Filmed Locally - War of the Worlds

By Bradley Towle

GREENE COUNTY — With the recent announcement that Steven Spielberg will be shooting scenes for his latest film Dish, or Non-View (there are two separate working titles reported) in Haines Falls and Catskill in early April, the acclaimed director returns to UFOs and extraterrestrials. The topic has been a persistent fascination throughout the director's long career. His first two movies to explore life beyond our planet were 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1982's E.T., unique for their "we come in peace" version of aliens. The announcement also marks Spielberg's return to Greene County. Twenty years ago, the director brought his production of 2005's War of the Worlds, a decidedly unfriendly alien story, to Athens to film a chaotic ferry scene.

Long-time Spielberg collaborator Kathleen Kennedy reflected on Spielberg's choice to adapt the H.G. Wells classic novel to the big screen, indicating that his desire to explore the darker side of possible otherworldly beings had been brewing for some time. "When we first started developing E.T., it was a much edgier, darker story, and it actually evolved into something that was more benign. I think that the edgier, darker story has always been somewhere inside him." War of the Worlds star and collaborator Tom Cruise weighed in on Speiberg's new tone when promoting the film. "This is E.T. gone bad," said Cruise. Spielberg himself was very conscious of the shift. "This is not one of my sweet, cuddly, benign alien stories," the award-winning director said. "I just thought it would be fun to make a really scary movie with really scary aliens, which I had never done before." With the shift from friendly to unfriendly aliens, Spielberg incorporated another topic he often returned to: war.

Spielberg's vision for his adaptation (and remake) of War of the Worlds focused on a single father (Cruise) trying to protect his family during the alien invasion. It's every bit a disaster movie as it's an alien movie, and much of that was informed by the era in which the film was made. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were fresh in the American memory and weighed heavily on our collective psyche. Spielberg's War of the Worlds update was a deliberate attempt to connect with the era's prevailing mood. Particularly evocative of the times are the public boards in the ferry scene (shot in Athens) covered with flyers created by families looking for their missing loved ones amid the chaos. Spielberg drew these images directly from the somber scenes that were all around New York City following the tragedy. Whether or not "9/11 references as Easter eggs" ultimately tip toward being tasteless or commemorative may be up to the viewer. Like everyone else, Spielberg was trying to process the heaviness of it all (although most of us did not make millions while doing so), and his references to the tragedy position his film squarely within the era. Whether or not that has any lasting relevance, time will tell. Movies about or inspired by 9/11 are legion and range in quality (and taste), but another alien invasion movie on that list does not immediately come to mind.

The whirlwind 72-day production for War of the Worlds included thousands of extras (including some likely recognizable from our area), two dozen locations in five states, and sets on the East and West coasts. Spielberg had to work quickly, making the already ambitious film shoot all the more intense, as he was also working on 2005's Munich, which also addressed themes of terrorism and war. In a bit of Hollywood trickery, Piru, California, was "dressed up" to resemble Athens, New York, to continue shooting the ferry scene that had begun along the Hudson River.

Details about Dish/Non-View are scant. We know it will star Emily Blunt and Coleman Domingo (fresh off an Oscar nomination for Sing Sing), and we know it will likely include at least some familiar Greene County sights and faces. David Koepp, a frequent Spielberg collaborator (and co-writer on War of the Worlds), wrote the screenplay. Beyond that, many questions remain. Given Spielberg's intentional commentary and reflection on the 9/11 era in War of the Worlds, will he somehow mirror our current, war-ridden, politically divisive times in the new project? Is it even possible not to reflect some aspect of an era when making a film? Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released during the Jimmy Carter years, a period marked by peace talks and, notably, a president who claimed to have seen a UFO. Perhaps the characters in Spielberg's latest will be a ragtag group of museum curators, librarians, scientists, and performers attempting to protect our history, art, and climate from fascist aliens who are trying to dismantle our democratic institutions to enrich themselves and their cronies as they drive humankind to extinction while planning their escape to Mars before the world burns. Perhaps Spielberg will reference the drone panic from earlier this winter, as the filming locations in New Jersey and New York overlap with many of those incidents. Whatever the references or plot, one big lingering question remains about Steven Spielberg's latest foray into extraterrestrial life, and perhaps the most important one when considering an alien film as a reflection of the times: do they come in peace?