Scott: Yeah, absolutely. If you're going to remake any movie you have to have a good reason; if you're going to remake a classic you have to have a really good reason. The idea of doing a remake started with Twentieth Century Fox; they wanted to do it, they developed a script on their own and sent it to me. I was very skeptical because I loved the original so much that I didn't necessarily think it was a good idea. But when I got the script, I thought the script still needed a good amount of work but I understood the reason to do it after reading the script. First, it had been fifty-seven years since the original, but most importantly the original was so rooted in the social issues of its time. It was so about the Cold War and the fear of the Bomb and the struggle to establish the UN, so I said: a.) it was so long ago; and b.) times have changed so dramatically. I felt that telling the same story but updating it to be kind of the social realities of our time made a lot of sense to me. I think the other thing about it was it is a revered and respected original but the simple fact is the majority, the vast majority of the movie-going public nowadays has not seen that film. It's such an amazing story; I very much loved the idea of being able to bring that great story to a new generation of audience members who don't know it. Those were the primary reasons; there were others but they were the primary ones certainly for me in motivating me to do the film.

Yo: As a Christian I'm curious how much you were worried about either overplaying or underplaying the the Christ allegory this story has in it. When I first saw it, that's one of the things that struck me the most and I thought it was very interesting. It was one of the first films I can remember seeing a strong parallel to the figure of Christ. How did you balance that without overdoing it and hammering people on the head with it and at the same time... well, did you keep it in there, first of all?

Scott: Oh yeah, I actually think it would be very hard to do The Day The Earth Stood Still without it. I think if you make a decision to try and take that out, you'd have a hard time telling the story, it's so deeply entrenched in the narrative. The more sort of overt and obvious allegory moments, I still kept some of that in and added quite bit, frankly, because I like that about the original. I felt that it was part of where the power came from. The idea of updating that and creating some more imagery and allegorical elements is in there very strongly. It was actually one of the number one things that was brought by the international press as I took the film around the world for the international press tour. They in particular were really struck by that and were pleased not only that it was there but that it was there fairly strongly as well. There are some things, some elements from the original that I thought were a little clunky for a modern audience, and that's the challenge of doing a remake of a film that's fifty-seven years old; you have to figure out: how do I update some of these for a modern audience to where you have the same points but it's going to play but not as something that's old and out of date? But yeah, it's one of the reasons I wanted to do the movie, that was part of the appeal of the movie was that allegorical quality to the main character.

Yo: Well that's one of the reasons I always liked so much and when I heard there was remake being done, that's one of the reasons why I was not excited about that. I thought that they're going to mess it up in today's Hollywood world...

Scott: (laughing) I certainly hope I haven't done that.

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