WEBVTT

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..:: Presented By ZarFilm Website ::..
‏.::  www.bolboljan.net ::.

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I must have been 16.

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A movie came into town
called "Lawrence of Arabia,"

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and everybody was talking about it.

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I never sat in a fancy
theater seat before.

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Premium ticket price,
70mm projection,

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stereophonic sound.

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And when the film was over,

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I wanted to not be a director anymore

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because the bar was too high.

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There was a scene where he looked
at himself in that sword/knife,

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when he was first given the robes

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and he thought he was alone.

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And he walked around laughing

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and looking at his shadow
where the diaphanous robe

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he was holding out
was actually imprinted

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on the sand in shadow.

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It was a great moment.

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And then later, when they route
the retreating Turks,

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you see him again covered in gore.

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And he's got the knife
in the same position he had it

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in his pristine days, in his glory days.

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And he's looking at himself,
who he's become.

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It was the first time,
seeing a movie,

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I realized that there are themes that
aren't narrative story themes.

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There are themes that are character
themes, that are personal themes.

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That David Lean created a portraiture,

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surrounded the portrait with a mural

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of scope and epic action,

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but at the heart and core
of "Lawrence of Arabia"

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is "Who am I"?

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I had such a profound reaction
to the filmmaking,

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and I went back and saw the film
a week later.

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I saw the film a week after that.

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And I saw the film a week after that.

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And I realized that
there was no going back,

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that this was going to be
what I was gonna do

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or I was gonna die trying.

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But this was going to be
the rest of my life.

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And then trying to get--
it felt lined up.

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- The camera just gotta go right.
- Just a little bit lower.

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That's good right there.
That's perfect.

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Yeah, camera has to go
right a bit, please.

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Go right.

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- Right, right, right, right.
- Can you get there?

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Right there would be good.

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Every time I start a new scene,
I'm nervous.

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And it's like going to school,
having to take a test.

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I never heard the lines spoken before.

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I don't know what I'm gonna think
of hearing the lines,

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I don't know what
I'm gonna tell the actors,

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I don't know where
I'm gonna put the camera.

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And every single time,
it's the same.

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But I tell you, it's the greatest
feeling in the world.

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I'll tell you why it's a good feeling.

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The more I'm feeling confident

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and secure about something,

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the less I'm gonna put out.

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The more I'm feeling,
"Uh-oh, this could be a major problem

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in getting the story told,"

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I'm gonna work overtime
to meet the challenge

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and get the job done.

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All right, that's done.
I don't know if it's worth it.

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And so, I hate the feeling
of being nervous,

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but I need to feel
in this moment

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I'm really not sure
what I'm doing.

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And when that verges on panic,
I get great ideas.

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The more I feel backed into a corner,

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the more rewarding it becomes

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when I figure my way out
of the corner.

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I love it.
Next shot.

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Good.

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- Did you see that?
- Yes.

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Martin Scorsese: I remember when Steven
was in production on "Jaws,"

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the word around town
and in the "LA Times"

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was that it was folly
and that it was gonna be a disaster.

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Richard Dreyfuss: "Jaws" started filming
on May 2nd.

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I was hired, I think, on May 3rd,

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and they had no shark,
no script, and no cast

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when they first started, so...

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The script was never locked.

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We were rewriting the script

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12 hours before we were shooting
what we just wrote.

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You know, it's scary
for a director to not know

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if he's gonna be able to hand pages to
his cast the next morning.

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Guys, we can't shoot right now.

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- Hold on.
- Hold on.

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This is my second day at sea

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and I have 54 more days to go.

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And if I survive this,

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I'll have learned a lot,
because right now all I can tell you is

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it's twice as slow shooting at sea
as it is shooting on land.

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Bill Butler: Well, the studio had never
shot a film on the ocean before.

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They would do it on the back lake.

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They would do it in a studio tank.

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They would make miniature boats.

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They would--
everything would be so easy

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that you would never get cold or wet.

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But Steven said, "I'm gonna shoot
in the open ocean."

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Roll sound.

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This was supposed to be a thriller

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based on people like you and me that are
out of our element

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and having to fight something we have
no comprehension how to deal with.

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That needs a level of authenticity

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that I thought shooting it
in the back lot

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at Universal in North Hollywood
would not give it.

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So, to me, there was no going back.

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It had to be shot in the ocean.

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I thought it was gonna be a cakewalk,

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but I didn't know anything
about tides or currents.

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I didn't know about how the wind
affects the water,

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how the color of the sky
changes the color of the water,

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or how you can't get anything to match.

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It was one nightmare, worst-case
scenario after the other.

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I didn't think we'd ever finish.

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I had just assumed
I'd be fired off the picture.

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We were isolated in the middle of
the ocean, 12 miles offshore,

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and it was technology
over art every single day.

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We'd get a shot, art was there,

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but you couldn't recognize
the art from the effort.

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Just trying to hold a whole movie story
in my head

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is a very lonely thing, because nobody
can really help me with that.

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I have to see it before I film it.

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And that's why
it was so scary on "Jaws"--

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when I couldn't see it
until I finally did.

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Just before I went off to make "Jaws,"
I got to meet Henry Hathaway.

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He was kind of a tough-guy director,
and he said,

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"There's gonna be moments
where you're gonna get to the set

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and you're not gonna know
what the hell you're doing.

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It happens to all of us.

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You've gotta guard that secret
with your life.

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Let no one see when you're unsure
of yourself.

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Hide that from everybody,

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or you'll lose the respect of everyone."

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Marker.

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- Good blood.
- And... ready?

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- And action, Roy.
- Slow ahead.

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I can go slow ahead.

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You ought to come down
and ladle some of this shit.

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And down.

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Absolutely everything was falling apart.

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The first time we tested the shark,
it sunk.

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It would come up
out of the water and go...

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Like that.

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I knew that it's gonna take

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three or four weeks
to rebuild the shark,

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and so we'd have to make up
something else

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that didn't exactly show the shark

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but gave the sense the shark was near.

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Bring it around after him!

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The barrels were a godsend,

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because I didn't need to show the shark
as long as those barrels were around.

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What you don't see is generally scarier
than what you do see,

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and the script was filled with "shark."

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Shark here, shark there,
shark everywhere.

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The movie doesn't have
very much shark in it.

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John Williams: If the shark had been
available visually,

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it might have changed
the whole psychology

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of the experience.

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Williams: When you hear,
"boom-boom, boom-boom,"

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you've already been conditioned to think
that's when the shark is present.

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When the shark is far away,
it's very faint.

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When the shark is just about to attack,
it's very close and it's very loud.

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Williams: We can advertise
the shark's presence or his attitude

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by how we manage these notes,

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just very few notes.

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Dreyfuss: You are in a state of anxiety
without seeing a shark.

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It just scares the crap out of you.

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Charlie, take my word for it!

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Don't look back!
Swim, Charlie!

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Swim!
Come on, Charlie!

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Dun-dun.
Dun-dun, dun-dun.

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Dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun,
bom,  bom, bom, bom, bom, bom.

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Come on, a little more, Charlie.
Attaboy.

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Come here, Charlie.
Attaboy. Attaboy.

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David Edelstein: It is a perfect
exercise in suspense

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with technique that any other filmmaker
would kill for.

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I knew I was using an electric
cattle prod on the audience

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every time there was some kind
of a pop-up surprise.

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Michael Phillips: Like Hitchcock,
he knows how to get you

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on the edge of your seat.

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He doesn't show you
what you want to see,

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and then he delivers it
when he wants to deliver it.

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J. Hoberman: He certainly
likes torturing the audience.

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Has he ever been in analysis?

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1, 1,000; 2, 1,000;

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3, 1,000; 4, 1,000...

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Everything scared me
when I was a kid.

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Everything.

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1, 1,000;
2, 1,000;
3, one...

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I had a tree out my window
that was terrifying.

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It was just terrifying.

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1, 1,000; 2, 1,000...

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I was filled with so much fear

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that I needed to exorcise some of that.

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And what better audience to exorcise
myself of my demons

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than my three sisters.

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He would lock us
in the closet with a skull,

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which he had dripped
different colors of wax all over.

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It almost looked like blood.

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I'd blindfold them one at a time,

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bring them into the closet.

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I'd put my whole body weight
against the door.

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They'd take their blindfold off,

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and I would just sit there
listening to them screaming.

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I mean, telling this story now...

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I still think it was pretty cool.

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I was gonna say,
"I hate myself for that."

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I don't hate myself for that.
It was fun.

00:13:13.195 --> 00:13:15.278
At first, he just scared us.

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But through his movies,

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he gets to scare the shit
out of everybody now.

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Dan Rather: The blockbuster movie

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of the summer, of course, is "Jaws,"

00:13:28.862 --> 00:13:31.487
a tale of a murderous white shark
on the loose.

00:13:31.487 --> 00:13:33.529
And that movie's release was well timed

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for maximum impact
during the vacation season,

00:13:35.862 --> 00:13:37.695
and some people who have seen it

00:13:37.695 --> 00:13:40.487
are now seeing phantom sharks
every time they go near the water.

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Scorsese: I remember the night
"Jaws" opened.

00:13:45.403 --> 00:13:48.071
I was with Steven.
He said, "Let's go and see the lines."

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And we were looking, going by
all the lines in Westwood

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and places like that,
and I said, "This is it.

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This is gonna be a major change."

00:13:55.862 --> 00:13:57.570
Janet Maslin: I was with him in the car

00:13:57.570 --> 00:14:01.362
and he was really, really nervous
but excited.

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And the car went around the corner,

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and there was the line
went around the corner,

00:14:05.487 --> 00:14:08.237
and then the car kept going,
and the line kept going.

00:14:08.237 --> 00:14:10.278
And he was absolutely beside himself.

00:14:10.278 --> 00:14:12.570
You know, it was
this instant breakthrough.

00:14:12.570 --> 00:14:15.570
It was like balloons were exploding
inside of this car.

00:14:15.570 --> 00:14:19.362
And his whole life changed
in that couple of minutes.

00:14:19.362 --> 00:14:21.237
And he was 25 years old
or something.

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"Jaws" went triple its budget

00:14:26.487 --> 00:14:29.237
and it went about two and a half times
its schedule.

00:14:29.237 --> 00:14:32.278
We wound up shooting
the movie in 159 days.

00:14:32.278 --> 00:14:35.071
The film was originally
scheduled for 55 days.

00:14:35.071 --> 00:14:36.862
But my hubris was I actually thought

00:14:36.862 --> 00:14:39.612
I could shoot the film in 55 days.

00:14:39.612 --> 00:14:43.987
Steven shook the very bones
of Hollywood.

00:14:43.987 --> 00:14:45.821
"Jaws" made more money

00:14:45.821 --> 00:14:50.195
than any film had ever made
up to that time.

00:14:50.195 --> 00:14:51.946
The success of that changed my life.

00:14:51.946 --> 00:14:53.487
You know, it gave me final cut.

00:14:53.487 --> 00:14:55.112
It gave me a chance to pick and choose

00:14:55.112 --> 00:14:57.612
the movies I directed
from that moment on.

00:14:57.612 --> 00:15:01.487
So "Jaws" was a free pass
into my future.

00:15:09.487 --> 00:15:12.029
I want you to meet
a filmmaker now who has taken

00:15:12.029 --> 00:15:15.320
the movie-going public
and shaken it to its very roots.

00:15:15.320 --> 00:15:16.737
- Oh, boy!
- Aren't you excited?

00:15:16.737 --> 00:15:18.445
- And everybody loves it.
- Have you seen it?

00:15:18.445 --> 00:15:21.362
Dinah Shore:
Please welcome Mr. Steven Spielberg.

00:15:26.529 --> 00:15:28.821
When did you first really get interested
in movies?

00:15:28.821 --> 00:15:30.278
When I was a bad little kid.

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- Really?
- About, yeah, 13 years old.

00:15:32.112 --> 00:15:34.487
- That was the whole thing?
- Very early starter, yeah.

00:15:34.487 --> 00:15:36.195
Not-- I didn't take it seriously.

00:15:36.195 --> 00:15:38.195
I did it-- like some people paint

00:15:38.195 --> 00:15:40.904
and some people like to, you know,
drive little cars,

00:15:40.904 --> 00:15:42.487
and I liked to make little movies.

00:15:42.487 --> 00:15:45.695
I didn't realize there was 50 years
of filmmaking before me.

00:15:45.695 --> 00:15:48.071
And I lived in Phoenix, Arizona,

00:15:48.071 --> 00:15:50.946
where you can listen to cactus grow
if you have nothing better to do.

00:15:50.946 --> 00:15:53.029
- Yeah.
- And I took a movie camera

00:15:53.029 --> 00:15:55.487
and I was learning sort of the ABCs
as I went along,

00:15:55.487 --> 00:15:57.862
but it was just fun,
it was something to do.

00:16:06.278 --> 00:16:08.195
I really wanted my childhood to be

00:16:08.195 --> 00:16:11.654
sort of the pie-in-the-sky,
Norman Rockwell American Dream.

00:16:15.445 --> 00:16:18.570
My dad was this computer genius
that was on the team that invented

00:16:18.570 --> 00:16:22.029
the first commercial data processing
machine at RCA back in 1950,

00:16:22.029 --> 00:16:25.445
and so my dad was headhunted a lot and
went from company to company.

00:16:25.445 --> 00:16:27.779
Like Army brats,
we moved from place to place.

00:16:27.779 --> 00:16:31.487
But most of my formative years
took place in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:16:31.487 --> 00:16:35.237
My father was the American man
who worked very hard.

00:16:35.237 --> 00:16:37.904
Sometimes worked six days a week
and he came home late at night.

00:16:37.904 --> 00:16:41.946
His career demanded a lot of time away
from the family.

00:16:41.946 --> 00:16:44.445
And my mom was Peter Pan.

00:16:44.445 --> 00:16:46.779
She was a sibling, not a parent,

00:16:46.779 --> 00:16:48.987
because she was a best friend,

00:16:48.987 --> 00:16:52.821
not a primary caregiver.

00:16:52.821 --> 00:16:57.403
And she got into trouble
like we got into trouble.

00:16:57.403 --> 00:17:00.320
Anne: Steve had a feeling
that family should be

00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:02.779
like "Father Knows Best,"

00:17:02.779 --> 00:17:05.029
but we were not the usual family.

00:17:05.029 --> 00:17:08.403
We just kind of were bohemians
growing up in suburbia.

00:17:11.654 --> 00:17:15.779
I went to a pet store one day,
and there was a monkey

00:17:15.779 --> 00:17:19.445
sitting in a cage like this,
fetal position.

00:17:19.445 --> 00:17:22.779
And the shopkeeper said
the monkey was dying.

00:17:22.779 --> 00:17:26.195
He had been taken away from his mother
and he was depressed.

00:17:26.195 --> 00:17:28.529
So, I come home, driving my jeep

00:17:28.529 --> 00:17:33.737
with a big cage in the back
and a monkey in the cage.

00:17:33.737 --> 00:17:36.403
And I remember the kids freaked out.

00:17:36.403 --> 00:17:38.570
They were so scared.

00:17:38.570 --> 00:17:42.445
Steve said, "You know,
in a normal household,

00:17:42.445 --> 00:17:44.570
kids say, 'Can we have a monkey?'

00:17:44.570 --> 00:17:47.237
And the mother says, 'Are you crazy?'"

00:17:47.237 --> 00:17:50.153
You know, when I hear my stories about

00:17:50.153 --> 00:17:54.779
the things I've done, I think,
"That's crazy."

00:17:54.779 --> 00:17:56.779
Susan Lacy: Did you think she was crazy?

00:17:56.779 --> 00:17:58.654
I liked the monkey.

00:18:03.112 --> 00:18:06.153
As a child, I spent a lot of my time
watching television,

00:18:06.153 --> 00:18:07.695
or listening to soundtrack albums,

00:18:07.695 --> 00:18:10.487
or just sitting around,
looking at the clouds.

00:18:10.487 --> 00:18:12.529
My dad was always on me for that.

00:18:12.529 --> 00:18:14.112
He did not like me getting Cs,

00:18:14.112 --> 00:18:17.487
but school was not a place
I was really drawn to.

00:18:17.487 --> 00:18:21.278
Nancy: Steve was a kid that was
sort of watchful and tentative

00:18:21.278 --> 00:18:23.195
and in some ways hesitant.

00:18:23.195 --> 00:18:26.153
You know, he wasn't like the normal kids
in the neighborhood.

00:18:26.153 --> 00:18:28.278
He wasn't the muscle guy.

00:18:28.278 --> 00:18:30.862
You know, he got bullied a lot.

00:18:30.862 --> 00:18:32.195
That was tough.

00:18:33.904 --> 00:18:37.570
Most of my demons
were self-inflicted wounds.

00:18:37.570 --> 00:18:39.529
They were things inside myself.

00:18:39.529 --> 00:18:41.112
The way I saw myself.

00:18:41.112 --> 00:18:45.362
I didn't have a lot
of high esteem for myself,

00:18:45.362 --> 00:18:48.695
you know, growing up.

00:18:49.779 --> 00:18:52.195
I just was a lonely guy.

00:18:52.195 --> 00:18:53.987
J.J. Abrams:
I think that explained a lot

00:18:53.987 --> 00:18:57.570
of why and how he was compelled
to make movies.

00:18:57.570 --> 00:18:59.529
It was not just a means of expression,

00:18:59.529 --> 00:19:01.153
but it was a means of escape,

00:19:01.153 --> 00:19:06.112
and it was a means of sometimes
making friends with people

00:19:06.112 --> 00:19:08.570
that you couldn't otherwise,
or getting to hang out

00:19:08.570 --> 00:19:10.487
with girls that you might not
be able to otherwise,

00:19:10.487 --> 00:19:13.904
or just finding a way to have meaning.

00:19:13.904 --> 00:19:15.654
The camera was my pen.

00:19:15.654 --> 00:19:17.320
I wrote my stories through the lens.

00:19:17.320 --> 00:19:20.445
And when I was able to say
"action" and "cut,"

00:19:20.445 --> 00:19:22.695
I wrested control of my life.

00:19:34.403 --> 00:19:36.946
I love films like
the "Sands of Iwo Jima,"

00:19:36.946 --> 00:19:38.779
the "Flying Tigers,"
"Battleground,"

00:19:38.779 --> 00:19:40.821
films that I'd see on television.

00:19:40.821 --> 00:19:44.570
And I would watch these things
over and over and over again.

00:19:44.570 --> 00:19:46.320
I was really influenced
by all that stuff,

00:19:46.320 --> 00:19:47.862
and so my first couple of movies

00:19:47.862 --> 00:19:50.946
were stories about World War II.

00:19:50.946 --> 00:19:53.737
There was an airport with a bunch
of World War II airplanes

00:19:53.737 --> 00:19:55.779
just sitting out there on the tarmac.

00:19:58.612 --> 00:20:01.862
I would take a shot of my friend
with his finger on the stick

00:20:01.862 --> 00:20:04.737
and intercut actual 8mm combat footage.

00:20:04.737 --> 00:20:06.779
A lot of it shot by John Ford,
by the way.

00:20:06.779 --> 00:20:08.612
And made a movie that looked like

00:20:08.612 --> 00:20:10.695
the production value was off the charts

00:20:10.695 --> 00:20:12.487
because the production value
was off the charts.

00:20:12.487 --> 00:20:13.779
It was the real thing.

00:20:17.029 --> 00:20:18.737
Abrams: You can just look
at those movies,

00:20:18.737 --> 00:20:23.278
and you see the ability
to tell a story without words.

00:20:23.278 --> 00:20:26.821
His use of primitive special effects
was spectacular.

00:20:26.821 --> 00:20:28.654
You know, he'd have big bullet hits,

00:20:28.654 --> 00:20:30.153
he'd put little see-saws of dirt,

00:20:30.153 --> 00:20:31.695
so that when his actors were running,

00:20:31.695 --> 00:20:33.362
they'd step on one piece,

00:20:33.362 --> 00:20:35.278
and it would sort of catapult
the dirt up in the air

00:20:35.278 --> 00:20:37.612
as if they were being shot
as they were running.

00:20:37.612 --> 00:20:39.987
There were things that he did that just
made complete sense.

00:20:39.987 --> 00:20:41.570
You saw the trajectory.

00:20:41.570 --> 00:20:43.570
There was something
in the DNA of it that,

00:20:43.570 --> 00:20:45.403
despite it being shot on 8mm film,

00:20:45.403 --> 00:20:48.195
was the voice of that same filmmaker.

00:20:48.195 --> 00:20:50.278
But I didn't know anything about whether

00:20:50.278 --> 00:20:53.071
I was gonna have a career
or where this was gonna go.

00:20:53.071 --> 00:20:54.987
I just knew that it filled up
the time and it gave me

00:20:54.987 --> 00:20:57.529
a tremendous amount of satisfaction.

00:20:57.529 --> 00:21:00.112
And the second I finished a movie,
I wanted to start a new one

00:21:00.112 --> 00:21:04.237
because I felt good about myself when
I was making a film.

00:21:04.237 --> 00:21:06.153
But when I had too much time to think,

00:21:06.153 --> 00:21:11.445
all those scary whispers
would start-- start up.

00:21:11.445 --> 00:21:15.946
It was not fun to be me
in between ideas or projects.

00:21:26.195 --> 00:21:28.904
Sid Sheinberg:
The lore has it that as a young man,

00:21:28.904 --> 00:21:32.029
Steven was sort of
the Phantom of the Opera,

00:21:32.029 --> 00:21:35.570
haunting the lot of Universal Studios.

00:21:35.570 --> 00:21:39.654
He would literally get on the lot

00:21:39.654 --> 00:21:41.737
one way or another.

00:21:41.737 --> 00:21:43.654
I got on the studio tour bus,

00:21:43.654 --> 00:21:45.529
took a jaunt around the back lot.

00:21:45.529 --> 00:21:48.320
And then at one point
they give you a bathroom break,

00:21:48.320 --> 00:21:50.071
and I never came out of the bathroom.

00:21:50.071 --> 00:21:54.029
I waited till I could hear a pin drop,
and then came out.

00:21:54.029 --> 00:21:56.195
The bus was gone and I was on the lot.

00:21:56.195 --> 00:21:59.195
James Brolin:
Word was that he went upstairs

00:21:59.195 --> 00:22:01.862
in the tower and took an office
on the sixth floor,

00:22:01.862 --> 00:22:04.071
and nobody bothered him for six months.

00:22:08.862 --> 00:22:11.987
Dreyfuss: The story was
he requisitioned an office,

00:22:11.987 --> 00:22:14.737
telephone, put his name on the door.

00:22:14.737 --> 00:22:16.987
Eh, I don't believe it,
but you know what they said

00:22:16.987 --> 00:22:19.071
in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"--

00:22:19.071 --> 00:22:22.195
when the legend is bigger than
the facts,print the legend.

00:22:22.195 --> 00:22:25.821
Roger Ernest: One time he sneaked
onto Alfred Hitchcock's set

00:22:25.821 --> 00:22:27.737
and watched him direct a little bit

00:22:27.737 --> 00:22:31.278
until he got caught
and was asked to leave.

00:22:31.278 --> 00:22:33.737
Steve was constantly learning,

00:22:33.737 --> 00:22:36.487
constantly looking,
constantly asking questions

00:22:36.487 --> 00:22:38.904
from all of the tradespeople--

00:22:38.904 --> 00:22:42.071
cinematographer, lighting, editors.

00:22:42.071 --> 00:22:47.445
It was like Spielberg 101 in overdrive.

00:22:47.445 --> 00:22:50.403
I tried very hard
to get into USC Film School,

00:22:50.403 --> 00:22:52.112
and I just didn't have
the grades to get in.

00:22:52.112 --> 00:22:53.821
And I even had
a personal interview at USC,

00:22:53.821 --> 00:22:55.654
and they turned me down even in person.

00:22:55.654 --> 00:22:57.904
So, Universal became my film school.

00:23:02.195 --> 00:23:05.278
Ernest: Steven was laser focused.

00:23:05.278 --> 00:23:10.278
He never lost sight of the fact that
the audience early on, for him,

00:23:10.278 --> 00:23:12.112
wasn't the audience in the theater.

00:23:12.112 --> 00:23:15.612
The audience were the studio executives.

00:23:15.612 --> 00:23:18.695
And he figured out how to make a film

00:23:18.695 --> 00:23:21.904
that will convince
the studio executives that,

00:23:21.904 --> 00:23:24.445
"Yes, I have the talent to
be a director.

00:23:24.445 --> 00:23:26.320
This is what I can do."

00:23:30.737 --> 00:23:34.320
I looked at this film,
and I was very taken with it.

00:23:34.320 --> 00:23:37.029
I had a very strong feeling

00:23:37.029 --> 00:23:40.987
that this was not your average
young filmmaker.

00:23:40.987 --> 00:23:45.153
Sid Sheinberg, who was President of
Universal Television at the time,

00:23:45.153 --> 00:23:47.904
he said, "So, sir, I saw your film.

00:23:47.904 --> 00:23:49.403
Very well made.

00:23:49.403 --> 00:23:51.946
I'd like to offer you
a seven-year contract

00:23:51.946 --> 00:23:54.403
to come to Universal
to direct television."

00:23:54.403 --> 00:23:57.987
He said, "If you sign with us,

00:23:57.987 --> 00:24:02.570
I will support you
as strongly in failure

00:24:02.570 --> 00:24:05.153
as I will in success."

00:24:05.153 --> 00:24:07.445
And he was true to his word.

00:24:07.445 --> 00:24:12.112
And that was the beginning
of the most important relationship

00:24:12.112 --> 00:24:14.529
I could ever imagine having
in this business.

00:24:14.529 --> 00:24:17.862
Steven was known
as the uncrowned prince.

00:24:17.862 --> 00:24:19.737
He was the guy
who was gonna make it.

