The beginning of Minority Report, Steven Spielberg’s thrilling sci-fi noir from 2002, is closely connected to another science fiction classic: Total Recall. The film was optioned all the way back in 1992 as a sequel to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, but the development started five years later, when Jon Cohen’s script reached Spielberg and Tom Cruise. The two of them met on the set of Risky Business in 1983 and subsequently spent years trying to find the right film to work together on, and Cohen’s screenplay seemed like a perfect opportunity. Minority Report, just like Total Recall, was based on Philip K. Dick’s story, the rights to which were bought by writer/producer Gary Goldman. He created the first script, alongside the uncredited pair of Ron Shusett and Robert Goethals. After a hiatus, Cohen was brought in to adapt the story. The filmmaker who was supposed to make it was Jan de Bont, but when Cruise read the script, he contacted Spielberg. The experienced director realized the story’s potential but wanted to wait for Cohen to produce an enhanced version of the screenplay. When Cohen delivered, the project was officially set for a take-off: in 1998, Minority Report was presented as a joint venture of Spielberg’s DreamWorks and Amblin Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, De Bont’s production company Blue Tulip and Cruise’s Cruise/Wagner Productions. Even though the plan was for Minority Report to be made right after Mission: Impossible II was finished, with the action flick going over schedule a delay had to be made. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as Spielberg found the time to bring in Scott Frank to rework Cohen’s material. The shooting script was very much Frank’s, but with a lot of material from Cohen’s third draft. What allegedly attracted Spielberg to the project was not only a chance to finally work with Cruise, whom he later called “his William Holden,” but an opportunity to stage a story that’s simultaneously a crime mystery with distinct noir characteristics and a futuristic science-fiction film that allowed him to combine two different genres.
Minority Report takes place in 2054, but for inspiration and motivation, Spielberg decided to turn to the past. “I had John Huston in my ear,” he explained later in an interview. “I went back and looked at The Maltese Falcon and Hawks’ The Big Sleep—to see how some of those film noir mysteries were resolved. They didn’t dot every i and cross every t. They tried to keep you off-balance. They asked more questions than they could answer in those days.” Minority Report hit theatres in the middle of June 2002, following a marketing campaign that was seemingly one of the least complicated tasks in the history of film promotion: after all, the names of Spielberg and Cruise were practically synonyms for box office splendor. However, since the director’s last film—A. I.—was a box office misfire, the promotional campaign rather concentrated on Cruise’s role in the project, highlighting Minority Report as a Tom Cruise action thriller. The popularity of the film among moviegoers was accompanied by almost universal critical praise, with Roger Ebert calling it a triumph of action and ideas.
These were films that I loved, the black-and-white style with crossed light and shadow, lots of scenes in darkness and people moving in stealth, and a very hard mystery to untangle. That was a genre I had never done before, and this movie allowed me to go into that world of the whodunit and the murder mystery, the kind of movies that they don’t make so much anymore, for some reason. It gave me a chance to do something I always wanted to do in a movie, which is to bring to the photo-realism of film a kind of abstract expressionism. We decided to put the film through a process called bleach bypass, which essentially takes all of the Technicolor out of your face and makes your face much more pale. What it does is take those happy, delightfully rosy skin tones away from people who are naturally that way and washes everything out. Then we shot some of the scenes on 800 ASA film stock, which creates a kind of graininess that makes it feel more like old film noir.
What makes Minority Report so good isn’t the fact it managed to successfully predict several aspects of the future, or that it offered some revolutionizing insight into the ever-going philosophical debate of free will versus predetermination, or that it features great performances from not only Cruise but also Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow and Samantha Morton. This film is great because it delivers a thrilling spectacle that’s at the same time both brains and brawns. As Ebert noted in his original review, Minority Report is a film that works on our minds and our emotions made by a “master filmmaker at the top of his form.”
==SCOTT FRANK ON ‘MINORITY REPORT’
Did Tom Cruise ever have any reservations about playing John Anderton because of the character’s dark side?
I had one meeting with him early on, and then he went off to Australia. During that meeting he was game to pretty much anything. Tom is a fearless actor, he’ll try anything, and so I felt he would actually like it. During the filming, I was on the set and he was very much a student of the page. He works very hard at making what’s there work. He did have ideas, but most of them were behavioral. He was very enthusiastic about the screenplay. In fact, I think his enthusiasm for the project kept it together a few times.
Were you on the set a lot?
Yeah some. I did have a lot on my plate. I was working on A Walk Among the Tomb Stones, and had to finish that while Minority Report was shooting so I needed to step away from the set more than I wanted. I would go as often as I could. It was very difficult to leave once I was there. Normally I hate being on a set—it’s usually so boring. Writers who say they love being on the set are nuts. It’s not very interesting to me. It’s great when you’re there working, and can help problem-solve and things like that. But on a Steven Spielberg set it’s always interesting [laughs]. First of all, there’s so many interesting things happening in terms of the way the movie is being made. New cameras, experimental cameras, new ways of using cameras. Steven had a robotic arm brought to the set one day from an automated factory of some kind and they put the camera on the arm. Not to mention the people that visit his set. From the Secretary of the Navy, to Sting, Mike Myers, and Bill Clinton [laughs]. There was always someone showing up.
