Spielberg: Walking in Orson Welle’s footsteps?
Why Steven Spielberg selected Bayonne and Newark to open his adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds becomes clear once you’ve listened to the Orson Welles radio play.
Perhaps, in all this, Spielberg felt the need to dig deep into the roots of the tale in order to present the most authentic piece possible.
In our culture, the 1938 play has become as significantly authentic as the original book, reflecting a society in the grips fear.
Europe was about the explode with a new World War everyone knew as inevitable, a conflict whose brewing contributed to the panic Welles’ radio show produced.
Just as the characters Robbie and Rachel confused the alien invasion for an attack by terrorists, some people listening to the radio show thought the Nazi’s had invaded.
In centering his adaptation in New Jersey, Spielberg seems to have drawn power from the radio broadcast in that he is bringing home the reality of the disaster – just how local horrors like this can become.
Many people in Newark saw the smoking Twin Towers from their door steps that morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
Although Spielberg could had more closely duplicated the radio play more closely by starting off as Welles did in Grover’s Mills, his film instead tends to reflect how close everything is, right on top of us all the time. Welles’ radio play was effective partly because people relied so heavily on media to tell them what was going on even in places as close as Grover’s Mills. So that the alien march over the Meadowlands towards New York became real because the radio told us it was.
But having seen the smoking towers, having television images and the Internet to convey information rapidly, no place is remote, and even in the heart of the city, no place is safe.
In the radio play, Bayonne and Newark appeared frequently even when the advancing monsters were still many miles away. Radio broadcasts sounded from Bayonne early in the transmission – playing ironically into the little known fact that Bayonne Police were the first department in the nation to use radios in law enforcement. The bombers flying in support of the troops entrenched in the distant Watchung Mountains flew over Bayonne and Newark. Ironically, on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I watched the second terrorist plane banking over the Meadowlands, Newark and Bayonne for its approach on the World Trade Center – a terrifying echo of the radio script Welles shaped out of his imagination.
Did Spielberg know this? Did he select Bayonne because of its historical value in the radio play or because he could find houses close to a bridge – which was supposed to be the Pulaski Skyway.
In the radio play, the alien machines straddled the Pulaski Skyway – an important link between New York and Newark. In Spielberg’s film, the aliens blew the bridge up, a tribute most likely to the radio play and its geographic references.
Yet Spielberg could have used any bridge anywhere, or even staged the whole thing using blue screen and film footage.
He chose Bayonne and Newark to actually film, perhaps – with the same sense of wonder I sometimes feel strolling through locations he used as sets – he needed to wander through the imaginary landscape Welles had shaped in his head, reliving that magic moment when he first heard that broadcast.
I like to think Spielberg wanted to touch the fabric of Welles’ imagination by retracing his steps in this film.