00:24:19.737 --> 00:24:22.654
I mean, he was directing
Joan Crawford

00:24:22.654 --> 00:24:25.195
when he was 20.

00:24:25.195 --> 00:24:27.862
That'll teach you a lot of things.

00:24:27.862 --> 00:24:31.195
Joan Crawford is the first
professional SAG member

00:24:31.195 --> 00:24:34.195
I ever directed in my life!

00:24:34.195 --> 00:24:37.237
I want to see something!

00:24:37.237 --> 00:24:42.695
Trees, concrete, buildings,
grass, airplanes, color!

00:24:42.695 --> 00:24:45.695
It was Cassavetes who said,
"If you want to be a real filmmaker,

00:24:45.695 --> 00:24:47.862
you can't be afraid
of anything or anybody."

00:24:47.862 --> 00:24:49.695
And Steven's not.

00:24:49.695 --> 00:24:51.737
He's there with Joan Crawford
who wants him out every day.

00:24:51.737 --> 00:24:55.821
And he's gotta shoot and
be on schedule and be good,

00:24:55.821 --> 00:24:58.071
meaning that it has to have a vision.

00:24:58.071 --> 00:25:00.071
The shots have to have a point of view.

00:25:00.071 --> 00:25:02.278
But after "Night Gallery" came out,

00:25:02.278 --> 00:25:05.612
there was a lot of criticism on
the fact that I was a novelty item.

00:25:05.612 --> 00:25:08.403
The youngest term director
ever put under contract in history.

00:25:08.403 --> 00:25:11.821
And the producers who were
doing the hiring wouldn't hire me.

00:25:11.821 --> 00:25:13.570
There was a lot of hostility,

00:25:13.570 --> 00:25:15.946
and I had to prove myself to everybody.

00:25:15.946 --> 00:25:19.237
You know, they looked at me
as sort of Sheinberg's folly.

00:25:19.237 --> 00:25:22.570
He underwrote me.
Let him find me work.

00:25:27.153 --> 00:25:29.362
Brolin: I had wanted to direct,

00:25:29.362 --> 00:25:32.487
and Steven walks in, and he's a kid!

00:25:32.487 --> 00:25:34.654
And I'm envious as hell right away.

00:25:36.529 --> 00:25:38.695
Steven's able to walk into a room,

00:25:38.695 --> 00:25:41.195
look for a second or two,
say, "Here. Here."

00:25:41.195 --> 00:25:44.362
"Move that here. Give me a 25mm here."

00:25:44.362 --> 00:25:46.278
"Put it this way. Face forward."

00:25:46.278 --> 00:25:48.278
"Move it. Silhouette here."

00:25:48.278 --> 00:25:49.862
Two takes, three takes.
"That's enough. Thanks."

00:25:49.862 --> 00:25:51.612
"Let's move on."
It was amazing.

00:25:51.612 --> 00:25:54.237
Steven Bochco:
Steven had a gear in his brain

00:25:54.237 --> 00:25:58.445
that automatically translated
words into pictures

00:25:58.445 --> 00:26:02.320
almost without it being
a conscious process for him.

00:26:02.320 --> 00:26:05.987
There was a unique visual voice there

00:26:05.987 --> 00:26:08.987
that you had to not only
pay attention to,

00:26:08.987 --> 00:26:13.654
but you had to give
somewhat of a free rein to.

00:26:34.487 --> 00:26:38.112
My early themes always had
the underdog being pursued

00:26:38.112 --> 00:26:40.320
by indomitable forces

00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:43.779
of both nature and natural enemies,

00:26:43.779 --> 00:26:47.695
and that person has to rise
to the occasion to survive.

00:26:47.695 --> 00:26:49.654
And a lot of that comes just from

00:26:49.654 --> 00:26:51.862
the insecurities I felt as a kid

00:26:51.862 --> 00:26:55.029
and how that bled over into the work.

00:26:55.029 --> 00:26:58.737
I was always the kid with the big bully,

00:26:58.737 --> 00:27:01.612
and "Duel" was my life
in the schoolyard.

00:27:01.612 --> 00:27:05.237
The truck was the bully,
and the car was me.

00:27:09.237 --> 00:27:11.278
George Lucas: I was over
at Francis Coppola's,

00:27:11.278 --> 00:27:13.529
and "Duel" was gonna be shown
that night,

00:27:13.529 --> 00:27:16.362
so I sort of snuck away from the party

00:27:16.362 --> 00:27:18.821
and said, "I wanna see this film.
I wanna see what this kid did."

00:27:18.821 --> 00:27:21.153
I was sort of on the fence about Steven.

00:27:21.153 --> 00:27:22.946
I said, "Knows what he's doing,

00:27:22.946 --> 00:27:25.487
nice, but a little too Hollywoody
for my taste."

00:27:25.487 --> 00:27:27.612
I saw "Amblin" and I thought
"Amblin" was nice,

00:27:27.612 --> 00:27:31.153
but it wasn't-- you know,
it was very, very flashy.

00:27:31.153 --> 00:27:33.195
It was very, very professional.

00:27:33.195 --> 00:27:35.362
And for the rest of us,
we were all rough-edged,

00:27:35.362 --> 00:27:38.153
crazy guys that were doing
much more dirty work.

00:27:38.153 --> 00:27:39.987
So, I thought, "Well, I'll watch
the first half hour

00:27:39.987 --> 00:27:42.946
and just see what he's up to."

00:27:42.946 --> 00:27:44.737
And I ended up watching the whole thing.

00:27:44.737 --> 00:27:48.570
And I came down to Francis,
I said, "This guy's amazing.

00:27:48.570 --> 00:27:50.320
You really gotta look at this film."

00:27:56.987 --> 00:27:59.529
Right off the bat, it was clear

00:27:59.529 --> 00:28:05.029
that no one moved the camera
like Steven Spielberg.

00:28:07.445 --> 00:28:11.737
Other directors had
a fantastic sense of space.

00:28:11.737 --> 00:28:14.071
Orson Welles,
you name it,

00:28:14.071 --> 00:28:16.695
people who understood composition.

00:28:19.695 --> 00:28:22.362
But the way that Spielberg's camera

00:28:22.362 --> 00:28:24.529
moved through a shot

00:28:24.529 --> 00:28:27.570
and then ended up somewhere
that completely shifted

00:28:27.570 --> 00:28:29.946
or intensified the emotion of the scene,

00:28:29.946 --> 00:28:32.779
that was just a natural gift he had.

00:28:32.779 --> 00:28:35.029
Who knows where that came from.

00:28:35.029 --> 00:28:37.987
Who-- but it was his own technique.

00:28:37.987 --> 00:28:39.946
Francis Ford Coppola:
"Duel" was a composition

00:28:39.946 --> 00:28:42.779
that had a very elusive
and interesting theme.

00:28:42.779 --> 00:28:45.112
You know, this unknown menace.

00:28:45.112 --> 00:28:48.821
Everyone's been on a road and some idiot
has crossed in front of you,

00:28:48.821 --> 00:28:53.112
and, you know, you're tempted
to rev up fast

00:28:53.112 --> 00:28:54.779
and go do something nasty to him.

00:28:54.779 --> 00:28:58.487
And here he took this
and made it into a parable.

00:29:10.904 --> 00:29:12.487
When ABC saw "Duel,"

00:29:12.487 --> 00:29:15.071
they were very excited
by what they were seeing.

00:29:15.071 --> 00:29:18.153
But at the very, very end
when the truck did not explode

00:29:18.153 --> 00:29:20.320
in a pyrotechnics display,

00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:21.987
George Eckstein called me and said,

00:29:21.987 --> 00:29:25.278
"Network's really upset that
the truck didn't blow up,

00:29:25.278 --> 00:29:28.654
so they're ordering us
to go back to that cliff

00:29:28.654 --> 00:29:30.320
and blow the truck up."

00:29:30.320 --> 00:29:31.946
And I said, "I'm not gonna do it."

00:29:34.195 --> 00:29:36.195
The death of the truck is so agonizing.

00:29:36.195 --> 00:29:39.320
I said, "I made that truck die slowly."

00:29:39.320 --> 00:29:42.737
The oil, like blood, dripping
off the steering wheel.

00:29:42.737 --> 00:29:45.570
The wheel slowly rolling to a stop.

00:29:45.570 --> 00:29:48.987
The fan still going,
but the truck's dying.

00:29:48.987 --> 00:29:50.570
I mean, it's the death of the truck.

00:29:50.570 --> 00:29:52.946
That's what the audience wants to see.

00:29:52.946 --> 00:29:55.529
This criminal element paying--

00:29:55.529 --> 00:29:58.487
you know, paying the price
for what it did to this man.

00:29:58.487 --> 00:30:02.529
I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't blow up the truck.

00:30:02.529 --> 00:30:06.278
For Steven, the little screen
was an interesting canvas,

00:30:06.278 --> 00:30:09.362
and obviously he painted
on it very well,

00:30:09.362 --> 00:30:11.612
but he knew that this screen

00:30:11.612 --> 00:30:15.570
simply wasn't a large enough canvas.

00:30:24.071 --> 00:30:25.946
Vilmos Zsigmond:
He's a director who knows

00:30:25.946 --> 00:30:28.112
how important cinematography is,

00:30:28.112 --> 00:30:32.487
and the way Steven directed
"Sugarland Express" was so fresh,

00:30:32.487 --> 00:30:34.737
you know, because everything
was on location.

00:30:34.737 --> 00:30:39.071
And half of the movie
was inside of a police car.

00:30:39.071 --> 00:30:41.862
And that was a difficult thing to--

00:30:41.862 --> 00:30:43.737
to keep that alive all the time.

00:30:43.737 --> 00:30:45.737
You know, the angles and all that.

00:30:47.737 --> 00:30:49.445
I see lights, a whole bunch.

00:30:49.445 --> 00:30:51.362
For me, directing is camerawork,

00:30:51.362 --> 00:31:01.362
Telegram Channel and Instagram Page
.:: @bollbolljan_com ::.

00:30:53.529 --> 00:30:56.112
I've gotta set up the shot,
I've gotta block the actors,

00:30:56.112 --> 00:30:58.112
choreograph the movement of the scene,

00:30:58.112 --> 00:30:59.779
bring the camera into the choreography,

00:30:59.779 --> 00:31:01.612
figure out when the camera stops,
how it moves,

00:31:01.612 --> 00:31:03.487
how far it moves,
what the composition is,

00:31:03.487 --> 00:31:05.946
so I've always got my eye on the lens,
and that's what I do.

00:31:05.946 --> 00:31:07.779
I even pick the lens I want.

00:31:14.487 --> 00:31:16.529
His strength is really the ability

00:31:16.529 --> 00:31:20.112
to be able to tell a story
in pictures instinctively.

00:31:20.112 --> 00:31:24.237
I sometimes watch his pictures on TV
without the sound

00:31:24.237 --> 00:31:26.987
just to see the pictures.

00:31:31.320 --> 00:31:36.278
Pauline Kael, one of the most
influential film critics of all time,

00:31:36.278 --> 00:31:38.946
wrote in "The New Yorker"
that Steven Spielberg had made

00:31:38.946 --> 00:31:43.112
one of the most phenomenal debuts
in the history of film.

00:31:43.112 --> 00:31:44.570
She compared him to Howard Hawks

00:31:44.570 --> 00:31:49.612
in terms of how natural
his feel for the medium was.

00:31:49.612 --> 00:31:51.320
What Kael saw in Spielberg

00:31:51.320 --> 00:31:54.695
was someone with a real movie sense,

00:31:54.695 --> 00:31:56.987
but she also said
she wasn't necessarily sure

00:31:56.987 --> 00:31:59.320
there was great depth to go with it.

00:31:59.320 --> 00:32:03.112
She didn't see a sign
of an emerging film artist

00:32:03.112 --> 00:32:04.654
like Martin Scorsese.

00:32:04.654 --> 00:32:07.695
What she saw instead was the birth

00:32:07.695 --> 00:32:11.278
of a new generation Hollywood hand.

00:32:13.904 --> 00:32:17.195
Martin Scorsese,
filmmaker of "Mean Streets."

00:32:17.195 --> 00:32:19.570
This is Brian De Palma, loud as ever.

00:32:23.029 --> 00:32:26.153
- George and Marcia Lucas.
- Hi!

00:32:26.153 --> 00:32:27.821
And this is Steven.

00:32:27.821 --> 00:32:29.821
Get the camera arranged.
Great.

00:32:29.821 --> 00:32:31.695
♪ Time has come today ♪

00:32:33.278 --> 00:32:35.445
♪ Young hearts can go their way... ♪

00:32:35.445 --> 00:32:38.904
In the mid to late '60s,
there was a major change

00:32:38.904 --> 00:32:40.570
in the Hollywood studio system.

00:32:40.570 --> 00:32:42.487
It was a very different world
they had to serve,

00:32:42.487 --> 00:32:44.654
and there was a new freedom, too.

00:32:44.654 --> 00:32:47.946
Brian De Palma: So, suddenly the doors
were open for young directors

00:32:47.946 --> 00:32:51.862
with very crazy,
seemingly original ideas.

00:32:51.862 --> 00:32:54.987
It's almost like, you know,
crashing a party.

00:32:57.195 --> 00:33:00.278
Yeah, people were on the way out,
and we were going in.

00:33:00.278 --> 00:33:02.362
We were absolutely obsessed with movies,

00:33:02.362 --> 00:33:04.695
but we certainly didn't look at it
as a career.

00:33:04.695 --> 00:33:06.695
We didn't think we were ever
gonna make any money at it.

00:33:06.695 --> 00:33:09.195
There was George and Francis,

00:33:09.195 --> 00:33:11.821
and then there was Marty and me,

00:33:11.821 --> 00:33:14.445
and then there was Steven.

00:33:14.445 --> 00:33:16.237
We came from different places,

00:33:16.237 --> 00:33:20.654
but needless to say, we were always
very happy to be together.

00:33:20.654 --> 00:33:24.278
When we got together,
it was like a fraternity of directors.

00:33:24.278 --> 00:33:27.862
George, put the camera
on the table, on--

00:33:27.862 --> 00:33:29.403
I'm gonna hit a ball into the lens,

00:33:29.403 --> 00:33:33.403
and you pick the camera up
at the last moment.

00:33:33.403 --> 00:33:35.862
When I got into the group
of the Movie Brats,

00:33:35.862 --> 00:33:37.946
as somebody once called us,

00:33:37.946 --> 00:33:40.320
I never-- it was the first time
I felt like an insider.

00:33:47.195 --> 00:33:50.403
We were very, very fortunate
to be part of that time.

00:33:50.403 --> 00:33:52.237
The culture was converging.

00:33:52.237 --> 00:33:53.487
That's Albert.

00:33:53.487 --> 00:33:55.779
It was filmmakers, it was artists,

00:33:55.779 --> 00:33:57.695
musicians, performers.

00:33:57.695 --> 00:34:00.570
It was an incredible, fertile time.

00:34:00.570 --> 00:34:02.695
And here we have Amy Irving in the car.

00:34:02.695 --> 00:34:04.946
Brian De Palma introduced us
when she was making "Carrie."

00:34:04.946 --> 00:34:07.946
- That's how we first met.
- Then they started to go out together.

00:34:07.946 --> 00:34:10.320
They were together
and then they were apart,

00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:12.278
and then they got back together again.

00:34:12.278 --> 00:34:14.821
- Amy half dressed.
- As usual, sewing.

00:34:14.821 --> 00:34:17.904
Yes, sewing Steven's pants
to get him ready

00:34:17.904 --> 00:34:20.195
for the big day that's coming very soon.

00:34:20.195 --> 00:34:22.320
Noogies, noogies.

00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:23.654
Steven was a nerd.

00:34:23.654 --> 00:34:26.237
Master of the world!

00:34:26.237 --> 00:34:28.362
A loveable nerd, but he was a nerd.

00:34:28.362 --> 00:34:33.987
He was not into sports
or drugs or rock 'n' roll,

00:34:33.987 --> 00:34:37.195
but he was passionate
and he was so enthusiastic.

00:34:37.195 --> 00:34:39.153
He used to love to talk about film,

00:34:39.153 --> 00:34:41.445
and it was infectious, his enthusiasm.

00:34:41.445 --> 00:34:43.904
Steven had the first car phone.

00:34:43.904 --> 00:34:45.112
It's ringing.

00:34:45.112 --> 00:34:48.445
So, Steven and I used to go around

00:34:48.445 --> 00:34:51.531
and call up a girl and say,
"Well, let's get together,"

00:34:51.532 --> 00:34:52.766
and she'd say, "Fine."

00:34:52.821 --> 00:34:55.821
And then of course we'd be
parked right outside her house.

00:34:55.821 --> 00:34:59.112
That was like--
I would say--

00:34:59.112 --> 00:35:01.529
it may seem extremely silly now,

00:35:01.529 --> 00:35:03.904
but in those days it was like a miracle.

00:35:03.904 --> 00:35:06.570
He was fun. He was fun to be around.

00:35:06.570 --> 00:35:09.112
I'm Julia Child, the French chef.

00:35:10.737 --> 00:35:14.946
Today we are carving...
turkey for Thanksgiving!

00:35:14.946 --> 00:35:17.195
We were all struggling

00:35:17.195 --> 00:35:19.529
with our first very
unsuccessful attempts

00:35:19.529 --> 00:35:22.403
to penetrate the
Hollywood establishment,

00:35:22.403 --> 00:35:24.862
but Steven was working all the time.

00:35:24.862 --> 00:35:28.237
Steven always was a creature
of the studio,

00:35:28.237 --> 00:35:32.987
and his thinking and his methodology
went that direction,

00:35:32.987 --> 00:35:34.779
and he became a master of it.

00:35:34.779 --> 00:35:37.779
He was very fortunate
that the kind of movie

00:35:37.779 --> 00:35:41.320
he really had a sense for
was also the kind of movie

00:35:41.320 --> 00:35:42.946
that the audience had a sense for.

00:35:42.946 --> 00:35:44.403
We are now in the Scorsese kitchen.

00:35:44.403 --> 00:35:47.862
We are going to show "Hell's Angels."

00:35:47.862 --> 00:35:49.862
We all gravitated towards each other.

00:35:49.862 --> 00:35:53.029
We had that one thing that kept us
all together, the one element.

00:35:53.029 --> 00:35:57.946
The one kind of a madness
and an obsession with movies.

00:35:57.946 --> 00:35:59.779
We were consulting with each other,

00:35:59.779 --> 00:36:03.071
and unabashedly giving opinions
about each other's works.

00:36:03.071 --> 00:36:04.904
It was very much that way,

00:36:04.904 --> 00:36:06.821
but we were still competitive.

00:36:06.821 --> 00:36:08.570
"Come and see my movie.

00:36:08.570 --> 00:36:10.779
Sit down-- sit here.
The sound's best here."

00:36:10.779 --> 00:36:12.529
And blow the other guy away.

00:36:12.529 --> 00:36:15.612
Everybody was sort of forced to
do a better job

00:36:15.612 --> 00:36:16.904
to impress everybody,

00:36:16.904 --> 00:36:18.904
because Marty had done this movie,

00:36:18.904 --> 00:36:20.612
or Francis had done that movie.

00:36:20.612 --> 00:36:22.529
They became like the acid test.

00:36:22.529 --> 00:36:26.987
You get some real grounding
and you hope an honesty--

00:36:26.987 --> 00:36:28.570
maybe not too honest.

00:36:31.946 --> 00:36:33.403
George showed a bunch of us

00:36:33.403 --> 00:36:34.904
"Star Wars" for the first time,

00:36:34.904 --> 00:36:36.570
and there were no effects in yet.

00:36:36.570 --> 00:36:39.278
It was just World War II,
black-and-white stock footage

00:36:39.278 --> 00:36:42.612
intercut with blue screen
production color footage,

00:36:42.612 --> 00:36:43.946
and then showed that movie to us,

00:36:43.946 --> 00:36:45.904
expecting us to be able
to see the movie.

00:36:45.904 --> 00:36:47.654
It was basically a children's film.

00:36:47.654 --> 00:36:49.403
You know, it wasn't what
the other friends of mine

00:36:49.403 --> 00:36:51.737
would think of as something
really worthwhile.

00:36:51.737 --> 00:36:54.445
Steven was the one person
who was really enthusiastic about it

00:36:54.445 --> 00:36:56.529
and said, "This is gonna be
a huge smash."

00:36:56.529 --> 00:36:58.362
But George said, "I think it's gonna be
a disaster."

00:36:58.362 --> 00:37:00.112
He was very depressed, and we all went

00:37:00.112 --> 00:37:02.529
to a Chinese restaurant
after the film was over,

00:37:02.529 --> 00:37:06.362
and Brian stood up
and started to geschrei about,

00:37:06.362 --> 00:37:09.779
"What's going on around here?
I don't understand the story.

00:37:09.779 --> 00:37:11.946
Who are these people?
Who's the hairy guy?

00:37:11.946 --> 00:37:15.112
Where do they come from?
Where's the context?

00:37:15.112 --> 00:37:17.362
Where's the backstory?
It's driving me crazy."

00:37:17.362 --> 00:37:18.946
Brian went off on George.

00:37:18.946 --> 00:37:20.987
And George just sat there.
He turned red.

00:37:20.987 --> 00:37:23.112
George, I think, wanted to kill him.

00:37:23.112 --> 00:37:25.487
But out of all that,
something great came.

00:37:25.487 --> 00:37:28.779
Brian basically said, "You need, like,
an old-fashioned movie

00:37:28.779 --> 00:37:30.904
to start the picture with a foreword,

00:37:30.904 --> 00:37:33.695
and all these words come on the screen,
and they travel up,

00:37:33.695 --> 00:37:36.320
and the foreword tells you
what the hell you're looking at

00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:39.362
and why you're in the theater
and what the mythology is.

00:37:39.362 --> 00:37:41.237
Tell us what this world is,

00:37:41.237 --> 00:37:43.029
and then we can enjoy the picture."

00:37:43.029 --> 00:37:45.612
And that was the birth
of the famous prologue.

00:37:45.612 --> 00:37:48.987
Steven came to visit me when
I was shooting "Scarface,"

00:37:48.987 --> 00:37:50.654
and I gave him one of the units

00:37:50.654 --> 00:37:54.737
to shoot the Colombians
coming up the staircase.

00:37:54.737 --> 00:37:57.487
Say hello to my little friend.

00:37:57.487 --> 00:37:59.821
So, we were just shooting
people getting shot

00:37:59.821 --> 00:38:01.987
for a couple of weeks.

00:38:01.987 --> 00:38:04.570
We all had great respect
for each other's work,

00:38:04.570 --> 00:38:06.821
and we were just trying
to help each other out

00:38:06.821 --> 00:38:10.153
when we would see things that we thought
could be improved.

00:38:10.153 --> 00:38:11.862
All right, now I am turning the--

00:38:11.862 --> 00:38:13.821
the camera over to our new director--

00:38:13.821 --> 00:38:17.904
That's the worst swish pan
I've ever seen.

00:38:17.904 --> 00:38:19.821
The worst swish pan I've ever seen.

00:38:19.821 --> 00:38:21.695
He's shooting me.
I'm totally in darkness.

00:38:21.695 --> 00:38:23.570
How do you expect to see anything?

00:38:23.570 --> 00:38:26.112
It's kind of like what happened in Paris
in the '20s.

00:38:26.112 --> 00:38:29.029
You know, you get a group of people,
they're all crazy people,

00:38:29.029 --> 00:38:32.570
and they're controversial
and doing the same struggle,

00:38:32.570 --> 00:38:34.362
but you sort of look at it later
and you say,

00:38:34.362 --> 00:38:35.695
"How could that whole group--"

00:38:35.695 --> 00:38:38.695
the whole group became successful

00:38:38.695 --> 00:38:41.529
and dominated the film business.

00:38:41.529 --> 00:38:42.821
It's like, how could that be?

00:38:42.821 --> 00:38:44.946
We were just a bunch of crazy kids.

00:38:44.946 --> 00:38:47.403
But, you know, I think
a lot of it was really love of film

00:38:47.403 --> 00:38:51.112
and all desperate to make film
any way we could.

00:39:11.946 --> 00:39:13.403
Oh, my God.

00:39:16.570 --> 00:39:18.904
Tony Kushner: When you're watching
Steven's movies,

00:39:18.904 --> 00:39:22.237
you feel like you're in the presence
of something mysterious

00:39:22.237 --> 00:39:25.946
and inexpressible and poetic.

00:39:25.946 --> 00:39:27.862
Enjoying very simple pleasures--

00:39:27.862 --> 00:39:31.320
being scared, being amused,
being dazzled.

00:39:45.445 --> 00:39:47.195
I had been very influenced

00:39:47.195 --> 00:39:50.029
by how far Stanley Kubrick took
"2001: A Space Odyssey"

00:39:50.029 --> 00:39:52.987
into the world of, really,
expressionist art,

00:39:52.987 --> 00:39:56.737
and I wanted to take
"Close Encounters" even further.

00:39:58.654 --> 00:40:01.112
I really wanted the audience
to look at the screen and say,

00:40:01.112 --> 00:40:03.112
"I'm having a sighting,"

00:40:03.112 --> 00:40:05.612
but I wasn't sure
any of this was gonna work.

00:40:06.946 --> 00:40:08.779
Bob Balaban: It was very risky.

00:40:08.779 --> 00:40:10.320
The effects for "Close Encounters"

00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:12.320
basically had never been done before.

00:40:12.320 --> 00:40:15.904
He shot the people
with a motion control camera,

00:40:15.904 --> 00:40:18.071
making the camera move, pan, tilt,

00:40:18.071 --> 00:40:19.695
whatever he want to do.

00:40:19.695 --> 00:40:22.612
And then that's recorded,
actually, on a tape,

00:40:22.612 --> 00:40:25.737
and then when Doug Trumbull,
the special effects supervisor,

00:40:25.737 --> 00:40:28.695
goes back to the
post production facilities,

00:40:28.695 --> 00:40:31.987
he can actually duplicate
exactly that camera move.

