All language subtitles for Spielberg.2017.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-monkee

Steven Spielberg: I started making
movies when I was a young kid,

but I remember the time I almost gave up
my dream of being a movie director.

I must have been 16.

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

and everybody was talking about it.

I never sat in a fancy
theater seat before.

Premium ticket price,
70mm projection,

stereophonic sound.

And when the film was over,

I wanted to not be a director anymore

because the bar was too high.

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

when he was first given the robes

and he thought he was alone.

And he walked around laughing

and looking at his shadow
where the diaphanous robe

he was holding out
was actually imprinted

on the sand in shadow.

It was a great moment.

And then later, when they route
the retreating Turks,

you see him again covered in gore.

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

in his pristine days, in his glory days.

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

It was the first time,
seeing a movie,

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

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

That David Lean created a portraiture,

surrounded the portrait with a mural

of scope and epic action,

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

is "Who am I"?

I had such a profound reaction
to the filmmaking,

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

I saw the film a week after that.

And I saw the film a week after that.

And I realized that
there was no going back,

that this was going to be
what I was gonna do

or I was gonna die trying.

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

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

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

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

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

Go right.

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

Right there would be good.

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

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

I never heard the lines spoken before.

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

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

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

And every single time,
it's the same.

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

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

The more I'm feeling confident

and secure about something,

the less I'm gonna put out.

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

in getting the story told,"

I'm gonna work overtime
to meet the challenge

and get the job done.

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

And so, I hate the feeling
of being nervous,

but I need to feel
in this moment

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

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

The more I feel backed into a corner,

the more rewarding it becomes

when I figure my way out
of the corner.

I love it.
Next shot.

Good.

- Did you see that?
- Yes.

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

the word around town
and in the "LA Times"

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

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

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

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

when they first started, so...

The script was never locked.

We were rewriting the script

12 hours before we were shooting
what we just wrote.

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

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

Guys, we can't shoot right now.

- Hold on.
- Hold on.

This is my second day at sea

and I have 54 more days to go.

And if I survive this,

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

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

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

They would do it on the back lake.

They would do it in a studio tank.

They would make miniature boats.

They would--
everything would be so easy

that you would never get cold or wet.

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

Roll sound.

This was supposed to be a thriller

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

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

That needs a level of authenticity

that I thought shooting it
in the back lot

at Universal in North Hollywood
would not give it.

So, to me, there was no going back.

It had to be shot in the ocean.

I thought it was gonna be a cakewalk,

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

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

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

or how you can't get anything to match.

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

I didn't think we'd ever finish.

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

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

and it was technology
over art every single day.

We'd get a shot, art was there,

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

Just trying to hold a whole movie story
in my head

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

I have to see it before I film it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It happens to all of us.

You've gotta guard that secret
with your life.

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

Hide that from everybody,

or you'll lose the respect of everyone."

Marker.

- Good blood.
- And... ready?

- And action, Roy.
- Slow ahead.

I can go slow ahead.

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

And down.

Absolutely everything was falling apart.

The first time we tested the shark,
it sunk.

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

Like that.

I knew that it's gonna take

three or four weeks
to rebuild the shark,

and so we'd have to make up
something else

that didn't exactly show the shark

but gave the sense the shark was near.

Bring it around after him!

The barrels were a godsend,

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

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

and the script was filled with "shark."

Shark here, shark there,
shark everywhere.

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

John Williams: If the shark had been
available visually,

it might have changed
the whole psychology

of the experience.

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

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

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

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

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

by how we manage these notes,

just very few notes.

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

It just scares the crap out of you.

Charlie, take my word for it!

Don't look back!
Swim, Charlie!

Swim!
Come on, Charlie!

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

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

Come on, a little more, Charlie.
Attaboy.

Come here, Charlie.
Attaboy. Attaboy.

David Edelstein: It is a perfect
exercise in suspense

with technique that any other filmmaker
would kill for.

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

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

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

on the edge of your seat.

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

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

J. Hoberman: He certainly
likes torturing the audience.

Has he ever been in analysis?

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

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

Everything scared me
when I was a kid.

Everything.

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

I had a tree out my window
that was terrifying.

It was just terrifying.

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

I was filled with so much fear

that I needed to exorcise some of that.

And what better audience to exorcise
myself of my demons

than my three sisters.

He would lock us
in the closet with a skull,

which he had dripped
different colors of wax all over.

It almost looked like blood.

I'd blindfold them one at a time,

bring them into the closet.

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

They'd take their blindfold off,

and I would just sit there
listening to them screaming.

I mean, telling this story now...

I still think it was pretty cool.

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

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

At first, he just scared us.

But through his movies,

he gets to scare the shit
out of everybody now.

Dan Rather: The blockbuster movie

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

a tale of a murderous white shark
on the loose.

And that movie's release was well timed

for maximum impact
during the vacation season,

and some people who have seen it

are now seeing phantom sharks
every time they go near the water.

Scorsese: I remember the night
"Jaws" opened.

I was with Steven.
He said, "Let's go and see the lines."

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

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

This is gonna be a major change."

Janet Maslin: I was with him in the car

and he was really, really nervous
but excited.

And the car went around the corner,

and there was the line
went around the corner,

and then the car kept going,
and the line kept going.

And he was absolutely beside himself.

You know, it was
this instant breakthrough.

It was like balloons were exploding
inside of this car.

And his whole life changed
in that couple of minutes.

And he was 25 years old
or something.

"Jaws" went triple its budget

and it went about two and a half times
its schedule.

We wound up shooting
the movie in 159 days.

The film was originally
scheduled for 55 days.

But my hubris was I actually thought

I could shoot the film in 55 days.

Steven shook the very bones
of Hollywood.

"Jaws" made more money

than any film had ever made
up to that time.

The success of that changed my life.

You know, it gave me final cut.

It gave me a chance to pick and choose

the movies I directed
from that moment on.

So "Jaws" was a free pass
into my future.

I want you to meet
a filmmaker now who has taken

the movie-going public
and shaken it to its very roots.

- Oh, boy!
- Aren't you excited?

- And everybody loves it.
- Have you seen it?

Dinah Shore:
Please welcome Mr. Steven Spielberg.

When did you first really get interested
in movies?

When I was a bad little kid.

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

- That was the whole thing?
- Very early starter, yeah.

Not-- I didn't take it seriously.

I did it-- like some people paint

and some people like to, you know,
drive little cars,

and I liked to make little movies.

I didn't realize there was 50 years
of filmmaking before me.

And I lived in Phoenix, Arizona,

where you can listen to cactus grow
if you have nothing better to do.

- Yeah.
- And I took a movie camera

and I was learning sort of the ABCs
as I went along,

but it was just fun,
it was something to do.

I really wanted my childhood to be

sort of the pie-in-the-sky,
Norman Rockwell American Dream.

My dad was this computer genius
that was on the team that invented

the first commercial data processing
machine at RCA back in 1950,

and so my dad was headhunted a lot and
went from company to company.

Like Army brats,
we moved from place to place.

But most of my formative years
took place in Phoenix, Arizona.

My father was the American man
who worked very hard.

Sometimes worked six days a week
and he came home late at night.

His career demanded a lot of time away
from the family.

And my mom was Peter Pan.

She was a sibling, not a parent,

because she was a best friend,

not a primary caregiver.

And she got into trouble
like we got into trouble.

Anne: Steve had a feeling
that family should be

like "Father Knows Best,"

but we were not the usual family.

We just kind of were bohemians
growing up in suburbia.

I went to a pet store one day,
and there was a monkey

sitting in a cage like this,
fetal position.

And the shopkeeper said
the monkey was dying.

He had been taken away from his mother
and he was depressed.

So, I come home, driving my jeep

with a big cage in the back
and a monkey in the cage.

And I remember the kids freaked out.

They were so scared.

Steve said, "You know,
in a normal household,

kids say, 'Can we have a monkey?'

And the mother says, 'Are you crazy?'"

You know, when I hear my stories about

the things I've done, I think,
"That's crazy."

Susan Lacy: Did you think she was crazy?

I liked the monkey.

As a child, I spent a lot of my time
watching television,

or listening to soundtrack albums,

or just sitting around,
looking at the clouds.

My dad was always on me for that.

He did not like me getting Cs,

but school was not a place
I was really drawn to.

Nancy: Steve was a kid that was
sort of watchful and tentative

and in some ways hesitant.

You know, he wasn't like the normal kids
in the neighborhood.

He wasn't the muscle guy.

You know, he got bullied a lot.

That was tough.

Most of my demons
were self-inflicted wounds.

They were things inside myself.

The way I saw myself.

I didn't have a lot
of high esteem for myself,

you know, growing up.

I just was a lonely guy.

J.J. Abrams:
I think that explained a lot

of why and how he was compelled
to make movies.

It was not just a means of expression,

but it was a means of escape,

and it was a means of sometimes
making friends with people

that you couldn't otherwise,
or getting to hang out

with girls that you might not
be able to otherwise,

or just finding a way to have meaning.

The camera was my pen.

I wrote my stories through the lens.

And when I was able to say
"action" and "cut,"

I wrested control of my life.

I love films like
the "Sands of Iwo Jima,"

the "Flying Tigers,"
"Battleground,"

films that I'd see on television.

And I would watch these things
over and over and over again.

I was really influenced
by all that stuff,

and so my first couple of movies

were stories about World War II.

There was an airport with a bunch
of World War II airplanes

just sitting out there on the tarmac.

I would take a shot of my friend
with his finger on the stick

and intercut actual 8mm combat footage.

A lot of it shot by John Ford,
by the way.

And made a movie that looked like

the production value was off the charts

because the production value
was off the charts.

It was the real thing.

Abrams: You can just look
at those movies,

and you see the ability
to tell a story without words.

His use of primitive special effects
was spectacular.

You know, he'd have big bullet hits,

he'd put little see-saws of dirt,

so that when his actors were running,

they'd step on one piece,

and it would sort of catapult
the dirt up in the air

as if they were being shot
as they were running.

There were things that he did that just
made complete sense.

You saw the trajectory.

There was something
in the DNA of it that,

despite it being shot on 8mm film,

was the voice of that same filmmaker.

But I didn't know anything about whether

I was gonna have a career
or where this was gonna go.

I just knew that it filled up
the time and it gave me

a tremendous amount of satisfaction.

And the second I finished a movie,
I wanted to start a new one

because I felt good about myself when
I was making a film.

But when I had too much time to think,

all those scary whispers
would start-- start up.

It was not fun to be me
in between ideas or projects.

Sid Sheinberg:
The lore has it that as a young man,

Steven was sort of
the Phantom of the Opera,

haunting the lot of Universal Studios.

He would literally get on the lot

one way or another.

I got on the studio tour bus,

took a jaunt around the back lot.

And then at one point
they give you a bathroom break,

and I never came out of the bathroom.

I waited till I could hear a pin drop,
and then came out.

The bus was gone and I was on the lot.

James Brolin:
Word was that he went upstairs

in the tower and took an office
on the sixth floor,

and nobody bothered him for six months.

Dreyfuss: The story was
he requisitioned an office,

telephone, put his name on the door.

Eh, I don't believe it,
but you know what they said

in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"--

when the legend is bigger than
the facts,print the legend.

Roger Ernest: One time he sneaked
onto Alfred Hitchcock's set

and watched him direct a little bit

until he got caught
and was asked to leave.

