A press conference with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg is sort of like an audience with the President. Only there’s more security with Tom Cruise. Imagine 15 tv cameras, 200 journalists, wristbands, metal detectors, and beefy security guards. Good thing I left my water gun at home.

They’re here, of course, to chat about “War of the Worlds,” Spielberg’s epic return to the summer blockbuster. The two clearly have a rapport. Swapping inside jokes and acting like lifelong friends, they spend a leisurely forty minutes chatting about the making of “Worlds,” why they both love science fiction, and that yes, of course there’s life on other planets.

Science fiction has a unique ability to put across social and political ideas in an oblique—or subconscious—way. Is that what draws you to the genre?

Spielberg: Well, I think that science fiction is not a subconscious thing at all. Science fiction to me is a vacation. It’s a vacation away from all the rules of narrative logic. It’s a vacation away from basic physics and physical science. It just lets you leave all the rules behind and just kind of fly. We, as a human race, we don’t fly. We envy the birds. I envy Tom because he actually flies jet planes, and I don’t do that because I’m too afraid to fly.

But for those of us who don’t fly: science fiction gives a chance to really soar, and this is why I keep coming back to science fiction. There are absolutely no limits to where the imagination can go. Now, the challenge of science fiction is to tell a credible story. All that being said, you have to impose certain limits. And I’ve imposed limits on myself. There are a lot of directors that could have taken this story and didn’t, because they would have made it almost too fantastic. This could have been much more like “Independence Day” or “Earth vs. Flying Saucers” or it could have been much more about the army vs. the extraterrestrials. There could have been huge battle-scenes, tripods going down, soldiers blowing up.

I didn’t want to go there. I wanted this, in a strange way, to be a little more of a cousin to “Saving Private Ryan” in the genre of science fiction. In the way that it’s more of a story told in a first person point of view. So I did impose limits, and David Koepp imposed limits, on how we shaped the screenplay and how we caused all the characters to seem as realistic and normal as we are. And that was very important to me. But science fiction, as a genre, is the great escape for moviemakers.

Cruise: No, I just dig going to science fiction movies, always have. You look at science fiction and the role that science fiction has actually played in our culture. It was the science fiction writers during that pulp fiction era—they were writing about space, [and then they] got the space race going. I find it fascinating when we were preparing “Minority Report,” the research that Steven had done. Now, the scrubbing the image, actually Steven came up with that idea. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but now, they’re doing that. They’ve created that.

Spielberg: Science fiction can sometimes suggest cool ways of exploring the universe. The astronauts are completely inspired by science fiction as kids, and they want to join the space program. Science fiction has done a lot, I think, to encourage the people who really have to spend the money at NASA to go out into space. “Star Wars” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” did amazingly positive prep work in that field but also…

Cruise: I wonder if the astronauts are going to use “War of the Worlds” to try to raise money to go out to make sure we don’t get invaded. [Laughs.]

Spielberg: I don’t know. It all depends if we’re going to take the Reagan Star Wars thing out of mothballs and put that up again. I just think that the whole field of science fiction, as Tom was saying, and science fiction stories—it really inspires young people to think and imagine and think that anything is possible. My movies go from historical dramas to science fiction. I love going back and forth from history where I really am contained and I have to pretty much be more of a reporter, a photojournalist, then an imaginer, and science fiction, where I don’t have that many constraints on where we take these stories.

Speaking of your earlier sci-fi movies… back when you were first envisioning “ET,” it began as a different movie—a scary alien invasion movie. You sort of turned it around and made it into a happy alien movie. At the time, you said that you didn’t want to do a scary alien movie. What’s changed since then?

Spielberg: There wasn’t anything huge that changed in my life that made me do a scary alien movie. Maybe it was just being goaded by the idea that everybody said, over the years, that this was the guy that can’t make a scary alien movie. I thought, well, why can’t I try my hand at the kind of film that Ridley Scott made when he did the first “Alien?” That was my favorite scary science fiction movie of all time. It was just something that I had always wanted to do.

[To Tom] We talked about this for a couple years. Looking for a project to do together. I told him that I wanted to do “War of the Worlds” ever since I read the book in college, before I actually became a filmmaker. I wanted to do some version of it at some point.

Cruise: So you always planned to have ET phone home and bring some of the, you know, ET gone gangster. [Laughs]

Spielberg: But no, there was nothing really conscious. It was just that it’s a great story. It’s a great piece of 19th Century classic literature. It began an entire revolution in science-fiction and fantasy in my opinion—Jules Verne and HG Wells—and it was a film that was something that I really respected when it was first made by George Paw in 1953 and 1954, and I just thought that we could make a version a little closer and darker toward the original novel.

Father figures are common themes in both of your movies. Tom, what did playing a father mean to you?

And Steven, was this your idea of reversing what you did in “Close Encounters,” where a guy stays with the family, instead of abandoning it for aliens?

