In Super 8, JJ Abrams – the man who reinvented Star Trek, and created the singular Lost– pays homage to the films that influenced him during his childhood. TARA BRADYmeets the 'new old Spielberg'
JJ Abrams sure can talk. We're at the Dorchester Hotel in London, to discuss Super 8, his rollicking new alien-invasion adventure, and Abrams is spitting out answers at a pace that fairly makes the head spin. Asked for his inspirations, the 45-year-old steps back a few metaphorical paces before surging forward like a man addicted to verbal momentum.
Set in 1979, the film concerns a bunch of kids who encounter a suspicious entity while shooting a Super 8 horror movie.
“The idea just came out of wanting to do something that revisited that time in my life when I was discovering all sorts of things about what I wanted to be and what my adult life might be like,” he jabbers amiably.
"It was a time of purity. It was very different from now. It felt like an interesting time to look back at. Of course, I was very influenced by the films of that time. The first thing I did was call Steven Spielberg: 'Do you want to do a film called Super 8?' He said: 'Yeah!' "
Over the past decade, after a fitful start in movies, Abrams has delivered some of television's most intriguing and discombobulating shows. Felicityreinvented the high-school drama. Aliasreinvented the spy series. Lostreinvented, erm, whatever the hell Lostwas. More recently, he has powered his way into cinema with Mission: Impossible IIIand that terrific Star Trekreinvention.
Many have made the mistake of calling Abrams the new Spielberg. There is, to be fair, a lot of Spielberg in Super 8. Produced by the veteran director's Amblin Entertainment, the film could be seen as a combination of The Gooniesand Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This is not the work of a new Spielberg; this is the work of a new old Spielberg, the Spielberg who made Jawsand ET.
Then again, it also feels very like an Abrams piece. Anybody who enjoyed Cloverfield, the monster movie produced and conceived by Abrams, will feel right at home with the later sections of Super 8.
As much as anything else, the film is a tribute to the early adventures of both Abrams and Spielberg. The two men cut their teeth making Super 8 films as kids. In this spirit, one of Abrams’s oldest pals, Larry Fong, a collaborator from those distant days, was director of photography on the film.
"The last time I remember writing something autobiographical was Felicity," Abrams says. "But this really was my life. I was lucky enough to be involved with Lostand Star Trekand so on. That was very exciting, and you found your own way to bring truth to them. But this was so connected to my experiences. Thank God Larry was there to say: 'It's amazing people are now letting us do this.' The condition of these kids' lives felt eerily familiar."
It is giving nothing away to say the film ends with a hilarious unveiling of the heroes’ home movie. A zombie flick with copious allusions to George A Romero, godfather of the genre, the film is rough and ready, but it looks like the work of budding film-makers. Are we watching a remake of Abrams’s first cinematic doodlings?
"I did do one that was particularly bad," he says, laughing. "My mom volunteered. I made her up. On Super 8you can't do any individual effects. You can maybe scratch off the emulsion for effects. But the frame is so small it's nearly impossible. I did my mom's eyes that way and made them glow. That's the closest thing I did to this. I did love horror movies as a kid. But it wasn't exactly the film you see. Mine was worse."
Abrams was born in New York but grew up close to the action in Los Angeles. His father, Gerald W Abrams, was a TV producer who became general sales manager of a CBS-controlled television station in LA. His mother, Carol, also worked as an executive television producer.
The title of the movie is significant. A generation of film-makers grew up shooting films on the relatively cheap Super 8 stock. Younger movie fans, raised on video, will feel they are watching something from the dark ages. Only a few short years after the events in Super 8, new technologies made film stock something of a luxury for teenage auteurs.
Abrams is at home with nostalgia. His films and TV series are hip, tricksy and innovative, but they always stay true to those old-school values that stressed strong narrative. Nobody is likely to confuse the charming Super 8with, for example, the deranged Transformers. At our previous meetings, Abrams has shared his passion for Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zoneand patron saint of small-screen storytelling.
Super 8drips with longing for a lost time. "It's a crazy thing. I love technology and I hate it," Abrams says. "It breaks my heart that the record stores I love are gone. There is a sense of entitlement. People think they can get whatever they want instantly.
“It’s less the technology that’s gone. It’s the byproduct. We have a letter-press in the office. We use it for making cards and so on. When I use that it’s imperfect, but there’s an experience in doing it. There’s a personality to the card. It’s flawed, but there’s character to it.” Warming to his theme, he begins to sound, in the most agreeable way, like a regretful ancient mourning the passing of a simpler time. Young people don’t know they’re born.
“Everything is so instant now that there is a disconnect from the actual experience,” he says. “Ten, 20, 30 years ago, if you wanted to buy a song you put effort in by going to the store. You at least knew that when you got home the very first thing you were going to do was listen to it. A lot of times these days I don’t even listen to the thing. It’s so crazy. In fact there’s no evidence that the song exists at all.
"There's a lack of evidence. Super 8is about a time when you couldn't click to get where you wanted. If you wanted to talk to somebody you had to ride your bike over there. If your dad left the house mysteriously you didn't know what to do."
Super 8also returns to certain, more personal, themes from the films of Spielberg's classic era. So many of those pictures dealt with broken homes and used the invading force, often kindly aliens, as a distraction from those nagging domestic crises. The protagonist of Super 8, played touchingly by young Joel Courtney, has recently lost his mother in an industrial accident. When shooting their film, he and his pals encounter a massive – thrillingly staged – train crash, from the wreckage of which a dangerous blob emerges. But the blob is not just a blob.
“The less you see the scarier it is,” Abrams says. “And it was partly thematic. The monster is a metaphor for the kid’s loss. To get past a loss you have to confront it. To me the whole notion of this creature was less about how cool or scary it is. It’s about a kid who is haunted by loss. How is he going to reconnect with his father? How is he going to find happiness? That creature is just a catalyst to get them to confront their issues.”
It's good to have JJ Abrams around. Now embarking on an array of new television productions – we'll have to wait a while for Star Trek 2– he brings a refreshing, sincere energy to the entertainment industry. Spielberg, who spotted him as a 15-year-old prodigy and found various bits of work for him to do, should be proud of the youngish pretender. Rod Serling would also be happy with the younger man's work.
It seems unlikely, however, that any future project will feel so personal. “When you are making movies as a kid, you are not a sports guy, you are not an academic: you are nobody,” he says. “Making movies gave me a purpose. I could do it on my own terms. We have kids and we try to teach them to be responsible. Making movies was like the most amazing thing ever. It was my domain. I got to do the stuff I wanted to do. But it never turned out how I wanted it to be.”
He takes an uncharacteristic pause.
“So it’s just like movies now. It’s always a disappointment.” All our disappointments should be so much fun.
Super 8is out on Friday