Steve was constantly learning,

constantly looking,
constantly asking questions

from all of the tradespeople--

cinematographer, lighting, editors.

It was like Spielberg 101 in overdrive.

I tried very hard
to get into USC Film School,

and I just didn't have
the grades to get in.

And I even had
a personal interview at USC,

and they turned me down even in person.

So, Universal became my film school.

Ernest: Steven was laser focused.

He never lost sight of the fact that
the audience early on, for him,

wasn't the audience in the theater.

The audience were the studio executives.

And he figured out how to make a film

that will convince
the studio executives that,

"Yes, I have the talent to
be a director.

This is what I can do."

I looked at this film,
and I was very taken with it.

I had a very strong feeling

that this was not your average
young filmmaker.

Sid Sheinberg, who was President of
Universal Television at the time,

he said, "So, sir, I saw your film.

Very well made.

I'd like to offer you
a seven-year contract

to come to Universal
to direct television."

He said, "If you sign with us,

I will support you
as strongly in failure

as I will in success."

And he was true to his word.

And that was the beginning
of the most important relationship

I could ever imagine having
in this business.

Steven was known
as the uncrowned prince.

He was the guy
who was gonna make it.

I mean, he was directing
Joan Crawford

when he was 20.

That'll teach you a lot of things.

Joan Crawford is the first
professional SAG member

I ever directed in my life!

I want to see something!

Trees, concrete, buildings,
grass, airplanes, color!

It was Cassavetes who said,
"If you want to be a real filmmaker,

you can't be afraid
of anything or anybody."

And Steven's not.

He's there with Joan Crawford
who wants him out every day.

And he's gotta shoot and
be on schedule and be good,

meaning that it has to have a vision.

The shots have to have a point of view.

But after "Night Gallery" came out,

there was a lot of criticism on
the fact that I was a novelty item.

The youngest term director
ever put under contract in history.

And the producers who were
doing the hiring wouldn't hire me.

There was a lot of hostility,

and I had to prove myself to everybody.

You know, they looked at me
as sort of Sheinberg's folly.

He underwrote me.
Let him find me work.

Brolin: I had wanted to direct,

and Steven walks in, and he's a kid!

And I'm envious as hell right away.

Steven's able to walk into a room,

look for a second or two,
say, "Here. Here."

"Move that here. Give me a 25mm here."

"Put it this way. Face forward."

"Move it. Silhouette here."

Two takes, three takes.
"That's enough. Thanks."

"Let's move on."
It was amazing.

Steven Bochco:
Steven had a gear in his brain

that automatically translated
words into pictures

almost without it being
a conscious process for him.

There was a unique visual voice there

that you had to not only
pay attention to,

but you had to give
somewhat of a free rein to.

My early themes always had
the underdog being pursued

by indomitable forces

of both nature and natural enemies,

and that person has to rise
to the occasion to survive.

And a lot of that comes just from

the insecurities I felt as a kid

and how that bled over into the work.

I was always the kid with the big bully,

and "Duel" was my life
in the schoolyard.

The truck was the bully,
and the car was me.

George Lucas: I was over
at Francis Coppola's,

and "Duel" was gonna be shown
that night,

so I sort of snuck away from the party

and said, "I wanna see this film.
I wanna see what this kid did."

I was sort of on the fence about Steven.

I said, "Knows what he's doing,

nice, but a little too Hollywoody
for my taste."

I saw "Amblin" and I thought
"Amblin" was nice,

but it wasn't-- you know,
it was very, very flashy.

It was very, very professional.

And for the rest of us,
we were all rough-edged,

crazy guys that were doing
much more dirty work.

So, I thought, "Well, I'll watch
the first half hour

and just see what he's up to."

And I ended up watching the whole thing.

And I came down to Francis,
I said, "This guy's amazing.

You really gotta look at this film."

Right off the bat, it was clear

that no one moved the camera
like Steven Spielberg.

Other directors had
a fantastic sense of space.

Orson Welles,
you name it,

people who understood composition.

But the way that Spielberg's camera

moved through a shot

and then ended up somewhere
that completely shifted

or intensified the emotion of the scene,

that was just a natural gift he had.

Who knows where that came from.

Who-- but it was his own technique.

Francis Ford Coppola:
"Duel" was a composition

that had a very elusive
and interesting theme.

You know, this unknown menace.

Everyone's been on a road and some idiot
has crossed in front of you,

and, you know, you're tempted
to rev up fast

and go do something nasty to him.

And here he took this
and made it into a parable.

When ABC saw "Duel,"

they were very excited
by what they were seeing.

But at the very, very end
when the truck did not explode

in a pyrotechnics display,

George Eckstein called me and said,

"Network's really upset that
the truck didn't blow up,

so they're ordering us
to go back to that cliff

and blow the truck up."

And I said, "I'm not gonna do it."

The death of the truck is so agonizing.

I said, "I made that truck die slowly."

The oil, like blood, dripping
off the steering wheel.

The wheel slowly rolling to a stop.

The fan still going,
but the truck's dying.

I mean, it's the death of the truck.

That's what the audience wants to see.

This criminal element paying--

you know, paying the price
for what it did to this man.

I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't blow up the truck.

For Steven, the little screen
was an interesting canvas,

and obviously he painted
on it very well,

but he knew that this screen

simply wasn't a large enough canvas.

Vilmos Zsigmond:
He's a director who knows

how important cinematography is,

and the way Steven directed
"Sugarland Express" was so fresh,

you know, because everything
was on location.

And half of the movie
was inside of a police car.

And that was a difficult thing to--

to keep that alive all the time.

You know, the angles and all that.

I see lights, a whole bunch.

For me, directing is camerawork,

and so I'm very
on the front line of that.

I've gotta set up the shot,
I've gotta block the actors,

choreograph the movement of the scene,

bring the camera into the choreography,

figure out when the camera stops,
how it moves,

how far it moves,
what the composition is,

so I've always got my eye on the lens,
and that's what I do.

I even pick the lens I want.

His strength is really the ability

to be able to tell a story
in pictures instinctively.

I sometimes watch his pictures on TV
without the sound

just to see the pictures.

Pauline Kael, one of the most
influential film critics of all time,

wrote in "The New Yorker"
that Steven Spielberg had made

one of the most phenomenal debuts
in the history of film.

She compared him to Howard Hawks

in terms of how natural
his feel for the medium was.

What Kael saw in Spielberg

was someone with a real movie sense,

but she also said
she wasn't necessarily sure

there was great depth to go with it.

She didn't see a sign
of an emerging film artist

like Martin Scorsese.

What she saw instead was the birth

of a new generation Hollywood hand.

Martin Scorsese,
filmmaker of "Mean Streets."

This is Brian De Palma, loud as ever.

- George and Marcia Lucas.
- Hi!

And this is Steven.

Get the camera arranged.
Great.

♪ Time has come today ♪

♪ Young hearts can go their way... ♪

In the mid to late '60s,
there was a major change

in the Hollywood studio system.

It was a very different world
they had to serve,

and there was a new freedom, too.

Brian De Palma: So, suddenly the doors
were open for young directors

with very crazy,
seemingly original ideas.

It's almost like, you know,
crashing a party.

Yeah, people were on the way out,
and we were going in.

We were absolutely obsessed with movies,

but we certainly didn't look at it
as a career.

We didn't think we were ever
gonna make any money at it.

There was George and Francis,

and then there was Marty and me,

and then there was Steven.

We came from different places,

but needless to say, we were always
very happy to be together.

When we got together,
it was like a fraternity of directors.

George, put the camera
on the table, on--

I'm gonna hit a ball into the lens,

and you pick the camera up
at the last moment.

When I got into the group
of the Movie Brats,

as somebody once called us,

I never-- it was the first time
I felt like an insider.

We were very, very fortunate
to be part of that time.

The culture was converging.

That's Albert.

It was filmmakers, it was artists,

musicians, performers.

It was an incredible, fertile time.

And here we have Amy Irving in the car.

Brian De Palma introduced us
when she was making "Carrie."

- That's how we first met.
- Then they started to go out together.

They were together
and then they were apart,

and then they got back together again.

- Amy half dressed.
- As usual, sewing.

Yes, sewing Steven's pants
to get him ready

for the big day that's coming very soon.

Noogies, noogies.

Steven was a nerd.

Master of the world!

A loveable nerd, but he was a nerd.

He was not into sports
or drugs or rock 'n' roll,

but he was passionate
and he was so enthusiastic.

He used to love to talk about film,

and it was infectious, his enthusiasm.

Steven had the first car phone.

It's ringing.

So, Steven and I used to go around

and call up a girl and say,
"Well, let's get together,"

and she'd say, "Fine."

And then of course we'd be
parked right outside her house.

That was like--
I would say--

it may seem extremely silly now,

but in those days it was like a miracle.

He was fun. He was fun to be around.

I'm Julia Child, the French chef.

Today we are carving...
turkey for Thanksgiving!

We were all struggling

with our first very
unsuccessful attempts

to penetrate the
Hollywood establishment,

but Steven was working all the time.

Steven always was a creature
of the studio,

and his thinking and his methodology
went that direction,

and he became a master of it.

He was very fortunate
that the kind of movie

he really had a sense for
was also the kind of movie

that the audience had a sense for.

We are now in the Scorsese kitchen.

We are going to show "Hell's Angels."

We all gravitated towards each other.

We had that one thing that kept us
all together, the one element.

The one kind of a madness
and an obsession with movies.

We were consulting with each other,

and unabashedly giving opinions
about each other's works.

It was very much that way,

but we were still competitive.

"Come and see my movie.

Sit down-- sit here.
The sound's best here."

And blow the other guy away.

Everybody was sort of forced to
do a better job

to impress everybody,

because Marty had done this movie,

or Francis had done that movie.

They became like the acid test.

You get some real grounding
and you hope an honesty--

maybe not too honest.

George showed a bunch of us

"Star Wars" for the first time,

and there were no effects in yet.

It was just World War II,
black-and-white stock footage

intercut with blue screen
production color footage,

and then showed that movie to us,

expecting us to be able
to see the movie.

It was basically a children's film.

You know, it wasn't what
the other friends of mine

would think of as something
really worthwhile.

Steven was the one person
who was really enthusiastic about it

and said, "This is gonna be
a huge smash."

But George said, "I think it's gonna be
a disaster."

He was very depressed, and we all went

to a Chinese restaurant
after the film was over,

and Brian stood up
and started to geschrei about,

"What's going on around here?
I don't understand the story.

Who are these people?
Who's the hairy guy?

Where do they come from?
Where's the context?

Where's the backstory?
It's driving me crazy."

Brian went off on George.

And George just sat there.
He turned red.

George, I think, wanted to kill him.

But out of all that,
something great came.

Brian basically said, "You need, like,
an old-fashioned movie

to start the picture with a foreword,

and all these words come on the screen,
and they travel up,

and the foreword tells you
what the hell you're looking at

and why you're in the theater
and what the mythology is.

Tell us what this world is,

and then we can enjoy the picture."

And that was the birth
of the famous prologue.

Steven came to visit me when
I was shooting "Scarface,"

and I gave him one of the units

to shoot the Colombians
coming up the staircase.

Say hello to my little friend.

So, we were just shooting
people getting shot

for a couple of weeks.

We all had great respect
for each other's work,

and we were just trying
to help each other out

when we would see things that we thought
could be improved.

All right, now I am turning the--

the camera over to our new director--

That's the worst swish pan
I've ever seen.

