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In the year 2045, the real world is a harsh place.\u00a0 The only time Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) truly feels alive is when he escapes to the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where most of humanity spend their days.\u00a0 In the OASIS, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone\u2014the only limits are your own imagination.\u00a0 The OASIS was created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who left his immense fortune and total control of the OASIS to the winner of a three-part contest he designed to find a worthy heir.\u00a0 When Wade conquers the first challenge of the reality-bending treasure hunt, he and his friends\u2014known as the High Five\u2014are hurled into a fantastical universe of discovery and danger to save the OASIS and their world.<\/p>\n
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Three-time Oscar winner Spielberg (\u201cSchindler\u2019s List\u201d [director & picture], and \u201cSaving Private Ryan\u201d [director]) directed the film from a screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline.\u00a0 It is based on the novel by Cline, which has spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, recently climbing to the #1 spot, as well as reaching #1 on Amazon\u2019s Most Read Fiction chart.\u00a0 \u201cReady Player One\u201d was produced by Donald De Line, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Spielberg and Dan Farah.\u00a0 Adam Somner, Daniel Lupi, Chris deFaria and Bruce Berman served as executive producers.<\/p>\n
What was it about this story and these characters that made you want to make Ready Player One your next movie?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: I think anybody who read the book and was connected at all with the industry would have loved to make this into a movie. I mean, the book had seven movies in it \u2013 maybe 12 [laughs]. It was just a matter of trying to figure out how to tell a story about both of these worlds, and to make it sort of an express train racing toward the third act, and, at the same time, a little bit of a cautionary tale about leaving us the choice: where do we want to exist? Do we want to exist in reality? Or do we want to exist in an escapist universe? Those themes were so profound for me, and are consistent throughout the whole book. But there are so many places we could have taken the story.<\/p>\n Themes of reality versus fantasy run throughout your filmography. Is the process different for you when you\u2019re making an escapist film than it is when you\u2019re exploring historical events or real life issues?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: This was my great escape movie. For me, it was a film that fulfilled all of my fantasies of the places I go in my imagination when I get out of town. I got to live this for three years. I got to actually escape into the imagination of Ernest Cline and Zak Penn; it was amazing. But I came back to Earth a couple of times. I made a few films. I made Bridge of Spies and The Post while I was making Ready Player One, so I got that whiplash effect of going from social reality to total escapist entertainment. And I\u2019m feeling it. It\u2019s a great feeling, but it also makes my wife and kids kind of crazy because they don\u2019t know who dad\u2019s going to be when he comes home in the evening, or which dad they\u2019re going to get [laughs].<\/p>\n Your passion and joy is evident in every frame of this film. How did that play into the choices you made in telling this story?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: Thank you. For one thing, I had a passionate and amazing cast. I think if you combine all their ages together, they\u2019re still younger than me [laughs]; I fed off that energy. I\u2019d come to work in the morning and Olivia would say, \u2018Okay, what do we do now? I can\u2019t wait!\u2019 Then Lena would say, \u2018Hey, throw anything at me. I\u2019m ready for it.\u2019 And Tye was completely the same. Ernie gave us a playground to basically become kids again, and we did. We all became kids again. Even though I was working with really young actors \u2013 except for Ben who\u2019s way over that [laughs]. That\u2019s where the energy came from.<\/p>\n You have to understand, also, that we made the movie on an abstract set. The only way the cast had a chance to understand where they were was through the virtual reality goggles we all had. Inside the goggles was a complete build of the set that you see in the movie. But when you took the goggles off, it was a big, white space. It was a 4,000 square-foot, white, empty space called a volume. But when you put the goggles on, it was Aech\u2019s basement. Or it was Aech\u2019s workshop. Or it was the Distracted Globe. So the actors had a chance to say, \u2018Okay, if I walk over there, there\u2019s the door and there\u2019s the DJ.\u2019 It was really an out-of-body experience to make this movie, and it\u2019s really hard to really express what that was like.<\/p>\n OLIVIA COOKE: It was wonderful because we just lived in our own imagination for five months, and we hadn\u2019t had a chance to do that since we were children. So, to be able to completely rely on our gut and our interaction with Steven and with the other cast \u2013 that was what made it so special and so different from anything that I think any of us have ever done before.<\/p>\n LENA WAITHE: When we got to live action, it was like, \u2018Oh, okay, this is real world now.