00:40:31.987 --> 00:40:35.029
So, when you married the two images,
they were perfect,

00:40:35.029 --> 00:40:38.320
and you could have,
for really about the first time,

00:40:38.320 --> 00:40:39.821
moving special effects.

00:40:39.821 --> 00:40:41.862
Always before, you had to kind of
sit there quietly,

00:40:41.862 --> 00:40:44.112
because if you moved,
it would destroy everything.

00:40:44.112 --> 00:40:45.695
Everybody is doing that today.

00:40:45.695 --> 00:40:48.445
They could not be doing
those effect movies

00:40:48.445 --> 00:40:53.029
unless Steven and Doug didn't
try all these things already.

00:40:55.821 --> 00:40:59.529
The stakes were so high for Steven
on "Close Encounters."

00:40:59.529 --> 00:41:02.529
Columbia Pictures was literally on
the verge of bankruptcy,

00:41:02.529 --> 00:41:05.654
and they bet the farm on this movie.

00:41:05.654 --> 00:41:09.071
He had bankers and Hollywood
breathing down his neck

00:41:09.071 --> 00:41:12.112
to prove to the world that
"Jaws" wasn't a fluke.

00:41:12.112 --> 00:41:16.695
So, Steven had a giant responsibility
on his shoulders,

00:41:16.695 --> 00:41:20.029
but he had to stay true
to what worked for him,

00:41:20.029 --> 00:41:21.779
or it wasn't gonna be a good film.

00:41:21.779 --> 00:41:23.695
And he did.

00:41:23.695 --> 00:41:26.862
Win or lose, he made the movie that
he had dreamed of making.

00:41:30.237 --> 00:41:32.071
When I was a kid,
my dad took me to watch

00:41:32.071 --> 00:41:35.237
the Perseid meteor shower
and introduced me to the sky

00:41:35.237 --> 00:41:37.570
as a place of unspeakable wonders.

00:41:37.570 --> 00:41:40.904
And because it was such a beautiful
experience for me,

00:41:40.904 --> 00:41:43.862
the heavens promised
if there was ever gonna be,

00:41:43.862 --> 00:41:46.654
you know, a first meeting

00:41:46.654 --> 00:41:49.529
between an extraterrestrial
civilization and our own,

00:41:49.529 --> 00:41:53.195
it would only be benign
and constructive.

00:41:53.195 --> 00:41:54.737
It would be a conversation.

00:42:04.071 --> 00:42:05.987
When these extraterrestrials
are coming here,

00:42:05.987 --> 00:42:07.654
we don't know what they can speak,

00:42:07.654 --> 00:42:09.362
what they understand,
or even what they see,

00:42:09.362 --> 00:42:11.695
so Steven had this idea
that communication

00:42:11.695 --> 00:42:15.779
should be a combination
of sound and light.

00:42:26.362 --> 00:42:28.529
I had first thought mathematics would be

00:42:28.529 --> 00:42:30.987
the common language
between intergalactic species,

00:42:30.987 --> 00:42:33.654
but I thought it would be
much more emotional

00:42:33.654 --> 00:42:37.112
if music was how we spoke
to one another.

00:42:41.779 --> 00:42:44.029
I don't search for films consciously

00:42:44.029 --> 00:42:46.612
that have a spiritual core.

00:42:46.612 --> 00:42:48.779
There's a spiritual part
of myself that happens

00:42:48.779 --> 00:42:52.445
to bleed over into the work,
and so I subconsciously,

00:42:52.445 --> 00:42:54.946
which is the only choice
that's important,

00:42:54.946 --> 00:42:59.237
will find things that inherently have
something of a belief system

00:42:59.237 --> 00:43:01.946
that's beyond our understanding,
that's a little bit out there.

00:43:01.946 --> 00:43:05.779
"Close Encounters" was
much more a personal statement

00:43:05.779 --> 00:43:08.112
than his previous two movies had been.

00:43:08.112 --> 00:43:10.320
I mean, he wrote the script.

00:43:10.320 --> 00:43:12.821
It really meant
a huge amount to Steven.

00:43:12.821 --> 00:43:14.946
Its genesis was from a film

00:43:14.946 --> 00:43:17.362
I had actually written
and directed when I was 17.

00:43:20.654 --> 00:43:24.153
It was the story of man's
first contact with UFOs.

00:43:26.112 --> 00:43:31.153
And there were actually UFOs in
"Firelight" that I created.

00:43:31.153 --> 00:43:34.153
I saw a lot of movies, and I had
a whole card catalogue in my brain

00:43:34.153 --> 00:43:36.071
of the things I had seen.

00:43:36.071 --> 00:43:38.654
And just by watching movies
with special effects in them,

00:43:38.654 --> 00:43:41.821
I could figure most everything out.

00:43:41.821 --> 00:43:44.195
In a way, he had lived
with "Close Encounters"

00:43:44.195 --> 00:43:46.904
since he was a child.

00:43:46.904 --> 00:43:50.403
And he had a vision
in a real palpable sense

00:43:50.403 --> 00:43:52.487
of what this movie
should feel like

00:43:52.487 --> 00:43:53.987
when you experience the movie.

00:43:55.570 --> 00:43:58.654
Steven doesn't want to make
little personal movies.

00:43:58.654 --> 00:44:01.612
He wants to make big personal movies.

00:44:01.612 --> 00:44:03.821
That's not right.
That's not right.

00:44:07.195 --> 00:44:08.695
That's not right.

00:44:10.862 --> 00:44:12.529
That's not right.

00:44:15.946 --> 00:44:18.071
I identified with this obsession

00:44:18.071 --> 00:44:20.445
that Richard Dreyfuss
was struggling with.

00:44:20.445 --> 00:44:22.112
I was Neary in that movie.

00:44:23.904 --> 00:44:26.695
Something opens up his imagination

00:44:26.695 --> 00:44:28.403
to go for something that he thinks

00:44:28.403 --> 00:44:31.862
is going to provide
some cathartic answer.

00:44:31.862 --> 00:44:34.320
He had to go through chaos

00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:36.737
to reach some kind of clarity.

00:44:36.737 --> 00:44:38.737
He was an artist trying to plumb

00:44:38.737 --> 00:44:41.487
the depths of his imagination.

00:44:41.487 --> 00:44:43.071
And so I think in a sense

00:44:43.071 --> 00:44:44.862
"Close Encounters" is maybe the most,

00:44:44.862 --> 00:44:46.946
at least certainly
the most personal film

00:44:46.946 --> 00:44:49.737
I had made up to that point,

00:44:49.737 --> 00:44:52.862
because it was also about
the dissolution of a family.

00:45:10.320 --> 00:45:13.487
I remember when we moved
to Northern California from Arizona.

00:45:13.487 --> 00:45:17.071
I had sensed that things
weren't going well with my parents.

00:45:17.071 --> 00:45:18.904
And one day,
my dad just broke down,

00:45:18.904 --> 00:45:20.946
and I never had seen
my dad cry before.

00:45:20.946 --> 00:45:22.695
And I just stood there
in the kitchen,

00:45:22.695 --> 00:45:25.237
outraged that my father
was not a man.

00:45:25.237 --> 00:45:27.862
He was crying like a little boy.

00:45:27.862 --> 00:45:31.320
And I started screaming "crybaby" at him
as loud as I could.

00:45:31.320 --> 00:45:34.071
Just started screaming, "Crybaby,
you crybaby, you crybaby,"

00:45:34.071 --> 00:45:35.612
until they pushed me out of the kitchen.

00:45:35.612 --> 00:45:38.403
Roy, promise me that you'll go!
Please!

00:45:38.403 --> 00:45:42.237
You crybaby!
You crybaby! You crybaby!

00:45:42.237 --> 00:45:45.153
- You crybaby! Crybaby!
- Get out of here! Get out!

00:45:45.153 --> 00:45:46.737
Come on, you guys.

00:45:46.737 --> 00:45:47.821
- Crybaby!
- Come on.

00:45:47.821 --> 00:45:49.278
You crybaby!

00:45:49.278 --> 00:45:51.320
- Be quiet!
- Ronnie: Stop it!

00:45:51.320 --> 00:45:55.403
My mom went from being
completely joyful

00:45:55.403 --> 00:45:58.487
and celebrative about life itself

00:45:58.487 --> 00:46:04.278
to being full of despair
and palpable sadness.

00:46:12.071 --> 00:46:14.195
I would see my mom
going into the living room

00:46:14.195 --> 00:46:17.821
and playing some Schumann and crying.

00:46:17.821 --> 00:46:20.779
Crying to the point she couldn't see
the notes on the paper.

00:46:22.779 --> 00:46:25.570
I'd sit with her and hold her hand,
talk to her.

00:46:25.570 --> 00:46:28.779
She just said, "I'm so lonely here.
I'm so sad here."

00:46:28.779 --> 00:46:30.654
I was going through
the same thing.

00:46:30.654 --> 00:46:32.195
And all I knew was that my dad

00:46:32.195 --> 00:46:34.403
was fulfilled up there,
and we weren't.

00:46:34.403 --> 00:46:36.821
So, when it was announced by my mom

00:46:36.821 --> 00:46:39.862
that my mom and my dad
were splitting up,

00:46:39.862 --> 00:46:41.320
I didn't know any of the details.

00:46:41.320 --> 00:46:43.779
I didn't know why
they were splitting up,

00:46:43.779 --> 00:46:44.946
and I didn't for a long time.

00:46:44.946 --> 00:46:46.195
I didn't want to know.

00:46:46.195 --> 00:46:48.904
I fell in love with somebody else.

00:46:48.904 --> 00:46:53.237
I was madly in love
with Bernie Adler.

00:46:53.237 --> 00:46:56.779
I look back, I think,
"How dare I do that?"

00:46:56.779 --> 00:46:58.779
But I really didn't care at that point.

00:46:58.779 --> 00:47:01.695
It was all about me
and my unhappiness.

00:47:01.695 --> 00:47:04.654
Bernie had been my father's best friend,

00:47:04.654 --> 00:47:06.237
and he was a fixture.

00:47:06.237 --> 00:47:07.362
It was like having an uncle.

00:47:10.071 --> 00:47:13.278
I never would tell the kids
that she divorced me.

00:47:13.278 --> 00:47:15.612
Instead, I let them think
I divorced her.

00:47:15.612 --> 00:47:16.904
Why did you do that?

00:47:16.904 --> 00:47:18.904
Protecting her 'cause she's fragile.

00:47:20.237 --> 00:47:21.946
And she still is.

00:47:21.946 --> 00:47:26.403
And so, I figured I could be
hurt less than she.

00:47:26.403 --> 00:47:28.362
I still loved her.

00:47:28.362 --> 00:47:30.904
My dad and my stepfather
were best friends.

00:47:30.904 --> 00:47:33.195
My mom married Dad's best friend.

00:47:33.195 --> 00:47:34.737
You look at the big picture,
that's shit.

00:47:34.737 --> 00:47:36.904
That's really bad.

00:47:36.904 --> 00:47:38.487
It didn't hit me till I got older

00:47:38.487 --> 00:47:40.612
that that was a really tough thing
for Dad,

00:47:40.612 --> 00:47:43.403
and I-- my heart bled for him.

00:47:43.403 --> 00:47:46.737
Steve really thought my dad left us.

00:47:46.737 --> 00:47:51.278
So, during a number of years,
we blocked him out.

00:47:51.278 --> 00:47:53.695
And Steve, I know, blamed him

00:47:53.695 --> 00:47:57.737
for the relationship going bad.

00:47:57.737 --> 00:47:59.403
It was literally the worst period

00:47:59.403 --> 00:48:00.779
of my entire life.

00:48:02.946 --> 00:48:05.278
I never told my dad
I was mad at him.

00:48:05.278 --> 00:48:06.946
We never had angry words,

00:48:06.946 --> 00:48:08.946
but it was an estrangement

00:48:08.946 --> 00:48:10.612
that I created, not from my dad.

00:48:10.612 --> 00:48:12.946
He was seeking a relationship with me.

00:48:12.946 --> 00:48:15.445
I just went off and got lost in my work,

00:48:15.445 --> 00:48:17.278
the way I saw my dad get lost in his

00:48:17.278 --> 00:48:19.237
all those years of coming home late

00:48:19.237 --> 00:48:21.695
and working weekends back in Phoenix and
all of that.

00:48:21.695 --> 00:48:24.445
I became my father.
I became a workaholic.

00:48:24.445 --> 00:48:28.695
And I just lost the contact with him.

00:48:28.695 --> 00:48:32.487
It went on for... 15 years.

00:48:35.071 --> 00:48:36.612
Tom Snyder:
You know, I read about you today.

00:48:36.612 --> 00:48:38.403
You've done four pictures.
That's all.

00:48:38.403 --> 00:48:40.570
Four movies that I can count.

00:48:40.570 --> 00:48:42.612
You're not Alfred Hitchcock
who's done over 50.

00:48:42.612 --> 00:48:43.862
You're not John Ford.

00:48:43.862 --> 00:48:45.320
Can you believe that you've directed

00:48:45.320 --> 00:48:46.987
four pictures and you're
a famous person?

00:48:46.987 --> 00:48:50.195
- Can you believe that?
- Can I believe that?

00:48:52.112 --> 00:48:53.737
Yes, I can, as a matter of fact.

00:48:53.737 --> 00:48:55.946
I can believe that I've directed
four pictures,

00:48:55.946 --> 00:48:58.779
although it seems like
I've been directing much longer.

00:48:58.779 --> 00:49:02.071
Tom Hanks: He arrived on the scene
in such a huge manner.

00:49:02.071 --> 00:49:03.779
You know, the way "Jaws" entered

00:49:03.779 --> 00:49:06.737
into the consciousness
of the world was huge.

00:49:06.737 --> 00:49:09.112
"Close Encounters" was 10 times as huge.

00:49:09.112 --> 00:49:11.779
But Steven was in the process
of inventing himself.

00:49:11.779 --> 00:49:14.320
I don't think he himself knew

00:49:14.320 --> 00:49:16.487
where this road was gonna take him.

00:49:16.487 --> 00:49:18.821
I'm sure, like everybody else
at that age,

00:49:18.821 --> 00:49:21.904
he was wondering was he really as good
as he thought he was.

00:49:21.904 --> 00:49:24.362
And turned out he was.

00:49:24.362 --> 00:49:25.987
Once you do "Jaws"

00:49:25.987 --> 00:49:28.612
and then "Close Encounters,"
well, where do you go?

00:49:28.612 --> 00:49:31.153
The bar, as they say,
is set a certain level.

00:49:31.153 --> 00:49:32.362
And what do you do?

00:49:32.362 --> 00:49:33.737
You get yourself into shape

00:49:33.737 --> 00:49:35.779
and you jump over the bar again.

00:49:58.320 --> 00:50:00.612
Originally, my idea for "E.T."

00:50:00.612 --> 00:50:03.737
didn't include an extraterrestrial.

00:50:03.737 --> 00:50:07.946
It was gonna be about how a divorce
affects childhood

00:50:07.946 --> 00:50:11.278
and how it really
kind of traumatizes children.

00:50:15.362 --> 00:50:19.362
- Dad's shirt.
- Yeah.

00:50:19.362 --> 00:50:24.071
Remember when he used to
take us out to the ball games

00:50:24.071 --> 00:50:25.946
and take us to the movies,

00:50:25.946 --> 00:50:28.320
and we'd have popcorn fights?

00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:32.195
So, the overriding theme
was gonna be about

00:50:32.195 --> 00:50:34.612
how do you fill the heart
of a lonely child?

00:50:34.612 --> 00:50:38.946
Me, human. Boy.

00:50:38.946 --> 00:50:42.779
- Elliott.
- And what extraordinary event

00:50:42.779 --> 00:50:44.779
would it take to fill Elliott's heart

00:50:44.779 --> 00:50:47.112
after losing his dad?

00:50:47.112 --> 00:50:49.946
It would take something as extraordinary

00:50:49.946 --> 00:50:51.904
as an extraterrestrial
coming into his life.

00:51:05.445 --> 00:51:07.278
Drew Barrymore: Steven, as a filmmaker,

00:51:07.278 --> 00:51:12.362
can create otherworldly,
almost impossible scenarios,

00:51:12.362 --> 00:51:15.112
but do it in a suburban setting

00:51:15.112 --> 00:51:17.987
and with real families and real people,

00:51:17.987 --> 00:51:22.570
and so, you are able to go
outer worldly, outer space,

00:51:22.570 --> 00:51:26.112
extraterrestrial, implausible scenario,

00:51:26.112 --> 00:51:29.695
because it's grounded in human beings

00:51:29.695 --> 00:51:31.487
and human stories.

00:51:31.487 --> 00:51:34.153
Okay, he's a man from outer space

00:51:34.153 --> 00:51:36.695
and we're taking him to his spaceship.

00:51:36.695 --> 00:51:41.570
- Well, can't he just beam up?
- This is reality, Greg.

00:51:41.570 --> 00:51:44.821
"E.T." was a suburban American story,

00:51:44.821 --> 00:51:47.029
and suburbia was all I knew
growing up.

00:51:47.029 --> 00:51:50.112
So, the movies I made
in the '70s, the '80s,

00:51:50.112 --> 00:51:52.654
were a reflection of what I knew.

00:51:52.654 --> 00:51:54.445
My main religion was suburbia.

00:51:54.445 --> 00:51:56.529
You know, the families
all getting together,

00:51:56.529 --> 00:51:59.529
nobody gets divorced,
nobody's unhappy with each other.

00:51:59.529 --> 00:52:00.946
'Course, it's all false.

00:52:00.946 --> 00:52:03.153
Maybe you just probably imagined it...

00:52:03.153 --> 00:52:04.477
I couldn't have imagined it.

00:52:04.478 --> 00:52:06.861
Maybe it was a pervert or
deformed kid or something.

00:52:06.904 --> 00:52:08.695
A deformed kid.

00:52:08.695 --> 00:52:11.362
Maybe an elf or a leprechaun.

00:52:11.362 --> 00:52:13.529
It was nothing like that, penis breath!

00:52:13.529 --> 00:52:15.821
Elliott!

00:52:15.821 --> 00:52:17.029
Sit down.

00:52:19.362 --> 00:52:22.695
Dad would believe me.

00:52:27.737 --> 00:52:31.445
Maybe you ought to call your father
and tell him about it.

00:52:31.445 --> 00:52:33.987
I can't.
He's in Mexico with Sally.

00:52:41.821 --> 00:52:44.529
Where's Mexico?

00:52:44.529 --> 00:52:47.071
I saw my childhood through this family

00:52:47.071 --> 00:52:50.612
and those young, wonderful actors.

00:52:50.612 --> 00:52:52.654
Peter Coyote:
When Steven works with children,

00:52:52.654 --> 00:52:55.987
he brings a kind of
"let's play" feeling.

00:52:55.987 --> 00:52:58.737
He'd have to pull you back.
Grab on to this, right here.

00:52:58.737 --> 00:53:02.071
It's not like somebody
talking baby talk to kids.

00:53:02.071 --> 00:53:05.029
It's just he's really
communicating to them.

00:53:05.029 --> 00:53:08.737
And it's sort of like
direct transmission.

00:53:08.737 --> 00:53:13.237
Now he suddenly turns to you,
his eyes come open.

00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:21.737
Do that to E.T.
Give that joyful scream to E.T.

00:53:21.737 --> 00:53:24.737
Do the line again, really excited about
"Are they coming?"

00:53:24.737 --> 00:53:26.821
Breathing, breathing,
breathing, breathing, breathing.

00:53:26.821 --> 00:53:28.487
- Work yourself up.
- Does this mean they're coming?

00:53:28.487 --> 00:53:30.445
No, work yourself up even more.
Work yourself up.

00:53:30.445 --> 00:53:33.237
Does this mean they're coming?

00:53:33.237 --> 00:53:35.153
Bigger, bigger.
"Does this mean they're coming?"

00:53:35.153 --> 00:53:37.362
Does this mean they're coming?

00:53:37.362 --> 00:53:39.445
Yes!

00:53:39.445 --> 00:53:42.904
Melissa Mathison: He had to be a bit
of a father, a bit of a pal,

00:53:42.904 --> 00:53:46.904
but he was, more than anything,
an observer of them,

00:53:46.904 --> 00:53:48.821
and I think that was
a lot of fun for him.

00:53:48.821 --> 00:53:51.237
- All of the kids were fun for him.
- You gotta take me seriously.

00:53:51.237 --> 00:53:54.278
- This is Halloween, folks. Hello, my love.
- Hi, Granny.

00:53:54.278 --> 00:53:57.237
Wait a sec.
Drew, this is for you, my darling.

00:53:57.237 --> 00:54:01.445
- Your apple.
- I wanted to shoot "E.T." in continuity.

00:54:01.445 --> 00:54:04.529
It gives the kids a context for the work
they're doing that day,

00:54:04.529 --> 00:54:07.821
'cause they know that tomorrow will be
tomorrow in the script

00:54:07.821 --> 00:54:10.487
and yesterday was
yesterday in the script.

00:54:10.487 --> 00:54:12.237
So, for young kids,

00:54:12.237 --> 00:54:15.654
it gives them a real confidence
that they're living a life

00:54:15.654 --> 00:54:17.695
and they're living a story's life.

00:54:17.695 --> 00:54:20.195
Now they put the machine on his chest,

00:54:20.195 --> 00:54:23.529
and they're gonna give him
a shock to try to make him come back.

00:54:23.529 --> 00:54:25.779
And when they give him the shock,

00:54:25.779 --> 00:54:29.612
it's very loud and it makes you jump
and cry even more.

00:54:29.612 --> 00:54:31.320
They're putting it on his chest now,

00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:34.654
and he presses the button,
and it goes, "Pow!"

00:54:34.654 --> 00:54:36.612
Are you okay, honey?

00:54:36.612 --> 00:54:38.946
Huh? Are you okay?

00:54:38.946 --> 00:54:41.862
Let's see.
Wipe your doll's face, too.

00:54:41.862 --> 00:54:44.195
Thank you.
Thank you.

00:54:44.195 --> 00:54:46.946
Okay. Oh.

00:54:46.946 --> 00:54:51.445
For many years I wondered about
the universal appeal of this movie,

00:54:51.445 --> 00:54:53.779
and one day, it hit me.

00:54:53.779 --> 00:54:56.445
There are no two humans on Earth

00:54:56.445 --> 00:54:58.695
that are farther apart

00:54:58.695 --> 00:55:02.029
than those humans
and that alien creature.

00:55:02.029 --> 00:55:03.529
Come.

00:55:07.737 --> 00:55:09.320
Stay.

00:55:12.112 --> 00:55:14.278
And if Elliott,

00:55:14.278 --> 00:55:16.862
and the mother, and the little girl,

00:55:16.862 --> 00:55:22.904
and the scientist,
could all love and empathize

00:55:22.904 --> 00:55:25.320
and make a rapprochement

00:55:25.320 --> 00:55:28.487
and a rapport with this creature,

00:55:28.487 --> 00:55:32.029
so, too, can any two humans on Earth,

00:55:32.029 --> 00:55:36.946
and I think that was a subtext that
bubbled up through the film

00:55:36.946 --> 00:55:38.737
and must have touched something,

00:55:38.737 --> 00:55:40.737
because you don't get many films

00:55:40.737 --> 00:55:43.946
that are universally
loved and appreciated

00:55:43.946 --> 00:55:45.779
40 years later.

00:55:46.946 --> 00:55:49.112
And it spoke to something.

00:55:49.112 --> 00:55:52.946
Some desire to be able
to reach across boundaries

00:55:52.946 --> 00:55:54.904
and touch other people.

00:55:56.821 --> 00:56:02.445
I'll be right here.

00:56:12.112 --> 00:56:14.862
Bye.

00:56:14.862 --> 00:56:17.779
Leonardo DiCaprio: It's a very difficult
balance as a director

00:56:17.779 --> 00:56:21.904
to push a young child
to do a dramatic sequence,

00:56:21.904 --> 00:56:25.487
because you're obviously
manipulating them to some capacity.

00:56:28.904 --> 00:56:32.237
But Steven knew
how to take them as a director

00:56:32.237 --> 00:56:35.362
into some of these darker places

00:56:35.362 --> 00:56:38.403
while handling them with kid gloves.

00:56:47.654 --> 00:56:50.153
A.O. Scott: The children
in Spielberg's world

00:56:50.153 --> 00:56:52.362
may be vulnerable,
may be unhappy,

00:56:52.362 --> 00:56:55.487
but they're also very--
they're very powerful

00:56:55.487 --> 00:56:56.987
and they're heroic.

00:57:02.695 --> 00:57:04.737
I think all of my movies
that have dealt

00:57:04.737 --> 00:57:06.445
with young people and their stories

00:57:06.445 --> 00:57:09.862
are about the importance
of empowering these children

00:57:09.862 --> 00:57:12.112
to take control of the story,

00:57:12.112 --> 00:57:13.821
at least take control of their lives.

00:57:19.029 --> 00:57:22.237
Kathleen Kennedy: Steven intuitively
looks at the world

00:57:22.237 --> 00:57:24.362
through a lens of innocence,

00:57:24.362 --> 00:57:26.904
and children do that naturally.

00:57:26.904 --> 00:57:30.362
So, it became the kind of go-to lens

00:57:30.362 --> 00:57:33.987
that he wanted to use
for his storytelling.

00:57:33.987 --> 00:57:36.153
George Negus: One of the most interesting
things that I've read about you

00:57:36.153 --> 00:57:39.029
was a headline which said,
"Steven Spielberg is making

00:57:39.029 --> 00:57:42.987
movies and a fortune
while he's still growing up.

00:57:42.987 --> 00:57:44.695
He's really just a big kid."

