Steven Spielberg & the Next Crusade

A: All of us think we've cracked the code until the moment we fail.

Q: The director Stanley Kubrick thought you had. I read that Kubrick ["Dr. Strangelove," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "The Shining"] would call, collect, from his estate in England to ask why one film or another was a blockbuster or a flop.

A: He would never call collect. But Kubrick did keep calling. He thought I had a crystal ball, and I spent years trying to convince him I did not. So whenever one of my films came out and failed, like "Empire of the Sun" [1987, about a British boy in a WWII Japanese internment camp], I'd phone and say why the heck did I make that one? Stanley and I used to laugh about that. After a couple of back-to-back successes, I thought I knew something. There are trends. You follow it until the public grows tired of it. It doesn't take a crystal ball to know the public will go to see a "Harry Potter" sequel or that the second "Pirates of the Caribbean" will make more money than the first.

Q: You get brought a lot of projects. You could have made a "Harry Potter" or a "Spider-Man" or even "Meet the Parents," no?

A: And I would have done those projects had they been brought to me 10 years earlier, but I had moved on in my life. In my 50s, I had other interests. "Spider-Man" and "Harry Potter" would have appealed to me in my 40s.

Q: Did it take a long time to mature? Is that a fair question? When others might have moved on, you were still making dinosaur movies . . .

A: I think that's true. I think I grew up making movies. When I was 25 years old, I was really 18. I've always felt younger than my actual age, maybe by a decade -- or more. So, I wouldn't even consider when I was making "Close Encounters" to even read a book like "Kramer vs. Kramer." It was not within my reach to even imagine directing a picture like "Kramer vs. Kramer" [the 1979 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep], though I was the person handing Robert Benton his Academy Award for Best Director. It was a great honor, but I remember thinking, as I passed the Oscar to him, I'll never make a movie as mature as "Kramer vs. Kramer" because I'm not mature enough.

Q: That's some self-knowledge.

A: I envied films like "Annie Hall" [Woody Allen, 1977] and "Mrs. Miniver" [William Wyler, 1942] and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" [Frank Capra, 1939]. I envied them but never thought I'd be able to have even a conversation with the filmmakers who made them.

Q: Why?

A: I thought I'm good at something so I better stick with what I'm good at. I never gave myself a chance. Until the book "The Color Purple" came along.

Q: Because here was a white man, a white director, telling a story of black experience. With Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey? It was nothing like "Jaws" or "E.T."