MUMBAI: The childhood prodigy who made movies on 8mm cameras grew up to become the world's most famous filmmaker a long time ago. But life can still throw up surprises for commercially and critically acclaimed producer-director Steven Spielberg . In a moment that could have been straight out of one of his iconic Indiana Jones movies, he recently came across what he describes as a "treasure trove of photographic negatives from a 35mm still camera".

While much has been written about Spielberg, it is not generally known that his father, Arnold, served as a technical sergeant with the 490th Bombardment Squadron, nicknamed the ‘Burma Bridge Busters' during World War II. The squadron was stationed in Karachi and bombed Japanese railway lines and bridges in Burma. For rest and recuperation, Spielberg's father would visit Bombay and Calcutta—as they were then known—and other places in India.

"About two years ago, I was going through a lot of my dad's things. We found three boxes full of my dad's love letters to my mom and her letters back to him. So I set up the video camera and my dad and I went through them. Some were too personal but my dad (who is now 96) read others out loud while I filmed him. At the bottom of one of the boxes, I found three sealed envelopes of about 9 by 4 inches each.

"When I opened them, it was the negatives of 400 still photographs which my father hadn't gotten developed. I had a lab print each one as an 8 by 10 inch photo, and I saw my father's entire history in Karachi, Bombay and Calcutta and other cities in India during WWII."

"That was the first time I really became aware of what my father did in the war," said Spielberg, with a childlike sparkle in his eyes. "He spoke about it a lot to me but I didn't really have any visual references. And what I saw looked beautiful and extremely friendly. There are lots of photos of Indian kids just running around jeeps and hanging out with these young American servicemen—my dad was the oldest at 27—and brilliant shots of elephants and cows and people and marketplaces and bazaars! Just the day-to-day lifestyle of India was so vivid."

Speaking of Indian settings, it has been several decades since Spielberg shot in India (for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released in 1977, as well as Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, in 1984). So does he have any plans to film a movie in India again? "We have finalized a script for a movie that DreamWorks (the studio he co-owns) and our partners Reliance Entertainment plan to make together. Part of it will take place on the India-Pakistan border in Kashmir. But we're still trying to figure out the casting, locations and who's going to direct it," said the filmmaker, dressed, as he often is, in a jacket and tie over a pair of jeans.

Now that he has an Indian company as a partner, has he caught up with Bollywood films? "Not a lot," he confessed. "Though I have seen excerpts of many. Among the movies I've seen, I loved ‘3 Idiots'. A long time ago, I saw the Indian classics — Raj Kapoor , Satyajit Ray. I loved Awaara. I thought it was a beautifully made, heart-rending story—a father putting his own son on trial." We couldn't help wondering if it was just a coincidence that his two favourite Indian movies were both directed by men named Raj (Raj Kapoor and Rajkumar Hirani ).

What about Indian actors? "I've seen Mr Bachchan's work in ‘The Great Gatsby'. He's a wonderful actor and an iconic figure and his legend has carried all the way to America," said Spielberg. Does he foresee any chance of a Bollywood collaboration? "A script hasn't come along for that wonderful opportunity," he replied.

At 66, Spielberg still retains a childlike fascination for the movies. That his mind is sharp becomes immediate apparent but there's also an other-wordly innocence to him—a bit like Gandalf and Hobbit, two contrasting characters from Lord of the Rings, rolled into one.

He is still basking in the success of ‘Lincoln', which won Daniel Day-Lewis the Oscar for best male actor ("Frankly, the kind of money it made surprised me," confessed Spielberg candidly). It is his third film after The Colour Purple (1985) and Amistad (1997) that deals with slavery and the civil rights struggle. What is it about the issue that keeps drawing him back to it?

"DreamWorks-Reliance is also planning a movie on Martin Luther King Jr. I wouldn't call it a biopic, it's more a story of King and the movement and also about how his admiration for Mahatma Gandhi helped to shape his moral core," replied Spielberg. "About the slavery issue, it's very hard for me to wrap my mind around how a group of people could ever—for profit or power—enslave another group of people.

In a sense, ‘Schindler's List' (the 1993 film that won him the first of his two Oscars for best director) explored the same issue. "When I don't understand something, I become rather compulsive about exploring it. I'm endlessly amazed by how one group could enslave another and not think it was wrong until an entire war was fought to prove right from wrong. Part of it is also because of growing up as a Jewish child and experiencing discrimination and anti-Semitism and also about hearing the story of how Moses delivered the Hebrews from the Pharaohs in Egypt. All my formative years were infused with these stories of man's penchant for enslaving others—and also for liberating them!"