The worst swish pan I've ever seen.

He's shooting me.
I'm totally in darkness.

How do you expect to see anything?

It's kind of like what happened in Paris
in the '20s.

You know, you get a group of people,
they're all crazy people,

and they're controversial
and doing the same struggle,

but you sort of look at it later
and you say,

"How could that whole group--"

the whole group became successful

and dominated the film business.

It's like, how could that be?

We were just a bunch of crazy kids.

But, you know, I think
a lot of it was really love of film

and all desperate to make film
any way we could.

Oh, my God.

Tony Kushner: When you're watching
Steven's movies,

you feel like you're in the presence
of something mysterious

and inexpressible and poetic.

Enjoying very simple pleasures--

being scared, being amused,
being dazzled.

I had been very influenced

by how far Stanley Kubrick took
"2001: A Space Odyssey"

into the world of, really,
expressionist art,

and I wanted to take
"Close Encounters" even further.

I really wanted the audience
to look at the screen and say,

"I'm having a sighting,"

but I wasn't sure
any of this was gonna work.

Bob Balaban: It was very risky.

The effects for "Close Encounters"

basically had never been done before.

He shot the people
with a motion control camera,

making the camera move, pan, tilt,

whatever he want to do.

And then that's recorded,
actually, on a tape,

and then when Doug Trumbull,
the special effects supervisor,

goes back to the
post production facilities,

he can actually duplicate
exactly that camera move.

So, when you married the two images,
they were perfect,

and you could have,
for really about the first time,

moving special effects.

Always before, you had to kind of
sit there quietly,

because if you moved,
it would destroy everything.

Everybody is doing that today.

They could not be doing
those effect movies

unless Steven and Doug didn't
try all these things already.

The stakes were so high for Steven
on "Close Encounters."

Columbia Pictures was literally on
the verge of bankruptcy,

and they bet the farm on this movie.

He had bankers and Hollywood
breathing down his neck

to prove to the world that
"Jaws" wasn't a fluke.

So, Steven had a giant responsibility
on his shoulders,

but he had to stay true
to what worked for him,

or it wasn't gonna be a good film.

And he did.

Win or lose, he made the movie that
he had dreamed of making.

When I was a kid,
my dad took me to watch

the Perseid meteor shower
and introduced me to the sky

as a place of unspeakable wonders.

And because it was such a beautiful
experience for me,

the heavens promised
if there was ever gonna be,

you know, a first meeting

between an extraterrestrial
civilization and our own,

it would only be benign
and constructive.

It would be a conversation.

When these extraterrestrials
are coming here,

we don't know what they can speak,

what they understand,
or even what they see,

so Steven had this idea
that communication

should be a combination
of sound and light.

I had first thought mathematics would be

the common language
between intergalactic species,

but I thought it would be
much more emotional

if music was how we spoke
to one another.

I don't search for films consciously

that have a spiritual core.

There's a spiritual part
of myself that happens

to bleed over into the work,
and so I subconsciously,

which is the only choice
that's important,

will find things that inherently have
something of a belief system

that's beyond our understanding,
that's a little bit out there.

"Close Encounters" was
much more a personal statement

than his previous two movies had been.

I mean, he wrote the script.

It really meant
a huge amount to Steven.

Its genesis was from a film

I had actually written
and directed when I was 17.

It was the story of man's
first contact with UFOs.

And there were actually UFOs in
"Firelight" that I created.

I saw a lot of movies, and I had
a whole card catalogue in my brain

of the things I had seen.

And just by watching movies
with special effects in them,

I could figure most everything out.

In a way, he had lived
with "Close Encounters"

since he was a child.

And he had a vision
in a real palpable sense

of what this movie
should feel like

when you experience the movie.

Steven doesn't want to make
little personal movies.

He wants to make big personal movies.

That's not right.
That's not right.

That's not right.

That's not right.

I identified with this obsession

that Richard Dreyfuss
was struggling with.

I was Neary in that movie.

Something opens up his imagination

to go for something that he thinks

is going to provide
some cathartic answer.

He had to go through chaos

to reach some kind of clarity.

He was an artist trying to plumb

the depths of his imagination.

And so I think in a sense

"Close Encounters" is maybe the most,

at least certainly
the most personal film

I had made up to that point,

because it was also about
the dissolution of a family.

I remember when we moved
to Northern California from Arizona.

I had sensed that things
weren't going well with my parents.

And one day,
my dad just broke down,

and I never had seen
my dad cry before.

And I just stood there
in the kitchen,

outraged that my father
was not a man.

He was crying like a little boy.

And I started screaming "crybaby" at him
as loud as I could.

Just started screaming, "Crybaby,
you crybaby, you crybaby,"

until they pushed me out of the kitchen.

Roy, promise me that you'll go!
Please!

You crybaby!
You crybaby! You crybaby!

- You crybaby! Crybaby!
- Get out of here! Get out!

Come on, you guys.

- Crybaby!
- Come on.

You crybaby!

- Be quiet!
- Ronnie: Stop it!

My mom went from being
completely joyful

and celebrative about life itself

to being full of despair
and palpable sadness.

I would see my mom
going into the living room

and playing some Schumann and crying.

Crying to the point she couldn't see
the notes on the paper.

I'd sit with her and hold her hand,
talk to her.

She just said, "I'm so lonely here.
I'm so sad here."

I was going through
the same thing.

And all I knew was that my dad

was fulfilled up there,
and we weren't.

So, when it was announced by my mom

that my mom and my dad
were splitting up,

I didn't know any of the details.

I didn't know why
they were splitting up,

and I didn't for a long time.

I didn't want to know.

I fell in love with somebody else.

I was madly in love
with Bernie Adler.

I look back, I think,
"How dare I do that?"

But I really didn't care at that point.

It was all about me
and my unhappiness.

Bernie had been my father's best friend,

and he was a fixture.

It was like having an uncle.

I never would tell the kids
that she divorced me.

Instead, I let them think
I divorced her.

Why did you do that?

Protecting her 'cause she's fragile.

And she still is.

And so, I figured I could be
hurt less than she.

I still loved her.

My dad and my stepfather
were best friends.

My mom married Dad's best friend.

You look at the big picture,
that's shit.

That's really bad.

It didn't hit me till I got older

that that was a really tough thing
for Dad,

and I-- my heart bled for him.

Steve really thought my dad left us.

So, during a number of years,
we blocked him out.

And Steve, I know, blamed him

for the relationship going bad.

It was literally the worst period

of my entire life.

I never told my dad
I was mad at him.

We never had angry words,

but it was an estrangement

that I created, not from my dad.

He was seeking a relationship with me.

I just went off and got lost in my work,

the way I saw my dad get lost in his

all those years of coming home late

and working weekends back in Phoenix and
all of that.

I became my father.
I became a workaholic.

And I just lost the contact with him.

It went on for... 15 years.

Tom Snyder:
You know, I read about you today.

You've done four pictures.
That's all.

Four movies that I can count.

You're not Alfred Hitchcock
who's done over 50.

You're not John Ford.

Can you believe that you've directed

four pictures and you're
a famous person?

- Can you believe that?
- Can I believe that?

Yes, I can, as a matter of fact.

I can believe that I've directed
four pictures,

although it seems like
I've been directing much longer.

Tom Hanks: He arrived on the scene
in such a huge manner.

You know, the way "Jaws" entered

into the consciousness
of the world was huge.

"Close Encounters" was 10 times as huge.

But Steven was in the process
of inventing himself.

I don't think he himself knew

where this road was gonna take him.

I'm sure, like everybody else
at that age,

he was wondering was he really as good
as he thought he was.

And turned out he was.

Once you do "Jaws"

and then "Close Encounters,"
well, where do you go?

The bar, as they say,
is set a certain level.

And what do you do?

You get yourself into shape

and you jump over the bar again.

Originally, my idea for "E.T."

didn't include an extraterrestrial.

It was gonna be about how a divorce
affects childhood

and how it really
kind of traumatizes children.

- Dad's shirt.
- Yeah.

Remember when he used to
take us out to the ball games

and take us to the movies,

and we'd have popcorn fights?

So, the overriding theme
was gonna be about

how do you fill the heart
of a lonely child?

Me, human. Boy.

- Elliott.
- And what extraordinary event

would it take to fill Elliott's heart

after losing his dad?

It would take something as extraordinary

as an extraterrestrial
coming into his life.

Drew Barrymore: Steven, as a filmmaker,

can create otherworldly,
almost impossible scenarios,

but do it in a suburban setting

and with real families and real people,

and so, you are able to go
outer worldly, outer space,

extraterrestrial, implausible scenario,

because it's grounded in human beings

and human stories.

Okay, he's a man from outer space

and we're taking him to his spaceship.

- Well, can't he just beam up?
- This is reality, Greg.

"E.T." was a suburban American story,

and suburbia was all I knew
growing up.

So, the movies I made
in the '70s, the '80s,

were a reflection of what I knew.

My main religion was suburbia.

You know, the families
all getting together,

nobody gets divorced,
nobody's unhappy with each other.

'Course, it's all false.

Maybe you just probably imagined it...

I couldn't have imagined it.

Maybe it was a pervert or
deformed kid or something.

A deformed kid.

Maybe an elf or a leprechaun.

It was nothing like that, penis breath!

Elliott!

Sit down.

Dad would believe me.

Maybe you ought to call your father
and tell him about it.

I can't.
He's in Mexico with Sally.

Where's Mexico?

I saw my childhood through this family

and those young, wonderful actors.

Peter Coyote:
When Steven works with children,

he brings a kind of
"let's play" feeling.

He'd have to pull you back.
Grab on to this, right here.

It's not like somebody
talking baby talk to kids.

It's just he's really
communicating to them.

And it's sort of like
direct transmission.

Now he suddenly turns to you,
his eyes come open.

Do that to E.T.
Give that joyful scream to E.T.

Do the line again, really excited about
"Are they coming?"

Breathing, breathing,
breathing, breathing, breathing.

- Work yourself up.
- Does this mean they're coming?

No, work yourself up even more.
Work yourself up.

Does this mean they're coming?

Bigger, bigger.
"Does this mean they're coming?"

Does this mean they're coming?

Yes!

Melissa Mathison: He had to be a bit
of a father, a bit of a pal,

but he was, more than anything,
an observer of them,

and I think that was
a lot of fun for him.

- All of the kids were fun for him.
- You gotta take me seriously.

- This is Halloween, folks. Hello, my love.
- Hi, Granny.

Wait a sec.
Drew, this is for you, my darling.

- Your apple.
- I wanted to shoot "E.T." in continuity.

It gives the kids a context for the work
they're doing that day,

'cause they know that tomorrow will be
tomorrow in the script

and yesterday was
yesterday in the script.

So, for young kids,

it gives them a real confidence
that they're living a life

and they're living a story's life.

Now they put the machine on his chest,

and they're gonna give him
a shock to try to make him come back.

And when they give him the shock,

it's very loud and it makes you jump
and cry even more.

They're putting it on his chest now,

and he presses the button,
and it goes, "Pow!"

Are you okay, honey?

Huh? Are you okay?

Let's see.
Wipe your doll's face, too.

Thank you.
Thank you.

Okay. Oh.

For many years I wondered about
the universal appeal of this movie,

and one day, it hit me.

There are no two humans on Earth

that are farther apart

than those humans
and that alien creature.

Come.

Stay.