00:57:44.695 --> 00:57:47.112
Is that how you see yourself?
Is that a reasonable comment?

00:57:47.112 --> 00:57:48.343
I think it's reasonable.

00:57:48.344 --> 00:57:51.062
You have to understand--
how do you define a big kid?

00:57:51.112 --> 00:57:54.029
A responsible big kid,
or just an irresponsible big kid?

00:57:54.029 --> 00:57:56.695
Because I think
you have to be responsible,

00:57:56.695 --> 00:57:59.153
but you don't want
to lose the child in you,

00:57:59.153 --> 00:58:01.112
because that's what keeps you young,

00:58:01.112 --> 00:58:03.153
and that's what keeps you in touch,

00:58:03.153 --> 00:58:06.071
and keeps a smile on your face.

00:58:06.071 --> 00:58:07.862
I don't quite know

00:58:07.862 --> 00:58:10.487
what it would be like
to become an adult.

00:58:12.737 --> 00:58:14.445
- Oh...
- My...

00:58:14.445 --> 00:58:15.403
God!

00:58:19.029 --> 00:58:20.821
I was feeling my oats

00:58:20.821 --> 00:58:23.071
after both "Jaws"
and "Close Encounters."

00:58:23.071 --> 00:58:25.904
And so I thought, "I can do a comedy."
Why not?

00:58:25.904 --> 00:58:29.071
If I did those two movies,
why can't I do anything?

00:58:29.071 --> 00:58:30.487
And I have a sense of humor.

00:58:30.487 --> 00:58:32.487
I go to movies and I laugh
when they're funny.

00:58:32.487 --> 00:58:34.529
Why not tackle a comedy?

00:58:34.529 --> 00:58:37.570
I felt pretty invulnerable
at that time.

00:58:37.570 --> 00:58:39.362
I can assure you

00:58:39.362 --> 00:58:42.112
there will be no bombs dropped here.

00:58:42.112 --> 00:58:43.862
Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale
wrote the script,

00:58:43.862 --> 00:58:45.278
and it was lean and mean.

00:58:45.278 --> 00:58:47.237
I'm the one that stretched the humor

00:58:47.237 --> 00:58:50.904
and the budget to its breaking point.

00:58:50.904 --> 00:58:54.779
To me, it was an excuse
to just blow a bunch of shit up

00:58:54.779 --> 00:58:57.987
and try to get an audience to laugh.

00:58:57.987 --> 00:59:01.695
But it was like I committed
a war crime by making "1941."

00:59:01.695 --> 00:59:03.904
Everyone was eviscerating it.

00:59:03.904 --> 00:59:06.946
I was really devastated.

00:59:06.946 --> 00:59:10.821
Just that feeling of failure,
that cold emptiness,

00:59:10.821 --> 00:59:12.779
where every reminder of the movie,

00:59:12.779 --> 00:59:14.946
you get that sick feeling
in the center of your stomach,

00:59:14.946 --> 00:59:18.278
and you just want to go dig a hole
and stick your head in it.

00:59:18.278 --> 00:59:22.278
I mean, for the next year,
I put my head in a lot of holes.

00:59:22.278 --> 00:59:25.445
And my friend George Lucas
came to the rescue.

00:59:34.946 --> 00:59:37.153
George said, "What are you doing next?"

00:59:37.153 --> 00:59:40.362
And Steven said that he really wanted
to do a James Bond film.

00:59:40.362 --> 00:59:42.862
And George said, "I have something
much better than James Bond."

00:59:42.862 --> 00:59:44.570
It's about an archeologist

00:59:44.570 --> 00:59:46.695
and he goes hunting
for supernatural artifacts.

00:59:46.695 --> 00:59:48.779
And Steven said, "I love it.

00:59:48.779 --> 00:59:50.362
Let's do it."

00:59:50.362 --> 00:59:53.487
He's not a stock, standard hero.

00:59:53.487 --> 00:59:55.654
He's not one of these "just add water"

00:59:55.654 --> 00:59:57.987
and he'll grow into the hero
of your dreams.

00:59:57.987 --> 01:00:00.029
There's a human being under all of that.

01:00:00.029 --> 01:00:03.237
That's what made Indiana Jones
accessible to audiences.

01:00:03.237 --> 01:00:06.612
- I think they're trying to kill us.
- I know, Dad!

01:00:06.612 --> 01:00:09.029
Well, it's a new experience for me.

01:00:09.029 --> 01:00:11.821
Happens to me all the time.

01:00:27.737 --> 01:00:31.029
It's an action-adventure movie where
every reel is a cliffhanger.

01:00:31.029 --> 01:00:34.029
Just pure escapist entertainment.

01:00:36.237 --> 01:00:38.862
It was gonna be an all-out "B" movie,

01:00:38.862 --> 01:00:42.529
and "B" movies are fun because they
don't take themselves that seriously.

01:00:42.529 --> 01:00:44.029
You do them quick.
You do them dirty.

01:00:44.029 --> 01:00:45.862
You cheat on everything you possibly can

01:00:45.862 --> 01:00:47.445
to save as much money
as you possibly can,

01:00:47.445 --> 01:00:49.071
and you don't worry about the fact

01:00:49.071 --> 01:00:50.987
that it's not gonna be
"Lawrence of Arabia."

01:01:01.654 --> 01:01:04.278
We took it to the studios,
and what I didn't realize

01:01:04.278 --> 01:01:07.237
was that Steven didn't have
that great a reputation,

01:01:07.237 --> 01:01:10.029
because he was always going
over budget and over schedule.

01:01:10.029 --> 01:01:13.029
So, every studio said no.

01:01:13.029 --> 01:01:15.737
And some of them even said, "You know,
if you can get a different director,

01:01:15.737 --> 01:01:19.529
we'll do it, but Steven can't make
that film for $20 million."

01:01:19.529 --> 01:01:23.071
So, Steven said, "I promise you,
I will not betray you.

01:01:23.071 --> 01:01:25.487
If it's $20 million,
we will make it for $20 million."

01:01:25.487 --> 01:01:28.071
My experience on three cost overruns,

01:01:28.071 --> 01:01:29.737
"Jaws," "Close Encounters," "'41,"

01:01:29.737 --> 01:01:31.529
taught me how to be more economical

01:01:31.529 --> 01:01:34.112
and benefited "Raiders" immeasurably.

01:01:34.112 --> 01:01:37.278
He had something to prove, but he also
didn't wanna let me down, his friend.

01:01:37.278 --> 01:01:40.529
You know, it's like,
it wasn't a studio, it was us.

01:01:40.529 --> 01:01:43.862
Friday night. If we don't get this,
we don't get the shot.

01:01:43.862 --> 01:01:46.904
If we don't get the shot,
we don't get the movie.

01:01:46.904 --> 01:01:49.821
If they don't get the movie,
we're all up the creek.

01:01:49.821 --> 01:01:51.612
George said, "Look, if you direct this,

01:01:51.612 --> 01:01:53.320
you have to shake my hand
right now and promise

01:01:53.320 --> 01:01:55.946
if it's a big hit,
you gotta direct two more."

01:01:55.946 --> 01:01:58.112
And it was a great collaboration.

01:01:58.112 --> 01:01:59.695
Dad!

01:01:59.695 --> 01:02:01.071
- What? What?
- Dad!

01:02:01.071 --> 01:02:02.320
- Dad!
- What?

01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:04.487
- Head for the fireplace.
- Oh.

01:02:04.487 --> 01:02:08.278
Harrison Ford: The "Indiana Jones" movies
were always more about movies

01:02:08.278 --> 01:02:10.112
than they were about anything else.

01:02:10.112 --> 01:02:12.987
They followed certain film formulas,

01:02:12.987 --> 01:02:15.946
which freed them to do silly stuff.

01:02:24.153 --> 01:02:26.654
Tom Stoppard: There was something
which I simply adored

01:02:26.654 --> 01:02:28.237
in "Indiana Jones."

01:02:28.237 --> 01:02:30.362
When Harrison had fallen over a cliff

01:02:30.362 --> 01:02:33.862
and his friends thought he was dead
and they were peering down,

01:02:33.862 --> 01:02:36.445
and Harrison had come up
without his hat,

01:02:36.445 --> 01:02:39.862
because he'd fallen over
a cliff, for heaven's sake,

01:02:39.862 --> 01:02:44.320
and a mysterious breeze
blows the hat into frame.

01:02:44.320 --> 01:02:47.904
These movies are clearly
made for an audience.

01:02:47.904 --> 01:02:49.946
They're made for the filmgoer.

01:02:49.946 --> 01:02:52.987
They're meant for the pure joy
of entertainment.

01:02:52.987 --> 01:02:56.112
Which doesn't mean that they can't be
emotionally involving,

01:02:56.112 --> 01:02:59.570
which doesn't mean they can't be smart
from time to time.

01:03:06.487 --> 01:03:11.320
But they have to be
satisfying entertainment.

01:03:11.320 --> 01:03:13.570
And Steven and George have figured out

01:03:13.570 --> 01:03:17.153
how to use the engine of filmmaking

01:03:17.153 --> 01:03:19.529
to satisfy an audience in a way

01:03:19.529 --> 01:03:23.029
not so many directors or producers have.

01:03:25.029 --> 01:03:27.278
Hugh Downs: In the century-long history
of motion pictures,

01:03:27.278 --> 01:03:29.821
there has been one director, just one,

01:03:29.821 --> 01:03:33.195
whose movies have earned
a total of a billion dollars--

01:03:33.195 --> 01:03:35.195
Steven Spielberg.

01:03:35.195 --> 01:03:37.362
Walter Parkes: Steven is arguably
the most commercial director

01:03:37.362 --> 01:03:39.112
in the history of motion pictures,

01:03:39.112 --> 01:03:41.529
and I think it's because
he has a deep understanding

01:03:41.529 --> 01:03:43.445
of how the language of cinema

01:03:43.445 --> 01:03:45.904
elicits an emotional reaction
in an audience.

01:03:45.904 --> 01:03:50.737
And there's no question that the idea of
making movies that became phenomenons

01:03:50.737 --> 01:03:53.029
was extremely exciting for Steven.

01:03:53.029 --> 01:03:54.987
But it brought a lot of mixed results.

01:03:54.987 --> 01:03:56.529
There were people that hated him,

01:03:56.529 --> 01:03:58.862
people that blamed him
for ruining the movies.

01:03:58.862 --> 01:04:01.403
William Goldman had written specifically

01:04:01.403 --> 01:04:03.071
that the blockbuster and Steven

01:04:03.071 --> 01:04:05.403
and George Lucas
had destroyed Hollywood.

01:04:05.403 --> 01:04:08.362
Some people saw Spielberg
as a repressive force,

01:04:08.362 --> 01:04:12.029
that he was bringing in
a kind of empty escapism

01:04:12.029 --> 01:04:14.821
that was going to take film
in another direction.

01:04:14.821 --> 01:04:17.071
And certainly with
the marketing executives

01:04:17.071 --> 01:04:19.529
who moved into the studios

01:04:19.529 --> 01:04:21.737
in the late '70s and the early '80s,

01:04:21.737 --> 01:04:25.153
it was clear that what they saw
were dollar signs.

01:04:25.153 --> 01:04:27.320
But I wouldn't blame Spielberg for that.

01:04:27.320 --> 01:04:29.862
Go back to the first review
by Pauline Kael.

01:04:29.862 --> 01:04:32.570
She said he was
a great popular entertainer,

01:04:32.570 --> 01:04:36.029
that he had a feel for what audiences
wanted to see.

01:04:36.029 --> 01:04:38.195
Why should anybody apologize for that?

01:04:38.195 --> 01:04:39.654
Let me get you to react to something

01:04:39.654 --> 01:04:41.946
that one of your peers said,
another director.

01:04:41.946 --> 01:04:43.695
"Steven Spielberg can't be compared

01:04:43.695 --> 01:04:46.403
with people like Mike Nichols
and Barry Levinson.

01:04:46.403 --> 01:04:48.987
There is a place for mass entertainment,

01:04:48.987 --> 01:04:50.862
but it shouldn't be confused

01:04:50.862 --> 01:04:55.403
with art or quality,
award-winning filmmaking."

01:04:55.403 --> 01:04:58.029
Sometimes I think
that statements like that

01:04:58.029 --> 01:04:59.987
are pretentious in themselves,

01:04:59.987 --> 01:05:02.570
because it sort of says that, you know,

01:05:02.570 --> 01:05:06.237
art is serious and art can't be--
can't move you.

01:05:06.237 --> 01:05:11.112
Art can't be on a bicycle with E.T.
and fly across the moon,

01:05:11.112 --> 01:05:12.821
that that can't be art.

01:05:12.821 --> 01:05:15.320
If you're making the kinds of movies

01:05:15.320 --> 01:05:17.779
that make the kinds of money
that his movies do,

01:05:17.779 --> 01:05:20.278
and if you're making
franchise entertainment

01:05:20.278 --> 01:05:22.946
or just something that
appeals to a lot of people

01:05:22.946 --> 01:05:26.112
and is unapologetically
mainstream entertainment,

01:05:26.112 --> 01:05:30.403
then there's a little bit of,
I think, suspicion.

01:05:30.403 --> 01:05:33.987
You know, how can we take you seriously
as an artist?

01:05:33.987 --> 01:05:36.821
Come on, girl,
'cause I'm waiting for you.

01:05:42.071 --> 01:05:45.153
You cut me and I'll kill you.

01:05:45.153 --> 01:05:49.403
I was looking for a different
perception of myself.

01:05:49.403 --> 01:05:51.278
And if I didn't want to consciously

01:05:51.278 --> 01:05:53.445
make a departure and prove something,

01:05:53.445 --> 01:05:55.821
not just to myself but to everyone else,

01:05:55.821 --> 01:05:58.695
I might not have chosen
"Color Purple" as my next movie.

01:05:58.695 --> 01:06:01.112
But it was my first really mature film,

01:06:01.112 --> 01:06:05.570
which took on, you know,
substantive, humanistic subject matter.

01:06:05.570 --> 01:06:09.695
I was turning 40 and I was looking at
life perhaps less optimistically.

01:06:09.695 --> 01:06:12.153
And so, I knew this was gonna be
a very sobering journey,

01:06:12.153 --> 01:06:13.987
and I was willing to take it on.

01:06:13.987 --> 01:06:17.029
All my life I had to fight.

01:06:17.029 --> 01:06:21.029
I had to fight my daddy,
I had to fight my uncles,

01:06:21.029 --> 01:06:23.612
I had to fight my brothers.

01:06:23.612 --> 01:06:26.612
A girl child ain't safe
in a family of mens,

01:06:26.612 --> 01:06:30.695
but I ain't never thought
I had to fight in my own house!

01:06:32.153 --> 01:06:34.779
I loves Harpo.

01:06:34.779 --> 01:06:37.821
God knows I do,

01:06:37.821 --> 01:06:42.612
but I'll kill him dead
before I let him beat me.

01:06:42.612 --> 01:06:45.821
Oprah Winfrey: For Steven to even
take on this material

01:06:45.821 --> 01:06:47.737
was a really big deal,

01:06:47.737 --> 01:06:49.737
because you're messing in some territory

01:06:49.737 --> 01:06:52.821
where if you get it wrong,
then you get a lot of people upset.

01:06:52.821 --> 01:06:56.695
He wanted to create not only
an African-American worldview,

01:06:56.695 --> 01:06:59.654
but a matriarchal world

01:06:59.654 --> 01:07:04.737
in the presence of patriarchal
repression and violence.

01:07:04.737 --> 01:07:07.071
And I truly believe that he wanted

01:07:07.071 --> 01:07:10.278
to stretch himself in a way
that he never had before.

01:07:10.278 --> 01:07:12.612
And he does push himself,

01:07:12.612 --> 01:07:15.570
but he's not gonna push
himself too far in advance--

01:07:15.570 --> 01:07:18.862
the audience or maybe his own,

01:07:18.862 --> 01:07:20.862
you know, core inclination.

01:07:20.862 --> 01:07:22.946
He don't ever ask me how I feel.

01:07:22.946 --> 01:07:26.445
Just never asked me nothing
about myself.

01:07:26.445 --> 01:07:29.445
Just climb on top of me,
do his business.

01:07:29.445 --> 01:07:32.487
"Do his business"?
Do his bu--

01:07:32.487 --> 01:07:34.362
why, Miss Celie, you sound like

01:07:34.362 --> 01:07:38.071
he going to the toilet on you.

01:07:38.071 --> 01:07:39.862
That's what it feel like.

01:07:39.862 --> 01:07:42.112
I got in trouble with several critics

01:07:42.112 --> 01:07:44.320
who didn't like that I shied away

01:07:44.320 --> 01:07:46.695
from the love story
between Shug and Celie.

01:07:46.695 --> 01:07:51.403
And the scene where Shug Avery
shows Celie, with a mirror, her vagina,

01:07:51.403 --> 01:07:54.695
that that did not go into the movie,

01:07:54.695 --> 01:07:56.612
which would've really changed

01:07:56.612 --> 01:08:00.821
the entire nature and tone of the film.

01:08:00.821 --> 01:08:04.445
I just didn't go for the full monty
the way the book did.

01:08:04.445 --> 01:08:08.737
I might've done that had I made
the movie 10 years later.

01:08:08.737 --> 01:08:11.529
I was just timid.
I was just a little embarrassed.

01:08:11.529 --> 01:08:13.654
I just wasn't the right guy to do that.

01:08:15.821 --> 01:08:19.362
Steven was telling
the story that Alice wrote,

01:08:19.362 --> 01:08:22.487
and he was trying to access that

01:08:22.487 --> 01:08:25.737
from his personal point of view.

01:08:25.737 --> 01:08:29.862
He could never go where Alice went
with that book.

01:08:43.654 --> 01:08:47.904
Maslin: That book was appreciated
for its grit and its realism,

01:08:47.904 --> 01:08:51.987
and neither of those were qualities that
he was known for.

01:08:51.987 --> 01:08:56.362
He was just asking for it
by even going anywhere near that.

01:08:56.362 --> 01:08:58.862
Nobody really wanted Steven Spielberg

01:08:58.862 --> 01:09:00.695
to be a gritty filmmaker.

01:09:00.695 --> 01:09:02.529
That wasn't his sensibility.

01:09:02.529 --> 01:09:05.612
But with "The Color Purple,"
colors are exact,

01:09:05.612 --> 01:09:08.029
the settings have been built
from the ground up

01:09:08.029 --> 01:09:10.112
according to his specifications.

01:09:10.112 --> 01:09:15.987
There's something so false
and so Disney storyboard-like

01:09:15.987 --> 01:09:17.904
about that movie.

01:09:17.904 --> 01:09:20.195
You know, he wanted
to make a prettier picture

01:09:20.195 --> 01:09:22.362
than was intended in the text.

01:09:22.362 --> 01:09:23.570
That's Steven.

01:09:23.570 --> 01:09:25.737
He wants to make everything like that.

01:09:25.737 --> 01:09:27.904
He wants to make life like that.

01:09:32.946 --> 01:09:34.403
I have a baby on the way,

01:09:34.403 --> 01:09:37.071
and the child is going
to change my life.

01:09:37.071 --> 01:09:40.237
- It already has, in a way.
- Are you nervous about it or what?

01:09:40.237 --> 01:09:41.821
I'm not nervous about it at all, no.

01:09:41.821 --> 01:09:43.654
I just think it's the best thing

01:09:43.654 --> 01:09:46.362
that's ever happened to me and to Amy.

01:09:46.362 --> 01:09:48.071
We really can't wait for this.

01:09:51.487 --> 01:09:53.737
I think the destiny of Amy and I

01:09:53.737 --> 01:09:55.821
was to bring Max into the world,

01:09:55.821 --> 01:09:59.612
which was such a beautiful thing.

01:09:59.612 --> 01:10:03.946
Before that, I'm not sure I knew
what a personal life was.

01:10:03.946 --> 01:10:06.779
I thought life began

01:10:06.779 --> 01:10:10.278
with, you know, "Action!"

01:10:10.278 --> 01:10:11.445
And then, "Cut!"

01:10:13.403 --> 01:10:15.195
After my mom and dad broke up,

01:10:15.195 --> 01:10:17.403
I always thought that I would do my best

01:10:17.403 --> 01:10:19.570
that if I ever decided
someday to get married,

01:10:19.570 --> 01:10:21.071
I wouldn't get divorced.

01:10:21.071 --> 01:10:22.612
And then, of course, I did.

01:10:27.821 --> 01:10:31.237
Divorce in any situation is painful.

01:10:31.237 --> 01:10:34.195
And it's especially painful for me

01:10:34.195 --> 01:10:37.612
because I am a child of divorce

01:10:37.612 --> 01:10:39.278
and I know what it felt like.

01:10:39.278 --> 01:10:42.487
And so, you know,
I felt terrible for Max,

01:10:42.487 --> 01:10:45.029
that he had to endure that.

01:10:50.403 --> 01:10:53.987
- Jamie: My plane.
- Jamie! Jamie!

01:10:57.821 --> 01:10:58.987
Mom?

01:11:01.112 --> 01:11:02.987
- Mom?
- Frank Marshall: "Empire of the Sun"

01:11:02.987 --> 01:11:05.654
was about this young boy
growing up in Shanghai

01:11:05.654 --> 01:11:07.654
who gets separated
from his parents

01:11:07.654 --> 01:11:09.821
during the Japanese invasion.

01:11:09.821 --> 01:11:11.403
Mommy!

01:11:11.403 --> 01:11:13.570
- Jamie!
- Mommy!

01:11:13.570 --> 01:11:16.862
And he goes through
a tremendous transformation

01:11:16.862 --> 01:11:20.320
and growing-up process.

01:11:20.320 --> 01:11:22.821
It was playing on what I knew
were my strengths,

01:11:22.821 --> 01:11:26.403
being able to take the dark,
grim reality of war

01:11:26.403 --> 01:11:28.570
and put it with a child's approach

01:11:28.570 --> 01:11:31.821
in the way this particular special child
saw that war.

01:11:40.237 --> 01:11:41.946
It was based on the experiences

01:11:41.946 --> 01:11:43.320
that J.G. Ballard had

01:11:43.320 --> 01:11:45.862
in a Japanese internment camp.

01:11:49.029 --> 01:11:51.862
Jim was a lost boy trying to figure out

01:11:51.862 --> 01:11:53.862
where he belongs in this world.

01:11:56.029 --> 01:11:58.445
It's a movie about
growing up too quickly

01:11:58.445 --> 01:12:01.278
and abandoning everything
that you once used

01:12:01.278 --> 01:12:02.904
to keep yourself safe.

01:12:06.570 --> 01:12:09.320
When you have nothing
to keep yourself safe,

01:12:09.320 --> 01:12:11.403
you become a survivor like all the rest,

01:12:11.403 --> 01:12:13.278
and you grow up awfully quickly.

01:12:14.946 --> 01:12:16.654
Christian Bale: It's an extraordinary story

01:12:16.654 --> 01:12:19.071
of the resilience of children,

01:12:19.071 --> 01:12:21.112
this incredible survivor

01:12:21.112 --> 01:12:23.821
who manages to have
more fortitude to him

01:12:23.821 --> 01:12:27.779
than, really, any of the adults
around him.

01:12:32.821 --> 01:12:36.695
It's in the great tradition
of epic filmmaking.

01:12:36.695 --> 01:12:40.362
That sports stadium
at the end when all the goods,

01:12:40.362 --> 01:12:42.570
all the stuff that had been stolen
is there,

01:12:42.570 --> 01:12:45.278
the surrealism of that

01:12:45.278 --> 01:12:50.278
and what it makes you feel
at that time and place,

01:12:50.278 --> 01:12:51.654
the sense of what
the world was like,

01:12:51.654 --> 01:12:55.153
how it had fallen apart,
all of civilization.

01:13:11.695 --> 01:13:16.237
And then, something even
more disturbingly beautiful,

01:13:16.237 --> 01:13:19.320
and that is the glow
from the atom bomb.

01:13:24.195 --> 01:13:27.654
It's like a soul transcending
into another life.

01:13:29.071 --> 01:13:31.737
Mrs. Victor.

01:13:31.737 --> 01:13:37.195
This is very poetic and... mystical.

01:13:47.654 --> 01:13:49.320
This was war

01:13:49.320 --> 01:13:53.570
and it was death and real horror.

01:13:53.570 --> 01:13:55.987
And it was like an end of innocence

01:13:55.987 --> 01:13:58.320
for the Spielberg child.

01:14:00.612 --> 01:14:03.153
I think it was a truly great film,

01:14:03.153 --> 01:14:05.487
but, for me, it ultimately shaded

01:14:05.487 --> 01:14:10.737
into an unnecessary softness
or sentimentality.

01:14:10.737 --> 01:14:12.612
I don't know where it comes from,

01:14:12.612 --> 01:14:15.612
but he likes and enjoys sentiment.

01:14:15.612 --> 01:14:17.029
It's part of him.

01:14:26.654 --> 01:14:29.195
At the time, he was not
dismissed, exactly,

01:14:29.195 --> 01:14:31.821
by a lot of critics, but sort of looked
at a little skeptically.

01:14:31.821 --> 01:14:33.195
"Oh, he wants to be serious now.

01:14:33.195 --> 01:14:34.862
Oh, he's trying to make serious movies.

01:14:34.862 --> 01:14:37.153
Oh, now he wants it"--
which, I mean--

01:14:37.153 --> 01:14:40.737
it's such a kind of nasty thing

01:14:40.737 --> 01:14:42.362
to say about any artist.

01:14:42.362 --> 01:14:44.779
It definitely hurt his feelings.

01:14:44.779 --> 01:14:46.403
I don't think anybody as an artist

01:14:46.403 --> 01:14:49.029
wants to feel like
they're being pigeonholed

01:14:49.029 --> 01:14:52.904
in a way that other people
are determining who they are.