==SPIELBERG IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE
So what drew you to the Minority Report?
The thing about Philip K. Dick is that he’s a concept illustrator. In Minority Report he’s got a very strong idea—that future murders can be preempted based on the psychic information from precognitives, or “precogs,” as he calls them. And the head of Precrime, played by Tom Cruise, who brought the book and original script to me, is himself accused of a murder that’s going to happen in 36 hours. He has to go on the run from all the men and women he’s trained to catch people just like him. At its core the movie is a whodunit. It’s actually a whodunit-to-me. I responded immediately to that. And then, I responded to the myriad possibilities of creating a future that is not too distant, yet with the kind of technologies we can only dream about but wish we had now.
Dick’s stories have inspired Screamers, Total Recall, and Blade Runner, arguably the ultimate sci-fi movie. Are you concerned about the inevitable comparisons to Blade Runner?
Minority Report is a different film. There’s darkness to it. There’s personal tragedy as well. But I think it’s a little more accessible. I thought Ridley [Scott, director of Blade Runner] painted a very bleak but brilliant vision of life on earth in a few years. It’s kind of acid rain and sushi. In fact, it’s coming true faster than most science fiction films come true. Blade Runner is almost upon us. It was ultranoir.
==THE CINEMATOGRAPHY OF ‘MINORITY REPORT’
It’s a really simple relationship: he directs the movie, I photograph it. Intellectualizing about making movies doesn’t really count for much in America, because the director is responsible for such a huge industrial machine. Filmmaking isn’t an industry that encourages risk taking. There isn’t much of an auteur sensibility any longer, because you’re shooting the movies with extensive coverage, all these amazing creative shots with unnecessary close-ups or over-the-shoulders. It becomes a very safe medium. All the intellectual conversations you might have with the director are usually quite interesting but ultimately a waste of time. You talk about ideas for three weeks before you start shooting and very quickly realize that none of those ideas apply, simply because the director is suddenly paralyzed in the face of having to direct this huge hundred-million-dollar movie and tell a hundred people where to stand and what to do. With Steven, we just don’t waste time on intellectual conversations. Very seldom do we talk about what the movie will look like. We might say, “Okay, it would be interesting if it wasn’t as slick as A.I.” We did Minority Report right after A.I., so we wanted it not to look as slick and elegant, which meant we said, “Let’s make this movie kind of dirty.” That’s as much conversation as we had. For Minority Report we looked at one movie, The Ipcress File, which I find to be an amazing piece of cinema. We looked at it because of the really interesting angles, but for A.I. we didn’t have any conversations. I think the beauty of our relationship comes from the lack of desire to discuss all those things. When he sees talent, he hires it and lets that person do the work they were hired to do. He’s got a tremendous amount of filmmaking to offer to me, and I’ve got a tremendous amount of filmmaking to offer to him.
How has that changed over time?
It hasn’t changed. Steven does his work, I do my work, and we mutually respect our decisions. I like to be left alone. Just let me do my work. Our first conversation before we started Schindler’s List was: “I’m making this movie in black and white. Do you want to do it?” “Sure, I want to do it.” There were no long conversations about concept. I went to Poland for three months and he arrived on the set three days before we started shooting. Nothing was very precise. There were no storyboards. A lot of the ideas just happened as we were shooting. It was very instinctual. With Saving Private Ryan he got to the set two days before. There are very few conversations, because he hires people he can fully rely on. You have to understand that Spielberg is a huge operation. He’s a producer, he runs a studio, he’s got a wife, he’s got seven kids, and on top of all that he’s very much involved in charitable organizations. He doesn’t have time to waste on useless conversations in terms of what this movie will be about. It’s like the Ivan Passer story. Steven discovers what the movie is about as he’s making it, which is perhaps different to the way he used to make films, when he would work everything out in advance. He has become much more poetic and free and adventurous in terms of wanting to discover what the movie’s about as he’s going into it.
How much input does Spielberg have in camera placement?
That’s the director’s job. You put the camera where you think it should go. That’s what he’s getting paid for. It’s another story as to how much collaboration there is on the set, because some directors are not interested at all in placing the camera, while others enjoy it tremendously. Usually at the end of a day of shooting, Steven and I will talk about the setups for the following day. He’ll give me the angle and we’ll block the scene with stand-ins. By the time we arrive on set the next day we more or less know what the shot is about. I drive straight from the lab, where I’ve been looking at the material from the previous day. I’m fighting the traffic, so Steven usually gets there maybe half an hour earlier, because he’s still trying to figure out what the hell he’s doing. He drives to the set because that gives him an hour and a half of thinking time, when he can fully focus on what the day’s work will be, which is a luxury in his life.
