Spielberg (2017) - full transcript

( camera rolling )

( music playing )

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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

- ( laughs )

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"?

- ( gunfire )

- ( all yelling )

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

( explosion )

( music continues )

( roaring )

( distant explosions )

( music continues )

And then trying to get...

it felt lined up.

- Man: 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.

- Man: Can you get there?

Right there

would be good.

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

- ( music playing )

- ( muffled chatter )

( yelling )

- Did you see that?

- Yes.

( screams )

( muffled screaming )

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.

Man: Guys, we can't

shoot right now.

- Hold on.

- Man #2: Hold on.

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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."

Man:

Marker.

- Man #2: Good blood.

- Spielberg: And... ready?

- And action, Roy.

- Slow ahead.

I can go slow ahead.

You ought to come down

and ladle some of this shit.

Spielberg:

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...

( vocalizing )

Like that.

Spielberg:

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!

Spielberg:

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.

( boat engine starting )

John Williams: If the shark

had been available visually,

it might have changed

the whole psychology

of the experience.

( music playing )

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.

Spielberg: 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.

- ( screams ) - J. Hoberman: He

certainly likes torturing the audience.

Has he ever been

in analysis?

( thunder rumbling )

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

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

Spielberg: Everything

scared me when I was a kid.

Everything.

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

- ( thunder rumbling )

Spielberg: I had a tree out my

window that was terrifying.

It was just terrifying.

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

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

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.

( screams )

- ( screaming ) - 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.

Spielberg: "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.

Spielberg: 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.

- ( music playing )

- ( applause )

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.

- ( applause )

- ( music playing )

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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

( birds chirping )

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg:

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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

( explosion )

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.

( music playing )

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.

( music playing )

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.

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

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."

Sheinberg: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

Dreyfuss: 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.

( chuckling )

Spielberg: 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!

Scorsese: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

Brolin:

I had wanted to direct,

and Steven walks in,

and he's a kid!

And I'm envious as hell

right away.

Scorsese: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

( horn honks )

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."

( cash register dings )

Edelstein: Right off

the bat, it was clear

that no one moved the camera

like Steven Spielberg.

- ( bell rings )

- ( billiard balls clack )

Edelstein: 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.

( horn honking )

Spielberg:

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.

Bochco: 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.

( music playing )

Vilmos Zsigmond:

He's a director who know

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

difficult thing to...

to keep that alive

all the time.

You know, the angles

and all that.

I see lights,

a whole bunch.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

Scorsese: 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.

( music playing )

Edelstein: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: Martin Scorsese,

filmmaker of "Mean Streets."

This is Brian De Palma,

loud as ever.

( chatter )

- George and Marcia Lucas.

- Hi!

And this is Steven.

Get the camera arranged.

Great.

♪ Time has come today ♪

♪ Young hearts

can go their way... ♪

Scorsese: 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.

( laughs )

Yeah, people were on the way

out, and we were going in.

Lucas: 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.

De Palma: 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.

- ( music playing )

- ( chatter )

Spielberg: 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. - De Palma:

Then they started to go out together.

They were together

and then they were apart,

and then they got back

together again.

- De Palma: 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.

- ( laughs )

Phillips:

Steven was a nerd.

( laughs )

Master of the world!

Phillips: 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.

- ( phone ringing )

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.

- ( gasps )

- ( laughs )

Today we are carving...

turkey for Thanksgiving!

De Palma:

We were all struggling

with our first

very unsuccessful attempts

to penetrate

the Hollywood establishment,

but Steven was working

all the time.

Coppola: 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."

Scorsese: 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.

Spielberg: We were

consulting with each other,

and unabashedly giving opinions

about each other's works.

Lucas:

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.

Scorsese: They became

like the acid test.

You get some real grounding

and you hope an honesty...

maybe not too honest.

Spielberg:

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.

Lucas: 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."

Spielberg: 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.

De Palma: 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.

- ( gun clicks )

- Say hello to my little friend.

De Palma: 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.

Man: 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?

Lucas: 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.

( music playing )

( gasping )

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.

( music playing )

Spielberg:

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.

Zsigmond: 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.

Balaban: 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.

Phillips: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( high notes playing )

( low notes playing )

Williams: 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.

( notes playing )

( notes playing )

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

Balaban: "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.