\u2019<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: When we got to live action, everybody was like, \u2018(SIGHS) Oh, okay, I know how to do this.\u2019<\/p>\n LENA WAITHE: It\u2019s fun, but it\u2019s not as fun as when you\u2019re just in an empty space and anything is possible.<\/p>\n There is a spectacular mix of music in the film. Are any of the songs on the soundtrack from your own playlist, Mr. Spielberg? Also, did you play music on set to get everyone warmed up?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: We did. I played a lot of the Bee Gees on the very first day [laughs].<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: I want to tell a story about that. I was extremely nervous on the first day. I actually didn\u2019t even know it was going to be our first day. We had two weeks of rehearsals, just kind of feeling out the mo cap volume and getting familiar with some of these environments that we were going to be in in the movie. And Steven shows up on the last day of rehearsal and says, \u2018Let\u2019s shoot something.\u2019 I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Oh sh**, I hope he doesn\u2019t want to shoot anything with me.\u2019 He\u2019s like \u2018Yeah, you can send everyone else home, I just want to use Tye.\u2019 [Laughs]<\/p>\n So, he brings me over to the side and says, \u2018Have you been working on your Parzival walk?\u2019 I said \u2018What? What is a Parzival walk? I didn\u2019t know I had to work on a Parzival walk.\u2019 [Laughs] \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s kind of like the John Travolta walk in the beginning of Saturday Night Fever. You know, he\u2019s got a certain swagger. I just want to capture you walking.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, okay.\u2019 So there I am, standing on one side of the volume and Steven\u2019s on the other side of the volume. And it\u2019s just me and him, no one else is on the floor. And my heart\u2019s racing. I\u2019m just waiting for him to call action. He pulls out his phone and hits the screen, and then he starts playing \u2018Staying Alive\u2019 by the Bee Gees. Then he just starts walking towards me and he\u2019s nodding his head and holding up his phone. And he goes, \u2018And action.\u2019<\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: And you can see that walk in Ready Player One. It\u2019s in the movie. A lot of the songs. But I have to say that most of the came from Zak Penn and Ernie Cline, from their playlist.<\/p>\n ZAK PENN: We would confer late at night on the phone about which songs off of the giant playlist in the book. I mean, the playlist from his book is absurd; I couldn\u2019t even load it on my phone. But we came up with some good options. And Ben threw in a couple of choices too, but they were more punk, which I respect.<\/p>\n BEN MENDELSOHN: Some of them didn\u2019t like the playlist.<\/p>\n Mr. Spielberg, there are so many references in this film; how did you get the rights to all of them?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: Kristie Macosko, who along with Donald De Line and Dan Farah produced the movie, can probably answer that question because Kristie spent three years with the Warner Bros. legal team getting the rights. And we couldn\u2019t get all of them. They wouldn\u2019t give up the Star Wars rights.<\/p>\n BEN MENDELSOHN: You could have called me on that one, Steven. I mean, I built the Death Star, I\u2019m just saying [laughs].<\/p>\n Tye, can you talk about your experience with videogames prior to the movie?<\/strong><\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: Actually, there\u2019s a scene in the movie where I play an Atari game. And, I researched the game and watched videos, and did as much research as I possibly could without actually playing the game. So, when it came time to shoot the scene, I was like, \u2018Listen, guys, I\u2019ve actually never played an Atari. So you guys are going to have to teach me how to hold the controller, because I don\u2019t want to look like I\u2019m holding it the wrong way.\u2019 So, I got lessons from Steven and Zak about the Atari controller.<\/p>\n BEN MENDELSOHN: The younger generation [laughs].<\/p>\n For everyone, what was the one thing in the movie that spoke to you personally? The movie speaks to all generations, so which reference really geeked you out?<\/strong><\/p>\n LENA WAITHE: Well, the thing that I liked the most was the Chucky doll, just because I used to be genuinely afraid of those movies. So now, as an adult, it\u2019s kind of nice to play a character who uses Chucky as a weapon [laughs]. But, also, in terms of the music, there\u2019s a moment where they\u2019re playing \u2018Just My Imagination,\u2019 which is a song that my mother played all the time when I was a kid. So, hearing that in Aech\u2019s warehouse was kind of cool.<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: I guess for me it was The Iron Giant. That was a movie that played so many times during my childhood. I have a very sentimental connection to that figure, and it was just super cool, even when we were shooting the movie, because we could see our avatars in real time on a 2-D screen. I would look over and I could see my avatar, and then the Iron Giant\u2019s foot. I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s Iron Giant\u2019s foot.