And if Elliott,

and the mother, and the little girl,

and the scientist,
could all love and empathize

and make a rapprochement

and a rapport with this creature,

so, too, can any two humans on Earth,

and I think that was a subtext that
bubbled up through the film

and must have touched something,

because you don't get many films

that are universally
loved and appreciated

40 years later.

And it spoke to something.

Some desire to be able
to reach across boundaries

and touch other people.

I'll be right here.

Bye.

Leonardo DiCaprio: It's a very difficult
balance as a director

to push a young child
to do a dramatic sequence,

because you're obviously
manipulating them to some capacity.

But Steven knew
how to take them as a director

into some of these darker places

while handling them with kid gloves.

A.O. Scott: The children
in Spielberg's world

may be vulnerable,
may be unhappy,

but they're also very--
they're very powerful

and they're heroic.

I think all of my movies
that have dealt

with young people and their stories

are about the importance
of empowering these children

to take control of the story,

at least take control of their lives.

Kathleen Kennedy: Steven intuitively
looks at the world

through a lens of innocence,

and children do that naturally.

So, it became the kind of go-to lens

that he wanted to use
for his storytelling.

George Negus: One of the most interesting
things that I've read about you

was a headline which said,
"Steven Spielberg is making

movies and a fortune
while he's still growing up.

He's really just a big kid."

Is that how you see yourself?
Is that a reasonable comment?

I think it's reasonable.

You have to understand--
how do you define a big kid?

A responsible big kid,
or just an irresponsible big kid?

Because I think
you have to be responsible,

but you don't want
to lose the child in you,

because that's what keeps you young,

and that's what keeps you in touch,

and keeps a smile on your face.

I don't quite know

what it would be like
to become an adult.

- Oh...
- My...

God!

I was feeling my oats

after both "Jaws"
and "Close Encounters."

And so I thought, "I can do a comedy."
Why not?

If I did those two movies,
why can't I do anything?

And I have a sense of humor.

I go to movies and I laugh
when they're funny.

Why not tackle a comedy?

I felt pretty invulnerable
at that time.

I can assure you

there will be no bombs dropped here.

Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale
wrote the script,

and it was lean and mean.

I'm the one that stretched the humor

and the budget to its breaking point.

To me, it was an excuse
to just blow a bunch of shit up

and try to get an audience to laugh.

But it was like I committed
a war crime by making "1941."

Everyone was eviscerating it.

I was really devastated.

Just that feeling of failure,
that cold emptiness,

where every reminder of the movie,

you get that sick feeling
in the center of your stomach,

and you just want to go dig a hole
and stick your head in it.

I mean, for the next year,
I put my head in a lot of holes.

And my friend George Lucas
came to the rescue.

George said, "What are you doing next?"

And Steven said that he really wanted
to do a James Bond film.

And George said, "I have something
much better than James Bond."

It's about an archeologist

and he goes hunting
for supernatural artifacts.

And Steven said, "I love it.

Let's do it."

He's not a stock, standard hero.

He's not one of these "just add water"

and he'll grow into the hero
of your dreams.

There's a human being under all of that.

That's what made Indiana Jones
accessible to audiences.

- I think they're trying to kill us.
- I know, Dad!

Well, it's a new experience for me.

Happens to me all the time.

It's an action-adventure movie where
every reel is a cliffhanger.

Just pure escapist entertainment.

It was gonna be an all-out "B" movie,

and "B" movies are fun because they
don't take themselves that seriously.

You do them quick.
You do them dirty.

You cheat on everything you possibly can

to save as much money
as you possibly can,

and you don't worry about the fact

that it's not gonna be
"Lawrence of Arabia."

We took it to the studios,
and what I didn't realize

was that Steven didn't have
that great a reputation,

because he was always going
over budget and over schedule.

So, every studio said no.

And some of them even said, "You know,
if you can get a different director,

we'll do it, but Steven can't make
that film for $20 million."

So, Steven said, "I promise you,
I will not betray you.

If it's $20 million,
we will make it for $20 million."

My experience on three cost overruns,

"Jaws," "Close Encounters," "'41,"

taught me how to be more economical

and benefited "Raiders" immeasurably.

He had something to prove, but he also
didn't wanna let me down, his friend.

You know, it's like,
it wasn't a studio, it was us.

Friday night. If we don't get this,
we don't get the shot.

If we don't get the shot,
we don't get the movie.

If they don't get the movie,
we're all up the creek.

George said, "Look, if you direct this,

you have to shake my hand
right now and promise

if it's a big hit,
you gotta direct two more."

And it was a great collaboration.

Dad!

- What? What?
- Dad!

- Dad!
- What?

- Head for the fireplace.
- Oh.

Harrison Ford: The "Indiana Jones" movies
were always more about movies

than they were about anything else.

They followed certain film formulas,

which freed them to do silly stuff.

Tom Stoppard: There was something
which I simply adored

in "Indiana Jones."

When Harrison had fallen over a cliff

and his friends thought he was dead
and they were peering down,

and Harrison had come up
without his hat,

because he'd fallen over
a cliff, for heaven's sake,

and a mysterious breeze
blows the hat into frame.

These movies are clearly
made for an audience.

They're made for the filmgoer.

They're meant for the pure joy
of entertainment.

Which doesn't mean that they can't be
emotionally involving,

which doesn't mean they can't be smart
from time to time.

But they have to be
satisfying entertainment.

And Steven and George have figured out

how to use the engine of filmmaking

to satisfy an audience in a way

not so many directors or producers have.

Hugh Downs: In the century-long history
of motion pictures,

there has been one director, just one,

whose movies have earned
a total of a billion dollars--

Steven Spielberg.

Walter Parkes: Steven is arguably
the most commercial director

in the history of motion pictures,

and I think it's because
he has a deep understanding

of how the language of cinema

elicits an emotional reaction
in an audience.

And there's no question that the idea of
making movies that became phenomenons

was extremely exciting for Steven.

But it brought a lot of mixed results.

There were people that hated him,

people that blamed him
for ruining the movies.

William Goldman had written specifically

that the blockbuster and Steven

and George Lucas
had destroyed Hollywood.

Some people saw Spielberg
as a repressive force,

that he was bringing in
a kind of empty escapism

that was going to take film
in another direction.

And certainly with
the marketing executives

who moved into the studios

in the late '70s and the early '80s,

it was clear that what they saw
were dollar signs.

But I wouldn't blame Spielberg for that.

Go back to the first review
by Pauline Kael.

She said he was
a great popular entertainer,

that he had a feel for what audiences
wanted to see.

Why should anybody apologize for that?

Let me get you to react to something

that one of your peers said,
another director.

"Steven Spielberg can't be compared

with people like Mike Nichols
and Barry Levinson.

There is a place for mass entertainment,

but it shouldn't be confused

with art or quality,
award-winning filmmaking."

Sometimes I think
that statements like that

are pretentious in themselves,

because it sort of says that, you know,

art is serious and art can't be--
can't move you.

Art can't be on a bicycle with E.T.
and fly across the moon,

that that can't be art.

If you're making the kinds of movies

that make the kinds of money
that his movies do,

and if you're making
franchise entertainment

or just something that
appeals to a lot of people

and is unapologetically
mainstream entertainment,

then there's a little bit of,
I think, suspicion.

You know, how can we take you seriously
as an artist?

Come on, girl,
'cause I'm waiting for you.

You cut me and I'll kill you.

I was looking for a different
perception of myself.

And if I didn't want to consciously

make a departure and prove something,

not just to myself but to everyone else,

I might not have chosen
"Color Purple" as my next movie.

But it was my first really mature film,

which took on, you know,
substantive, humanistic subject matter.

I was turning 40 and I was looking at
life perhaps less optimistically.

And so, I knew this was gonna be
a very sobering journey,

and I was willing to take it on.

All my life I had to fight.

I had to fight my daddy,
I had to fight my uncles,

I had to fight my brothers.

A girl child ain't safe
in a family of mens,

but I ain't never thought
I had to fight in my own house!

I loves Harpo.

God knows I do,

but I'll kill him dead
before I let him beat me.

Oprah Winfrey: For Steven to even
take on this material

was a really big deal,

because you're messing in some territory

where if you get it wrong,
then you get a lot of people upset.

He wanted to create not only
an African-American worldview,

but a matriarchal world

in the presence of patriarchal
repression and violence.

And I truly believe that he wanted

to stretch himself in a way
that he never had before.

And he does push himself,

but he's not gonna push
himself too far in advance--

the audience or maybe his own,

you know, core inclination.

He don't ever ask me how I feel.

Just never asked me nothing
about myself.

Just climb on top of me,
do his business.

"Do his business"?
Do his bu--

why, Miss Celie, you sound like

he going to the toilet on you.

That's what it feel like.

I got in trouble with several critics

who didn't like that I shied away

from the love story
between Shug and Celie.

And the scene where Shug Avery
shows Celie, with a mirror, her vagina,

that that did not go into the movie,

which would've really changed

the entire nature and tone of the film.

I just didn't go for the full monty
the way the book did.

I might've done that had I made
the movie 10 years later.

I was just timid.
I was just a little embarrassed.

I just wasn't the right guy to do that.

Steven was telling
the story that Alice wrote,

and he was trying to access that

from his personal point of view.

He could never go where Alice went
with that book.

Maslin: That book was appreciated
for its grit and its realism,

and neither of those were qualities that
he was known for.

He was just asking for it
by even going anywhere near that.

Nobody really wanted Steven Spielberg

to be a gritty filmmaker.

That wasn't his sensibility.

But with "The Color Purple,"
colors are exact,

the settings have been built
from the ground up

according to his specifications.

There's something so false
and so Disney storyboard-like

about that movie.

You know, he wanted
to make a prettier picture

than was intended in the text.

That's Steven.

He wants to make everything like that.

He wants to make life like that.

I have a baby on the way,

and the child is going
to change my life.

- It already has, in a way.
- Are you nervous about it or what?

I'm not nervous about it at all, no.

I just think it's the best thing

that's ever happened to me and to Amy.

We really can't wait for this.

I think the destiny of Amy and I

was to bring Max into the world,

which was such a beautiful thing.

Before that, I'm not sure I knew
what a personal life was.

I thought life began

with, you know, "Action!"

And then, "Cut!"

After my mom and dad broke up,

I always thought that I would do my best

that if I ever decided
someday to get married,

I wouldn't get divorced.

And then, of course, I did.

Divorce in any situation is painful.

And it's especially painful for me

because I am a child of divorce

and I know what it felt like.

And so, you know,
I felt terrible for Max,

that he had to endure that.

- Jamie: My plane.
- Jamie! Jamie!

Mom?

- Mom?
- Frank Marshall: "Empire of the Sun"

was about this young boy
growing up in Shanghai

who gets separated
from his parents

during the Japanese invasion.

Mommy!

- Jamie!
- Mommy!

And he goes through
a tremendous transformation

and growing-up process.

It was playing on what I knew
were my strengths,

being able to take the dark,
grim reality of war

and put it with a child's approach

in the way this particular special child
saw that war.

It was based on the experiences

that J.G. Ballard had

in a Japanese internment camp.

Jim was a lost boy trying to figure out

where he belongs in this world.

It's a movie about
growing up too quickly

and abandoning everything
that you once used

to keep yourself safe.

When you have nothing
to keep yourself safe,

you become a survivor like all the rest,

and you grow up awfully quickly.