( music playing )

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.

Balaban: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( crying )

Nancy: I remember when we moved to

Northern California from Arizona.

I had sensed that things weren't

going well with my parents.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

Anne: Bernie had been my

father's best friend,

and he was a fixture.

It was like

having an uncle.

Arnold: I never would tell the

kids that she divorced me.

Instead, I let them think

I divorced her.

Lacy:

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.

Anne: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

Scorsese:

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.

( crickets chirping )

- ( rustling )

- ( heavy breathing )

( screaming )

( screams )

- ( rustling )

- ( both screaming )

Spielberg: 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.

( chuckles ) 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.

- Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

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.

Spielberg: "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!

( laughs )

Sit down.

- ( clears throat )

- Dad would believe me.

( sighs )

Maybe you ought to call your

father and tell him about it.

I can't. He's in

Mexico with Sally.

Where's Mexico?

Spielberg: 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.

Coyote: 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.

( screams, panting )

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.

( panting ) Does this

mean they're coming?

Bigger, bigger. "Does this

mean they're coming?"

Does this mean

they're coming?

- Yes!

- ( screams )

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. - Spielberg: 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!"

- ( crying )

- Are you okay, honey?

Huh? Are you okay?

Let's see.

Wipe your doll's face, too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

- ( crying )

- 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 father apart

than those humans

and that alien creature.

Come.

Stay.

Coyote:

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.

( music playing )

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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

( yelps )

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!

( both screaming )

Spielberg:

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.

( music playing )

George said,

"What are you doing next?"

Lucas: And Steven said that he really

wanted to do a James Bond film.

And George said, "I have something

much better than James Bond."

Lucas:

It's about an archeologist

and he goes hunting

for supernatural artifacts.

And Steven said,

"I love it.

Let's do it."

Spielberg: 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.

- ( plane engine buzzing )

- Happens to me all the time.

( men yelling )

( music playing )

Lucas: It's an action-adventure movie

where every reel is a cliffhanger.

Spielberg: Just pure

escapist entertainment.

Lucas: 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."

( crowd cheering )

Lucas: 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."

Spielberg: My experience

on three cost overruns,

"Jaws,"

"Close Encounters," "'41,"

taught me how to be

more economical

and benefited

"Raiders" immeasurably.

Lucas: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

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. ( chuckles )

Ford: 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.

( wind gusting )

Ford: 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.

( music playing )

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.

Edelstein: 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.

Scott: 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.

( chuckles )

You cut me

and I'll kill you.

Spielberg: 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.

Hoberman:

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.

Spielberg: 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.

Kennedy: 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.

( music playing )

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.

Edelstein: 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.

Geffen: 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.

- Shalit: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

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.

- ( music playing )

- ( people shouting )

- 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.

Spielberg: 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.

( crowd clamoring )

Spielberg: 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.

Scorsese: 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.

( music playing )

Scorsese: 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.

- ( man speaks Japanese )

- ( boy singing in Welsh )

Stoppard:

This was war

and it was death

and real horror.

And it was like

an end of innocence

for the Spielberg child.

( children's choir

singing in Welsh )

Stoppard: 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.

Scott: 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.

Kennedy: 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.

( man singing

in Hebrew )

Spielberg: My very first

memory... I was in a stroller.

I just remember

being wheeled somewhere,

and my grandmother

and grandfather were with me.

( singing continues )

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.

- Lacy: 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.

Adler: I remember

that at one point,

kids were standing outside

and chanting

"the Spielbergs

are dirty Jews."

Spielberg: 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!"

Anne: 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.

( choir singing

in Hebrew )

Spielberg: 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.

Parkes: 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.

( train whistle blaring )

Spielberg: 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.

Anne: 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."

- ( people clamoring )

- ( dog barking )

Anne:

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.

- ( dogs barking )

- ( all screaming )

No! No!

Spielberg: 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.

- ( music playing )

- ( chatter )

Neeson: He was telling a story

of his family, his tribe,

so I was aware of the weight

of the subject matter.

Spielberg: 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."

Spielberg: 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...

- ( coughing )

...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.

- ( whistle trilling )

- ( people shouting )

( speaking German )

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.

- ( woman screams )

- ( all yelling )

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.

