(Barry Monush, author of the new book "Steven Spielberg FAQ" enlightens readers as to how the famed director inspired him to write this overview of the famed director's career.)
BY BARRY MONUSH
As it gets harder
these days to find “reliables,†it’s nice to have certain filmmakers still
around who have given me more pleasure than pain over the years. And even nicer
when you’re given a chance to celebrate them in print. Such is the case with
Steven Spielberg.
My publishers,
Applause Books, were tossing around possible ideas for further volumes of their
FAQ series, and I tossed back at them
the suggestion of a Spielberg book. Of course it got an instant response,
because absolutely everyone is aware
of Steven Spielberg. You needn’t be the sort of film aficionado that follows
the scene with fervent interest (i.e. readers of this website) to know he’s out
there making movies and has been doing so for some 45 years with a track record
of success far exceeding anyone else. When you’re pitching ideas, it helps for
your topic to have a high awareness factor in order to get a book on that someone
“greenlighted,†but it’s even better when the subject is worthy of the tribute.
To me, the motion
picture scene since the 1970s would be inconceivable without the presence of
Steven Spielberg. Some would go so far as to say he created the world of motion
pictures as we know it today, which shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a high
compliment. For everyone who loves the cinematic world of Steven Spielberg,
there are plenty who will give you a theatrical grimace at the mere mention of
his name. Trust me, I know, I’ve seen it, when people asked me what the subject
was for my newest book. They either lit up or cringed. You don’t get to be that well known and that well-to-do financially without making some people a bit
resentful or dismissive.
With great fame
comes expectations of an unreasonable size. You can’t blow people away with the
thrills of Jaws or the sense of
wonder inherent in Close Encounters of
the Third Kind or E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial and then make a mere “good†movie; you’re expected to score
a slam dunk, a home run and a touchdown
every time you’re given the ball. As a result, some very good Steven Spielberg
films have been shortchanged over the years by those who wanted him to reach
Olympian peaks each time they plunked their cash down at the box office. Moviegoers
have pigeonholed him according to their own personal tastes and fond memories, and
often have stubbornly resisted venturing with him into new territory. Much as
“those wonderful people out there in the dark†are loathe to admit it, history
has shown that audiences let down filmmakers far more often than filmmakers do
the audience. Of course any director worth their salt is going to go in unexpected
ways once in a while or try out new genres or techniques, which is what makes
movie going something exciting. Believe me, if you had a mild initial response
to such movies as Empire of the Sun,
Amistad, or Munich, I recommend
you see them again. These are all strong,
impressive, moving works with something to say about the human condition. If
they do not tower as highly or with as much resonance as, say, Schindler’s List, that’s to be forgiven.
That’s an awful lofty peak to reach, after all.
I don’t need this
constant reassurance of greatness with Spielberg or any filmmaker for that
matter. I know he’s good; quite good. Even when I’ve come away disappointed
from one of his efforts, I know I wasn’t watching a hack on a downward spiral,
but a singular talent whose capabilities were still evident even within the
missteps. Such are all the best filmmakers. And Spielberg really is one of the
best. It’s been evident from the start; it was even evident in his television
work, in the handful of series episodes and movies he made for the small screen
before he ventured towards the larger canvas of motion pictures.
I remembered
pretty vividly the segment of the Night
Gallery pilot he directed long before I even realized who Steven Spielberg
was. Blind Joan Crawford’s justifiable punishment for her abominable behavior
was dramatized in a lean but eerie fashion: her sight is restored for a brief
period only to find herself waking up during a New York blackout. Her
accidental stumble through a window was dramatized by dropping a plate of glass
and watching it shatter in slow motion. A great touch. Watching the segment
again, all these years later, there’s nothing in this credit to suggest that
its director had never before taken on a professional directing job prior to
this, nor that he had only recently turned 22 years of age. His work was that
of a professional with decades of experience behind him.
Of course the TV
assignment that really did the trick was Duel
(1971). It is not unjust to say that this compact story of a hapless
motorist terrorized by a menacing, unseen truck driver might very well be the
peak of the television movie genre. After all, how many of these presentations really
stayed with people over the years as vividly as this one did? How many were
executed with a flair more cinematic than was customarily seen on the small
screen? How many of this ilk were grouped in with a director’s theatrical work,
just because they were so well done?
For the most part,
there’s no great glory in being a very good television director, however, and
it was a day for celebration when Spielberg go to go-ahead from Universal
Studios to make his first theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express. The maiden effort of this “newbie†was so assured
and so incredibly well-made that it stands with the best of his work, even
though it made next to no impact on the movie going public in 1974 when it was
released. His first movie, it turns out, was his lowest grossing one of all,
but its virtues have so overwhelmed its initial box office response that nobody
gives much thought to the financial end of it anymore. In the long run, it’s
the quality that counts and Spielberg got off to a sensationally good start.
