'We are not alone': Steven Spielberg shares his true feelings about aliens and UFOs at SXSW

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AUSTIN, Texas — One of the most anticipated events at this year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival wasn’t a movie at all, but a speaking appearance by director Steven Spielberg.The talk, a live taping of the podcast “The Big Picture” lead by co-host Sean Fennessey, covered many aspects of the Hollywood legend’s career, with a through line of sci-fi and space aliens in conjunction with Spielberg’s upcoming alien invasion thriller “Disclosure Day,” due June 12.Though no real details about the new film were revealed, references to it peppered the conversation as if it were very much on Spielberg’s mind — the film he was ostensibly there to promote.To an audience that included filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Daniel Kwan, the event began with a clip reel that served as a reminder (as if anyone in the packed hotel ballroom needed one) of just how influential the 79-year-old filmmaker is.

A selection of Spielberg’s work plays like a trailer for the idea of movies themselves; this one included “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T.” “Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park,” “The Sugarland Express,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Munich” and many more.Movies This year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival will showcase new films starring Keke Palmer, Elle Fanning, Nick Offerman, Hannah Einbinder, Lola Tung and more.Fennessey noted that Spielberg wanted to make 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” his first sci-fi movie about the existence of aliens from other worlds, even before making 1975’s “Jaws.” Spielberg went further, saying he had actually wanted to make “Close Encounters” — then just referred to as “The UFO Movie” — even before 1974’s “Sugarland Express.”Asked about President Obama’s recent comments about the possible existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and how his own feelings may ...