01:14:52.904 --> 01:14:55.320
And when Steven began to explore

01:14:55.320 --> 01:14:57.779
other kinds of more serious stories,

01:14:57.779 --> 01:15:00.654
they were very reluctant
to let him do that.

01:15:00.654 --> 01:15:03.195
That was like, "How dare you,
Steven Spielberg?

01:15:03.195 --> 01:15:05.737
We've determined that you make
these kind of movies,

01:15:05.737 --> 01:15:08.779
so why are you suddenly
trying to make this?"

01:15:08.779 --> 01:15:10.946
He doesn't over-intellectualize,

01:15:10.946 --> 01:15:15.071
but maybe as a filmmaker,
Steven was using those movies

01:15:15.071 --> 01:15:17.612
as stepping stones along the way.

01:15:17.612 --> 01:15:20.153
He didn't know where he was headed,

01:15:20.153 --> 01:15:23.570
but I think he was exercising
those muscles, in a way,

01:15:23.570 --> 01:15:26.362
to recognize he could go there,

01:15:26.362 --> 01:15:28.362
that it was okay.

01:15:40.946 --> 01:15:43.821
My very first memory--
I was in a stroller.

01:15:43.821 --> 01:15:45.529
I just remember being wheeled somewhere,

01:15:45.529 --> 01:15:49.029
and my grandmother
and grandfather were with me.

01:15:51.612 --> 01:15:55.112
We went into this underground space.

01:15:55.112 --> 01:15:58.654
There was a red light
over a set of doors.

01:16:01.654 --> 01:16:03.529
And I just remember
getting closer and closer

01:16:03.529 --> 01:16:06.237
to this red light
where all these old men--

01:16:06.237 --> 01:16:10.987
just men were all chanting something.

01:16:10.987 --> 01:16:14.029
And the red light was the Eternal Light,
the Ner Tamid,

01:16:14.029 --> 01:16:16.862
and that's my very first memory.

01:16:19.695 --> 01:16:22.904
- Do you believe in God?
- Yes.

01:16:22.904 --> 01:16:24.987
Tell me about that.
Where where does...?

01:16:24.987 --> 01:16:27.362
It comes from my--

01:16:27.362 --> 01:16:31.029
you know, my spiritual--
not even spiritual,

01:16:31.029 --> 01:16:33.946
my religious roots and family.

01:16:37.195 --> 01:16:40.904
All my grandparents had
a very strong influence over me.

01:16:40.904 --> 01:16:43.278
My grandfather, Fievel, played guitar

01:16:43.278 --> 01:16:45.570
and he sang all Yiddish Russian songs.

01:16:45.570 --> 01:16:47.487
And my grandmother, Jennie,

01:16:47.487 --> 01:16:50.445
taught English to Hungarian
Holocaust survivors.

01:16:54.821 --> 01:16:57.904
We were Orthodox.
I was raised Orthodox.

01:16:57.904 --> 01:17:00.987
And tradition has been
a huge part of my family,

01:17:00.987 --> 01:17:02.946
and religious studies,
and Hebrew school,

01:17:02.946 --> 01:17:07.153
and bar mitzvahs, and bat mitzvahs
for my sisters.

01:17:07.153 --> 01:17:10.195
But we always lived in neighborhoods
where there were no Jews.

01:17:10.195 --> 01:17:13.904
And there was a real cultural divide
in those days

01:17:13.904 --> 01:17:16.153
between Jewish people and Gentiles,

01:17:16.153 --> 01:17:18.320
a real cultural divide.

01:17:18.320 --> 01:17:19.946
I remember that at one point,

01:17:19.946 --> 01:17:23.529
kids were standing outside and chanting

01:17:23.529 --> 01:17:25.946
"the Spielbergs are dirty Jews."

01:17:25.946 --> 01:17:29.237
I certainly experienced being excluded

01:17:29.237 --> 01:17:32.362
and being picked on
and discriminated against.

01:17:32.362 --> 01:17:34.195
All I wanted to do was fit in.

01:17:34.195 --> 01:17:37.862
And by being Jewish, there was no way
I could fit into anything.

01:17:37.862 --> 01:17:40.529
My grandfather would come over
to spend a week with us,

01:17:40.529 --> 01:17:43.237
and I'd be playing in the front yard
seven houses down,

01:17:43.237 --> 01:17:45.071
and my grandfather
would stand on our front porch

01:17:45.071 --> 01:17:47.278
and yell my Hebrew name, "Shmuel!"

01:17:47.278 --> 01:17:49.320
As loud as he could, "Shmuel!"

01:17:49.320 --> 01:17:50.981
And all my friends would say,

01:17:50.982 --> 01:17:53.389
"Is he talking to you?
That's your house."

01:17:53.445 --> 01:17:56.112
And I immediately denied
that that was me.

01:17:56.112 --> 01:17:58.946
"No, he must be calling
somebody else."

01:17:58.946 --> 01:18:00.779
"Is your name Shmuel?"

01:18:00.779 --> 01:18:02.320
And all my friends started laughing.

01:18:02.320 --> 01:18:04.029
"Shmuel? What's Shmuel?"

01:18:04.029 --> 01:18:05.320
And meanwhile, in the background,

01:18:05.320 --> 01:18:07.112
you can hear my grandfather yelling

01:18:07.112 --> 01:18:09.445
with a Russian accent, "Shmuel!"

01:18:09.445 --> 01:18:11.320
Steve did not want to be Jewish.

01:18:11.320 --> 01:18:13.362
He didn't want to be Jewish
because it made us

01:18:13.362 --> 01:18:15.071
too different from everybody.

01:18:15.071 --> 01:18:17.821
And the "Father Knows Best" family

01:18:17.821 --> 01:18:20.029
is an assimilated family.

01:18:20.029 --> 01:18:22.654
And I think he really yearned for that.

01:18:22.654 --> 01:18:27.445
I began to deny my Jewishness,

01:18:27.445 --> 01:18:29.570
you know, began to deny

01:18:29.570 --> 01:18:32.278
everything that I had
accepted as a child

01:18:32.278 --> 01:18:33.821
and was not willing to accept

01:18:33.821 --> 01:18:36.278
if it was going to make me a pariah.

01:18:36.278 --> 01:18:38.029
I was ashamed of myself.

01:18:38.029 --> 01:18:41.237
I still feel ashamed of myself

01:18:41.237 --> 01:18:45.946
even remembering
that long stretch of my life

01:18:45.946 --> 01:18:49.445
where I didn't want
to be Jewish anymore.

01:18:53.445 --> 01:18:55.403
When I first met Kate,

01:18:55.403 --> 01:18:57.779
something that only happens
in the movies

01:18:57.779 --> 01:18:59.071
happened to me.

01:18:59.071 --> 01:19:04.153
It's a terrible cliché,
but bells began ringing.

01:19:04.153 --> 01:19:07.153
It was love at first sight.
It really was.

01:19:07.153 --> 01:19:08.821
There was something that was

01:19:08.821 --> 01:19:11.403
so both self-assured about Katie

01:19:11.403 --> 01:19:13.737
and reassuring for me.

01:19:13.737 --> 01:19:16.487
There was a kind of in-syncness.

01:19:16.487 --> 01:19:18.570
We could talk about anything,

01:19:18.570 --> 01:19:20.821
and I couldn't get her off my mind.

01:19:30.320 --> 01:19:33.362
Kate came into my world, in my life,

01:19:33.362 --> 01:19:35.654
with a deep fascination
with the traditions

01:19:35.654 --> 01:19:38.029
and the depth of the history of Judaism.

01:19:38.029 --> 01:19:40.654
And she really wanted
to marry me as a Jew.

01:19:40.654 --> 01:19:43.904
So, she converted to Judaism
just before we got married.

01:19:43.904 --> 01:19:46.362
Sue: She said she always felt like
she was coming home.

01:19:46.362 --> 01:19:48.862
She always felt this was
where she was meant to be.

01:19:48.862 --> 01:19:51.570
And so, as she studied Judaism
and got into it,

01:19:51.570 --> 01:19:54.737
it brought Steve back around
to appreciating it.

01:19:54.737 --> 01:19:56.779
Kate brought something to Steven

01:19:56.779 --> 01:20:00.029
that I don't think Steven believed
he could ever have.

01:20:00.029 --> 01:20:03.821
She is so dedicated
to the idea of family

01:20:03.821 --> 01:20:07.071
in its, you know, purest essence

01:20:07.071 --> 01:20:09.946
that not only did it bring him,

01:20:09.946 --> 01:20:12.695
I think, a happiness
he never thought he'd have,

01:20:12.695 --> 01:20:15.362
but I suspect it contributed

01:20:15.362 --> 01:20:17.487
to his growth as an artist.

01:20:29.403 --> 01:20:31.779
In 1982, Sid Sheinberg gave me the book

01:20:31.779 --> 01:20:33.695
of "Schindler's List" to read.

01:20:33.695 --> 01:20:36.445
He felt it was my destiny
to make this movie.

01:20:36.445 --> 01:20:38.237
He was tenacious
about getting me

01:20:38.237 --> 01:20:40.862
to pay attention to it,
not to give up on it.

01:20:40.862 --> 01:20:44.654
I think he was intimidated

01:20:44.654 --> 01:20:47.904
by the thought of making it.

01:20:47.904 --> 01:20:50.570
He had the book for over 10 years

01:20:50.570 --> 01:20:52.737
before he was ready to do it.

01:20:52.737 --> 01:20:55.112
And he just said,
"I'll know when it's time."

01:20:55.112 --> 01:20:56.529
You know, if anybody
pushed him on it,

01:20:56.529 --> 01:20:57.987
"I'll know when it's time."

01:20:59.695 --> 01:21:01.237
And then the time came.

01:21:07.112 --> 01:21:11.987
Liam Neeson: On my first day, we were
outside the gates of Auschwitz.

01:21:11.987 --> 01:21:16.112
5:30 in the morning,
bitterly, bitterly cold.

01:21:16.112 --> 01:21:18.487
And hundreds of extras

01:21:18.487 --> 01:21:21.612
dressed up in those
horrible striped pajamas

01:21:21.612 --> 01:21:23.570
and German guards

01:21:23.570 --> 01:21:27.278
and real Alsatian dogs,
real nasty dogs.

01:21:31.487 --> 01:21:33.612
No! No!

01:21:33.612 --> 01:21:36.529
Nothing could prepare me for
my first visit to Auschwitz.

01:21:36.529 --> 01:21:38.112
Nothing prepared me for that.

01:21:40.529 --> 01:21:43.278
I wanted to shoot where the story
actually took place,

01:21:43.278 --> 01:21:46.612
all the actual locations,

01:21:46.612 --> 01:21:48.612
but I realized at that point
when I went to Poland

01:21:48.612 --> 01:21:51.237
for the first time
that I was playing with fire.

01:21:51.237 --> 01:21:52.695
That's horrible.

01:21:52.695 --> 01:21:55.278
He was like someone
whose skin had been torn off.

01:21:55.278 --> 01:21:57.570
He was just so vulnerable,

01:21:57.570 --> 01:21:59.904
pacing up and down all the time.

01:21:59.904 --> 01:22:01.529
I could tell how important

01:22:01.529 --> 01:22:04.403
this subject matter
and this film was to him.

01:22:13.570 --> 01:22:17.570
He was telling a story
of his family, his tribe,

01:22:17.570 --> 01:22:22.153
so I was aware of the weight
of the subject matter.

01:22:22.153 --> 01:22:24.570
I said to the crew,
"This isn't a documentary,

01:22:24.570 --> 01:22:28.403
but we are documenting things
that actually took place

01:22:28.403 --> 01:22:30.362
in the place that
you're standing right now."

01:22:30.362 --> 01:22:35.112
And I said also, you know,
"Those of us who are Jewish,

01:22:35.112 --> 01:22:38.695
you know, would never have
been able to stand here,

01:22:38.695 --> 01:22:41.821
you know, in 1943."

01:22:45.862 --> 01:22:48.362
I knew this couldn't be
just another movie

01:22:48.362 --> 01:22:52.153
and it couldn't be anything like
anything I had ever directed before.

01:22:52.153 --> 01:22:53.779
I had to approach the material

01:22:53.779 --> 01:22:55.862
and I had to approach the location

01:22:55.862 --> 01:22:58.362
with a great deal of reverence,

01:22:58.362 --> 01:23:03.362
and I had to make this
a very quiet, quiet production.

01:23:03.362 --> 01:23:06.029
We were shooting
on hallowed, sacred ground.

01:23:08.904 --> 01:23:10.487
Everywhere we shot in Kraków

01:23:10.487 --> 01:23:12.737
felt like we were shooting
in a cemetery.

01:23:12.737 --> 01:23:16.403
And it changed my entire approach
to cinema.

01:23:16.403 --> 01:23:17.779
I-- that film looks different

01:23:17.779 --> 01:23:20.071
than anything I had ever
done before that.

01:23:20.071 --> 01:23:23.862
I tried to do it with no fancy tricks,
no fancy lenses,

01:23:23.862 --> 01:23:26.237
no big Hollywood sweeping cranes.

01:23:26.237 --> 01:23:28.320
I tried to take all the tools

01:23:28.320 --> 01:23:30.654
with which I made so many of my films

01:23:30.654 --> 01:23:32.529
and just chuck them out the window.

01:23:32.529 --> 01:23:35.237
I never handheld anything,
but I wanted to handhold

01:23:35.237 --> 01:23:37.195
as much of "Schindler's List"
as I possibly could.

01:23:37.195 --> 01:23:39.695
I just wanted to create for all of us

01:23:39.695 --> 01:23:43.237
the feeling that we were
absolutely there at the time.

01:23:43.237 --> 01:23:45.237
Goodbye Jews!

01:23:45.237 --> 01:23:48.403
Goodbye Jews!
Goodbye Jews!

01:23:48.403 --> 01:23:51.570
I'm just wondering is the synagogue...

01:23:51.570 --> 01:23:52.779
...a good background,

01:23:52.779 --> 01:23:54.237
or is the park a good background,

01:23:54.237 --> 01:23:56.445
because this is
kind of interesting here.

01:23:56.445 --> 01:23:58.946
Ralph Fiennes: Steven said, "I feel like
I'm directing my first movie.

01:23:58.946 --> 01:24:00.529
I'm not storyboarding anything."

01:24:00.529 --> 01:24:01.946
And I think that gave him an adrenaline

01:24:01.946 --> 01:24:03.487
or something that we all felt.

01:24:03.487 --> 01:24:05.403
A fire, an alertness.

01:24:05.403 --> 01:24:09.237
I've never felt the same level
of energy and focus.

01:24:09.237 --> 01:24:11.779
He seems to breathe cinema.

01:24:11.779 --> 01:24:14.529
I wouldn't say
he's an intellectual director.

01:24:14.529 --> 01:24:17.821
I think he feels things
intuitively and emotionally.

01:24:17.821 --> 01:24:19.278
...and coverage up like that.

01:24:19.278 --> 01:24:21.946
He was kind of like an abstract painter

01:24:21.946 --> 01:24:25.237
who has his canvass

01:24:25.237 --> 01:24:28.779
and has a palette
of extraordinary colors

01:24:28.779 --> 01:24:30.695
but just doesn't know what color

01:24:30.695 --> 01:24:33.612
to put on that screen first.

01:24:33.612 --> 01:24:36.029
But once he's committed
to that color,

01:24:36.029 --> 01:24:38.987
he was just firing
on all cylinders.

01:24:38.987 --> 01:24:41.612
And there was literally times
he was running,

01:24:41.612 --> 01:24:43.362
physically running, with that camera

01:24:43.362 --> 01:24:45.779
because a lot of the stuff,
he shot himself.

01:24:45.779 --> 01:24:47.029
Handheld camera.

01:24:47.029 --> 01:24:48.654
He'd be running up and down,

01:24:48.654 --> 01:24:50.987
saying, "Come on, come with me, quick,"

01:24:50.987 --> 01:24:52.904
as the idea was forming in his head.

01:24:52.904 --> 01:24:55.403
And we'd all be running
after him, "What? What?"

01:24:55.403 --> 01:24:58.029
He'd be inspired.
He saw something.

01:25:10.195 --> 01:25:13.320
Sir Ben Kingsley: We were all struggling
with the incomprehensible

01:25:13.320 --> 01:25:16.737
as characters and as actors.

01:25:16.737 --> 01:25:20.612
But we put one foot in front of
the other in our mandate

01:25:20.612 --> 01:25:23.821
to, as Elie Wiesel says, tell stories.

01:25:26.362 --> 01:25:28.112
Kingsley: We took on the mantle

01:25:28.112 --> 01:25:30.987
of actor-warriors, if you like.

01:25:30.987 --> 01:25:34.904
Because if you soften
anything with sentiment,

01:25:34.904 --> 01:25:38.112
you lessen the blow that
the audience have got to feel

01:25:38.112 --> 01:25:39.862
and got to reel under.

01:25:52.570 --> 01:25:55.029
In the liquidation of the ghetto scene,

01:25:55.029 --> 01:25:56.695
I knew I had to serve the story.

01:25:56.695 --> 01:26:00.112
I remembered my lines,
but I was in deep shock.

01:26:00.112 --> 01:26:01.904
No acting.

01:26:07.904 --> 01:26:10.403
The beautifully orchestrated chaos

01:26:10.403 --> 01:26:12.904
was unrepeatable or unforgettable.

01:26:20.362 --> 01:26:24.570
Oskar Schindler was a gregarious man.

01:26:24.570 --> 01:26:27.029
He was a second-rate businessman.

01:26:27.029 --> 01:26:29.987
Bit of a shady character, you know?

01:26:29.987 --> 01:26:34.612
A man about town, loved the women,
loved his booze.

01:26:34.612 --> 01:26:38.237
A bon vivant, that's what he was.

01:26:38.237 --> 01:26:40.237
And he did this extraordinary thing.

01:26:40.237 --> 01:26:44.529
He saved over 1,100 Jewish lives.

01:26:44.529 --> 01:26:47.570
There was something
indescribably mysterious

01:26:47.570 --> 01:26:49.112
about this character.

01:26:49.112 --> 01:26:51.779
It was impossible
to really understand

01:26:51.779 --> 01:26:53.946
why he did what he did.

01:26:53.946 --> 01:26:56.445
But we decided just to let the audience

01:26:56.445 --> 01:26:59.278
work that out for themselves.

01:26:59.278 --> 01:27:01.112
I was a smoker at the time.

01:27:01.112 --> 01:27:03.654
Steve was not a smoker,
but in the close-ups,

01:27:03.654 --> 01:27:05.487
he would start
to tell me how to smoke.

01:27:05.487 --> 01:27:08.946
He'd say, "Okay,
you're looking at the table.

01:27:08.946 --> 01:27:12.821
You see three of these
high-ranking Nazi guys.

01:27:12.821 --> 01:27:14.612
Take a drag of your cigarette."

01:27:14.612 --> 01:27:18.612
"No, no. Do it again.

01:27:18.612 --> 01:27:21.071
Keep your fingers there.
Take a drag.

01:27:21.071 --> 01:27:24.779
Let the smoke curl up your face.

01:27:24.779 --> 01:27:27.612
Do it again.

01:27:27.612 --> 01:27:29.987
Okay, now take your hand away
very, very slowly."

01:27:29.987 --> 01:27:32.612
So, he was basically
telling me how to breathe.

01:27:32.612 --> 01:27:34.904
I remember sharing it
with Ben Kingsley

01:27:34.904 --> 01:27:36.779
later on that night
or the next day.

01:27:36.779 --> 01:27:40.278
I said, "Ben, I just--
if every scene's gonna be like that,

01:27:40.278 --> 01:27:42.570
I'm a fucking puppet, you know?

01:27:42.570 --> 01:27:44.071
I don't want to be a puppet.

01:27:44.071 --> 01:27:45.529
I'm 41 years of age."

01:27:45.529 --> 01:27:47.362
And I remember Ben so well.

01:27:47.362 --> 01:27:49.946
He said, "A great conductor...

01:27:51.487 --> 01:27:54.529
needs a good soloist.

01:27:54.529 --> 01:27:56.153
So just trust that.

01:27:56.153 --> 01:27:57.654
Just go into his direction.

01:27:57.654 --> 01:27:59.612
Don't fight against it.
Just go into it."

01:27:59.612 --> 01:28:00.987
And that's what I did.

01:28:00.987 --> 01:28:04.320
I just opened myself
for Steven, you know?

01:28:04.320 --> 01:28:05.779
My father was fond of saying,

01:28:05.779 --> 01:28:07.987
"You need three things in life--

01:28:07.987 --> 01:28:12.529
a good doctor,
a forgiving priest,

01:28:12.529 --> 01:28:14.487
and a clever accountant."

01:28:18.779 --> 01:28:20.821
The first two...

01:28:20.821 --> 01:28:22.529
I've never had much use for.

01:28:22.529 --> 01:28:26.445
But the third?

01:28:26.445 --> 01:28:28.487
Itzhak Stern was the character

01:28:28.487 --> 01:28:31.737
that I was closest to
in my understanding of him.

01:28:31.737 --> 01:28:34.529
Just pretend, for Christ's sake.

01:28:34.529 --> 01:28:38.029
And I said to Ben, "You're the conscience
of Oskar Schindler.

01:28:38.029 --> 01:28:40.403
You're also my window

01:28:40.403 --> 01:28:42.821
into my insight into Oskar Schindler."

01:28:42.821 --> 01:28:44.737
I'm trying to thank you.

01:28:46.737 --> 01:28:49.779
I'm saying I couldn't
have done this without you.

01:28:49.779 --> 01:28:52.737
Anything I can glean
from Schindler himself,

01:28:52.737 --> 01:28:55.403
I think a lot of it is gonna
come from how you look at him.

01:28:58.654 --> 01:29:00.237
You're welcome.

01:29:00.237 --> 01:29:01.904
There are very, very few directors

01:29:01.904 --> 01:29:04.987
who respect stillness as much as Steven.

01:29:04.987 --> 01:29:07.737
He's gonna catch every single gesture

01:29:07.737 --> 01:29:11.029
you offer to the camera,
and he's going to use it.

01:29:11.029 --> 01:29:16.153
His intuition for something real and
present is very, very strong.

01:29:16.153 --> 01:29:19.320
He wanted to avoid clichés
about Nazis,

01:29:19.320 --> 01:29:22.779
and, in terms of performance,
I understood it on my first day.

01:29:22.779 --> 01:29:26.195
You know, the thing about Amon having
a cough-- "Ahem, excuse me,"

01:29:26.195 --> 01:29:29.779
and giving him sort of banal human
failings, touches like that.

01:29:29.779 --> 01:29:31.821
Do you have any questions, sir?

01:29:31.821 --> 01:29:35.695
Yeah, why is the top down?
I'm fucking freezing.

01:29:35.695 --> 01:29:37.654
There were ways in which,
through performance and filming,

01:29:37.654 --> 01:29:40.112
you can amp up
and signal "bad guy."

01:29:40.112 --> 01:29:42.237
And I think he wanted,
quite rightly,

01:29:42.237 --> 01:29:44.112
to say, "No, man doing job.

01:29:44.112 --> 01:29:47.029
- You decide what you think."
- I have an idea.

01:29:47.029 --> 01:29:48.946
How about just lighting their mouths,
nothing else?

01:29:48.946 --> 01:29:51.112
I was just going-- you know--

01:29:51.112 --> 01:29:53.695
no, him, I want to light
just from the top, you know,

01:29:53.695 --> 01:29:55.862
so we get some shadows here,
just like...

01:29:55.862 --> 01:29:59.029
Okay, I just want to make sure we're
not being too on the nose

01:29:59.029 --> 01:30:02.737
with the-- you know,
the badness of the character

01:30:02.737 --> 01:30:04.946
by having a straight-down light.

01:30:04.946 --> 01:30:07.237
Everything we do in this medium is about
light and shadow,

01:30:07.237 --> 01:30:10.153
how the cinematographer lights
the actors, lights the set.

01:30:10.153 --> 01:30:11.987
If you look at "Schindler's List,"

01:30:11.987 --> 01:30:14.487
Amon Goeth was always lit beautifully.

01:30:14.487 --> 01:30:16.821
He always had
that beautiful front light.

01:30:16.821 --> 01:30:18.362
You know, the guy was very clear.

01:30:18.362 --> 01:30:19.779
There was no mystery in him.

01:30:19.779 --> 01:30:21.487
You don't have to enhance his evilness,

01:30:21.487 --> 01:30:23.654
if you may say, by lighting.

01:30:23.654 --> 01:30:25.570
Now, if you look at Oskar Schindler,

01:30:25.570 --> 01:30:27.153
that was a confused individual.

01:30:27.153 --> 01:30:29.153
He came to Poland to make money,

01:30:29.153 --> 01:30:32.278
so it's always glamorous,
but always shadowy.

01:30:32.278 --> 01:30:35.654
And then as the movie's progressing,
he gets more frontal light.

01:30:35.654 --> 01:30:36.987
The shadows disappear.

01:30:36.987 --> 01:30:38.987
They say you are good.

01:30:38.987 --> 01:30:41.695
Because he's learning who he is.

01:31:04.445 --> 01:31:07.320
The little girl in red
actually happened.

01:31:07.320 --> 01:31:11.403
Schindler on horseback watching these
people being rounded up.

01:31:13.487 --> 01:31:18.529
He did spot this little girl
in a red coat.

01:31:18.529 --> 01:31:20.695
Of all the carnage that's happening,

01:31:20.695 --> 01:31:22.821
he can't take his eyes
off this little girl

01:31:22.821 --> 01:31:24.445
meandering down the street.

01:31:24.445 --> 01:31:25.862
He couldn't take his eyes off of her

01:31:25.862 --> 01:31:28.237
and wonder why is she not being taken

01:31:28.237 --> 01:31:30.195
along with everybody else.