Has the recent recession hit Hollywood hard? "In 2008, film-going dipped because people were tightening their belts. But I think the motion pictures and TV are, in fact, recession-proof. Sometimes, the worse things get, the more people will find the means to be able to escape into someone else's imagination," he said.

However, he quickly added. "It's no longer just movies and TV. We also have to consider the cellphone as a platform entertainment device. We should never forget that the only thing that really hurts the movies today is the amount of time young people spend on phones, and skypeing and tweeting and texting. Also, very often, a good movie is sustained by instant texts that go out all over the world. It's no longer about just word of mouth, it's also how fast your fingers can type."

Does he spend any time looking at the company's finances or does he just focus on the creative aspects? "I'm very aware of the balance sheet, though Stacey Snider (co-chairperson and CEO of DreamWorks) is really the one who's very involved and interfaces with Reliance Entertainment on a regular basis. I share the burden of responsibility with Stacey to try to make really good movies that return their investment. We think it's wrong to make movies that simply are being made to make the most amount of money. I wouldn't have made ‘Lincoln' had I thought that my criterion had to be commercial success before artistic content. ‘Lincoln' made more money than many action movies, but I guess in the movie business, there's room for surprise."

In a career spanning over four decades, Spielberg has directed just 29 movies, while producing almost 350. So how does he decide when to direct a movie? "When something seizes me and doesn't let me breathe until I give up and give in and say ‘OK, OK, I'll do it', those are the films I direct," he laughed. "When I feel like my arm has been put into a half-nelson by the material and theme, I can't rest till I've finished the movie."

As a producer, is he ever tempted to ghost-direct a movie? "If it's a film I've nurtured from birth—where I've chosen the writer, director and cast, then I get a little bit more hands-on, but never to the point that I'll overrule a director if he or she insists on doing it his/her way. I'll offer my notes and comments and the director is welcome to use them if he agrees. But I've always believed that if the director has a strong point of view, then once he's started it's become his movie, which is how I like to be treated myself."

Many of his movies have revolved around all-American themes and characters. So why does he think they have become such big hits globally? "I think the world is increasingly on the same page, especially now that it is becoming more acquainted with itself through social media and faster platforms of communication. So, certain movies do hit the same chord across cultures and countries," he said.

‘Next Tintin by 2015-end'

It's something all Tintin fans desperately want to know. So, we put the question to Spielberg—when is the sequel out? " Peter Jackson is directing the next one, I'm producing. We have a script and we're going to start performance capture probably at the end of this year.

"Don't hold me to it, but we're hoping the film will come out around Christmas-time in 2015. We know which books we're making, we can't share that now but we're combining two books which were always intended to be combined by Herge." Smiling impishly, refused to confirm or deny the guesses we hazarded but when specifically asked about ‘The Blue Lotus ', said it would probably be the third Tintin film.

Of bond & broccoli

It was one of Spielberg’s dreams to make a Bond film. And as he revealed in a conversation to Amitabh Bachchan organised by Reliance Entertainment, he twice offered to do so but was turned down by the producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli. "I spoke to him after making ‘Jaws’ , which was a huge hit but Cubby said I wasn’t experienced enough and they’d call me if they did a Bond film on water. After ‘Close Encounters’ , I told him that by now I had two Oscar nominations. And he asked ‘Did you win’? And I hadn’t. So that was that.

How Leo saved Lincoln

Daniel Day-Lewis may have won an unprecedented third Oscar for best male actor for ‘Lincoln’ but he had actually turned down the project twice, revealed Spielberg. He then signed Liam Neeson for the role, but the script changed—from being more of a civil war action film to one focusing on Lincoln’s efforts to amend the American constitution to abolish slavery. At that stage, Neeson and Spielberg decided to part ways on the movie "though he remains a dear friend as Spielberg put it. Then one night, Leonardo di Caprio asked Spielberg, "Whatever happened to that Lincoln movie? The next day, he called Spielberg, read out a number and said, "This is Daniel’s home number in Ireland. I’ve spoken to him. He’s expecting your call. "I spoke to Daniel and flew down to his place with the new script. We spoke for two days and he finally signed on, said Spielberg, adding, "I wouldn’t have made the movie if Daniel hadn’t agreed to play Lincoln.