Christian Bale: It's an extraordinary story

of the resilience of children,

this incredible survivor

who manages to have
more fortitude to him

than, really, any of the adults
around him.

It's in the great tradition
of epic filmmaking.

That sports stadium
at the end when all the goods,

all the stuff that had been stolen
is there,

the surrealism of that

and what it makes you feel
at that time and place,

the sense of what
the world was like,

how it had fallen apart,
all of civilization.

And then, something even
more disturbingly beautiful,

and that is the glow
from the atom bomb.

It's like a soul transcending
into another life.

Mrs. Victor.

This is very poetic and... mystical.

This was war

and it was death and real horror.

And it was like an end of innocence

for the Spielberg child.

I think it was a truly great film,

but, for me, it ultimately shaded

into an unnecessary softness
or sentimentality.

I don't know where it comes from,

but he likes and enjoys sentiment.

It's part of him.

At the time, he was not
dismissed, exactly,

by a lot of critics, but sort of looked
at a little skeptically.

"Oh, he wants to be serious now.

Oh, he's trying to make serious movies.

Oh, now he wants it"--
which, I mean--

it's such a kind of nasty thing

to say about any artist.

It definitely hurt his feelings.

I don't think anybody as an artist

wants to feel like
they're being pigeonholed

in a way that other people
are determining who they are.

And when Steven began to explore

other kinds of more serious stories,

they were very reluctant
to let him do that.

That was like, "How dare you,
Steven Spielberg?

We've determined that you make
these kind of movies,

so why are you suddenly
trying to make this?"

He doesn't over-intellectualize,

but maybe as a filmmaker,
Steven was using those movies

as stepping stones along the way.

He didn't know where he was headed,

but I think he was exercising
those muscles, in a way,

to recognize he could go there,

that it was okay.

My very first memory--
I was in a stroller.

I just remember being wheeled somewhere,

and my grandmother
and grandfather were with me.

We went into this underground space.

There was a red light
over a set of doors.

And I just remember
getting closer and closer

to this red light
where all these old men--

just men were all chanting something.

And the red light was the Eternal Light,
the Ner Tamid,

and that's my very first memory.

- Do you believe in God?
- Yes.

Tell me about that.
Where where does...?

It comes from my--

you know, my spiritual--
not even spiritual,

my religious roots and family.

All my grandparents had
a very strong influence over me.

My grandfather, Fievel, played guitar

and he sang all Yiddish Russian songs.

And my grandmother, Jennie,

taught English to Hungarian
Holocaust survivors.

We were Orthodox.
I was raised Orthodox.

And tradition has been
a huge part of my family,

and religious studies,
and Hebrew school,

and bar mitzvahs, and bat mitzvahs
for my sisters.

But we always lived in neighborhoods
where there were no Jews.

And there was a real cultural divide
in those days

between Jewish people and Gentiles,

a real cultural divide.

I remember that at one point,

kids were standing outside and chanting

"the Spielbergs are dirty Jews."

I certainly experienced being excluded

and being picked on
and discriminated against.

All I wanted to do was fit in.

And by being Jewish, there was no way
I could fit into anything.

My grandfather would come over
to spend a week with us,

and I'd be playing in the front yard
seven houses down,

and my grandfather
would stand on our front porch

and yell my Hebrew name, "Shmuel!"

As loud as he could, "Shmuel!"

And all my friends would say,

"Is he talking to you?
That's your house."

And I immediately denied
that that was me.

"No, he must be calling
somebody else."

"Is your name Shmuel?"

And all my friends started laughing.

"Shmuel? What's Shmuel?"

And meanwhile, in the background,

you can hear my grandfather yelling

with a Russian accent, "Shmuel!"

Steve did not want to be Jewish.

He didn't want to be Jewish
because it made us

too different from everybody.

And the "Father Knows Best" family

is an assimilated family.

And I think he really yearned for that.

I began to deny my Jewishness,

you know, began to deny

everything that I had
accepted as a child

and was not willing to accept

if it was going to make me a pariah.

I was ashamed of myself.

I still feel ashamed of myself

even remembering
that long stretch of my life

where I didn't want
to be Jewish anymore.

When I first met Kate,

something that only happens
in the movies

happened to me.

It's a terrible cliché,
but bells began ringing.

It was love at first sight.
It really was.

There was something that was

so both self-assured about Katie

and reassuring for me.

There was a kind of in-syncness.

We could talk about anything,

and I couldn't get her off my mind.

Kate came into my world, in my life,

with a deep fascination
with the traditions

and the depth of the history of Judaism.

And she really wanted
to marry me as a Jew.

So, she converted to Judaism
just before we got married.

Sue: She said she always felt like
she was coming home.

She always felt this was
where she was meant to be.

And so, as she studied Judaism
and got into it,

it brought Steve back around
to appreciating it.

Kate brought something to Steven

that I don't think Steven believed
he could ever have.

She is so dedicated
to the idea of family

in its, you know, purest essence

that not only did it bring him,

I think, a happiness
he never thought he'd have,

but I suspect it contributed

to his growth as an artist.

In 1982, Sid Sheinberg gave me the book

of "Schindler's List" to read.

He felt it was my destiny
to make this movie.

He was tenacious
about getting me

to pay attention to it,
not to give up on it.

I think he was intimidated

by the thought of making it.

He had the book for over 10 years

before he was ready to do it.

And he just said,
"I'll know when it's time."

You know, if anybody
pushed him on it,

"I'll know when it's time."

And then the time came.

Liam Neeson: On my first day, we were
outside the gates of Auschwitz.

5:30 in the morning,
bitterly, bitterly cold.

And hundreds of extras

dressed up in those
horrible striped pajamas

and German guards

and real Alsatian dogs,
real nasty dogs.

No! No!

Nothing could prepare me for
my first visit to Auschwitz.

Nothing prepared me for that.

I wanted to shoot where the story
actually took place,

all the actual locations,

but I realized at that point
when I went to Poland

for the first time
that I was playing with fire.

That's horrible.

He was like someone
whose skin had been torn off.

He was just so vulnerable,

pacing up and down all the time.

I could tell how important

this subject matter
and this film was to him.

He was telling a story
of his family, his tribe,

so I was aware of the weight
of the subject matter.

I said to the crew,
"This isn't a documentary,

but we are documenting things
that actually took place

in the place that
you're standing right now."

And I said also, you know,
"Those of us who are Jewish,

you know, would never have
been able to stand here,

you know, in 1943."

I knew this couldn't be
just another movie

and it couldn't be anything like
anything I had ever directed before.

I had to approach the material

and I had to approach the location

with a great deal of reverence,

and I had to make this
a very quiet, quiet production.

We were shooting
on hallowed, sacred ground.

Everywhere we shot in Kraków

felt like we were shooting
in a cemetery.

And it changed my entire approach
to cinema.

I-- that film looks different

than anything I had ever
done before that.

I tried to do it with no fancy tricks,
no fancy lenses,

no big Hollywood sweeping cranes.

I tried to take all the tools

with which I made so many of my films

and just chuck them out the window.

I never handheld anything,
but I wanted to handhold

as much of "Schindler's List"
as I possibly could.

I just wanted to create for all of us

the feeling that we were
absolutely there at the time.

Goodbye Jews!

Goodbye Jews!
Goodbye Jews!

I'm just wondering is the synagogue...

...a good background,

or is the park a good background,

because this is
kind of interesting here.

Ralph Fiennes: Steven said, "I feel like
I'm directing my first movie.

I'm not storyboarding anything."

And I think that gave him an adrenaline

or something that we all felt.

A fire, an alertness.

I've never felt the same level
of energy and focus.

He seems to breathe cinema.

I wouldn't say
he's an intellectual director.

I think he feels things
intuitively and emotionally.

...and coverage up like that.

He was kind of like an abstract painter

who has his canvass

and has a palette
of extraordinary colors

but just doesn't know what color

to put on that screen first.

But once he's committed
to that color,

he was just firing
on all cylinders.

And there was literally times
he was running,

physically running, with that camera

because a lot of the stuff,
he shot himself.

Handheld camera.

He'd be running up and down,

saying, "Come on, come with me, quick,"

as the idea was forming in his head.

And we'd all be running
after him, "What? What?"

He'd be inspired.
He saw something.

Sir Ben Kingsley: We were all struggling
with the incomprehensible

as characters and as actors.

But we put one foot in front of
the other in our mandate

to, as Elie Wiesel says, tell stories.

Kingsley: We took on the mantle

of actor-warriors, if you like.

Because if you soften
anything with sentiment,

you lessen the blow that
the audience have got to feel

and got to reel under.

In the liquidation of the ghetto scene,

I knew I had to serve the story.

I remembered my lines,
but I was in deep shock.

No acting.

The beautifully orchestrated chaos

was unrepeatable or unforgettable.

Oskar Schindler was a gregarious man.

He was a second-rate businessman.

Bit of a shady character, you know?

A man about town, loved the women,
loved his booze.

A bon vivant, that's what he was.

And he did this extraordinary thing.

He saved over 1,100 Jewish lives.

There was something
indescribably mysterious

about this character.

It was impossible
to really understand

why he did what he did.

But we decided just to let the audience

work that out for themselves.

I was a smoker at the time.

Steve was not a smoker,
but in the close-ups,

he would start
to tell me how to smoke.

He'd say, "Okay,
you're looking at the table.

You see three of these
high-ranking Nazi guys.

Take a drag of your cigarette."

"No, no. Do it again.

Keep your fingers there.
Take a drag.

Let the smoke curl up your face.

Do it again.

Okay, now take your hand away
very, very slowly."

So, he was basically
telling me how to breathe.

I remember sharing it
with Ben Kingsley

later on that night
or the next day.

I said, "Ben, I just--
if every scene's gonna be like that,

I'm a fucking puppet, you know?

I don't want to be a puppet.

I'm 41 years of age."

And I remember Ben so well.

He said, "A great conductor...

needs a good soloist.

So just trust that.

Just go into his direction.

Don't fight against it.
Just go into it."

And that's what I did.

I just opened myself
for Steven, you know?

My father was fond of saying,

"You need three things in life--

a good doctor,
a forgiving priest,

and a clever accountant."

The first two...

I've never had much use for.

But the third?

Itzhak Stern was the character

that I was closest to
in my understanding of him.

Just pretend, for Christ's sake.

And I said to Ben, "You're the conscience
of Oskar Schindler.

You're also my window

into my insight into Oskar Schindler."

I'm trying to thank you.

I'm saying I couldn't
have done this without you.

Anything I can glean
from Schindler himself,

I think a lot of it is gonna
come from how you look at him.

You're welcome.

There are very, very few directors

who respect stillness as much as Steven.

He's gonna catch every single gesture

you offer to the camera,
and he's going to use it.

His intuition for something real and
present is very, very strong.

He wanted to avoid clichés
about Nazis,

and, in terms of performance,
I understood it on my first day.

You know, the thing about Amon having
a cough-- "Ahem, excuse me,"

and giving him sort of banal human
failings, touches like that.

Do you have any questions, sir?

Yeah, why is the top down?
I'm fucking freezing.

There were ways in which,
through performance and filming,

you can amp up
and signal "bad guy."

And I think he wanted,
quite rightly,

to say, "No, man doing job.

- You decide what you think."
- I have an idea.

How about just lighting their mouths,
nothing else?

I was just going-- you know--

no, him, I want to light
just from the top, you know,

so we get some shadows here,
just like...

