By G. WAYNE MILLER
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- On the eve of his return to Los Angeles, Steven Spielberg yesterday spoke glowingly of his month on location in southern New England. He said he would gladly shoot another movie in Rhode Island, his local base of operations for Amistad, which is expected to wrap East Coast production in Newport late tonight.

"The people in all of Rhode Island have been fantastic. We've had a great experience," Spielberg said during an interview between takes at the State House. Their workday curtailed Tuesday by a rare spring blizzard, Spielberg and company were back at the capitol at the crack of dawn yesterday to finish.

Spielberg had only praise for the many public and private entities that have helped support an intense production schedule of 12-hour or longer days, and six-day weeks. He singled out the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation's Film and TV Office, the prime catalyst in affording Spielberg access to historic buildings and helping to arrange the multitude of services needed for big-budget production 3,000 miles from Hollywood.

But Spielberg's deepest gratitude was to the untold hundreds of fans who have braved rain, wind, cold and snow - just about everything nature at its nastiest can offer - for a glimpse of the director of Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park and many more of America's most beloved, and biggest-grossing, movies.

"I would have invited them all inside to keep warm if we didn't have a crew of 100 already there," Spielberg said. Instead, the director has settled for shaking hands, exchanging small talk, and signing autographs on his breaks.

KNOWN FOR his equanimity on the set, Spielberg in an interview came across as - well, nice. He answered questions politely and with interest, spoke in modest terms of his Academy Award-winning Schindler's List, and professed not to comprehend how certain stars resent the affections of their audiences.

"I've witnessed so many celebrities be so cavalier to the people on whom they depend to be so successful," he said. "I don't understand the hypocrisy."

Spielberg had been shooting in the State Room, made over as President Martin Van Buren's office, when he granted the interview, the first since arriving in Rhode Island the first week of March. A man of average height and build who has a beard and curly long hair, he was favoring a hurt back that's on the mend, he explained. He was dressed in red shirt, black pants, and hiking boots, and wore dark glasses and a Capitol Police cap, a gift. Earlier in the morning, as he shot on an outside balcony, he'd been wearing a Providence Police cap and a parka.

Catapulted to the top of Hollywood's A-list with the phenomenal success of Jaws, released in 1975, when he was only 27, Spielberg has been as famous as any of his actors and actresses for nearly a quarter of a century. He has been able to keep a level head, he said yesterday, for a very simple reason: He likes people.

"I don't have to think about being a nice guy," he said. "I've just sort of been this way all my life." Spielberg said he's still flattered by those interested in trying to figure out what he does. "I kind of have sympathy for them because I've been trying to figure it out myself all these years!" he joked.

Not surprisingly, in light of the many young characters in his films, some of the best of which are imbued with a sense of wide-eyed wonder, Spielberg has a special fondness for children.

"I love kids," he said. "I've directed kids all my life."

Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, have seven children, including a girl born in December. With the exception of daughter Jessica Capshaw, 20, a Brown University junior who's studying abroad this semester, Spielberg's entire family joined him for about a week last month in Newport. They kept a low profile, deliberately. Spielberg does not shy from strangers, but he is keenly protective of his children.

AMISTAD IS ABOUT an 1839 mutiny by African slaves that led to imprisonment in Connecticut and a legal battle for freedom that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and pitted a president against an ex-president.

"I had kind of vaguely heard about Amistad," when producer Debbie Allen brought him the project, Spielberg said. After listening to the story and learning of Allen's intensive research, he was sold. "It was a very interesting way of getting into the story of civil rights," he said. "It's a huge moral struggle."

Spielberg was deep into preproduction of The Lost World, sequel to Jurassic Park, due for release this summer, when he decided to film Amistad. Lost World was the first film he'd directed since Schindler's List, a story of the Holocaust, shot in black-and-white, that leaves many viewers emotionally exhausted - if not haunted, shocked, or angry - at the end of its three-plus hours.

"You can imagine how we felt," Spielberg said, talking about making the movie in Poland. "Only we felt it every day for four months."

Drained, Spielberg took a year off after shooting, in 1993. The next year, he co-founded a studio, DreamWorks SKG, and the year after that was spent preparing for The Lost World. By the time principal photography began, in 1996, he was itching to get back behind the camera. Since his feature- filmmaking career began, Spielberg had never had so much time off.

"I missed it terribly," he said. Still, he was not up to another Schindler's List. "I didn't want to throw myself back into another emotional film. Lost World was the perfect popcorn hiatus . . . an exercise in craft."

DURING HIS MONTH in New England, Spielberg has spent the majority of his time in Newport. He's also brought the Amistad cast and crew to Jamestown, Bristol, twice to Providence, once to Boston, and repeatedly to Connecticut. Production resumes Monday on a Los Angeles sound stage, with release expected in December.

Although he didn't divulge details, Spielberg said the warm welcome he's received has led him to recommend another DreamWorks director to consider Rhode Island for a film. "He's coming out here to do a location scout," Spielberg said.

When Amistad is done, Spielberg leaves for England, to shoot a movie starring Tom Hanks. He plans to take time off after that, he said, in part to relocate his family to the East Coast from Los Angeles (the Spielbergs already have a summer place on Long Island).

Looking further into the future, Spielberg said he would consider returning to Rhode Island for another film "in a heartbeat."

"It's been pretty amazing," Spielberg said. "We don't get this kind of hospitality everywhere we go."

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