“I was a scared kid and my parents had no idea what to do with it,” says Steven Spielberg. The photo above was taken in New York City in March 2017.
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Mike Coppola/Getty Images
“I was a scared kid and my parents had no idea what to do with it,” says Steven Spielberg. The photo above was taken in New York City in March 2017.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg still remembers his first trip to the cinema.his parents took him to see best show on earth Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952 drama, set in the Ringling Brothers and the Barnum & Bailey Circus, was misunderstood.
“I never went to the movies,” recalls Spielberg. “and … In fact, I thought they were telling me, “I’m taking you to the circus.” “
As he settled into his theater seat, Spielberg felt betrayed. where was the big tent? Where did the circus animals he expected go? But then it didn’t take long before the red curtain opened, the movie started, and he was spellbound.
“I didn’t understand the story, I didn’t understand what they were saying, but the visuals were amazing,” he says.
After that, he became haunted by the horrific train derailment he saw in the movies. At his home, he began recreating the scene using the Lionel train set and his father’s 8mm motion picture camera.
“I really think that the idea of using a camera to film it helped ease the fear,” he says. “Thus, my obsession with creating images turned into storytelling.”
Spielberg would go on to direct over 30 films. Joes, and indiana jones movie, Private Ryan and recent adaptations west side story. He says his movies are all personal, especially his latest (which he jokingly calls “$40 million therapy”).
favermans A semi-autobiographical film based on Spielberg’s childhood and teenage years. The film depicts the tensions in his family at the time and why his parents divorced when he was 19 years old. Also, the story of how he fell in love with movies and became a film director is told in fictional form.
interview highlights
About being a scared child
Nothing scared me. Everything was scary. I was terrified of this…a horrible bare tree outside the window that looked like it had tentacles, horrible branches, and what looked like arms and long fingers and long claws. And that tree scared me. Later, as an adult, when I wrote Poltergeist, made a tree outside the window. It actually comes to life and grabs the child and begins sucking it into one of its wet knotholes. It was stolen directly from the tree outside the window and scared me.
I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of tight spaces – and still am. I am very claustrophobic. But I was a scared kid and my parents had no idea what to do with it. My mother was fearless and my father was very stoic about things like this. And when the sun went down and I went to bed and my parents turned off the lights, no amount of bedside chatter could calm me down. I think the only consolation was that the door to the bedroom was allowed to crack an inch or two. So I felt a small solace in the light of the hall coming in, and that was it.
Gabrielle LaBelle to play young film director Sammy favermans.
Mary Wise Miller Wallace/Universal Pictures
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Mary Wise Miller Wallace/Universal Pictures
Gabrielle LaBelle to play young film director Sammy favermans.
Mary Wise Miller Wallace/Universal Pictures
On learning my number from a Holocaust survivor’s tattoo as a child
That’s how I remembered my numbers.that’s a very perverted version Sesame street, I sat at these tables. I was just a kid I think I was about three years old. I’m back in Cincinnati. … I remember sitting around a table with a lot of very, very old people, but perhaps they weren’t that old. They probably think he was in his 30s or his early 40s, but as a kid, anyone who looks 30 or he looks 40 looks like he’s on the brink of death. …they mostly spoke Yiddish or German or Hungarian. … My grandmother was their English teacher and taught classes at their Cincinnati home. The large dining room table was filled with survivors. And one man in particular, I kept staring at the number tattoo on his forearm. During the dinner break, when everyone was eating and not studying, he pointed to a number and said, “That’s 2, that’s him 4.” And he said, “This is an eight and that is a one.” And I will never forget this, and he said, “It’s a nine.” I turned my arm upside down and said, “And look, it’s going to be a 6. This is magic.” And all that cynicism and that gift of instruction didn’t really hit me until I was much older.
About his early childhood when his father’s story triggered his obsession with World War II
My father kept telling me stories of World War II. He made an 8mm war movie with it. nowhere to runIt was drawn with The Fablemans, This is an actual movie that I made when I was about 16 years old. … And I was really into war, so I made a WWII Air Force movie. fighter squadron in black and white When I was about 14 years old. So it came out of a sort of interest in what I was watching on TV and the stories his father was telling me.
Steven Spielberg in a 1978 photo.
Graham Morris/Evening Standard/Getty Images
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Graham Morris/Evening Standard/Getty Images
Steven Spielberg in a 1978 photo.
Graham Morris/Evening Standard/Getty Images
My father would occasionally reunite with other members of his fighter squadron and the Ford 90th Squadron, and once every few years he would come over to the house from time to time, and seven or eight of us would be together, and I would say, ‘I I was walking in and out of their room and going to the kitchen, and I heard some of their stories and conversations. And what was most disturbing to me was when suddenly a grown man collapsed sobbing and my father and everyone else sat around him… patting him on the back and trying to drink a glass of water. That was it. And there will be tears. When you were a child, it was unusual to hear an adult sob in your own home. …It was years later that I learned that PTSD from the war was the cause. [it]. That’s why it was so healthy for veterans to get together every few years.
On my desire to make a war movie that doesn’t glorify war
I knew from listening to my father and his friends talking about World War II that there was no glory in war. It was ugly and cruel. It was visually devastating. So I thought that if I was going to make a real war movie one day, it would have to tell the truth about what it was like for 17, 18 and 19-year-old boys who attacked Omaha Beach. Well, so to speak.
So when I had the chance to adapt Robert Rodat’s script into a movie, Private RyanI was reading a Stephen Ambrose book. citizen soldier, and I got to know Steve really well. He became my consultant because he spent time interviewing veterans who landed on that beach at 6:30 am on June 6, 1944. And because I interviewed dozens of veterans in the first wave. And he actually sent me out to have some of them interview me and ask my own questions. That’s when I realized that if I was going to tell this story, it shouldn’t be about glorifying war. It would have to be the dirty dirty truth of what it was like for these boys.
Steven Spielberg speaks on stage at the 2017 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governor’s Awards in Hollywood, California.
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Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Steven Spielberg speaks on stage at the 2017 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Governor’s Awards in Hollywood, California.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
On his fear of not being seen by the audience Private Ryan because of violence
It was DreamWorks money and I was kind of sure it would lose that shirt and every dollar we put in would go to waste Ryan The film cost $59 million to make (which is cheap now) back then. Filmed in 1997 and released in 1998. I just wanted to tell the truth, I didn’t think anyone would see that movie. And I was really surprised that so many people all over the world went to see it. I was worried that people who saw it for the first time would say, “You’re bloody, don’t overdo it.”
On becoming a self-taught filmmaker
I didn’t go to film school. And although I was self-taught, I was blessed with a wonderful teacher. As you know, all the people who influenced me were the directors and writers of the movies I was seeing in theaters and on television. And my film school was truly a legacy of Hollywood and international filmmaking. Because there is no better teacher than Lubitsch, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Ford, William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Clarence Brown. That is Val Lewton. They are my teachers.
Heidi Saman and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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