Okay, I just want to make sure we're
not being too on the nose

with the-- you know,
the badness of the character

by having a straight-down light.

Everything we do in this medium is about
light and shadow,

how the cinematographer lights
the actors, lights the set.

If you look at "Schindler's List,"

Amon Goeth was always lit beautifully.

He always had
that beautiful front light.

You know, the guy was very clear.

There was no mystery in him.

You don't have to enhance his evilness,

if you may say, by lighting.

Now, if you look at Oskar Schindler,

that was a confused individual.

He came to Poland to make money,

so it's always glamorous,
but always shadowy.

And then as the movie's progressing,
he gets more frontal light.

The shadows disappear.

They say you are good.

Because he's learning who he is.

The little girl in red
actually happened.

Schindler on horseback watching these
people being rounded up.

He did spot this little girl
in a red coat.

Of all the carnage that's happening,

he can't take his eyes
off this little girl

meandering down the street.

He couldn't take his eyes off of her

and wonder why is she not being taken

along with everybody else.

And, of course, the answer was,
"Well, she will be taken.

May not be in the next few minutes,

but she's not going to survive."

During the liquidation of the ghetto,

when they were taking people
and putting them in trucks

and shooting old people
in the streets,

they were leaving her alone.

Somehow, the most obvious target

was not being apprehended.

And, to me, it was less about
what turned Oskar Schindler,

and it was more that the world
turned a blind eye on the Holocaust

and the industrialized process
of wholesale murder.

Can you believe this?

As if I don't have enough to do,
they come up with this?

I have to find every rag
buried up here and burn it.

The party's over, Oskar.

They're closing us down,
sending everybody to Auschwitz.

- When?
- I don't know.

As soon as I can arrange the shipments.

Maybe 30, 40 days.
That ought to be fun.

So, that little girl in red,

for me, symbolizes the Holocaust

and all of its monstrous evil,

and no one did anything about it
when they could have.

Michael Kahn: I remember I put together
a scene, very hard, emotionally.

And Steven comes in that night.

We went out to where he was staying

and I start running the scene.

And he looks at it.
"Hold on, Mike. I can't do it."

He's like-- he went like,
"I can't do it.

It's too tough."
And he left.

I just remember getting home
and just falling apart.

And Kate was on the set
with me a lot.

We would cry together
many, many times.

She really kept me going
through that whole production.

We were four months in Kraków.
A long time.

It was, emotionally, the hardest movie
I've ever made.

Annette Insdorf: The film is not about

the Holocaust with a capital "H."

It is a particular window
into the past.

And here, a mainstream director

had crafted a motion picture

that would in fact
finally reach a large audience,

including people that simply may never
have known

the word "Auschwitz."

About three quarters
of the way through the shoot,

Steven had this idea
about the end of the film.

He wanted to fly us to Jerusalem.

We would shoot a scene
at Schindler's grave.

I needed there to be

some testimony built into the movie

that says this story actually happened.

Brave thing to do.

These are the real people.

That was a pivotal moment
in Steven's life.

He recognized he couldn't take

any of the profits from the film.

He wanted to give something back,

so he started what became
the Shoah Foundation,

documenting that oral history
and capturing history

in a way that allowed people
not to forget.

The Shoah Foundation
is a way of trying to hear

the faintest echo
of the stories that we've lost.

So, it's connected to him
as a storyteller,

which is in his DNA.

They started running toward the tracks
and they were shot.

It was probably the last patrol
of the day.

They were not supposed
to be there anymore.

And of course they asked for papers,

but my grandfather didn't have any.

And they took them.
They took them.

He's got thousands
and thousands of testimonies,

and not just about the Holocaust.

About Rwanda,
about Bosnia, you know?

And it's amazing, this legacy
that "Schindler's List"

has spawned through Steven.

The experience of making
"Schindler's List"

made me reconcile
with all of the reasons,

the vain, glorious reasons,
I hid from my Jewishness.

And it made me so proud
to be a Jew.

There are periods of time
in moviemaking history

where you have a collision of events

that innovates and creates
something new.

And "Jurassic Park"
was one of those moments.

- Keep it there.
- It was the beginning

of, really, the digital era

where the central characters
were digitally created.

No one had ever
gone there before that way.

Come on!

Steven said to me,

"I want 28-foot to 30-foot
dinosaurs on the set

that the actors can interact with,

and I want them to be able to run."

There were going to be
at least 60 wide shots

with 60 head-to-toe dinosaurs

that could not operate mechanically.

They had to run.
They had to perform.

They had to twist and turn.
They had to be real.

So, I went off to start
to talk to experts

in the area of prosthetics
and theme parks

to figure out
how we're gonna do this.

And, of course,
everybody said to me,

"We can build these things,
but they can't run."

So, I went back to Steven
and I said, "They can't run."

He said, "Well, they have to run."

- Okay, pushing team, move in there.
- Move in.

So, all this development was going on,

and simultaneous to that,
Dennis Muren called me and he said,

"I'm working on something
with the computer

that I think could be extraordinary."

Aah!

Lock the opening!

And we flew up to ILM,

and we went in this little office,

and there was a computer,
and Dennis said, "Watch this."

And he hit a button,

and there was a dinosaur running.

This is all in the computer.

There's no models,
no cameras, or anything.

When we looked at them,

it was like nothing
you had ever seen before.

And it was one of those primal moments

where you suddenly realize, oh, my God...

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, we're there.

This is the future.

I could not believe my eyes.

Couldn't believe it.

They were alive.
They were real.

And it was so exciting,
we all leapt to our feet

because we had never seen
anything like it.

I'm not exaggerating when I say

looking at that test was like the moment

when sound came to movies.

There was this new tool
that was going to be huge,

and you could just tell.

Laura Dern:
It was that much of an experiment.

It felt that wild.

And watching, you know,
their brains at work

as we were shooting,
and how'd they adjust a shot,

and how giddy Steven would get,

you get caught up in the dreams he was
building and the magic.

Jeff Goldblum: During the scenes where
we're first seeing the dinosaur,

he puts the camera on me
and says, "Okay, Jeff,

now you're looking at the thing.

Okay, so look at it.

Yeah, keep going. Keep rolling.

Is it real?
Is it a trick?

And now, for no reason at all,
you start to laugh.

Keep laughing a little bit.

Laugh a little bit more. That's it.

Now you're stunned by it again

and you just get very still.

Okay, that's it.
Okay, I got what I need.

Let's go. Let's move on."
Like that.

He knows exactly what he needs.

Weapon, you know,
guy face-- all faces,

weapons, faces, and then right to Bob.

- Get in there!
- "Jurassic Park" is a cautionary tale.

We stand on the shoulders of giants

to create the next great thing,

and yet we take no responsibility
for our own creations.

But it's an old, timeworn
science fiction story.

It's what brought Godzilla
up from the depths.

You mess with atomic energy,
you get Godzilla.

Rick Carter: There's a lot of
dark themes in "Jurassic Park"

that are about, you know,
unleashing Pandora's box.

As it turns out, it's not
only genetic engineering,

which is a theme in the movie,

it's actually the digital revolution

coming out right from behind the fence.

Muren: This opened up
a whole new world in storytelling

because you can do
anything you want.

You're not limited by plastics or metal

or gravity or anything.

If you can imagine it,
you can do it.

It was the end of an era,
no question about it.

And it was the beginning
of a whole nother era.

Muren: Steven is a master of putting
the effects shots in for a purpose.

They're there to advance the story

and to make it a different journey

than anybody's seen before.

And it could be a spaceship,

it could be a dinosaur,
it could be an alien landing,

it could be, you know, a red coat
that somebody's wearing

when they're running through
a black-and-white movie.

- Put the camera down.
- It's part of the emotional landscape

of the story he's telling.

I've never seen a single moment

in a Spielberg movie in which you feel

that the technology
is crushing the story.

And that's really hard.

I mean, these moments,
which have to feel

spontaneous and real on-screen...

There are 200 people around,

and half of it is being
created six months later

and half of it was six months before.

When he made "Jurassic Park,"

there was no guarantee
that it would work.

That could easily
have been a disaster.

But it was the right ratio
of excitement and fear for Steven.

Doing a movie has to scare you
a little bit.

Otherwise, you're not pushing it.

"Schindler's List," which seems--

clearly, that should have
been a movie now--

was a three-hour black-and-white movie
about the Holocaust.

In the halls of Universal,
that was-- that was crazy.

That was not--

who green lights that movie, you know?

It was as big a risk
as CG dinosaurs. Bigger.

You're saying "All my credibility
as a fantasy filmmaker--

I'm gonna risk all that
on CG dinosaurs.

And all my credibility
as an artist,

I'm gonna put on the line, too.

And I'm gonna do it all
over the course of 12 months.

Fingers crossed."

They seem obvious now.

They were by no means guarantees.

And that must have been
a really terrifying period,

because you really are pushing all your
chips into the middle of the table

at that point.

Of course, it turned out
very well for Steven,

giving him one of the strangest

and most astoundingly successful years
of any film director, ever.

This is my greatest
technological masterpiece--

the Schpiel-Borg 2000.

I spared no expense.

Your play pal, Pinky,

is actually an extremely advanced
cybernetic clone

of one of Hollywood's
most powerful figures.

And if his box office numbers
are any indication,

he has the potential
to become ruler of the world.

Steven is the best-known
director in the world, easily.

- Listen.
- What?

Steven, you've made so many films.

When are you gonna do the big one?

Wow. What do you mean "big one?"

Something that clicks
with the public.

"Something that clicks
with the public."

The guy's an unmistakable force

in the business of making movies.

Running a company,
being an executive producer,

being a producer,
and being a director.

Robert Zemeckis: For a filmmaker,
you can't have a better producer

than one of the greatest
directors in the world.

He really nurtures
young talent coming up.

It's a pretty amazing roster.

He's also a major figure
in the television business.

He started a restaurant.

Dive!
Submarine sandwiches.

The man was, like, doing
27 things at once

and being perfectly
unselfconscious about it.

How many hats does that man wear?
It's impossible.

He once told me, "When I'm at a buffet,

I like to have too much food
on my plate."

Holly Hunter: He will be in production
on a movie,

doing preproduction for another movie,

and editing yet a third.

He's got a lot of different channels.

You know, me, I have a list.

You know, "change light bulbs,"

and that's on there for a week.

No, he gets a lot accomplished.

Tom Brokaw: Three of Hollywood's richest,
most powerful boy wonders

teamed up today to create
a movie studio,

Hollywood's first
major new independent studio

in almost half a century.

I don't think Steven really
fears anything.

He's always ready to go
and do something new.

Jeffrey Katzenberg: No one can
consume information,

be in so many places
so effortlessly.

It used to make me crazy
if a screenplay came in,

that, you know,
we were all waiting for,

no matter what,
I could never get home

and get it read before him.

Dustin Hoffman:
To be that talented,

to be that successful
almost in a mythological way,

your jaw drops.

Many times you see the person

incorporating their success
into their personality.

There's a sense
of self-importance.

And it's the opposite with Steven.

Steven's like a guy who works
for Steven Spielberg.

Shark!

A day of pure bliss, for me,

is a day where I'm with my family.

I've got my eyes closed,
they're swimming in the pool,

- and I just listen to their voices.
- One more time.

That's great, Theo.
That was the best one.

I never knew I was going
to have a big family.

That took me completely by surprise.

Kate never thought she'd have
a big family either.