01:31:30.195 --> 01:31:32.654
And, of course, the answer was,
"Well, she will be taken.

01:31:32.654 --> 01:31:34.195
May not be in the next few minutes,

01:31:34.195 --> 01:31:36.570
but she's not going to survive."

01:31:43.071 --> 01:31:45.071
During the liquidation of the ghetto,

01:31:45.071 --> 01:31:47.112
when they were taking people
and putting them in trucks

01:31:47.112 --> 01:31:48.904
and shooting old people
in the streets,

01:31:48.904 --> 01:31:50.862
they were leaving her alone.

01:31:50.862 --> 01:31:53.403
Somehow, the most obvious target

01:31:53.403 --> 01:31:55.071
was not being apprehended.

01:31:55.071 --> 01:31:58.029
And, to me, it was less about
what turned Oskar Schindler,

01:31:58.029 --> 01:32:01.737
and it was more that the world
turned a blind eye on the Holocaust

01:32:01.737 --> 01:32:05.237
and the industrialized process
of wholesale murder.

01:32:05.237 --> 01:32:07.071
Can you believe this?

01:32:07.071 --> 01:32:10.654
As if I don't have enough to do,
they come up with this?

01:32:10.654 --> 01:32:14.946
I have to find every rag
buried up here and burn it.

01:32:14.946 --> 01:32:17.112
The party's over, Oskar.

01:32:17.112 --> 01:32:19.570
They're closing us down,
sending everybody to Auschwitz.

01:32:19.570 --> 01:32:20.779
- When?
- I don't know.

01:32:20.779 --> 01:32:22.153
As soon as I can arrange the shipments.

01:32:22.153 --> 01:32:26.195
Maybe 30, 40 days.
That ought to be fun.

01:32:28.862 --> 01:32:30.403
So, that little girl in red,

01:32:30.403 --> 01:32:32.821
for me, symbolizes the Holocaust

01:32:32.821 --> 01:32:35.529
and all of its monstrous evil,

01:32:35.529 --> 01:32:38.237
and no one did anything about it
when they could have.

01:32:41.821 --> 01:32:46.112
Michael Kahn: I remember I put together
a scene, very hard, emotionally.

01:32:46.112 --> 01:32:49.112
And Steven comes in that night.

01:32:49.112 --> 01:32:52.612
We went out to where he was staying

01:32:52.612 --> 01:32:54.695
and I start running the scene.

01:32:54.695 --> 01:32:58.071
And he looks at it.
"Hold on, Mike. I can't do it."

01:32:58.071 --> 01:33:01.112
He's like-- he went like,
"I can't do it.

01:33:01.112 --> 01:33:03.654
It's too tough."
And he left.

01:33:03.654 --> 01:33:06.071
I just remember getting home
and just falling apart.

01:33:06.071 --> 01:33:08.570
And Kate was on the set
with me a lot.

01:33:08.570 --> 01:33:11.029
We would cry together
many, many times.

01:33:11.029 --> 01:33:13.987
She really kept me going
through that whole production.

01:33:13.987 --> 01:33:17.112
We were four months in Kraków.
A long time.

01:33:17.112 --> 01:33:20.529
It was, emotionally, the hardest movie
I've ever made.

01:33:31.487 --> 01:33:33.987
Annette Insdorf: The film is not about

01:33:33.987 --> 01:33:37.153
the Holocaust with a capital "H."

01:33:37.153 --> 01:33:41.862
It is a particular window
into the past.

01:33:50.862 --> 01:33:53.278
And here, a mainstream director

01:33:53.278 --> 01:33:55.237
had crafted a motion picture

01:33:55.237 --> 01:33:58.529
that would in fact
finally reach a large audience,

01:33:58.529 --> 01:34:01.112
including people that simply may never
have known

01:34:01.112 --> 01:34:03.821
the word "Auschwitz."

01:34:10.862 --> 01:34:12.821
About three quarters
of the way through the shoot,

01:34:12.821 --> 01:34:15.529
Steven had this idea
about the end of the film.

01:34:15.529 --> 01:34:18.737
He wanted to fly us to Jerusalem.

01:34:18.737 --> 01:34:21.445
We would shoot a scene
at Schindler's grave.

01:34:21.445 --> 01:34:23.112
I needed there to be

01:34:23.112 --> 01:34:26.403
some testimony built into the movie

01:34:26.403 --> 01:34:29.695
that says this story actually happened.

01:34:32.570 --> 01:34:34.403
Brave thing to do.

01:34:34.403 --> 01:34:35.779
These are the real people.

01:35:05.320 --> 01:35:09.278
That was a pivotal moment
in Steven's life.

01:35:09.278 --> 01:35:11.695
He recognized he couldn't take

01:35:11.695 --> 01:35:13.487
any of the profits from the film.

01:35:13.487 --> 01:35:15.529
He wanted to give something back,

01:35:15.529 --> 01:35:18.445
so he started what became
the Shoah Foundation,

01:35:18.445 --> 01:35:22.445
documenting that oral history
and capturing history

01:35:22.445 --> 01:35:26.612
in a way that allowed people
not to forget.

01:35:26.612 --> 01:35:31.445
The Shoah Foundation
is a way of trying to hear

01:35:31.445 --> 01:35:34.987
the faintest echo
of the stories that we've lost.

01:35:34.987 --> 01:35:37.987
So, it's connected to him
as a storyteller,

01:35:37.987 --> 01:35:41.278
which is in his DNA.

01:35:41.278 --> 01:35:44.029
They started running toward the tracks
and they were shot.

01:35:44.029 --> 01:35:46.445
It was probably the last patrol
of the day.

01:35:46.445 --> 01:35:48.153
They were not supposed
to be there anymore.

01:35:48.153 --> 01:35:50.153
And of course they asked for papers,

01:35:50.153 --> 01:35:52.654
but my grandfather didn't have any.

01:35:52.654 --> 01:35:56.153
And they took them.
They took them.

01:35:58.445 --> 01:36:02.403
He's got thousands
and thousands of testimonies,

01:36:02.403 --> 01:36:03.987
and not just about the Holocaust.

01:36:03.987 --> 01:36:07.320
About Rwanda,
about Bosnia, you know?

01:36:07.320 --> 01:36:10.779
And it's amazing, this legacy
that "Schindler's List"

01:36:10.779 --> 01:36:12.695
has spawned through Steven.

01:36:30.320 --> 01:36:32.821
The experience of making
"Schindler's List"

01:36:32.821 --> 01:36:37.112
made me reconcile
with all of the reasons,

01:36:37.112 --> 01:36:42.987
the vain, glorious reasons,
I hid from my Jewishness.

01:36:42.987 --> 01:36:47.529
And it made me so proud
to be a Jew.

01:37:07.529 --> 01:37:10.737
There are periods of time
in moviemaking history

01:37:10.737 --> 01:37:14.029
where you have a collision of events

01:37:14.029 --> 01:37:15.904
that innovates and creates
something new.

01:37:15.904 --> 01:37:18.904
And "Jurassic Park"
was one of those moments.

01:37:18.904 --> 01:37:20.987
- Keep it there.
- It was the beginning

01:37:20.987 --> 01:37:22.737
of, really, the digital era

01:37:22.737 --> 01:37:26.278
where the central characters
were digitally created.

01:37:26.278 --> 01:37:28.403
No one had ever
gone there before that way.

01:37:28.403 --> 01:37:32.071
Come on!

01:37:32.071 --> 01:37:34.153
Steven said to me,

01:37:34.153 --> 01:37:38.737
"I want 28-foot to 30-foot
dinosaurs on the set

01:37:38.737 --> 01:37:40.904
that the actors can interact with,

01:37:40.904 --> 01:37:43.153
and I want them to be able to run."

01:37:43.153 --> 01:37:45.821
There were going to be
at least 60 wide shots

01:37:45.821 --> 01:37:47.779
with 60 head-to-toe dinosaurs

01:37:47.779 --> 01:37:49.737
that could not operate mechanically.

01:37:49.737 --> 01:37:51.278
They had to run.
They had to perform.

01:37:51.278 --> 01:37:52.821
They had to twist and turn.
They had to be real.

01:37:52.821 --> 01:37:56.695
So, I went off to start
to talk to experts

01:37:56.695 --> 01:38:00.195
in the area of prosthetics
and theme parks

01:38:00.195 --> 01:38:01.487
to figure out
how we're gonna do this.

01:38:01.487 --> 01:38:03.029
And, of course,
everybody said to me,

01:38:03.029 --> 01:38:05.237
"We can build these things,
but they can't run."

01:38:05.237 --> 01:38:07.153
So, I went back to Steven
and I said, "They can't run."

01:38:07.153 --> 01:38:08.862
He said, "Well, they have to run."

01:38:08.862 --> 01:38:11.153
- Okay, pushing team, move in there.
- Move in.

01:38:11.153 --> 01:38:14.487
So, all this development was going on,

01:38:14.487 --> 01:38:19.278
and simultaneous to that,
Dennis Muren called me and he said,

01:38:19.278 --> 01:38:22.278
"I'm working on something
with the computer

01:38:22.278 --> 01:38:24.612
that I think could be extraordinary."

01:38:31.071 --> 01:38:32.821
Aah!

01:38:32.821 --> 01:38:34.445
Lock the opening!

01:38:34.445 --> 01:38:36.487
And we flew up to ILM,

01:38:36.487 --> 01:38:38.195
and we went in this little office,

01:38:38.195 --> 01:38:41.487
and there was a computer,
and Dennis said, "Watch this."

01:38:41.487 --> 01:38:42.862
And he hit a button,

01:38:42.862 --> 01:38:45.153
and there was a dinosaur running.

01:38:45.153 --> 01:38:46.445
This is all in the computer.

01:38:46.445 --> 01:38:47.737
There's no models,
no cameras, or anything.

01:38:47.737 --> 01:38:49.153
When we looked at them,

01:38:49.153 --> 01:38:50.779
it was like nothing
you had ever seen before.

01:38:50.779 --> 01:38:54.071
And it was one of those primal moments

01:38:54.071 --> 01:38:57.025
where you suddenly realize, oh, my God...

01:38:57.026 --> 01:38:57.919
Oh, my God.

01:38:57.987 --> 01:38:59.445
Oh, my God, we're there.

01:38:59.445 --> 01:39:01.737
This is the future.

01:39:01.737 --> 01:39:03.695
I could not believe my eyes.

01:39:03.695 --> 01:39:05.695
Couldn't believe it.

01:39:05.695 --> 01:39:07.570
They were alive.
They were real.

01:39:07.570 --> 01:39:10.987
And it was so exciting,
we all leapt to our feet

01:39:10.987 --> 01:39:13.320
because we had never seen
anything like it.

01:39:13.320 --> 01:39:15.029
I'm not exaggerating when I say

01:39:15.029 --> 01:39:18.737
looking at that test was like the moment

01:39:18.737 --> 01:39:20.278
when sound came to movies.

01:39:20.278 --> 01:39:23.862
There was this new tool
that was going to be huge,

01:39:23.862 --> 01:39:25.071
and you could just tell.

01:39:38.612 --> 01:39:41.029
Laura Dern:
It was that much of an experiment.

01:39:41.029 --> 01:39:42.821
It felt that wild.

01:39:42.821 --> 01:39:45.946
And watching, you know,
their brains at work

01:39:45.946 --> 01:39:48.654
as we were shooting,
and how'd they adjust a shot,

01:39:48.654 --> 01:39:51.029
and how giddy Steven would get,

01:39:51.029 --> 01:39:55.570
you get caught up in the dreams he was
building and the magic.

01:39:55.570 --> 01:39:58.654
Jeff Goldblum: During the scenes where
we're first seeing the dinosaur,

01:39:58.654 --> 01:40:00.071
he puts the camera on me
and says, "Okay, Jeff,

01:40:00.071 --> 01:40:01.695
now you're looking at the thing.

01:40:01.695 --> 01:40:03.362
Okay, so look at it.

01:40:03.362 --> 01:40:05.445
Yeah, keep going. Keep rolling.

01:40:05.445 --> 01:40:07.821
Is it real?
Is it a trick?

01:40:07.821 --> 01:40:11.153
And now, for no reason at all,
you start to laugh.

01:40:11.153 --> 01:40:12.570
Keep laughing a little bit.

01:40:12.570 --> 01:40:14.487
Laugh a little bit more. That's it.

01:40:14.487 --> 01:40:16.695
Now you're stunned by it again

01:40:16.695 --> 01:40:18.362
and you just get very still.

01:40:19.904 --> 01:40:21.445
Okay, that's it.
Okay, I got what I need.

01:40:21.445 --> 01:40:23.237
Let's go. Let's move on."
Like that.

01:40:23.237 --> 01:40:25.071
He knows exactly what he needs.

01:40:25.071 --> 01:40:26.946
Weapon, you know,
guy face-- all faces,

01:40:26.946 --> 01:40:30.071
weapons, faces, and then right to Bob.

01:40:30.071 --> 01:40:33.570
- Get in there!
- "Jurassic Park" is a cautionary tale.

01:40:33.570 --> 01:40:35.779
We stand on the shoulders of giants

01:40:35.779 --> 01:40:38.654
to create the next great thing,

01:40:38.654 --> 01:40:42.320
and yet we take no responsibility
for our own creations.

01:40:42.320 --> 01:40:45.654
But it's an old, timeworn
science fiction story.

01:40:45.654 --> 01:40:48.153
It's what brought Godzilla
up from the depths.

01:40:48.153 --> 01:40:52.695
You mess with atomic energy,
you get Godzilla.

01:40:52.695 --> 01:40:55.195
Rick Carter: There's a lot of
dark themes in "Jurassic Park"

01:40:55.195 --> 01:40:58.695
that are about, you know,
unleashing Pandora's box.

01:40:58.695 --> 01:41:01.779
As it turns out, it's not
only genetic engineering,

01:41:01.779 --> 01:41:04.112
which is a theme in the movie,

01:41:04.112 --> 01:41:05.946
it's actually the digital revolution

01:41:05.946 --> 01:41:08.195
coming out right from behind the fence.

01:41:20.071 --> 01:41:22.654
Muren: This opened up
a whole new world in storytelling

01:41:22.654 --> 01:41:24.946
because you can do
anything you want.

01:41:24.946 --> 01:41:27.529
You're not limited by plastics or metal

01:41:27.529 --> 01:41:30.320
or gravity or anything.

01:41:30.320 --> 01:41:32.654
If you can imagine it,
you can do it.

01:41:32.654 --> 01:41:35.487
It was the end of an era,
no question about it.

01:41:35.487 --> 01:41:37.320
And it was the beginning
of a whole nother era.

01:41:50.821 --> 01:41:55.362
Muren: Steven is a master of putting
the effects shots in for a purpose.

01:41:55.362 --> 01:41:59.071
They're there to advance the story

01:41:59.071 --> 01:42:02.029
and to make it a different journey

01:42:02.029 --> 01:42:04.195
than anybody's seen before.

01:42:04.195 --> 01:42:05.862
And it could be a spaceship,

01:42:05.862 --> 01:42:08.403
it could be a dinosaur,
it could be an alien landing,

01:42:08.403 --> 01:42:12.195
it could be, you know, a red coat
that somebody's wearing

01:42:12.195 --> 01:42:14.612
when they're running through
a black-and-white movie.

01:42:14.612 --> 01:42:17.529
- Put the camera down.
- It's part of the emotional landscape

01:42:17.529 --> 01:42:19.278
of the story he's telling.

01:42:19.278 --> 01:42:21.362
I've never seen a single moment

01:42:21.362 --> 01:42:23.362
in a Spielberg movie in which you feel

01:42:23.362 --> 01:42:25.821
that the technology
is crushing the story.

01:42:25.821 --> 01:42:27.612
And that's really hard.

01:42:27.612 --> 01:42:30.529
I mean, these moments,
which have to feel

01:42:30.529 --> 01:42:33.862
spontaneous and real on-screen...

01:42:33.862 --> 01:42:35.821
There are 200 people around,

01:42:35.821 --> 01:42:37.862
and half of it is being
created six months later

01:42:37.862 --> 01:42:41.570
and half of it was six months before.

01:42:41.570 --> 01:42:43.320
When he made "Jurassic Park,"

01:42:43.320 --> 01:42:45.071
there was no guarantee
that it would work.

01:42:45.071 --> 01:42:47.862
That could easily
have been a disaster.

01:42:47.862 --> 01:42:52.529
But it was the right ratio
of excitement and fear for Steven.

01:42:52.529 --> 01:42:55.195
Doing a movie has to scare you
a little bit.

01:42:55.195 --> 01:42:58.237
Otherwise, you're not pushing it.

01:42:58.237 --> 01:42:59.904
"Schindler's List," which seems--

01:42:59.904 --> 01:43:01.987
clearly, that should have
been a movie now--

01:43:01.987 --> 01:43:05.403
was a three-hour black-and-white movie
about the Holocaust.

01:43:05.403 --> 01:43:10.946
In the halls of Universal,
that was-- that was crazy.

01:43:10.946 --> 01:43:12.612
That was not--

01:43:12.612 --> 01:43:15.654
who green lights that movie, you know?

01:43:15.654 --> 01:43:20.153
It was as big a risk
as CG dinosaurs. Bigger.

01:43:20.153 --> 01:43:23.278
You're saying "All my credibility
as a fantasy filmmaker--

01:43:23.278 --> 01:43:26.362
I'm gonna risk all that
on CG dinosaurs.

01:43:26.362 --> 01:43:28.821
And all my credibility
as an artist,

01:43:28.821 --> 01:43:30.529
I'm gonna put on the line, too.

01:43:30.529 --> 01:43:33.112
And I'm gonna do it all
over the course of 12 months.

01:43:33.112 --> 01:43:35.278
Fingers crossed."

01:43:35.278 --> 01:43:36.779
They seem obvious now.

01:43:36.779 --> 01:43:40.237
They were by no means guarantees.

01:43:40.237 --> 01:43:43.612
And that must have been
a really terrifying period,

01:43:43.612 --> 01:43:46.779
because you really are pushing all your
chips into the middle of the table

01:43:46.779 --> 01:43:48.654
at that point.

01:43:48.654 --> 01:43:50.445
Of course, it turned out
very well for Steven,

01:43:50.445 --> 01:43:52.612
giving him one of the strangest

01:43:52.612 --> 01:43:56.071
and most astoundingly successful years
of any film director, ever.

01:43:56.071 --> 01:43:59.029
This is my greatest
technological masterpiece--

01:43:59.029 --> 01:44:01.779
the Schpiel-Borg 2000.

01:44:01.779 --> 01:44:03.779
I spared no expense.

01:44:03.779 --> 01:44:05.403
Your play pal, Pinky,

01:44:05.403 --> 01:44:08.779
is actually an extremely advanced
cybernetic clone

01:44:08.779 --> 01:44:12.029
of one of Hollywood's
most powerful figures.

01:44:12.029 --> 01:44:14.987
And if his box office numbers
are any indication,

01:44:14.987 --> 01:44:19.195
he has the potential
to become ruler of the world.

01:44:19.195 --> 01:44:22.403
Steven is the best-known
director in the world, easily.

01:44:24.029 --> 01:44:26.612
- Listen.
- What?

01:44:31.987 --> 01:44:34.071
Steven, you've made so many films.

01:44:34.071 --> 01:44:36.779
When are you gonna do the big one?

01:44:36.779 --> 01:44:39.445
Wow. What do you mean "big one?"

01:44:39.445 --> 01:44:41.320
Something that clicks
with the public.

01:44:41.320 --> 01:44:42.654
"Something that clicks
with the public."

01:44:45.195 --> 01:44:47.362
The guy's an unmistakable force

01:44:47.362 --> 01:44:49.237
in the business of making movies.

01:44:49.237 --> 01:44:51.403
Running a company,
being an executive producer,

01:44:51.403 --> 01:44:53.362
being a producer,
and being a director.

01:44:53.362 --> 01:44:57.195
Robert Zemeckis: For a filmmaker,
you can't have a better producer

01:44:57.195 --> 01:44:59.195
than one of the greatest
directors in the world.

01:44:59.195 --> 01:45:02.529
He really nurtures
young talent coming up.

01:45:02.529 --> 01:45:05.029
It's a pretty amazing roster.

01:45:07.779 --> 01:45:10.445
He's also a major figure
in the television business.

01:45:10.445 --> 01:45:11.862
He started a restaurant.

01:45:11.862 --> 01:45:14.153
Dive!
Submarine sandwiches.

01:45:14.153 --> 01:45:16.529
The man was, like, doing
27 things at once

01:45:16.529 --> 01:45:19.821
and being perfectly
unselfconscious about it.

01:45:19.821 --> 01:45:22.362
How many hats does that man wear?
It's impossible.

01:45:22.362 --> 01:45:24.071
He once told me, "When I'm at a buffet,

01:45:24.071 --> 01:45:27.278
I like to have too much food
on my plate."

01:45:29.570 --> 01:45:32.112
Holly Hunter: He will be in production
on a movie,

01:45:32.112 --> 01:45:34.278
doing preproduction for another movie,

01:45:34.278 --> 01:45:35.946
and editing yet a third.

01:45:35.946 --> 01:45:37.904
He's got a lot of different channels.

01:45:37.904 --> 01:45:39.153
You know, me, I have a list.

01:45:39.153 --> 01:45:40.403
You know, "change light bulbs,"

01:45:40.403 --> 01:45:42.029
and that's on there for a week.

01:45:42.029 --> 01:45:44.153
No, he gets a lot accomplished.

01:45:44.153 --> 01:45:47.278
Tom Brokaw: Three of Hollywood's richest,
most powerful boy wonders

01:45:47.278 --> 01:45:50.071
teamed up today to create
a movie studio,

01:45:50.071 --> 01:45:53.195
Hollywood's first
major new independent studio

01:45:53.195 --> 01:45:54.237
in almost half a century.

01:45:56.278 --> 01:45:58.362
I don't think Steven really
fears anything.

01:45:58.362 --> 01:46:01.112
He's always ready to go
and do something new.

01:46:03.112 --> 01:46:06.320
Jeffrey Katzenberg: No one can
consume information,

01:46:06.320 --> 01:46:09.195
be in so many places
so effortlessly.

01:46:09.195 --> 01:46:12.320
It used to make me crazy
if a screenplay came in,

01:46:12.320 --> 01:46:14.445
that, you know,
we were all waiting for,

01:46:14.445 --> 01:46:16.612
no matter what,
I could never get home

01:46:16.612 --> 01:46:18.654
and get it read before him.

01:46:20.278 --> 01:46:22.403
Dustin Hoffman:
To be that talented,

01:46:22.403 --> 01:46:27.403
to be that successful
almost in a mythological way,

01:46:27.403 --> 01:46:29.112
your jaw drops.

01:46:29.112 --> 01:46:30.570
Many times you see the person

01:46:30.570 --> 01:46:35.153
incorporating their success
into their personality.

01:46:35.153 --> 01:46:38.904
There's a sense
of self-importance.

01:46:38.904 --> 01:46:41.487
And it's the opposite with Steven.

01:46:41.487 --> 01:46:44.946
Steven's like a guy who works
for Steven Spielberg.

01:46:48.904 --> 01:46:52.487
Shark!

01:46:52.487 --> 01:46:54.654
A day of pure bliss, for me,

01:46:54.654 --> 01:46:56.612
is a day where I'm with my family.

01:46:56.612 --> 01:46:59.779
I've got my eyes closed,
they're swimming in the pool,

01:46:59.779 --> 01:47:01.862
- and I just listen to their voices.
- One more time.

01:47:01.862 --> 01:47:04.237
That's great, Theo.
That was the best one.

01:47:04.237 --> 01:47:06.403
I never knew I was going
to have a big family.

01:47:06.403 --> 01:47:08.153
That took me completely by surprise.

01:47:08.153 --> 01:47:10.403
Kate never thought she'd have
a big family either.

01:47:10.403 --> 01:47:14.779
So, the natural evolution
in our life was a gift.

01:47:14.779 --> 01:47:16.654
Jessica is my oldest,

01:47:16.654 --> 01:47:19.403
and then Max, and then Theo after that,

01:47:19.403 --> 01:47:22.403
and then Sasha,
and then Sawyer,

01:47:22.403 --> 01:47:24.779
and then Mikaela,
and then Destry.

01:47:24.779 --> 01:47:26.654
Woman: Whoo-hoo!

01:47:26.654 --> 01:47:29.487
Kate is a force in my life.

01:47:29.487 --> 01:47:31.071
There's such an honesty
about her

01:47:31.071 --> 01:47:32.737
and an awareness
of the world.

01:47:32.737 --> 01:47:34.362
And I think the authenticity

01:47:34.362 --> 01:47:37.612
of the kinds of movies
I began to make

01:47:37.612 --> 01:47:40.779
after Katie and I got together

01:47:40.779 --> 01:47:44.487
had to do with bringing
a kind of truth into my life

01:47:44.487 --> 01:47:47.987
where truth began
to upstage make-believe.

01:47:47.987 --> 01:47:49.445
Okay, turn the camera on.

01:47:49.445 --> 01:47:51.695
- Roll.
- Okay, do it.

01:47:51.695 --> 01:47:53.362
Marker.

01:47:53.362 --> 01:47:54.946
You know, I've turned down

01:47:54.946 --> 01:47:58.403
a lot of very successful
movie franchises

01:47:58.403 --> 01:48:01.612
that 10 years before I would've
jumped at the chance to direct.

01:48:01.612 --> 01:48:03.695
But it wasn't the kind of legacy

01:48:03.695 --> 01:48:06.195
I want to leave behind
for my kids.

01:48:27.612 --> 01:48:29.737
Steven wanted "Saving Private Ryan"

01:48:29.737 --> 01:48:34.278
to be a different kind of very tactile
and personal war movie.

