Artificial intelligence is at once a thriving technological reality in the present and fertile literary ground for futurists and visionaries. Though intelligent machines make coffee, direct traffic, conduct web searches and perform various other mundane tasks, the sophisticated artificial humans of "A.I." have become deeply enmeshed in the fabric of everyday human life.

Noted science fiction author Brian Aldiss wrote his short story, "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long," over 30 years ago. Published in Harper?s Bazaar in 1969 and later anthologized, it concerned a near future in which a robot child struggles to make a connection with his human mother.

After more than a decade, director Stanley Kubrick purchased the rights to Aldiss?s tale and set out on what would become a twenty-year odyssey to convert it into "A.I." Throughout this period, Kubrick consulted often with Steven Spielberg, who had commenced a friendship with the expatriate filmmaker in 1979 while Spielberg was on location in England shooting "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Their nearly 20-year friendship involved few face-to-face meetings, but thrived on marathon transatlantic phone calls.

"A lot of our phone calls through the years were just to make contact with each other, to see what was happening on both sides of the ocean," Spielberg recalls. "I saw him maybe 12 times over two decades. But one day in the middle of a conversation, he said ?You know, you really ought to direct ?A.I.? and I should produce it for you.? I remember him actually giving me a title card on the whole proposal: a Stanley Kubrick production of a Steven Spielberg film."

Taken aback, Spielberg asked why Kubrick would consider passing the reins of a long favored project to him. "I was shocked. I said, ?Why would you want to do that, Stanley?? He just said ?Well, you know, I think this movie is closer to your sensibility than mine.?"

Executive producer Jan Harlan had worked with his brother-in-law Stanley Kubrick for thirty years, shepherding many projects with him since "Barry Lyndon," including "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." "Stanley always wanted to go to new territory," says Harlan. "Always probing. He wanted to bring the art of moviemaking into areas and topics that hadn?t been explored. ?2001? is a great example. So is ?Eyes Wide Shut? - it tackled a very internal topic: Jealousy. ?Every single member of the audience is bound to be an expert,? Stanley once said. He had planned to do ?A.I.? before ?Eyes Wide Shut,? but many factors delayed this."

Leaving his Long Island summer house, Spielberg immediately took a plane to England. Soon after his arrival, Kubrick showed Spielberg thousands of storyboards done by renowned comic book illustrator Chris Baker (known professionally as Fangorn) and the two discussed bringing the project to the screen. Kubrick elicited an oath of secrecy "under penalty of excommunication from [his] life" from Spielberg and asked him to install a secure fax line in his home so they could communicate directly.

Though this version of "A.I." ultimately never came to be, Kubrick continued to develop the project. "Stanley thought Steven might be the right person to direct this for several reasons," Harlan continues. "Using a real child actor is possible for Steven who would shoot this film in twenty weeks while Stanley knew he would take a year and the child might change too much. Another was that Stanley appreciated Steven?s talent very much ? he saw in Steven one of the all time great filmmakers of the next generation. The two directors are very different in character and the common denominator is sheer talent. Because of the established co-operation on this film, Spielberg was the only director who had the moral authority to make this film into his own."

To utilize a child actor, Kubrick have had to face strict time limitations that could not be accommodated on an ambitious project like "A.I." Also, visual effects had still not reached the proficiency Kubrick required to realize his vision for "A.I." The filmmaker, whose CGI-free ?2001? stands as one of the greatest visual effects achievements ever committed to film, had envisioned vast and complex processes.

Then everything changed in 1993 with "Jurassic Park."

Elated by the breakthrough visual effects in Spielberg?s landmark film, Kubrick inundated colleagues like "Jurassic Park" effects creator Dennis Muren of Industrial Light and Magic with questions about the scope of the emerging computer-generated technology so masterfully displayed within that film.

Muren, long recognized as one of the most accomplished innovators of modern visual film effects, soon found himself on a London-bound jet as well. "In 1993, when we finished ?Jurassic Park,? Stanley called and invited me to England to discuss a new project that became ?A.I.?," says Muren, who has earned Academy Awards for his special effects work in such films as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" and "The Empire Strikes Back," among others. "He had called me for years before that to discuss technical questions. But this time he wanted to have us take a close look at something. It was over Thanksgiving, so he had a wonderful turkey dinner set for me. It was a great five hours I?ll never forget."

Although intrigued that technology had solved some long running effects problems, Kubrick opted to delay production on "A.I.," choosing to go ahead with "Eyes Wide Shut" instead. It was to be his last film.

After his death, Harlan and Kubrick?s wife, Christiane, approached Terry Semel, then the chairman of Warner Bros., with the idea of reviving "A.I." with Spielberg at the helm. "It simply would have disappeared into the archives if Steven Spielberg had not taken it," says Harlan.

Though he had not written a script since 1977?s "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Spielberg resolved to write "A.I." himself.

"I remember at the moment Steven told me the story of ?A.I.? it was clear there probably wasn?t anyone else who could write it," says producer Kathleen Kennedy, who began her association with Spielberg in the late 1970s as his assistant but soon became his producer and, ultimately, his partner in Amblin Entertainment. Together, they created some of the world?s most successful and acclaimed motion pictures, beginning with "E.T. The Extraterrestrial," through the "Indiana Jones" series, "Empire of the Sun," "The Color Purple" and "Jurassic Park," among others. "Steven understood, on so many levels, what this movie meant to an audience, what it meant to him personally, and what it had meant to Stanley. And I don?t think he could have sat down with any other writer and expect them to interpret what was in his head."

"It was like getting my wisdom teeth pulled all over again," says Spielberg of the writing process, "because Stanley was sitting on the seat back behind me saying, ?No, don?t do that!? I felt like I was being coached by a ghost. I finally just had to kind of be disrespectful to the extent that I needed to be able to write this, not from Stanley?s experience, but from mine. Still, I was like an archeologist, picking up the pieces of a civilization, putting Stanley?s picture back together again."
Harlan gathered volumes of special materials pertaining to the project, including conceptual artist Chris Baker?s futuristic drawings from which the look of the "A.I." future would later emerge.

"After reading through the treatment for ?A.I.? several times, I was pretty much given free reign to start generating ideas," Baker explains. "Stanley had nothing really concrete envisioned at this stage - basically I was there to develop ideas that Stanley could be inspired by, then guide toward a direction he was happy with. All of this was done by fax and phone after our initial meetings. It was a relationship that worked pretty well, I think."

Illustrations that would form the eventual look of the film?s Rouge City, Flesh Fair and the Swinton home, for example, were created in this manner over several years. Steven Spielberg retained Baker?s vision when he took on directing and writing chores.

Producer Bonnie Curtis, who also began her association with Spielberg as his assistant, was privy to Spielberg?s and Kubrick?s communication about "A.I" for the many years prior to its production. "For the six years I was Steven?s assistant, all correspondence went through me except his faxes from Stanley," Curtis recalls. "Steven had a fax machine installed in his closet at home, and he and Stanley faxed each other directly. No copies were made, nothing was seen by anyone else but those two. Steven and Stanley acted as their own assistants for this project."

After Kubrick?s death, Spielberg focused intently upon making "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," after spending the two years following making "Saving Private Ryan" without committing to a new project. He wrote the screenplay in a mere two months and readied himself for a memorable shooting experience that would reunite him with several talented co-workers.

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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