Cruise: First of all, I have to say that I love how Steven Spielberg deals with families in his movies. I find them to be very real. Unique. I’ve always wanted to personally be a father growing up, and when we started talking about the story, we started talking about it being about a father and a family. I couldn’t wait to be a father in this movie.

Spielberg: Well, I was never really conscious of that. In “Close Encounters,” it was about a man whose insatiable curiosity—more than just curiosity, he developed an obsession—drew him away from his family. And only looking back once, he walked onto the mothership. Now, that was before I had kids. That was 1977. So I wrote that blithely. Today, I would never have the guy leaving his family and go on the mothership. I would have the guy doing everything he could to protect his children. So in a sense, “War of the Worlds” does reflect my own maturity, you know, in my own life growing up and now having seven children.

The film has a lot to do with refugees. Is that a theme for you?

Spielberg: Well, it is. It’s an unfamiliar theme to all of us because we don’t often see images of American refugees, except after local and national disasters like hurricanes and people fleeing. And of course, the image that stands out in my mind the most was the image of everybody in Manhattan fleeing across the Brooklyn Bridge in the shadow of 9/11, which is a searing image that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. This is partially about the American refugee experience, because it’s certainly about Americans fleeing for their lives, being attacked for no reason. Having no idea why they’re being attacked, and who is attacking them.

How much did the political situation today have to do with your decision to make this film right now?

Spielberg: This movie, I was hoping, would be more like a prism. Everybody could see in a facet of the prism what they choose to take from the experience of seeing “War of the Worlds,” so I tried to make it as open for interpretation as possible, without having anybody coming out with a huge political polemic in the second act of the movie. I think there are politics certainly underneath some of the scares and some of the adventure and some of the fear, but I really wanted to make it suggested, and not that everybody could have their own opinion. But I certainly think I gave you enough rope to hang me with.

The director of the Fantastic Four said that he was going to “WHOOP your asses at the box office.”

Cruise: I’d like to see that picture do really well, and I want all the movies to do well. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m going to go see that picture. I can’t wait.

Spielberg: I want to go see it with my kids.

This is the second time you work together, after “Minority Report” in 2002. Which one was easier for you?

Cruise: I have to tell you personally that it just gets better, the experience working with Steven.

Spielberg: This was 100% character. Minority Report was certainly 50% character and 50% very complicated storytelling…. layers and layers of murder mystery plotting. This was a character journey, and everything we talked about was about Tom’s character, Dakota’s character, Justin Chatwin’s character, Tim Robbin’s character…all about who these people were an in a sense, that freed us up to explore a world we didn’t get a chance to explore in Minority Report.

Cruise: I had a lot of fun on Minority Report. I had even more fun on this one. And the next one is going to be even more fun. [Laughs.]

One of the things changed from the novel was having the aliens laying dormant for eons rather than coming out of the sky…

Cruise: I was there when he came up with that idea. It was instantaneous. Because the machines are lying dormant—

Spielberg: That was just something that I came up with. Because I didn’t want to do the old “death from above” cliché that we’ve seen so often in science fiction movies, where you look up at the sky and it’s raining down terror and death on you. I thought it was much more logical that this could have been living with us inside of our earth for eons, before the time was right and they made their plans. And so, I just thought that was more of an original way of introducing a threat; not from above, but from where we least expect it to come. A sort of extraterrestrial threat almost from the inter-reaches of earth.

What are your beliefs on life on other planets? Is it out there?

Spielberg: Yeah, it’s definitely out there. You know that. I think we all know that we’re not alone in the universe. I can’t imagine that anyone believes that we’re the only intelligent biological life form in the entire universe. I certainly can’t imagine living without the belief that there’s other life, that the universe is teeming with life.

Do you think we’ve been visited?

Spielberg: I’m a little less sure in my ‘50s then I was in my late ‘20s whether we actually have ever been visited. I used to answer this question back in the days of “Close Encounters” in the ‘70s. Wow, was I convinced that we had been visited! And you know why I’m not as convinced right now? Because of the millions of video cameras that are out there today that are picking up less photographs videos of UFOs—alleged UFOs—than have been picked up in the ‘60s and ‘70s and ‘80s. Why is it that there’s 150% more video cameras on the face of the planet today, but we see less UFOs? Maybe we’re in a cold spell. A UFO drought. [Laughter from room.]

Cruise: I think it’s supreme arrogance to think that we’re the only ones in all the universes.

What was the most difficult thing for both of you making this movie?

Spielberg: Physically, the most difficult scene for me was the scene I worried about the most. Because it involved the safety of several thousand local extras where we were shooting in Athens up the Hudson River. That was the ferry scene. We had to have thousands of people running, and I was terrified of someone falling, tripping, being stepped on, being run over.

And thank God, because we had such a great stunt coordinator, and we had so many dozens of stunt people actually inside the crowds, and we had many safety meetings with the crowds. Nothing bad happened, but I was on edge for four days because of the fast amount of crowds, at night, running on very narrow streets. I couldn’t wait for those scenes to be over. I was happy every time we finished a take and everybody was okay.