So, the natural evolution
in our life was a gift.

Jessica is my oldest,

and then Max, and then Theo after that,

and then Sasha,
and then Sawyer,

and then Mikaela,
and then Destry.

Woman: Whoo-hoo!

Kate is a force in my life.

There's such an honesty
about her

and an awareness
of the world.

And I think the authenticity

of the kinds of movies
I began to make

after Katie and I got together

had to do with bringing
a kind of truth into my life

where truth began
to upstage make-believe.

Okay, turn the camera on.

- Roll.
- Okay, do it.

Marker.

You know, I've turned down

a lot of very successful
movie franchises

that 10 years before I would've
jumped at the chance to direct.

But it wasn't the kind of legacy

I want to leave behind
for my kids.

Steven wanted "Saving Private Ryan"

to be a different kind of very tactile
and personal war movie.

We had no idea that Omaha Beach

was gonna be what it was like
when we started.

He did not describe
anything to us.

He was playing
with our sense of confusion

and panic and fear,

capturing the moment
of our own shock,

or our surprise,
or our own blankness.

And the difference between standing
around before we're shooting

and saying, "Hey, ready to do this?
Nice to meet you. Here we go.

Can you swim?
You can't swim?

You better, because you're
in a Steven Spielberg movie.

You better..."
So, we're talking like that.

And then it opened up

and all the powers of physical
moviemaking went berserk.

Over the side!

Over the side, boys!

I tried very, very hard
to put the audience

as close to the experience
as I possibly knew how to do

so there wouldn't ever be
a safe feeling

in the audience.

And when you narrow
that distance--

if you're successful
in narrowing the distance,

then the audience
really becomes those characters.

Come on.

In "Saving Private Ryan,"
Spielberg understood

the expressionistic
possibilities of sound.

You could hear the bullets
streaking along.

You can hear them
penetrate the flesh

and ravage these bodies.

You felt what it was like
to have your ears ringing

in the midst of this
and be completely disoriented.

The sheer intensity of that scene,

the visceral element,

not just metaphorically,
but literally,

is like nothing-- nothing
that had been put on film before.

I decided to shoot the entire
Omaha Beach sequence

in complete continuity,

not knowing what was gonna come next.

And all my cameramen
were given instruction

to be spontaneous
in what they decided to shoot,

just like a documentary
cameraman would.

And for, like, 27 days,
we literally took the beach

as filmmakers,
one yard at a time.

Mama! Mama!

"Saving Private Ryan" revealed

certain visceral truths about war

that people were not
gonna learn from books.

They were not gonna learn
from documentaries.

That was him at the height of his powers

doing something
that nobody else could do.

The first time we talked
about the movie,

he said, "I can't wait to shoot that

machine gun nest at
the radar installation."

He had already mapped
this thing out in his mind,

and when we got to the location,
there was one problem--

the sun wasn't in the right place.

Steven had thought
the set was built this way,

but it was built this way.

So, he could not shoot it,
because the sun

was not going to give him
the light that he wanted.

And he was mad, perhaps with himself
or perhaps with someone

who didn't tell him
what the compass points were.

So, he went on a walk,
and when he comes back,

he says, "Okay, I know
how I'm gonna shoot it."

And it's a different perspective

from any other assault
that we had shot in the film.

And if you're not Steven,

if you don't have this lifetime

of cinematic language in your head,

that's a different kind of day.

But because his eye
is so connected to his brain

and every movie that he's ever seen

and every movie that he's ever made,

he just went out and said,

"Here's how we're gonna
do this, and that's it."

Incredible.

"Saving Private Ryan"
was in honor of the veterans,

and I think a bit of a homage
to my father

who flew missions during WWII.

He wasn't in Europe.
He was in India and Burma.

When I was a kid, my dad was telling
WWII stories all the time.

His veteran friends would come
over to the house

and I'd listen to them tell war stories.

So, WWII, that greatest generation,

became something that I wished
I could be part of.

Steven had a complicated relationship
with his father,

but he was starting
to reconnect and realize

that his first impressions
of a lot of the things he had

weren't necessarily true.

It was complex for me for a long time,

but at least I had a art form

that I could filter it through.

At least I had that.

If movies did anything for me, it--

I've avoided therapy
because movies are my therapy.

Junior?

- Yes, sir.
- And this father-son obsession

I've had in my movies
obviously speaks

to a great deal of feelings
that I've been carrying with me

that I want to unburden myself of,
and I have.

Do you remember the last time we had
a quiet drink?

Huh?

I had a milkshake.

Hmm? What did we talk about?

We didn't talk.

We never talked.

The absent father

has haunted Steven throughout his life,

and he has fictionalized it
in all kinds of ways on film.

It's the heart of him.

Although I liked the movies,

I noticed the absence of the father

quite significantly.

For a long time,
Steven was very mad at me.

There he is.

- Get a hug?
- I was hurt by it, but quietly hurt.

Confusing handshake?
Kick in the teeth?

I didn't broach it with Steven.

I just ate it up a little bit

and hurt a little bit.

I thought I had lost you, boy.

I thought you had too, sir.

My dad and I finally
resolved our differences,

and we're probably closer now
than we ever were before.

When he made "Saving Private Ryan,"

he said, "I made this for my dad."

And that was wonderful.

That made me feel warm right here.

Lawrence Kasdan:
Steven has always had a big vision

of what movies can be.

He's an American moviemaker.

And it's not starry-eyed patriotism.

Animals!

He is drawn to all the themes

that are inherent
in the American character

and the American society
and how it developed.

There are people struggling

in one way or another
for freedom in these movies.

Give... us free.

He doesn't take freedom for granted.

Liberty and equality,

the Constitution,

and the rights of the individual.

He's evolved as a filmmaker.

"Amistad" and "Lincoln"
and "Bridge of Spies"

are all about the rule of law.

They're all about
the rights of even people

who are either brought here
against their will

or come here to be a soldier
in an opposing army

and are caught.

The law fully covers everyone.

We were supposed to show

he had a capable defense,
which we did.

Why are you citing
the goddamn Constitution at me?

Tom, if you look me in the eye

and tell me we don't have grounds

for an appeal, I'll drop it right now.

I'm not saying that.
You know what I'm saying.

Tom is saying there's a cost
to these things.

That's right.

A cost to both
your family and your firm.

I really believe in this country,

and I always have.

And it just resonated
throughout my work--

wanting to tell American stories,

wanting to tell stories
about principled, ethical people

who, against all advice

and against most everyone else's
better judgment,

just proceed to do the right thing.

I'm sure that sounds like
I'm this kind of, you know,

idealist or some sort of a patriot,

but I am a patriot.

And I'm somewhat of an idealist, too.

Say all we done is show the world

that democracy isn't chaos.

That there is a great
invisible strength

in a people's union.

Say we've shown
that a people can endure

awful sacrifice and yet cohere.

Mightn't that save at least the idea
of democracy,

to aspire to?

Eventually to become worthy of?

Daniel Day-Lewis: The first thing that
you have to overcome

is the reluctance
to even approach Lincoln

because he's such a mighty figure.

His experience as a president
was in, you know,

one of the greatest crises
that this country's ever known.

And so, undoubtedly, of course,

he made decisions that were
extremely unpalatable

to many, many people.

We are absolutely guaranteed
to lose the whole thing.

We don't need a goddamned
abolition amendment.

Leave the Constitution alone!

...peace commissioners appear today, or--

I can't listen to this anymore.

I can't accomplish a goddamn thing

of any human meaning or worth

until we cure ourselves of slavery

and end this pestilential war!

And whether any of you
or anyone else knows it,

I know I need this!

This amendment is that cure!

Steven worked a long time

to find where the story was to tell it.

And it took guts for Steven to
make a movie about Abraham Lincoln

in which Lincoln shares top billing with
the House of Representatives.

Doris Kearns Goodwin:
He had faith that if he told a story

that is about democracy and it's about
messiness and politics--

and people are on different sides
of the issue,

and people who were Democrats then
are Republicans now,

and Republicans now
were Democrats then,

was pretty confusing
for people to get a sense

right away of what the story was.

But he somehow thought
if the American people

can feel this man
and feel what he was doing,

they'll see what democracy is
when it really works.

A motion has been made
to bring the bill

for the 13th Amendment to a vote.

- Do I hear a second?
- I second the motion.

So moved, so ordered.

And in the end,
it's not Lincoln's triumph

that's pushed to the fore in the film.

I think what's really
pushed to the fore

is that it's a triumph of democracy.

The part assigned to me
is to raise the flag.

And when up, it'll be for the people
to keep it up.

That's my speech.

♪ We are coming, Father Abraham ♪

♪ 300,000 more ♪

♪ From Mississippi's winding stream ♪

♪ And from New England's shore ♪

♪ We leave our ploughs... ♪

Oh, yeah!

Todd McCarthy: From about the time

of the millennium in Spielberg's career,

there is something, whether it's personal,
political, historical,

that pushed him in a more adventurous
and a darker direction.

I fundamentally don't buy

that he has a pessimistic worldview

or that he suddenly changed
and has a more dubious opinion

of the human race, but still,

there's been an alteration.

He has been willing to go places

that he would not have gone
in his earlier films.

All right, Howard Marks.
Where are you?

It was a very complicated
story, "Minority Report."

A very dark story, actually.

You know, democracy, freedom of choice,

corruption.

That dark, futuristic dystopian tone

was so compelling for me at that time.

Tennessee Williams says that artists

are like the canaries in the coal mine.

And Steven has an uncanny knack

for feeling what's going on
in the world around him

and what needs to be said
at its moment.

I think he's a very present filmmaker.

By mandate of the District of Columbia
Precrime Division,

I'm placing you under arrest for the

future murder of Sarah Marks
and Donald...

The film anticipated
the whole post-9/11 mentality

of arresting people
before they can commit crimes

and preventive detention
and so on.

But the movie that I made

that was a real statement about 9/11

was "War of the Worlds."

For me, it began with
what would really happen

if we were invaded

and everything that we thought

made us invulnerable to invasion

was all wrong?

There's a sequence
where Cruise's character

runs through the streets
and the ray is turning people to dust

and some of that dust is in his hair.

And he comes home
and sees himself in shock

and realizes that that's remains
that are in his hair.

Oh!

Steven handled that with great tact.

9/11 was so much a part
of our national psyche,

you didn't have to do much
to evoke the shock we all felt

and the helplessness
we all felt at being attacked.

Good afternoon.
I'm Jim McKay speaking to you

live at this moment
from ABC headquarters

just outside the Olympic Village
in Munich, West Germany.

The peace of what is-- would've
been called the "Serene Olympics"

was shattered just before dawn
this morning about 5:00.

Nobody was expecting Steven Spielberg,

maybe the world's
most famous Jewish artist,

to weigh in on the Middle East

because it's such a minefield,

and Steven is not a sensationalist

in the sense of wanting to create,

you know, firestorms of controversy.

This is building number 31.

At this moment,

eight or nine terrified
living human beings

are being held prisoner.

I felt I could not make this one-sided.

And so, I knew it would be controversial
from the very get-go.

Eric Bana: It was that story
of the group of Mossad agents

who were assembled
to avenge the deaths

of the Israeli athletes
at the Munich Olympics.

It was their job to go after a list
of targeted men

who were part of a terrorist group.

And it was their job to, one by one,
assassinate them.

Daniel Craig: This movie was trying to
affect and turn on a debate.

