ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Of course, there are downsides to the burgeoning Internet age and one of those downsides is, when a popular movie is coming up, people sort of peck it to death before it even opens. There's been a huge amount written on the Internet about the development of Crystal Skull, including lots of spoilers on chat boards though most of it is clearly labeled. Is it getting harder to protect the development process?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: It really is important to be able to point out that the Internet is still filled with more speculation than facts. The Internet isn't really about facts. It's about people's wishful thinking, based on a scintilla of evidence that allows their imaginations to springboard. And that's fine.
GEORGE LUCAS: Y'know, Steven will say, ''Oh, everything's out on the Internet [in terms of Crystal Skull details] what this is and what that is.'' And to that I say, ''Steven, it doesn't make any difference!'' Look Jaws was a novel before it was a movie, and anybody could see how it ended. Didn't matter.
SPIELBERG: But there's lots and lots of people who don't want to find out what happens. They want that to happen on the 22nd of May. They want to find out in a dark theater. They don't wanna find out by reading a blog.... A movie is experiential. A movie happens in a way that has always been cathartic, the personal, human catharsis of an audience in holy communion with an experience up on the screen. That's why I'm in the middle of this magic, and I always will be.
Do you think the sanctuary of the dark theater is being eroded?
LUCAS: No! Look, it's like sports
SPIELBERG: Yes. I think it is being eroded, by too much information and too much misinformation, especially.
LUCAS: But look, it's like sports. This isn't new. When March Madness gets started with the NCAA [basketball tournament], there are thousands of blogs out there. Rampant speculation. If you follow it enough, you go crazy. [With Crystal Skull], you don't know what's actually gonna happen till you walk into that theater. I don't care if you know the whole story, I don't care if you've seen clips. I don't care how much you've seen or heard or read. The experience itself is very different, once you walk in that theater.
SPIELBERG: Well, here's my debate on that. I've always been stingy about the scenes I show in a teaser or a trailer. Because my experience has been and my kids' experience has been, 'cause they talk out loud in theaters, like everybody else does today that if a scene they remember from the trailer hasn't come on the screen yet, and they're three quarters of the way through the movie, they start talking. ''Oh I know what's gonna happen! Because there was that one little scene they haven't shown yet in the movie I'm experiencing, and it's coming up!'' And it ruins everything.
What about creating deliberate disinformation, the way, say The Sopranos' producers did?
SPIELBERG: I did that, but I don't do that any more 'cause it takes too much effort.
LUCAS: We have managed to keep the fact that Will Ferrell is the main villain in Crystal Skull out of the blogosphere.
SPIELBERG: Exactly. But it did get out that it's Steve Carell, last week.
LUCAS: Except people don't know that they're a team...
SPIELBERG: [Laughs] And by the way, when you run this? There'll be people that believe it!