01:48:34.278 --> 01:48:36.237
We had no idea that Omaha Beach

01:48:36.237 --> 01:48:39.987
was gonna be what it was like
when we started.

01:48:39.987 --> 01:48:42.320
He did not describe
anything to us.

01:48:42.320 --> 01:48:44.237
He was playing
with our sense of confusion

01:48:44.237 --> 01:48:45.862
and panic and fear,

01:48:45.862 --> 01:48:48.112
capturing the moment
of our own shock,

01:48:48.112 --> 01:48:51.403
or our surprise,
or our own blankness.

01:48:51.403 --> 01:48:53.737
And the difference between standing
around before we're shooting

01:48:53.737 --> 01:48:55.987
and saying, "Hey, ready to do this?
Nice to meet you. Here we go.

01:48:55.987 --> 01:48:57.612
Can you swim?
You can't swim?

01:48:57.612 --> 01:49:00.278
You better, because you're
in a Steven Spielberg movie.

01:49:00.278 --> 01:49:03.695
You better..."
So, we're talking like that.

01:49:03.695 --> 01:49:05.487
And then it opened up

01:49:05.487 --> 01:49:09.821
and all the powers of physical
moviemaking went berserk.

01:49:28.320 --> 01:49:30.153
Over the side!

01:49:36.362 --> 01:49:38.487
Over the side, boys!

01:49:49.403 --> 01:49:51.821
I tried very, very hard
to put the audience

01:49:51.821 --> 01:49:55.904
as close to the experience
as I possibly knew how to do

01:49:55.904 --> 01:49:58.821
so there wouldn't ever be
a safe feeling

01:49:58.821 --> 01:50:00.445
in the audience.

01:50:00.445 --> 01:50:02.153
And when you narrow
that distance--

01:50:02.153 --> 01:50:04.654
if you're successful
in narrowing the distance,

01:50:04.654 --> 01:50:08.445
then the audience
really becomes those characters.

01:50:17.112 --> 01:50:19.529
Come on.

01:50:19.529 --> 01:50:22.695
In "Saving Private Ryan,"
Spielberg understood

01:50:22.695 --> 01:50:25.612
the expressionistic
possibilities of sound.

01:50:28.071 --> 01:50:30.779
You could hear the bullets
streaking along.

01:50:30.779 --> 01:50:33.278
You can hear them
penetrate the flesh

01:50:33.278 --> 01:50:35.278
and ravage these bodies.

01:50:35.278 --> 01:50:37.987
You felt what it was like
to have your ears ringing

01:50:37.987 --> 01:50:41.195
in the midst of this
and be completely disoriented.

01:50:48.612 --> 01:50:50.987
The sheer intensity of that scene,

01:50:50.987 --> 01:50:52.737
the visceral element,

01:50:52.737 --> 01:50:55.362
not just metaphorically,
but literally,

01:50:55.362 --> 01:50:58.862
is like nothing-- nothing
that had been put on film before.

01:51:05.237 --> 01:51:08.403
I decided to shoot the entire
Omaha Beach sequence

01:51:08.403 --> 01:51:10.237
in complete continuity,

01:51:10.237 --> 01:51:12.904
not knowing what was gonna come next.

01:51:12.904 --> 01:51:15.403
And all my cameramen
were given instruction

01:51:15.403 --> 01:51:18.779
to be spontaneous
in what they decided to shoot,

01:51:18.779 --> 01:51:21.029
just like a documentary
cameraman would.

01:51:21.029 --> 01:51:24.695
And for, like, 27 days,
we literally took the beach

01:51:24.695 --> 01:51:27.529
as filmmakers,
one yard at a time.

01:51:31.278 --> 01:51:35.071
Mama! Mama!

01:51:35.071 --> 01:51:37.112
"Saving Private Ryan" revealed

01:51:37.112 --> 01:51:39.737
certain visceral truths about war

01:51:39.737 --> 01:51:42.195
that people were not
gonna learn from books.

01:51:42.195 --> 01:51:44.779
They were not gonna learn
from documentaries.

01:51:44.779 --> 01:51:46.987
That was him at the height of his powers

01:51:46.987 --> 01:51:49.195
doing something
that nobody else could do.

01:51:49.195 --> 01:51:52.362
The first time we talked
about the movie,

01:51:52.362 --> 01:51:54.158
he said, "I can't wait to shoot that

01:51:54.159 --> 01:51:56.354
machine gun nest at
the radar installation."

01:51:56.403 --> 01:51:58.445
He had already mapped
this thing out in his mind,

01:51:58.445 --> 01:52:01.529
and when we got to the location,
there was one problem--

01:52:01.529 --> 01:52:03.487
the sun wasn't in the right place.

01:52:03.487 --> 01:52:07.071
Steven had thought
the set was built this way,

01:52:07.071 --> 01:52:08.779
but it was built this way.

01:52:08.779 --> 01:52:10.695
So, he could not shoot it,
because the sun

01:52:10.695 --> 01:52:12.779
was not going to give him
the light that he wanted.

01:52:12.779 --> 01:52:16.071
And he was mad, perhaps with himself
or perhaps with someone

01:52:16.071 --> 01:52:18.403
who didn't tell him
what the compass points were.

01:52:18.403 --> 01:52:20.654
So, he went on a walk,
and when he comes back,

01:52:20.654 --> 01:52:22.278
he says, "Okay, I know
how I'm gonna shoot it."

01:52:25.445 --> 01:52:27.487
And it's a different perspective

01:52:27.487 --> 01:52:30.487
from any other assault
that we had shot in the film.

01:52:31.987 --> 01:52:34.487
And if you're not Steven,

01:52:34.487 --> 01:52:36.487
if you don't have this lifetime

01:52:36.487 --> 01:52:39.487
of cinematic language in your head,

01:52:39.487 --> 01:52:41.487
that's a different kind of day.

01:52:41.487 --> 01:52:45.153
But because his eye
is so connected to his brain

01:52:45.153 --> 01:52:47.112
and every movie that he's ever seen

01:52:47.112 --> 01:52:48.654
and every movie that he's ever made,

01:52:48.654 --> 01:52:49.987
he just went out and said,

01:52:49.987 --> 01:52:52.403
"Here's how we're gonna
do this, and that's it."

01:52:52.403 --> 01:52:53.821
Incredible.

01:53:03.320 --> 01:53:06.821
"Saving Private Ryan"
was in honor of the veterans,

01:53:06.821 --> 01:53:10.112
and I think a bit of a homage
to my father

01:53:10.112 --> 01:53:12.362
who flew missions during WWII.

01:53:12.362 --> 01:53:15.862
He wasn't in Europe.
He was in India and Burma.

01:53:15.862 --> 01:53:18.987
When I was a kid, my dad was telling
WWII stories all the time.

01:53:18.987 --> 01:53:21.029
His veteran friends would come
over to the house

01:53:21.029 --> 01:53:22.529
and I'd listen to them tell war stories.

01:53:22.529 --> 01:53:24.403
So, WWII, that greatest generation,

01:53:24.403 --> 01:53:28.946
became something that I wished
I could be part of.

01:53:28.946 --> 01:53:31.487
Steven had a complicated relationship
with his father,

01:53:31.487 --> 01:53:35.362
but he was starting
to reconnect and realize

01:53:35.362 --> 01:53:38.195
that his first impressions
of a lot of the things he had

01:53:38.195 --> 01:53:39.737
weren't necessarily true.

01:53:39.737 --> 01:53:41.695
It was complex for me for a long time,

01:53:41.695 --> 01:53:45.237
but at least I had a art form

01:53:45.237 --> 01:53:48.071
that I could filter it through.

01:53:48.071 --> 01:53:49.403
At least I had that.

01:53:49.403 --> 01:53:53.153
If movies did anything for me, it--

01:53:53.153 --> 01:53:57.403
I've avoided therapy
because movies are my therapy.

01:54:00.612 --> 01:54:02.654
Junior?

01:54:02.654 --> 01:54:05.320
- Yes, sir.
- And this father-son obsession

01:54:05.320 --> 01:54:07.195
I've had in my movies
obviously speaks

01:54:07.195 --> 01:54:13.237
to a great deal of feelings
that I've been carrying with me

01:54:13.237 --> 01:54:15.946
that I want to unburden myself of,
and I have.

01:54:15.946 --> 01:54:19.071
Do you remember the last time we had
a quiet drink?

01:54:19.071 --> 01:54:21.320
Huh?

01:54:21.320 --> 01:54:23.654
I had a milkshake.

01:54:23.654 --> 01:54:25.821
Hmm? What did we talk about?

01:54:27.779 --> 01:54:30.320
We didn't talk.

01:54:30.320 --> 01:54:32.071
We never talked.

01:54:32.071 --> 01:54:33.529
The absent father

01:54:33.529 --> 01:54:35.529
has haunted Steven throughout his life,

01:54:35.529 --> 01:54:39.779
and he has fictionalized it
in all kinds of ways on film.

01:54:39.779 --> 01:54:42.821
It's the heart of him.

01:54:42.821 --> 01:54:44.403
Although I liked the movies,

01:54:44.403 --> 01:54:46.320
I noticed the absence of the father

01:54:46.320 --> 01:54:48.237
quite significantly.

01:54:48.237 --> 01:54:50.987
For a long time,
Steven was very mad at me.

01:54:50.987 --> 01:54:52.403
There he is.

01:54:54.987 --> 01:54:57.987
- Get a hug?
- I was hurt by it, but quietly hurt.

01:54:57.987 --> 01:55:00.487
Confusing handshake?
Kick in the teeth?

01:55:00.487 --> 01:55:02.237
I didn't broach it with Steven.

01:55:02.237 --> 01:55:06.153
I just ate it up a little bit

01:55:06.153 --> 01:55:08.320
and hurt a little bit.

01:55:08.320 --> 01:55:12.195
I thought I had lost you, boy.

01:55:12.195 --> 01:55:14.821
I thought you had too, sir.

01:55:14.821 --> 01:55:17.570
My dad and I finally
resolved our differences,

01:55:17.570 --> 01:55:22.195
and we're probably closer now
than we ever were before.

01:55:22.195 --> 01:55:24.403
When he made "Saving Private Ryan,"

01:55:24.403 --> 01:55:26.779
he said, "I made this for my dad."

01:55:26.779 --> 01:55:28.237
And that was wonderful.

01:55:28.237 --> 01:55:31.153
That made me feel warm right here.

01:55:45.987 --> 01:55:49.821
Lawrence Kasdan:
Steven has always had a big vision

01:55:49.821 --> 01:55:52.487
of what movies can be.

01:55:54.487 --> 01:55:57.403
He's an American moviemaker.

01:55:57.403 --> 01:56:01.862
And it's not starry-eyed patriotism.

01:56:01.862 --> 01:56:03.529
Animals!

01:56:03.529 --> 01:56:06.071
He is drawn to all the themes

01:56:06.071 --> 01:56:09.737
that are inherent
in the American character

01:56:09.737 --> 01:56:13.362
and the American society
and how it developed.

01:56:13.362 --> 01:56:15.362
There are people struggling

01:56:15.362 --> 01:56:18.987
in one way or another
for freedom in these movies.

01:56:18.987 --> 01:56:23.737
Give... us free.

01:56:23.737 --> 01:56:25.862
He doesn't take freedom for granted.

01:56:27.278 --> 01:56:29.570
Liberty and equality,

01:56:29.570 --> 01:56:31.946
the Constitution,

01:56:31.946 --> 01:56:33.529
and the rights of the individual.

01:56:35.071 --> 01:56:37.904
He's evolved as a filmmaker.

01:56:37.904 --> 01:56:41.403
"Amistad" and "Lincoln"
and "Bridge of Spies"

01:56:41.403 --> 01:56:43.029
are all about the rule of law.

01:56:43.029 --> 01:56:45.904
They're all about
the rights of even people

01:56:45.904 --> 01:56:49.153
who are either brought here
against their will

01:56:49.153 --> 01:56:53.904
or come here to be a soldier
in an opposing army

01:56:53.904 --> 01:56:55.570
and are caught.

01:56:55.570 --> 01:56:58.320
The law fully covers everyone.

01:56:58.320 --> 01:56:59.612
We were supposed to show

01:56:59.612 --> 01:57:01.946
he had a capable defense,
which we did.

01:57:01.946 --> 01:57:04.612
Why are you citing
the goddamn Constitution at me?

01:57:04.612 --> 01:57:06.195
Tom, if you look me in the eye

01:57:06.195 --> 01:57:08.071
and tell me we don't have grounds

01:57:08.071 --> 01:57:09.445
for an appeal, I'll drop it right now.

01:57:09.445 --> 01:57:11.695
I'm not saying that.
You know what I'm saying.

01:57:11.695 --> 01:57:13.695
Tom is saying there's a cost
to these things.

01:57:13.695 --> 01:57:15.570
That's right.

01:57:15.570 --> 01:57:18.570
A cost to both
your family and your firm.

01:57:18.570 --> 01:57:20.237
I really believe in this country,

01:57:20.237 --> 01:57:21.737
and I always have.

01:57:21.737 --> 01:57:23.946
And it just resonated
throughout my work--

01:57:23.946 --> 01:57:25.821
wanting to tell American stories,

01:57:25.821 --> 01:57:28.612
wanting to tell stories
about principled, ethical people

01:57:28.612 --> 01:57:30.445
who, against all advice

01:57:30.445 --> 01:57:33.654
and against most everyone else's
better judgment,

01:57:33.654 --> 01:57:36.529
just proceed to do the right thing.

01:57:36.529 --> 01:57:40.654
I'm sure that sounds like
I'm this kind of, you know,

01:57:40.654 --> 01:57:44.779
idealist or some sort of a patriot,

01:57:44.779 --> 01:57:46.779
but I am a patriot.

01:57:46.779 --> 01:57:49.362
And I'm somewhat of an idealist, too.

01:57:49.362 --> 01:57:52.445
Say all we done is show the world

01:57:52.445 --> 01:57:54.779
that democracy isn't chaos.

01:57:57.487 --> 01:58:01.112
That there is a great
invisible strength

01:58:01.112 --> 01:58:03.071
in a people's union.

01:58:03.071 --> 01:58:05.654
Say we've shown
that a people can endure

01:58:05.654 --> 01:58:09.403
awful sacrifice and yet cohere.

01:58:09.403 --> 01:58:12.071
Mightn't that save at least the idea
of democracy,

01:58:12.071 --> 01:58:14.445
to aspire to?

01:58:14.445 --> 01:58:17.278
Eventually to become worthy of?

01:58:17.278 --> 01:58:19.320
Daniel Day-Lewis: The first thing that
you have to overcome

01:58:19.320 --> 01:58:21.445
is the reluctance
to even approach Lincoln

01:58:21.445 --> 01:58:23.987
because he's such a mighty figure.

01:58:23.987 --> 01:58:26.821
His experience as a president
was in, you know,

01:58:26.821 --> 01:58:29.987
one of the greatest crises
that this country's ever known.

01:58:29.987 --> 01:58:32.904
And so, undoubtedly, of course,

01:58:32.904 --> 01:58:36.737
he made decisions that were
extremely unpalatable

01:58:36.737 --> 01:58:38.487
to many, many people.

01:58:38.487 --> 01:58:42.529
We are absolutely guaranteed
to lose the whole thing.

01:58:42.529 --> 01:58:45.737
We don't need a goddamned
abolition amendment.

01:58:45.737 --> 01:58:48.071
Leave the Constitution alone!

01:58:48.071 --> 01:58:50.195
...peace commissioners appear today, or--

01:58:54.278 --> 01:58:57.029
I can't listen to this anymore.

01:58:58.654 --> 01:59:01.946
I can't accomplish a goddamn thing

01:59:01.946 --> 01:59:04.403
of any human meaning or worth

01:59:04.403 --> 01:59:08.195
until we cure ourselves of slavery

01:59:08.195 --> 01:59:11.737
and end this pestilential war!

01:59:11.737 --> 01:59:15.153
And whether any of you
or anyone else knows it,

01:59:15.153 --> 01:59:17.737
I know I need this!

01:59:17.737 --> 01:59:21.237
This amendment is that cure!

01:59:21.237 --> 01:59:23.153
Steven worked a long time

01:59:23.153 --> 01:59:25.612
to find where the story was to tell it.

01:59:25.612 --> 01:59:29.445
And it took guts for Steven to
make a movie about Abraham Lincoln

01:59:29.445 --> 01:59:33.737
in which Lincoln shares top billing with
the House of Representatives.

01:59:33.737 --> 01:59:36.153
Doris Kearns Goodwin:
He had faith that if he told a story

01:59:36.153 --> 01:59:39.403
that is about democracy and it's about
messiness and politics--

01:59:39.403 --> 01:59:41.570
and people are on different sides
of the issue,

01:59:41.570 --> 01:59:43.570
and people who were Democrats then
are Republicans now,

01:59:43.570 --> 01:59:45.112
and Republicans now
were Democrats then,

01:59:45.112 --> 01:59:47.737
was pretty confusing
for people to get a sense

01:59:47.737 --> 01:59:49.403
right away of what the story was.

01:59:49.403 --> 01:59:52.112
But he somehow thought
if the American people

01:59:52.112 --> 01:59:54.529
can feel this man
and feel what he was doing,

01:59:54.529 --> 01:59:57.570
they'll see what democracy is
when it really works.

01:59:57.570 --> 01:59:59.821
A motion has been made
to bring the bill

01:59:59.821 --> 02:00:02.153
for the 13th Amendment to a vote.

02:00:02.153 --> 02:00:04.153
- Do I hear a second?
- I second the motion.

02:00:04.153 --> 02:00:06.445
So moved, so ordered.

02:00:06.445 --> 02:00:09.821
And in the end,
it's not Lincoln's triumph

02:00:09.821 --> 02:00:12.112
that's pushed to the fore in the film.

02:00:12.112 --> 02:00:13.987
I think what's really
pushed to the fore

02:00:13.987 --> 02:00:16.445
is that it's a triumph of democracy.

02:00:16.445 --> 02:00:20.737
The part assigned to me
is to raise the flag.

02:00:20.737 --> 02:00:25.654
And when up, it'll be for the people
to keep it up.

02:00:28.403 --> 02:00:29.695
That's my speech.

02:00:32.779 --> 02:00:35.654
♪ We are coming, Father Abraham ♪

02:00:35.654 --> 02:00:37.612
♪ 300,000 more ♪

02:00:37.612 --> 02:00:40.071
♪ From Mississippi's winding stream ♪

02:00:40.071 --> 02:00:42.362
♪ And from New England's shore ♪

02:00:42.362 --> 02:00:44.987
♪ We leave our ploughs... ♪

02:00:51.654 --> 02:00:54.153
Oh, yeah!

02:00:58.153 --> 02:00:59.779
Todd McCarthy: From about the time

02:00:59.779 --> 02:01:01.821
of the millennium in Spielberg's career,

02:01:01.821 --> 02:01:06.237
there is something, whether it's personal,
political, historical,

02:01:06.237 --> 02:01:10.278
that pushed him in a more adventurous
and a darker direction.

02:01:10.278 --> 02:01:12.071
I fundamentally don't buy

02:01:12.071 --> 02:01:14.654
that he has a pessimistic worldview

02:01:14.654 --> 02:01:19.071
or that he suddenly changed
and has a more dubious opinion

02:01:19.071 --> 02:01:21.821
of the human race, but still,

02:01:21.821 --> 02:01:24.695
there's been an alteration.

02:01:24.695 --> 02:01:27.195
He has been willing to go places

02:01:27.195 --> 02:01:30.320
that he would not have gone
in his earlier films.

02:01:35.320 --> 02:01:37.570
All right, Howard Marks.
Where are you?

02:01:37.570 --> 02:01:40.029
It was a very complicated
story, "Minority Report."

02:01:40.029 --> 02:01:41.654
A very dark story, actually.

02:01:41.654 --> 02:01:44.195
You know, democracy, freedom of choice,

02:01:44.195 --> 02:01:46.612
corruption.

02:01:46.612 --> 02:01:48.987
That dark, futuristic dystopian tone

02:01:48.987 --> 02:01:51.403
was so compelling for me at that time.

02:01:51.403 --> 02:01:53.362
Tennessee Williams says that artists

02:01:53.362 --> 02:01:55.570
are like the canaries in the coal mine.

02:01:55.570 --> 02:01:58.112
And Steven has an uncanny knack

02:01:58.112 --> 02:02:02.153
for feeling what's going on
in the world around him

02:02:02.153 --> 02:02:05.654
and what needs to be said
at its moment.

02:02:05.654 --> 02:02:08.904
I think he's a very present filmmaker.

02:02:08.904 --> 02:02:11.278
By mandate of the District of Columbia
Precrime Division,

02:02:11.278 --> 02:02:12.854
I'm placing you under arrest for the

02:02:12.855 --> 02:02:14.694
future murder of Sarah Marks
and Donald...

02:02:14.737 --> 02:02:18.278
The film anticipated
the whole post-9/11 mentality

02:02:18.278 --> 02:02:21.278
of arresting people
before they can commit crimes

02:02:21.278 --> 02:02:22.904
and preventive detention
and so on.

02:02:26.987 --> 02:02:28.529
But the movie that I made

02:02:28.529 --> 02:02:31.737
that was a real statement about 9/11

02:02:31.737 --> 02:02:33.071
was "War of the Worlds."

02:02:37.071 --> 02:02:40.779
For me, it began with
what would really happen

02:02:40.779 --> 02:02:42.695
if we were invaded

02:02:42.695 --> 02:02:44.612
and everything that we thought

02:02:44.612 --> 02:02:47.779
made us invulnerable to invasion

02:02:47.779 --> 02:02:48.862
was all wrong?

02:03:00.529 --> 02:03:02.654
There's a sequence
where Cruise's character

02:03:02.654 --> 02:03:05.654
runs through the streets
and the ray is turning people to dust

02:03:05.654 --> 02:03:08.987
and some of that dust is in his hair.

02:03:08.987 --> 02:03:11.153
And he comes home
and sees himself in shock

02:03:11.153 --> 02:03:14.695
and realizes that that's remains
that are in his hair.

02:03:14.695 --> 02:03:16.403
Oh!

02:03:16.403 --> 02:03:19.112
Steven handled that with great tact.

02:03:19.112 --> 02:03:21.904
9/11 was so much a part
of our national psyche,

02:03:21.904 --> 02:03:25.153
you didn't have to do much
to evoke the shock we all felt

02:03:25.153 --> 02:03:28.071
and the helplessness
we all felt at being attacked.

02:03:49.487 --> 02:03:51.612
Good afternoon.
I'm Jim McKay speaking to you

02:03:51.612 --> 02:03:54.737
live at this moment
from ABC headquarters

02:03:54.737 --> 02:03:58.071
just outside the Olympic Village
in Munich, West Germany.

02:03:58.071 --> 02:04:01.153
The peace of what is-- would've
been called the "Serene Olympics"

02:04:01.153 --> 02:04:04.779
was shattered just before dawn
this morning about 5:00.

02:04:04.779 --> 02:04:08.029
Nobody was expecting Steven Spielberg,

02:04:08.029 --> 02:04:10.654
maybe the world's
most famous Jewish artist,

02:04:10.654 --> 02:04:12.403
to weigh in on the Middle East

02:04:12.403 --> 02:04:14.237
because it's such a minefield,

02:04:14.237 --> 02:04:16.362
and Steven is not a sensationalist

02:04:16.362 --> 02:04:19.695
in the sense of wanting to create,

02:04:19.695 --> 02:04:22.445
you know, firestorms of controversy.

02:04:22.445 --> 02:04:24.904
This is building number 31.

02:04:24.904 --> 02:04:26.654
At this moment,

02:04:26.654 --> 02:04:29.862
eight or nine terrified
living human beings

02:04:29.862 --> 02:04:31.737
are being held prisoner.

02:04:31.737 --> 02:04:34.987
I felt I could not make this one-sided.

02:04:34.987 --> 02:04:39.445
And so, I knew it would be controversial
from the very get-go.

02:04:56.071 --> 02:04:59.278
Eric Bana: It was that story
of the group of Mossad agents

02:04:59.278 --> 02:05:01.821
who were assembled
to avenge the deaths

02:05:01.821 --> 02:05:04.862
of the Israeli athletes
at the Munich Olympics.

02:05:08.987 --> 02:05:13.195
It was their job to go after a list
of targeted men

02:05:13.195 --> 02:05:16.362
who were part of a terrorist group.

02:05:16.362 --> 02:05:20.320
And it was their job to, one by one,
assassinate them.

02:05:20.320 --> 02:05:23.821
Daniel Craig: This movie was trying to
affect and turn on a debate.

02:05:23.821 --> 02:05:26.904
Is vengeance the answer?
Does it actually solve anything?

02:05:26.904 --> 02:05:28.904
If you continue the cycle of violence

02:05:28.904 --> 02:05:30.737
and cycle of blood, then...

02:05:30.737 --> 02:05:33.737
that's what they'll be and nothing else.

02:05:35.904 --> 02:05:38.529
Steven was very keen
to tell a human story,

02:05:38.529 --> 02:05:42.195
that these were men
and not superheroes.

02:05:42.195 --> 02:05:45.403
Their indecision and their mistakes

02:05:45.403 --> 02:05:48.904
and their-- is the reality
of what happened, you know?

02:05:48.904 --> 02:05:51.612
Life isn't a "James Bond" movie.

02:05:51.612 --> 02:05:53.237
Are you-- are you Wael Zwaiter?

02:05:53.237 --> 02:05:55.487
He said yes already.
He already said yes.

02:05:58.737 --> 02:06:00.779
What are we doing?

02:06:04.737 --> 02:06:06.029
What do I do?

02:06:06.029 --> 02:06:08.112
Do you know why we're here?

02:06:18.987 --> 02:06:21.904
In "Munich," Spielberg is trying
to come to terms

02:06:21.904 --> 02:06:23.987
with the war against terror.

