Delighted to see that Mark Kermode has done a u-turn about his berating of the Spielberg-released movie AI which is based on Supertoys Last All Summer Long. Brian spent several long weeks working with Kubrick to create a screen play from this short story but in the end couldn’t find a solution to Kubrick’s seemingly endless desire to remake Pinocchio. The script ended up being treated by several writers including Bob Shaw, Ian Watson, and Sara Maitland, and it became a bit of a joke that if you hadn’t worked on AI you were no one in SF writing. The end result is a great blend of Spielberg managing to hold onto many of Kubrick’s desires for the film as well as some of his own trademark smokey fantasies. We still enjoy it, are glad Mark does, and hope you do too.
A.I. – Kermode apologises to Spielberg
