots become, the less comfortable with them the humans that ?employ? them are," Kennedy says. "And even more so with David, who has been built to feel. There are, in fact, sections of humanity that take that hostility to extremes."

"In a way, for me, the message of this piece is that we humans must be very careful about what we make," says Law. "Because it will probably outlive us, organically. And therefore, what we make should be full of love. Because otherwise, what we leave, our legacy, will be anything but that."

"?A.I.? is a story of a robot boy who has been programmed to love," says producer Bonnie Curtis, who has worked with Spielberg since serving as his assistant and later co-producer of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Amistad." "But at the end of the movie, we aren?t aware that he?s a robot. What is so wonderful is that the line between human and robot is so thin. It?s artificial intelligence. It?s our future."

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Page 1- Review
Page 1a -Reviews continued. Bulletin Board
Page 1b -Bulletin board continued
Page 2- Spielberg's Homage to Kubrick
Page 3- The 30 Year Journey to the Screen
Page 4- Production of an Intelligent Adult Fairy Tale