02:06:23.987 --> 02:06:28.445
And he doesn't know where he is on it.

02:06:28.445 --> 02:06:30.737
He's-- he supports it,

02:06:30.737 --> 02:06:34.487
but he's also disturbed by it.

02:06:34.487 --> 02:06:36.529
And so, that's an example

02:06:36.529 --> 02:06:39.320
of a kind of thoughtfulness
that goes into his work.

02:06:39.320 --> 02:06:43.153
I mean, he's the Hollywood equivalent
of a public intellectual.

02:06:52.320 --> 02:06:55.987
I remember when we shot
the telephone bomb sequence.

02:06:57.195 --> 02:06:58.987
In that one dolly shot,

02:06:58.987 --> 02:07:02.237
you got a complete sense of the
geography of the entire scene.

02:07:04.529 --> 02:07:07.278
It took three days to shoot the scene.

02:07:07.278 --> 02:07:10.320
Everything had to be from
points of view.

02:07:10.320 --> 02:07:12.779
There was the point of view
of the guys in the car.

02:07:12.779 --> 02:07:17.029
So now we wait for the red light.

02:07:17.029 --> 02:07:20.195
There was the point of view
of the man in the phone booth

02:07:20.195 --> 02:07:21.862
who was gonna dial the number.

02:07:21.862 --> 02:07:24.071
There was a point of view of Avner.

02:07:24.071 --> 02:07:27.195
It's a triangle of shots.

02:07:27.195 --> 02:07:29.570
Geography is one of the most
important things to me,

02:07:29.570 --> 02:07:31.862
so the audience isn't thrown into chaos

02:07:31.862 --> 02:07:33.654
trying to figure out
the story you're telling.

02:07:33.654 --> 02:07:36.403
The audience needs to be
clearer than you.

02:07:38.779 --> 02:07:40.695
- Is the truck blocking the signal?
- No.

02:07:40.695 --> 02:07:42.195
Will the remote still work?

02:07:42.195 --> 02:07:43.862
I can create suspense

02:07:43.862 --> 02:07:47.237
if the audience knows
where all the players are,

02:07:47.237 --> 02:07:48.821
and they know what the stakes are,

02:07:48.821 --> 02:07:51.112
and they know that there's
a ticking clock.

02:07:51.112 --> 02:07:53.487
Like the mom and daughter
that get into the car

02:07:53.487 --> 02:07:56.779
and then wind up returning
because she forgot the glasses.

02:08:05.529 --> 02:08:07.071
The suspense of that sequence

02:08:07.071 --> 02:08:09.529
is letting the audience
know geographically

02:08:09.529 --> 02:08:12.071
where everybody is at all times.

02:08:12.071 --> 02:08:15.029
Allô? Allô?

02:08:17.362 --> 02:08:18.737
Allô?

02:08:37.278 --> 02:08:38.320
Stop!

02:08:38.320 --> 02:08:40.821
Stop, stop. Abort.

02:08:44.153 --> 02:08:46.028
You're in the hands of somebody who

02:08:46.029 --> 02:08:48.225
will always show you
what you need to see

02:08:48.278 --> 02:08:52.029
in order to understand, on a
narrative level, what's happening.

02:08:52.029 --> 02:08:54.112
And you'll also see a lot of things

02:08:54.112 --> 02:08:56.695
that will help you understand
on deeper levels as well.

02:08:56.695 --> 02:09:02.278
And that sort of narrative device
that's in his head

02:09:02.278 --> 02:09:06.362
is, you know, I think
almost without precedent.

02:09:12.153 --> 02:09:14.195
- Oui?
- Mahmoud Hamshari?

02:09:14.195 --> 02:09:15.362
Yes.

02:09:22.362 --> 02:09:25.946
We talked a great deal
about the politics

02:09:25.946 --> 02:09:27.987
of making a movie like this.

02:09:27.987 --> 02:09:30.445
How do you make a film that allows

02:09:30.445 --> 02:09:32.320
for the possibility of understanding

02:09:32.320 --> 02:09:35.987
why these men who murdered the athletes

02:09:35.987 --> 02:09:37.153
did what they did?

02:09:37.153 --> 02:09:40.695
Not in any way to excuse it,

02:09:40.695 --> 02:09:43.654
but to try and comprehend it.

02:09:43.654 --> 02:09:47.362
You kill Jews, and the world feels bad
for them and thinks you're animals.

02:09:47.362 --> 02:09:49.821
Yes, but then the world will see

02:09:49.821 --> 02:09:51.695
how they've made us into animals.

02:09:51.695 --> 02:09:53.195
They'll start to ask questions

02:09:53.195 --> 02:09:55.195
about the conditions in our cages.

02:09:55.195 --> 02:09:58.029
The movie was perceived to be suffering

02:09:58.029 --> 02:09:59.695
from a sense of moral equivalence,

02:09:59.695 --> 02:10:03.237
which is really the bravest thing
about the movie.

02:10:03.237 --> 02:10:07.737
It's looking for aspects of humanity
on both sides of this conflict.

02:10:07.737 --> 02:10:11.362
Ambiguity is something that you don't
normally associate with Spielberg's films,

02:10:11.362 --> 02:10:14.570
and "Munich" is the film
where he went the furthest

02:10:14.570 --> 02:10:17.570
in the bluntness and the ferocity

02:10:17.570 --> 02:10:19.654
with which he approached that subject.

02:10:19.654 --> 02:10:21.862
Did we accomplish anything at all?

02:10:21.862 --> 02:10:24.695
Every man we killed has been
replaced by worse!

02:10:24.695 --> 02:10:27.612
Why cut my fingernails?
They'll grow back.

02:10:27.612 --> 02:10:31.445
Did we kill to replace the terrorist
leadership or the Palestinian leadership?

02:10:31.445 --> 02:10:33.237
You tell me what we've done.

02:10:33.237 --> 02:10:36.987
You killed them for the sake of a
country you now choose to abandon.

02:10:36.987 --> 02:10:39.403
The end of this film
is not celebratory--

02:10:39.403 --> 02:10:41.445
rejoicing in the death of the enemy.

02:10:41.445 --> 02:10:43.153
It is incredibly quiet,

02:10:43.153 --> 02:10:44.737
and only on the second viewing

02:10:44.737 --> 02:10:46.654
did I realize the Twin Towers

02:10:46.654 --> 02:10:48.445
are revealed at the end.

02:10:50.570 --> 02:10:52.779
We did several takes of that scene

02:10:52.779 --> 02:10:55.403
without having that space in the frame,

02:10:55.403 --> 02:10:56.904
and then we did one take

02:10:56.904 --> 02:10:58.654
with having that space in the frame,

02:10:58.654 --> 02:11:02.071
knowing that he would put the Towers in.

02:11:02.071 --> 02:11:05.112
Steven knew that he's making
a controversial movie.

02:11:05.112 --> 02:11:07.112
He just didn't want
to push the boundaries.

02:11:07.112 --> 02:11:08.570
But then at the end, he realized,

02:11:08.570 --> 02:11:10.570
"You know what?
I'm already doing it.

02:11:10.570 --> 02:11:14.570
Why not just go and say
what I want to say, you know?"

02:11:18.029 --> 02:11:21.570
I made the choice because
I wanted people to say

02:11:21.570 --> 02:11:23.445
"Munich" is the context

02:11:23.445 --> 02:11:26.612
for problems that exist in today's world

02:11:26.612 --> 02:11:30.195
and basically are threatening
to all of us.

02:11:30.195 --> 02:11:34.112
You know, history is its own reminder

02:11:34.112 --> 02:11:38.278
of how bad things can get.

02:11:38.278 --> 02:11:41.529
And if we don't solve these problems,

02:11:41.529 --> 02:11:43.529
they accumulate.

02:11:43.529 --> 02:11:45.445
And you can't--
there's no rug big enough

02:11:45.445 --> 02:11:47.278
to sweep these problems under.

02:11:47.278 --> 02:11:50.570
And eventually,
something is going to happen.

02:11:50.570 --> 02:11:53.529
And so, "Munich" is a prayer for peace,

02:11:53.529 --> 02:11:55.278
but peace the hard way.

02:11:55.278 --> 02:11:58.320
You know, peace by discovering
within yourself

02:11:58.320 --> 02:12:00.862
your moral high ground.

02:12:07.112 --> 02:12:09.029
All my films come
from the part of myself

02:12:09.029 --> 02:12:11.112
that I really can't articulate.

02:12:11.112 --> 02:12:13.946
I certainly have intuitive facilities,

02:12:13.946 --> 02:12:16.821
but I don't really analyze those
or don't really question them.

02:12:16.821 --> 02:12:19.195
It's like looking
a gift horse in the mouth,

02:12:19.195 --> 02:12:22.237
and I'm almost superstitious
that if I start to question that,

02:12:22.237 --> 02:12:24.445
it's gonna, you know, fly away.

02:12:24.445 --> 02:12:27.153
I don't think there's
any doubt that Steven's work

02:12:27.153 --> 02:12:29.779
deals with specific themes in his life,

02:12:29.779 --> 02:12:33.237
which makes him
a real personal filmmaker.

02:12:33.237 --> 02:12:38.029
Do you understand what we are saying
to you, Frank?

02:12:38.029 --> 02:12:41.695
Your father and I are getting a divorce.

02:12:41.695 --> 02:12:43.570
And his express through the images,

02:12:43.570 --> 02:12:46.153
through the choice of story
and how he deals with character.

02:12:50.529 --> 02:12:52.403
All of Steven's sensibilities

02:12:52.403 --> 02:12:56.153
were right in tune
with this young man's journey.

02:12:57.695 --> 02:12:59.737
You're immediately with this kid,

02:12:59.737 --> 02:13:01.195
and no matter what he does,

02:13:01.195 --> 02:13:03.278
you know he's searching
for some way back

02:13:03.278 --> 02:13:06.362
to repairing this torn household.

02:13:06.362 --> 02:13:10.029
- Have you tried to call her?
- No.

02:13:10.029 --> 02:13:13.029
Why-- why don't
you call her right now?

02:13:13.029 --> 02:13:14.946
Dad, why don't you call her right now?
Here.

02:13:14.946 --> 02:13:16.737
Dad, just call her.

02:13:16.737 --> 02:13:18.821
Call her for me. You call her.

02:13:18.821 --> 02:13:21.737
You tell her I have two first-class
tickets to go see her son--

02:13:21.737 --> 02:13:24.195
Your mother's married now
to my friend Jack Barnes.

02:13:24.195 --> 02:13:27.570
- They have a house in Long Island.
- Oh, no.

02:13:27.570 --> 02:13:29.403
So often in Spielberg's movies

02:13:29.403 --> 02:13:31.071
the relationships that matter

02:13:31.071 --> 02:13:33.612
are the relationships
between parent and children

02:13:33.612 --> 02:13:37.237
or members of a family
or members of a community

02:13:37.237 --> 02:13:40.487
bound by affection
and loyalty and responsibility.

02:13:40.487 --> 02:13:43.278
It's a huge theme that comes up again
and again and again

02:13:43.278 --> 02:13:45.570
in different phases of his own life

02:13:45.570 --> 02:13:47.487
and in different stories.

02:13:50.112 --> 02:13:51.862
Whoa! Hey!

02:13:51.862 --> 02:13:54.071
Ronnie, hold it. Hold it. Wa--

02:13:54.071 --> 02:13:55.112
Hold it.

02:13:57.278 --> 02:13:59.445
Family is a big element in my life,

02:13:59.445 --> 02:14:01.445
which is why so many of my stories

02:14:01.445 --> 02:14:06.987
are about separation
and then reunification.

02:14:06.987 --> 02:14:10.987
Even "Lincoln" is about separation
and reunification.

02:14:25.987 --> 02:14:27.445
Barry!

02:14:27.445 --> 02:14:29.529
I've made a lot of movies

02:14:29.529 --> 02:14:33.320
about a family disintegrating

02:14:33.320 --> 02:14:38.112
and then a family finding common ground
to reunite.

02:14:45.362 --> 02:14:48.570
There's a sense that everything,
including the natural world,

02:14:48.570 --> 02:14:52.112
conspires to pull people

02:14:52.112 --> 02:14:55.237
or beings apart from one another

02:14:55.237 --> 02:14:57.946
and then to return them.

02:14:57.946 --> 02:14:59.570
It's like Shakespeare's romances.

02:14:59.570 --> 02:15:05.570
There's a deep faith in his work that...

02:15:05.570 --> 02:15:09.195
what's lost will in some way
be restored.

02:15:09.195 --> 02:15:11.153
And I think he is searching for that

02:15:11.153 --> 02:15:14.862
in almost all the films that he's made.

02:15:18.821 --> 02:15:21.237
Now slowly.

02:15:21.237 --> 02:15:23.112
My mom and dad
have a relationship today

02:15:23.112 --> 02:15:25.529
which a writer in a storybook

02:15:25.529 --> 02:15:27.862
would be accused of exaggeration.

02:15:27.862 --> 02:15:30.403
I feel very lucky that
after all these years apart,

02:15:30.403 --> 02:15:33.654
my parents spend quality time
with each other.

02:15:33.654 --> 02:15:37.195
If you look at the first 18 years

02:15:37.195 --> 02:15:39.862
of Steve's life and now, current day,

02:15:39.862 --> 02:15:42.737
you would not know that there was a
huge chunk in the middle,

02:15:42.737 --> 02:15:44.445
that there was a divorce
and a separation,

02:15:44.445 --> 02:15:47.195
a lot of tears, and another man,
and another wife,

02:15:47.195 --> 02:15:50.487
and, you know, it looks like we were
one continuous, happy family.

02:15:50.487 --> 02:15:52.570
We just lost the reels
to the home movies

02:15:52.570 --> 02:15:54.112
in the middle of life.

02:15:54.112 --> 02:15:56.654
Now she's back in love with me.

02:15:56.654 --> 02:15:57.862
Isn't that nice?

02:15:59.529 --> 02:16:03.403
Oh, Leah.

02:16:05.529 --> 02:16:07.612
Janusz, it'd be a better two-shot.

02:16:07.612 --> 02:16:10.570
If Dougie is here, okay,
then it's not such a spread.

02:16:10.570 --> 02:16:14.278
- So, it's not a single. It's over here.
- No, no, it's a single.

02:16:14.278 --> 02:16:17.445
When we start pulling back,
Dougie comes into the shot sooner.

02:16:17.445 --> 02:16:18.695
And then we continue with the move?

02:16:18.695 --> 02:16:19.987
Yeah, we continue with the move,

02:16:19.987 --> 02:16:21.779
but right now it looks like

02:16:21.779 --> 02:16:24.195
- there's nothing in the center
but the window.
- Got you.

02:16:24.195 --> 02:16:27.695
Steven loves to be a part
of a big gang of people

02:16:27.695 --> 02:16:30.362
and the company of filmmakers
who are making a movie.

02:16:30.362 --> 02:16:32.695
It's a big, great club.
It's a big, great family.

02:16:32.695 --> 02:16:36.779
- Tom, action.
- I think it defines Steven's filmmaking

02:16:36.779 --> 02:16:38.445
in many, many different ways

02:16:38.445 --> 02:16:42.821
because Steven is grounded
and feels very safe

02:16:42.821 --> 02:16:46.112
inside an environment with family.

02:16:46.112 --> 02:16:48.403
He likes close relationships

02:16:48.403 --> 02:16:51.737
with a few people who he trusts

02:16:51.737 --> 02:16:54.278
and he can open his life up to.

02:16:54.278 --> 02:16:56.612
And then he's very reluctant
to have anybody leave.

02:16:56.612 --> 02:16:58.779
That's it right there.
It looks great.

02:16:58.779 --> 02:17:00.612
We work for Steven.

02:17:00.612 --> 02:17:03.946
He's the boss, but he encourages
people with talent

02:17:03.946 --> 02:17:06.654
to use the talent,
to be brave with it,

02:17:06.654 --> 02:17:08.153
to take risks,

02:17:08.153 --> 02:17:10.695
because he wants to be
stimulated as a filmmaker,

02:17:10.695 --> 02:17:12.987
but those who he works with,
you know.

02:17:12.987 --> 02:17:15.403
And that's a really good quality
in a filmmaker.

02:17:15.403 --> 02:17:17.320
He's very collaborative.

02:17:17.320 --> 02:17:19.320
He uses his people over and over again
on the films

02:17:19.320 --> 02:17:21.487
because we already speak
a shorthand to each other.

02:17:21.487 --> 02:17:23.946
- We've all worked together.
- And they'd come on to full size...

02:17:23.946 --> 02:17:25.904
He understands that people
and can serve him

02:17:25.904 --> 02:17:28.362
and how to synchronize
his wishes with your own.

02:17:28.362 --> 02:17:30.195
He would've made a great general.

02:17:30.195 --> 02:17:32.445
If you could say that a film unit

02:17:32.445 --> 02:17:35.153
can be like a Special Forces film crew,

02:17:35.153 --> 02:17:36.529
that's what he has.

02:17:36.529 --> 02:17:39.153
His team works so fast,

02:17:39.153 --> 02:17:42.612
so hard getting through
a lot every day.

02:17:42.612 --> 02:17:44.403
Everybody on their feet, applauding.

02:17:44.403 --> 02:17:45.987
And I think you could come to grief

02:17:45.987 --> 02:17:47.862
very, very quickly on Steven's set

02:17:47.862 --> 02:17:49.821
if you weren't very well prepared.

02:17:49.821 --> 02:17:51.195
Everyone has to be.

02:17:51.195 --> 02:17:53.487
And that creates incredible energy.

02:17:56.445 --> 02:18:00.112
I work with my peeps,
and I have for decades.

02:18:00.112 --> 02:18:02.153
I mean, I don't know
what I would do without them.

02:18:02.153 --> 02:18:05.237
Roll sound.
Roll!

02:18:06.654 --> 02:18:09.112
I can't really have sanity

02:18:09.112 --> 02:18:11.695
unless I have familiarity.

02:18:11.695 --> 02:18:13.612
And it's just an extraordinary family

02:18:13.612 --> 02:18:16.737
that I've been able to assemble
over all these years.

02:18:16.737 --> 02:18:19.195
I love being part of his tapestry,

02:18:19.195 --> 02:18:21.445
so to speak, you know,
like "Fiddler on the Roof."

02:18:21.445 --> 02:18:24.654
♪ After 37 years, it's nice to know... ♪
You know?

02:18:24.654 --> 02:18:27.529
Michael Kahn and I are blood brothers.

02:18:27.529 --> 02:18:30.195
He started with me on
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind,"

02:18:30.195 --> 02:18:34.695
and except for one time, he's edited
every movie I made since then.

02:18:34.695 --> 02:18:37.862
Janusz Kaminski has done everything
since "Schindler's List."

02:18:37.862 --> 02:18:41.862
But John Williams
is my oldest collaboration,

02:18:41.862 --> 02:18:45.487
and I depend on Johnny more than
I've depended on anybody

02:18:45.487 --> 02:18:47.946
to rewrite my movies musically

02:18:47.946 --> 02:18:51.904
and put them a rung higher
than I ever could reach.

02:18:51.904 --> 02:18:54.445
You know, if I had to go back and recast

02:18:54.445 --> 02:18:57.570
the creative team surrounding me,

02:18:57.570 --> 02:19:00.987
I wouldn't be able to work
as often as I do.

02:19:00.987 --> 02:19:02.403
It'd be impossible.

02:19:04.904 --> 02:19:08.029
Steven looks at movies constantly

02:19:08.029 --> 02:19:10.320
and over and over and over again,

02:19:10.320 --> 02:19:14.153
referencing shots and framing and ideas.

02:19:14.153 --> 02:19:16.862
That's something Steven does
all the time.

02:19:20.695 --> 02:19:23.403
Great filmmakers' works
live on to create

02:19:23.403 --> 02:19:26.904
tremendous moments of inspiration.

02:19:26.904 --> 02:19:29.737
And so, one of the films
I still see every year

02:19:29.737 --> 02:19:31.654
is "Lawrence of Arabia."

02:19:39.612 --> 02:19:42.695
The shots, the sheer vistas,

02:19:42.695 --> 02:19:46.029
and the portrait
of such a complex character,

02:19:46.029 --> 02:19:48.153
it's pure moviemaking.

02:19:48.153 --> 02:19:49.737
Hey!

02:19:49.737 --> 02:19:53.278
Hey! Hey! Hey!

02:20:00.029 --> 02:20:01.946
Who are you?

02:20:03.987 --> 02:20:06.987
Who are you?

02:20:06.987 --> 02:20:08.695
Steven has always wanted to work

02:20:08.695 --> 02:20:12.320
in a kind of big, you know,
historical canvass like that,

02:20:12.320 --> 02:20:15.112
and it took many movies
before he accomplished

02:20:15.112 --> 02:20:19.112
that level of masterly filmmaking.

02:20:19.112 --> 02:20:21.821
Many years ago, Pauline Kael
gave me a really great review

02:20:21.821 --> 02:20:23.987
on "Sugarland Express,"
but she said,

02:20:23.987 --> 02:20:26.570
"Whatever's on the surface
might be all that is there.

02:20:26.570 --> 02:20:28.071
There may be nothing behind that."

02:20:28.071 --> 02:20:30.320
And she was absolutely right.

02:20:30.320 --> 02:20:33.695
I hadn't grown up yet
through the movies.

02:20:33.695 --> 02:20:35.862
That was going to come in time.

02:20:42.362 --> 02:20:46.153
Take a look at what he's done
over close to 50 years.

02:20:48.612 --> 02:20:51.112
There's certainly a lot of variety.

02:20:53.320 --> 02:20:57.612
There are some things he's done
that haven't worked,

02:20:57.612 --> 02:21:00.654
but there is absolutely
nobody like him

02:21:00.654 --> 02:21:03.529
and no film career trajectory

02:21:03.529 --> 02:21:07.237
that is anything like his
in the history of film.

02:21:07.237 --> 02:21:11.362
He speaks cinema
as if it's his native language.

02:21:11.362 --> 02:21:14.153
He is so fluent in it
that he does things

02:21:14.153 --> 02:21:16.195
that nobody else
would dare to do

02:21:16.195 --> 02:21:18.612
and they are instantly recognizable

02:21:18.612 --> 02:21:21.737
as things that are purely his.

02:21:21.737 --> 02:21:25.695
He has a dynamic sense
of real filmmaking.

02:21:25.695 --> 02:21:27.403
I'm talking about filmmaking of--

02:21:27.403 --> 02:21:30.362
in the great narrative tradition
of American cinema.

02:21:31.529 --> 02:21:32.946
Steven was blessed

02:21:32.946 --> 02:21:35.237
in that he could be commercial

02:21:35.237 --> 02:21:37.112
and he could do art.

02:21:37.112 --> 02:21:39.403
That's why I always compare him

02:21:39.403 --> 02:21:40.987
to a kind of George Gershwin,

02:21:40.987 --> 02:21:43.570
because Gershwin could write
a Broadway show

02:21:43.570 --> 02:21:45.987
or he could write "Concerto in F."

02:21:45.987 --> 02:21:48.737
He could do both,
and very few people can do both.

02:21:48.737 --> 02:21:50.612
And Steven can do both.

02:21:50.612 --> 02:21:53.570
And that's a talent
you have to be born with.

02:21:56.071 --> 02:21:57.862
You think of that young kid in Arizona,

02:21:57.862 --> 02:21:59.237
in the desert, watching movies,

02:21:59.237 --> 02:22:01.445
watching television incessantly,

02:22:01.445 --> 02:22:04.612
one day sneaking his way
into a studio,

02:22:04.612 --> 02:22:06.904
and manifesting his own destiny.

02:22:06.904 --> 02:22:09.737
It's a pretty fantastic Hollywood story.

02:22:11.612 --> 02:22:14.487
He's found a way to take
his view of the world,

02:22:14.487 --> 02:22:19.153
his wishful thinking, his optimism,

02:22:19.153 --> 02:22:23.237
and also his uncanny sense
of the thrill,

02:22:23.237 --> 02:22:24.946
and sort of galvanize
the whole thing

02:22:24.946 --> 02:22:27.737
into whatever the story is
he's telling.

02:22:27.737 --> 02:22:30.112
It's authentically him.

02:22:32.737 --> 02:22:34.612
Steven has a part of him

02:22:34.612 --> 02:22:36.612
that wants to see something good

02:22:36.612 --> 02:22:38.320
in the darkest of the dark

02:22:38.320 --> 02:22:41.112
or that wants to just have a playtime.

02:22:45.654 --> 02:22:48.987
And there may be people
who say he's not edgy enough

02:22:48.987 --> 02:22:53.112
or he's not bitter enough,
he's not quirky enough,

02:22:53.112 --> 02:22:55.612
or he's not dark enough,

02:22:55.612 --> 02:22:58.821
but when it's all over
and said and done,

02:22:58.821 --> 02:23:02.821
what Steven has left is enormous.

02:23:04.487 --> 02:23:07.987
To have both humor
and suspense

02:23:07.987 --> 02:23:10.529
and adventure and heart

02:23:10.529 --> 02:23:14.320
through his grand eyes
of storytelling

02:23:14.320 --> 02:23:17.737
is a hell of a good thing.

02:23:17.737 --> 02:23:21.612
Steven still has an enormous appetite

02:23:21.612 --> 02:23:23.821
for the work that he does.

02:23:23.821 --> 02:23:26.071
It's quite a rare thing.

02:23:26.071 --> 02:23:29.487
You know, we all have,
probably, a shelf life.

02:23:31.487 --> 02:23:34.737
Yes, we probably go
past that shelf life,

02:23:34.737 --> 02:23:37.904
most of us,
without even knowing it.

02:23:37.904 --> 02:23:42.362
But in his case, I think, till the day
he dies, he'll be doing work

02:23:42.362 --> 02:23:47.695
that he feels absolutely
viscerally compelled to do.