Had you read Philip K. Dick's story before you started working on the film?

Belker: They gave us the short story to read when we first got started because the actual script was all secret. So we'd get a page or so which we were directly involved with. I got pages where vehicles were described. The short story stuff was promising, though it didn't go into much detail.

Underkoffler: Oh yes, long before. I'm a huge fan of all of Dick's writings. It's a very compact little piece with a fascinating central idea that very much competes with all his other stuff. As with the rest of his writings, he recognizes that social science fiction is more interesting than pure science fiction. He was one of the few guys back in the '50s who knew the truth about technology. Everyone else wanted shiny ray guns and perfect societies floating around in anti-gravity space stations and who knows what. Dick knew that technology mostly doesn't work or complicates things in unforeseen ways. And so, in Dick's books and stories, you always have doors that won't let you through 'cause you have to give them a quarter and you have to argue with them because you don't have any spare change. In general, with him, it's the intersection of high-end science with other more human elements: individual psychologies, larger-scale sociology or politics. That's what makes him continue to be relevant where other authors of the same era ... their shiny spaceships and ray guns look a little tarnished right now.

How often did you refer to the original text? Did you have much creative license?

Belker: I don't think I had much license except for the actual design of a vehicle. I'm definitely bound by the direction of the director and the production design, but the way it looks is my problem.

Underkoffler: I myself didn't, and I think that the film took everything it was possible to take from the story. By the time we were up and running, those ideas were so fully dissolved into the fabric of everything that we were doing, it wasn't as if had to go back and look at the scripture, so to speak.

What were some of the ideas or concepts you personally devised that made it into the final film?

Underkoffler: The sort of single largest scale item was the gestural interface language that we see in the first scene that Mr. Cruise's character uses to sift through the pre-visions -- the evidence dreamed by the pre-cogs. We had him in the middle of that giant curved, transparent screen and Steven's brief was that he wanted the interface of that computer to be like conducting an orchestra. Armed with that brief, I went off and devised this whole kind of sign language for interacting with this computer, for controlling the flow of all this information. That was great fun and it derived in some ways from my earlier research back at MIT.

Much has been made of this "think tank summit" hosted by Steven Spielberg prior to shooting. Can you give us an idea what that experience was like?

Belker: I thought, "What is all this?" [Laughs.] They went into great detail on medical future, architectural future, the rising of the sea level. For me, what was most interesting was the way they foresaw the future; if you really showed that in a movie today it would be unbelievable. So, to make it more realistic, you almost have to draw back from that and show it a little more reasonable.

Science used to draw on sci-fi all the time, but that relationship has changed: now sci-fi draws more from science. Which does this film do?

Underkoffler: I'm not sure that I totally agree. I think in some ways, science draws more than ever from science fiction. Here's one example. We had the constant problem of designing access panels to high-tech installations, stuff that appears in movies where you scan your thumb or your iris. And what does it say when you can't get it? It says, "Access Denied." Everyone knows that. The guys who have to build that hate "Access Denied" -- we all hate "Access Denied." It's such a clichi, but the fact is, the people who build those things for real make them say "Access Denied." And why? Because we all know that from movies.

Of all the technological advancements showcased in the film, how much of this stuff actually exists or is in the early stages of development?

Underkoffler: I would say a surprisingly large fraction. Almost an astoundingly large fraction. The mag-lev cars, for example. Although we don't have mag-lev technology that works on vertical surfaces, mag-lev technology has been around for many decades, spearheaded by professor Eric Laithwaite, who died not too long ago. And, of course, in Japan and Europe you have mag-lev trains. The nonlethal weapons are all variants or extrapolations of currently existing or under-development technology. It would be hard to identify anything that had no grounding in reality. I think that was very much by design.

Are there any concepts to which you were particularly attached that never made it into the movie?

Underkoffler: [mock coyness] Mmm ... not sure if I'm allowed to say such things. I mean, there was a lot we certainly didn't have time to do. We had a couple of interesting gadgets. Stuff like media-bots that were kind of autonomous, flying robots that would collect video and audio footage of the scene of the crime, a sporting event, some other paparazzi-intensive place. And they'd sort of jostle with each other for space and transmit it back to TV. The world that we all had in our heads was complete and as rich as our real world.

Belker: Yeah, I wish there were a lot more establishing shots of the transportation system, not just a quick drive-by. [Laughs.] There was a lot of work done on explaining how the hovership works, the whole transportation system. It was fantastically put together and yet you see very little of that. But, the way he [Spielberg] was shooting the film, the subject matter and the actor were his prime goals.

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