\u2019<\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: Yeah, Brad Bird is a genius. I saw Iron Giant when it was in theaters the first time, and have been a big fan of Brad Bird\u2019s. We actually worked together on something called Family Dog on television a long time ago. So this was to honor Brad Bird and to honor the Iron Giant.<\/p>\n OLIVIA COOKE: I used to go disco dancing when I was a kid in my hometown, so I really relished getting to learn the Saturday Night Fever dance. And Tye and I got very close, very quickly, with these dance lessons [laughs]. I don\u2019t know how much of it is digitally enhanced in post-production, probably a lot. But that was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: All of my dancing was digitally enhanced [laughs].<\/p>\n LENA WAITHE: No, you were good! You got good, man!<\/p>\n OLIVIA COOKE: That was the highlight of the job for me.<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: It was so much fun. Yeah, we spent like three weeks on wires. But then three weeks just rehearsing after work or in between, or yeah.<\/p>\n ERNEST CLINE: Tye played John Travolta\u2019s son in a movie, right? Has he seen your performance?<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: I didn\u2019t tell him. I texted him and said, \u2018I just want you to know that you\u2019ve got to see this film, because it\u2019s a huge nod to some of your stuff.\u2019 But you were great friends with him, weren\u2019t you, Steven?<\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: Yeah. John Travolta and I have been friends for like a long time. We met on the set of Carrie, which was 1976, something like that? So we\u2019ve been friends since \u201976 and I can\u2019t wait for John to see the film.<\/p>\n HANNAH JOHN-KAMEN: I think I\u2019m with Olivia on the dance sequence in the film for me; I just got chills. And I didn\u2019t know that the Saturday Night Fever walk was the inspiration for Tye\u2019s. But actually looking back, I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh yeah!\u2019 I thought it was so cool; he just looked awesome. So, yeah, I think that was pretty cool.<\/p>\n BEN MENDELSOHN: You used to be able to rent a place that was either the guest house right next door or the guest house of The Nightmare on Elm Street house. So I\u2019m going to say, Freddy getting blown away early on [laughs].<\/p>\n ERNEST CLINE: Well, for me, it\u2019s the BACK TO THE FUTURE time machine, the DeLorean. It was always my dream car from the time I was a kid, even before I saw Back to the Future. But then, when I saw Back to the Future, I always dreamed of owning a DeLorean someday. And when I sold my novel, and I realized I could finally buy a DeLorean and use it in my author photo, because it\u2019s an \u201880s time machine, which is kind of what my novel is. And then I could drive it around the country on my book tour and it would be a business expense [laughs]. So, it worked its way from the novel into my life, and now it\u2019s in the movie.<\/p>\n ZAK PENN: The spaceships. I really like that there\u2019s the Galactica and the ship from Silent Running. I think Steven was the one who pointed that out. And I was like, \u2018Oh my God, of course, the Silent Running ship. Because you wouldn\u2019t let us put in the mothership from Close Encounters,\u2019 which I had originally written in as a joke.<\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: There comes a point when I would have had to just defer to somebody else who liked my movies and not make a movie about my movies. I let a couple of little iconic characters in from my films, especially the DeLorean, which came from the book directly. But otherwise, there were a lot of things that we could have put in.<\/p>\n ZAK PENN: Oh yeah. I don\u2019t blame Steven. I didn\u2019t know Steven was going to direct the movie when I wrote the joke. But, anyway, all those spaceships, to me, sum up the wonder, and that\u2019s directly from the book, the idea of everybody having their own spaceship.<\/p>\n PHILIP ZHAO: Mine would probably be the Iron Giant, because I was a kid when that was filming.<\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: And now you\u2019re an old man [laughs].<\/p>\n PHILIP ZHAO: Yeah, now I\u2019m an old man. I\u2019ve aged quite well, I think [laughs]. When I saw The Iron Giant on screen, which was played by Lena, I was really impressed. Lena had this, like, pink ball on top of her head when we were filming it, and we had to look at that.<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: That was difficult because when you\u2019re shooting motion capture, whenever Lena says her line, they\u2019ll say \u2018Look up, look up.\u2019 And you look over at Lena but you look at her face first, and you\u2019re like, \u2018Dang, I\u2019m supposed to look at the ball.\u2019<\/p>\n PHILIP ZHAO: And you had to talk to a ball, which was really weird.<\/p>\n WIN MORISAKI: Yeah, for me it\u2019s definitely Gundam. Japanese fans are going to be screaming out, \u2018WHOA!\u2019<\/p>\n ERNEST CLINE: You also got to drive the Mach 5 from SPEED RACER. You got cool toys.<\/p>\n WIN MORISAKI: Yeah, thank you!<\/p>\n For the younger cast, having not grown up in the \u201880s, how did you immerse yourself in that era? And was there something you hadn\u2019t seen that you now really love?<\/strong><\/p>\n LENA WAITHE: I was born in \u201984. So a lot of the 80s I didn\u2019t remember, I don\u2019t really know a ton about. But because I grew up in the 90s, a lot of the stuff I remember is the music. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston \u2013 really that\u2019s where they began, in the \u201880s. So it was not hard for me to revisit. But we did, Tye and I watched some \u201880s movies together, just to get in the vibe. And the interesting thing about that time was that everything was so big and loud and happy and colorful. It was a prosperous time. So, that\u2019s why I think I\u2019m kind of happy I was born in that decade. And I think that\u2019s why it really translates on screen. There\u2019s so much joy, and it\u2019s reminding us of a happier time. And that\u2019s why we\u2019re so obsessed with it.<\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: I think we\u2019re nostalgic for the \u201880s because it was a decade when there wasn\u2019t global and domestic turbulence, chaos and seismic change. In the \u201860s we had seismic change with the Civil Rights movement. There was so much change with the assassinations of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and there were all these different eras.<\/p>\n TYE SHERIDAN: I guess it also makes sense because the OASIS stands for the great escape. It\u2019s anything you want it to be. And because the \u201880s was such a vibrant decade, full of all this crazy hope, I think it makes total sense that there are all these references to \u201880s pop culture in there.<\/p>\n Special effects has changed so much in the past 30 years. Have you ever considered going back and digitally redoing some shots, like George Lucas did with Star Wars, in E.T. the Extraterrestrial?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: Well, I actually got in trouble for doing that. When E.T. was re-released, I digitized five shots where E.T. went from being a puppet to a digital puppet. I also replaced the gun when the F.B.I. runs up on the van \u2013 now they\u2019re walkie-talkies. So, there\u2019s a really bad version of E.T. where I took my cue from Star Wars and did a few touch-ups in the film. And in those days, social media wasn\u2019t as profound as it is today, but what was just beginning erupted in a loud, negative voice about how could you ruin our favorite childhood film by taking the guns away and putting walkie-talkies in their hands, among other things [laughs]. So, I learned a big lesson and that\u2019s the last time I decided to ever mess with the past. What\u2019s done is done, and I\u2019ll never go back to another movie I made and I have control over to enhance or change it.<\/p>\n The film got an incredibly enthusiastic reaction when you recently previewed it at the South-by-Southwest Film Festival. What was that like for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: I was hiding in the back [laughs]. But I heard a lot of it. I\u2019ve made a lot of movies and I\u2019ve gotten a lot of interesting reactions to my films; I\u2019ve never heard anything like this before. And we were right in the center of the action.<\/p>\n LENA WAITHE: I was just happy to be there because I had seen the movie prior and enjoyed it thoroughly sitting there by myself. But it was great being able to experience it with these people, and I spent a lot of time watching the audience, and they were right there, just leaned in and revved up, because I think it brought a real sense of joy. Talk about a time when we want escapism and want to feel good again, and I think Spielberg represents that for a lot of us. He\u2019s been such a huge part of our lives.<\/p>\n I remember seeing Jurassic Park in the movie theater with my family and how I was one person before I walked into the theater and a different person when I walked out. So, to be in this movie and to be around these people who are having that exact same experience, I saw that they were different when they walked out of that theater. They were lighter; they were walking taller and smiling and slapping hands. I\u2019ve never experienced anything like that before and I\u2019ll never experience that again, and it was phenomenal, and I\u2019m glad I got to experience it with all those fans.<\/p>\n Can you talk about your relationship with nostalgia and how that may have changed over the years?<\/strong><\/p>\n STEVEN SPIELBERG: That\u2019s a great question because I have the most intimate relationship with nostalgia. It\u2019s based on the fact that from when I was 11 or 12 years-old, I started taking 8mm movies of my family on camping trips when I was a kid growing up in Arizona. When videotape came in, I started taking videotapes. And then I started taking my 8mm sound movie camera when I was hanging around with [Francis Ford] Coppola and [George] Lucas and [Martin] Scorsese and [Brian] De Palma, and that whole group, back in the \u201870s. I\u2019ve got something like 60 hours of footage of all us growing up and making movies together, which someday might make an interesting documentary \u2013 if I can get the rights to any of these guys \u2013\u00a0probably 80% of the footage, they would not want released to the public [laughs]!<\/p>\n Today in my life, I do all the videos of my family growing up. I have a really great editor, Andy, in our office, and he cuts together the whole year in the life of my family \u2013 all of my children, my grandchildren \u2013 and every year we have little screenings. It\u2019s called the Annual Family Video. So, I basically live in nostalgia, and that might be the main reason I reacted so positively to Ernie\u2019s book and Zak\u2019s script. Because I\u2019m kind of livin\u2019 that way most of my life [laughs].<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ReadyPlayerOne-1.jpg?resize=400%2C166\")
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