Perhaps one had to
live through the experience to understand just how seismic was the effect of
his second movie, Jaws, on the world
of motion pictures. This shark thriller was a jolt of excitement that made
nothing more fulfilling than to spend time in a movie theater in the summer of
1975. If you hadn’t seen it, you were looked at askance. It became that pivotal
a part of pop culture. Folks of all ages, walks of life, professions and
intellectual levels seemed to love it equally. It made people revved up about
the endless possibilities of films, the future of cinema, the life-changing
grip mass entertainment could have on its viewers. Certain people wanted more
eagerly than ever to find a way into the motion picture industry because of it
to see if perhaps they could come anywhere near its reach. If filmmaking was
not your goal, there were those of us who wanted to at least celebrate or write
about movies somehow because a movie like Jaws
was a reminder of just how wonderfully engaged a really well-made work of
populist art could make us feel.
As I recall, at
the time you didn’t hear your average citizen, however, speaking about the
director behind it all, or even bothering to remember just who this Steven
Spielberg was. The “household name†degree of recognition would come over time,
after Close Encounters (1977), and
the back-to-back summer smashes of Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981) and E.T. (1982).
By that point, a person had to be pretty much hiding under the proverbial rock
to be unaware that Steven Spielberg was the guy dictating a great deal of what
was thrilling the world in modern entertainment.
It was that
“household name†label, however, that brought the inevitable backlash, further
compounded by the fact that Mr. Spielberg’s name was all over the place
starting in the 1980s, as a producer or executive producer, on a whole slew of
light entertainments and fantasies, from the hyper Gremlins (1984) to the droll time travel comedy Back to the Future (1985) to the
animated An American Tail (1986), not
to mention his own two-season (1985-87) anthology series Amazing Stories. While a lot of these Spielberg presentations (or
presentations of Amblin Entertainment, as his company was dubbed, in tribute to
his 1968 independent short, “Amblin’†that earned him the attention of the
industry) left much to be desired (Harry
and the Hendersons and Innerspace come
instantly to mind), I believe that Spielberg himself was still working at the
top of his game. He might have felt uninspired by certain material (his segment
of Twilight Zone: The Movie or Hook, to name two), but it was thrilling
when he’d rise so brilliantly to the occasion, with amazing set pieces (the
last half hour of 1984’s Indiana Jones
and the Temple of Doom is a tour de force display of just how thrilling an
adventure movie can be) and motion pictures that were emotionally stirring and
resonant in their power (The Color
Purple, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, among others).
Unlike many
acclaimed filmmakers, Spielberg managed for decades to hold onto his enviable
status and keep producing high profile pictures that were considered important
additions to each movie year. As the years went on, he grew in versatility,
being able to impress us with varied projects, sometimes within the same year. I
am stilled staggered by him managing to give us Jurassic Park and Schindler’s
List in the same year (1993); the former the year’s most popular and
dazzling thrill ride, the latter it’s most shattering and award-laden drama. In
2002, he created one of the most mesmerizing sci-fi stories of the new
millennium, Minority Report, and then
turned around and pulled off a light-hearted bio-pic of a likable con artist in
Catch Me if You Can. In 2005, he made
a smashingly effective update on War of
the Worlds (2005), and then quickly produced a grimly disturbing meditation
on the consequences of retaliation with the historical Munich.
Of course the
money people at the studios love Steven Spielberg because he’s been able to
score so many profitable hits over the years, but what I find more essential to
the well-being of the industry is the that his “box office pull†gets
interesting projects done with a higher awareness factor than most. Thanks to
this, large audiences have shown up for difficult movies like The Color Purple, Schindler’s List, and Lincoln, which might not have been made
otherwise or might have had to struggle to find appreciative viewers had Mr.
Spielberg not opened the door to them in the first place. Seeing Spielberg’s
name on such movies was far more appealing than it might have been with other talented
but unfamiliar filmmakers helming them.
The nice thing is
that the man is still on the top of his game past the age of 70. Last year he
surprised us all when, before he’d finished fine tuning his adaptation of the
novel Ready Player One, he decided to
slip in another major motion picture, The
Post, knowing it was important during this shambles of a Presidential
administration to do a motion picture that supported freedom of the press and
the public’s need to know when their leaders have been playing fast and loose
with the facts. It was another exemplary credit, miles apart from Ready Player in tone and execution. I
have no affinity whatsoever for the world of video gaming or virtual reality,
but if there was someone to pull it off adeptly, it’s Spielberg. As a result, Ready Player One is hardly my cup of
tea, but I can still be wowed by the versatility of the man who made it,
pulling me into an alien world because of his craft and, more importantly, his
ever-present humanity. I’d like him to be around for as long as I’m still up
for venturing out to the movies. I’m certain he’ll end up astounding and
satisfying me more often than not. That’s what I call “a reliable.â€
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