Is vengeance the answer?
Does it actually solve anything?

If you continue the cycle of violence

and cycle of blood, then...

that's what they'll be and nothing else.

Steven was very keen
to tell a human story,

that these were men
and not superheroes.

Their indecision and their mistakes

and their-- is the reality
of what happened, you know?

Life isn't a "James Bond" movie.

Are you-- are you Wael Zwaiter?

He said yes already.
He already said yes.

What are we doing?

What do I do?

Do you know why we're here?

In "Munich," Spielberg is trying
to come to terms

with the war against terror.

And he doesn't know where he is on it.

He's-- he supports it,

but he's also disturbed by it.

And so, that's an example

of a kind of thoughtfulness
that goes into his work.

I mean, he's the Hollywood equivalent
of a public intellectual.

I remember when we shot
the telephone bomb sequence.

In that one dolly shot,

you got a complete sense of the
geography of the entire scene.

It took three days to shoot the scene.

Everything had to be from
points of view.

There was the point of view
of the guys in the car.

So now we wait for the red light.

There was the point of view
of the man in the phone booth

who was gonna dial the number.

There was a point of view of Avner.

It's a triangle of shots.

Geography is one of the most
important things to me,

so the audience isn't thrown into chaos

trying to figure out
the story you're telling.

The audience needs to be
clearer than you.

- Is the truck blocking the signal?
- No.

Will the remote still work?

I can create suspense

if the audience knows
where all the players are,

and they know what the stakes are,

and they know that there's
a ticking clock.

Like the mom and daughter
that get into the car

and then wind up returning
because she forgot the glasses.

The suspense of that sequence

is letting the audience
know geographically

where everybody is at all times.

Allô? Allô?

Allô?

Stop!

Stop, stop. Abort.

You're in the hands of somebody who

will always show you
what you need to see

in order to understand, on a
narrative level, what's happening.

And you'll also see a lot of things

that will help you understand
on deeper levels as well.

And that sort of narrative device
that's in his head

is, you know, I think
almost without precedent.

- Oui?
- Mahmoud Hamshari?

Yes.

We talked a great deal
about the politics

of making a movie like this.

How do you make a film that allows

for the possibility of understanding

why these men who murdered the athletes

did what they did?

Not in any way to excuse it,

but to try and comprehend it.

You kill Jews, and the world feels bad
for them and thinks you're animals.

Yes, but then the world will see

how they've made us into animals.

They'll start to ask questions

about the conditions in our cages.

The movie was perceived to be suffering

from a sense of moral equivalence,

which is really the bravest thing
about the movie.

It's looking for aspects of humanity
on both sides of this conflict.

Ambiguity is something that you don't
normally associate with Spielberg's films,

and "Munich" is the film
where he went the furthest

in the bluntness and the ferocity

with which he approached that subject.

Did we accomplish anything at all?

Every man we killed has been
replaced by worse!

Why cut my fingernails?
They'll grow back.

Did we kill to replace the terrorist
leadership or the Palestinian leadership?

You tell me what we've done.

You killed them for the sake of a
country you now choose to abandon.

The end of this film
is not celebratory--

rejoicing in the death of the enemy.

It is incredibly quiet,

and only on the second viewing

did I realize the Twin Towers

are revealed at the end.

We did several takes of that scene

without having that space in the frame,

and then we did one take

with having that space in the frame,

knowing that he would put the Towers in.

Steven knew that he's making
a controversial movie.

He just didn't want
to push the boundaries.

But then at the end, he realized,

"You know what?
I'm already doing it.

Why not just go and say
what I want to say, you know?"

I made the choice because
I wanted people to say

"Munich" is the context

for problems that exist in today's world

and basically are threatening
to all of us.

You know, history is its own reminder

of how bad things can get.

And if we don't solve these problems,

they accumulate.

And you can't--
there's no rug big enough

to sweep these problems under.

And eventually,
something is going to happen.

And so, "Munich" is a prayer for peace,

but peace the hard way.

You know, peace by discovering
within yourself

your moral high ground.

All my films come
from the part of myself

that I really can't articulate.

I certainly have intuitive facilities,

but I don't really analyze those
or don't really question them.

It's like looking
a gift horse in the mouth,

and I'm almost superstitious
that if I start to question that,

it's gonna, you know, fly away.

I don't think there's
any doubt that Steven's work

deals with specific themes in his life,

which makes him
a real personal filmmaker.

Do you understand what we are saying
to you, Frank?

Your father and I are getting a divorce.

And his express through the images,

through the choice of story
and how he deals with character.

All of Steven's sensibilities

were right in tune
with this young man's journey.

You're immediately with this kid,

and no matter what he does,

you know he's searching
for some way back

to repairing this torn household.

- Have you tried to call her?
- No.

Why-- why don't
you call her right now?

Dad, why don't you call her right now?
Here.

Dad, just call her.

Call her for me. You call her.

You tell her I have two first-class
tickets to go see her son--

Your mother's married now
to my friend Jack Barnes.

- They have a house in Long Island.
- Oh, no.

So often in Spielberg's movies

the relationships that matter

are the relationships
between parent and children

or members of a family
or members of a community

bound by affection
and loyalty and responsibility.

It's a huge theme that comes up again
and again and again

in different phases of his own life

and in different stories.

Whoa! Hey!

Ronnie, hold it. Hold it. Wa--

Hold it.

Family is a big element in my life,

which is why so many of my stories

are about separation
and then reunification.

Even "Lincoln" is about separation
and reunification.

Barry!

I've made a lot of movies

about a family disintegrating

and then a family finding common ground
to reunite.

There's a sense that everything,
including the natural world,

conspires to pull people

or beings apart from one another

and then to return them.

It's like Shakespeare's romances.

There's a deep faith in his work that...

what's lost will in some way
be restored.

And I think he is searching for that

in almost all the films that he's made.

Now slowly.

My mom and dad
have a relationship today

which a writer in a storybook

would be accused of exaggeration.

I feel very lucky that
after all these years apart,

my parents spend quality time
with each other.

If you look at the first 18 years

of Steve's life and now, current day,

you would not know that there was a
huge chunk in the middle,

that there was a divorce
and a separation,

a lot of tears, and another man,
and another wife,

and, you know, it looks like we were
one continuous, happy family.

We just lost the reels
to the home movies

in the middle of life.

Now she's back in love with me.

Isn't that nice?

Oh, Leah.

Janusz, it'd be a better two-shot.

If Dougie is here, okay,
then it's not such a spread.

- So, it's not a single. It's over here.
- No, no, it's a single.

When we start pulling back,
Dougie comes into the shot sooner.

And then we continue with the move?

Yeah, we continue with the move,

but right now it looks like

- there's nothing in the center
but the window.
- Got you.

Steven loves to be a part
of a big gang of people

and the company of filmmakers
who are making a movie.

It's a big, great club.
It's a big, great family.

- Tom, action.
- I think it defines Steven's filmmaking

in many, many different ways

because Steven is grounded
and feels very safe

inside an environment with family.

He likes close relationships

with a few people who he trusts

and he can open his life up to.

And then he's very reluctant
to have anybody leave.

That's it right there.
It looks great.

We work for Steven.

He's the boss, but he encourages
people with talent

to use the talent,
to be brave with it,

to take risks,

because he wants to be
stimulated as a filmmaker,

but those who he works with,
you know.

And that's a really good quality
in a filmmaker.

He's very collaborative.

He uses his people over and over again
on the films

because we already speak
a shorthand to each other.

- We've all worked together.
- And they'd come on to full size...

He understands that people
and can serve him

and how to synchronize
his wishes with your own.

He would've made a great general.

If you could say that a film unit

can be like a Special Forces film crew,

that's what he has.

His team works so fast,

so hard getting through
a lot every day.

Everybody on their feet, applauding.

And I think you could come to grief

very, very quickly on Steven's set

if you weren't very well prepared.

Everyone has to be.

And that creates incredible energy.

I work with my peeps,
and I have for decades.

I mean, I don't know
what I would do without them.

Roll sound.
Roll!

I can't really have sanity

unless I have familiarity.

And it's just an extraordinary family

that I've been able to assemble
over all these years.

I love being part of his tapestry,

so to speak, you know,
like "Fiddler on the Roof."

♪ After 37 years, it's nice to know... ♪
You know?

Michael Kahn and I are blood brothers.

He started with me on
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind,"

and except for one time, he's edited
every movie I made since then.

Janusz Kaminski has done everything
since "Schindler's List."

But John Williams
is my oldest collaboration,

and I depend on Johnny more than
I've depended on anybody

to rewrite my movies musically

and put them a rung higher
than I ever could reach.

You know, if I had to go back and recast

the creative team surrounding me,

I wouldn't be able to work
as often as I do.

It'd be impossible.

Steven looks at movies constantly

and over and over and over again,

referencing shots and framing and ideas.

That's something Steven does
all the time.

Great filmmakers' works
live on to create

tremendous moments of inspiration.

And so, one of the films
I still see every year

is "Lawrence of Arabia."

The shots, the sheer vistas,

and the portrait
of such a complex character,

it's pure moviemaking.

Hey!

Hey! Hey! Hey!

Who are you?

Who are you?

Steven has always wanted to work

in a kind of big, you know,
historical canvass like that,

and it took many movies
before he accomplished

that level of masterly filmmaking.

Many years ago, Pauline Kael
gave me a really great review

on "Sugarland Express,"
but she said,

"Whatever's on the surface
might be all that is there.

There may be nothing behind that."

And she was absolutely right.

I hadn't grown up yet
through the movies.

That was going to come in time.

Take a look at what he's done
over close to 50 years.

There's certainly a lot of variety.

There are some things he's done
that haven't worked,

but there is absolutely
nobody like him

and no film career trajectory

that is anything like his
in the history of film.

He speaks cinema
as if it's his native language.

He is so fluent in it
that he does things

that nobody else
would dare to do

and they are instantly recognizable

as things that are purely his.

He has a dynamic sense
of real filmmaking.

I'm talking about filmmaking of--

in the great narrative tradition
of American cinema.

Steven was blessed

in that he could be commercial

and he could do art.

That's why I always compare him

to a kind of George Gershwin,

because Gershwin could write
a Broadway show

or he could write "Concerto in F."

He could do both,
and very few people can do both.

And Steven can do both.

And that's a talent
you have to be born with.

You think of that young kid in Arizona,

in the desert, watching movies,

watching television incessantly,

one day sneaking his way
into a studio,

and manifesting his own destiny.

It's a pretty fantastic Hollywood story.

He's found a way to take
his view of the world,

his wishful thinking, his optimism,

and also his uncanny sense
of the thrill,

and sort of galvanize
the whole thing

into whatever the story is
he's telling.

It's authentically him.

Steven has a part of him

that wants to see something good

in the darkest of the dark

or that wants to just have a playtime.

And there may be people
who say he's not edgy enough

or he's not bitter enough,
he's not quirky enough,

or he's not dark enough,

but when it's all over
and said and done,

what Steven has left is enormous.

To have both humor
and suspense

and adventure and heart

through his grand eyes
of storytelling

is a hell of a good thing.

Steven still has an enormous appetite

for the work that he does.

It's quite a rare thing.

You know, we all have,
probably, a shelf life.

Yes, we probably go
past that shelf life,

most of us,
without even knowing it.

But in his case, I think, till the day
he dies, he'll be doing work

that he feels absolutely
viscerally compelled to do.