Cruise: One thing I just want to add to that—which is kind of astonishing to me, having obviously made a lot of movies, produced a lot of movies—was how accurate and how quickly Steven shot those sequences. It’s kind of stunning. For me, what was the most difficult. I don’t know really. Honestly, I had a lot of fun making the movie. There wasn’t a day…the most difficult, hardest day was the last day of shooting. Because it was over, because I really do sincerely love working with Steven. I have great admiration, which you know, and I just knew that I was going to miss it.

When David Koepp wrote this screenplay, I had to say it was the best screenplay I’d ever read. I told David this. You could just see a man inspired. The story flew off the pages…I actually received 84 pages and I could tell with Steven… He was like “OH, I’m going to send it to you” and I was like “How is it how is it How is it how is it How is it how is it?”I can be quite an excitable person. I don’t know if you know that about me. He said “Oh, just read it and call me afterwards”. I read 84 pages and when it was over…I tell you I was jumping on the couch! [Laughter.]

The box office has been in a slump. What do you think that theaters need to do differently to help the box office?

Spielberg: I don’t believe this is the exhibitor’s responsibility. The exhibitors don’t have to tweak their theaters. We don’t have to find a new platform or medium to communicate our stories with you. We don’t necessarily have to build screens three times bigger. We don’t have to IMAX out this world. We just have to make the kind of movies that you want to see. If the box office is in a slump, I don’t believe it’s because people are watching cable or playing their video games so much; I really don’t believe that. I believe that when the right movies come along, people will show up for it.

Are you stunned or puzzled by criticism that love or religion might distract from the movie?

Cruise: No. I really don’t pay attention to it. It doesn’t bother me, you know what I’m saying? I just really don’t pay attention to it. I do my work. I live my life. It’s never affected anything before. It doesn’t matter. I make my movies. And I live my life the best way that I can. I can’t control what people are going to say or do. They can say or do what they want. But it’s not going to change the way I live my life?

Would you personally run toward the tripods, or away?

Cruise: I would run. [Laughs]

Spielberg: Run! [Laughs.] I don’t know. There could have been another kind of movie. There could have been a 1980’s-Tom Cruise-version of War of the Worlds, where Tom Cruise runs toward the tripods.

Cruise: And then I get in a jet.

Spielberg: Get some sidewinders…

Cruise: I don’t know what I’d do. It’s different with kids. You’d run with them.

What happens when the two of you disagree?

Cruise: We’ve never actually had a disagreement. I so respect his opinion, his judgment, that when he has an idea, I’m always interested in exploring it.

Spielberg: Yeah, we’ve never had a disagreement. And also, what usually happens in the whole process, is that I’ll give Tom an idea, and to Tom, an idea is a gift. When he hears an idea, it’s a total surprise, and he’ll cover thousands of acres and figure out a way to take that idea and make it his own. And I’m the same way. Tom will come to the set—he’s never like, “I want to do something that’s not in the script,”—but he’ll be like, “Hey, can I kinda just try this? I have this idea I want to throw out. Can I try this song to my daughter, because I haven’t been able to understand what the nursery rhymes mean? But can I try a song that I like, that might be associated with cars, since I’m the car guy in the movie?” That was Tom’s idea. He brought that to the movie. Those are the kind of ideas that I try out. Movies, they evolve. You start with a screenplay, and then you evolve from there. And so every single day, there are 15, 20 moments of discovery. That makes the movie come to life.

Cruise: Those are the fun moments. That’s why I do show up early. I like to hang out and to let Steven see me on the set. And it gives you ideas, and it gives him that time and that room for ideas. Sometimes when we’re making a movie we’ll watch scenes from other movies just for fun, on the set. “Full Metal Jacket.” We didn’t listen to “Full Metal Jacket” when Dakota was on the set. It was like, “Is D on the set? Is D on the set? Okay, D’s in school! ‘Full Metal Jacket!’ That scene from ‘The Fly!’”

Spielberg: It’s just a way of cleaning the palette. One of the biggest problems in making movies—I’m sure other filmmakers have told you this at press conferences—is that directors tend to lose their objectivity. You get halfway through a film, and you forget why you’re making it, what the story’s all about, and you’ve got to read the script again. So sometimes those little moments of taking a break from the picture while the cameraman is widening the shot, and just going off and watching a great scene from a European or American motion picture is a great way to clear the air.

Every cast member says that you have unbelievable energy. Is there a secret to your boundless energy?

Cruise: My interest in life, quite honestly. I’m interested in life. I’m someone who will get excited about living. I’m interested in people. There are things in my life, in Scientology and tools that I’ve spoken about before, that help me to overcome barriers and problems, and that has been extraordinary in my life. I have the privilege of doing something that I love. I do see it as a privilege. I’m truly proud of the life that I have.

Spielberg: And I have half his energy, and I’m still going strong.

WAR OF THE WORLDS INVADES THEATERS ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at jeff@latinoreview.com.