( shouting in German )

( soldiers shouting

in German )

- ( whistle trills )

- ( speaking German )

Kingsley: 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.

- ( shouting )

- ( gunshot )

- ( woman wailing )

( whistle trilling )

Kingsley: The beautifully

orchestrated chaos

was unrepeatable

or unforgettable.

- ( music playing )

- ( chatter )

Neeson: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

Neeson:

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."

( smacks lips, blows )

"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?

Oskar: 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...

( chuckles )

I've never had

much use for.

But the third?

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

Kingsley: 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.

Man: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

Kaminski: Because he's

learning who he is.

( man speaking German

over PA )

- ( distant shouting )

- ( gunshot )

( children's choir

singing in Yiddish )

Neeson: The little girl

in red actually happened.

Schindler on horseback watching

these people being rounded up.

( gunfire )

Neeson: 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."

( man shouts in German )

Spielberg: 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.

Amon:

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.

( sighs )

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.

( man shouting

in German )

Spielberg:

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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

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."

( chorus singing

in Hebrew )

Neeson: 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.

Spielberg:

I needed there to be

some testimony

built into the movie

that says this story

actually happened.

Fiennes:

Brave thing to do.

These are

the real people.

( music playing )

Kennedy: 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.

Kingsley: 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.

Man: They started running toward

the tracks and they were shot.

- ( overlapping voices ) - Woman: 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.

- ( overlapping voices )

And they took them.

They took them.

( overlapping voices

in various languages )

Neeson: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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.

- ( trees rustling )

- ( bird squawks )

( dinosaur growling )

Kennedy: 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.

- Man: Keep it there.

- Spielberg: 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.

- Man #2: Come on!

- ( all chattering )

Kennedy:

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.

- Man: Move in.

Kennedy: 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."

( dinosaur roaring )

( grunts )

( groaning )

( alarm blaring )

- Aah!

- ( dinosaur roars )

Muldoon:

Lock the opening!

Marshall:

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.

Spielberg:

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.

( music playing )

( roaring )

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! - Spielberg: "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.

- ( growling )

- ( thunder crashing )

( roaring )

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.

- ( music playing )

- ( chittering )

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. - Parkes:

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.

Koepp: 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.

The Brain: 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.

( thumps )

- Listen.

- What?

( thunder crashes )

( both screaming )

Steven, you've made

so many films.

When are you

gonna do the big one?

( laughing ) Wow.

What do you mean "big one?"

Something that clicks

with the public.

"Something that clicks

with the public."

( reporters clamoring )

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.

Parkes: He once told me,

"When I'm at a buffet,

I like to have too much

food on my plate."

( music playing )

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.

Geffen: 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.

- ( water splashing )

- ( children laughing )

- ( Spielberg vocalizing "Jaws" theme )

- Girl: Shark!

Spielberg: 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.

- Spielberg: One more time.

That's great, Theo.

That was the best one.

Spielberg: 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.

- ( girl yelps ) - Spielberg:

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!

- ( squeals )

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg:

Okay, turn the camera on.

- Roll.

- Man: Okay, do it.

Marker.

Spielberg:

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.

Hanks: 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.

- ( loud whirring )

- ( men shouting )

( rapid gunfire )

( explosion )

( rapid gunfire )

Over the side!

( gunfire continues )

- ( bullets whizzing )

- Over the side, boys!

( bullets whizzing )

Spielberg: 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.

( rapid gunfire )

( rapid gunfire )

( rapid gunfire )

Come on.

Edelstein: In "Saving Private

Ryan," Spielberg understood

the expressionistic

possibilities of sound.

- ( bullets whizzing )

- ( men shouting )

Edelstein: 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.

( explosion )

( sound fades )

Edelstein: 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.

( rapid gunfire )

Spielberg: 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.

- ( gunfire )

- ( men shouting )

Mama! Mama!

Maslin: "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.

- ( gunfire ) - Hanks: 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."

- ( panting )

- ( rapid gunfire )

And it's a different

perspective

from any other assault

that we had shot in the film.

( explosion )

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.

( music playing )

Anne: "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.

Lucas: 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.

- Spielberg: 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?

- ( music playing )

- ( chatter )

We didn't talk.

We never talked.

Maslin:

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.

Arnold: 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.

( music blaring

over headphones )

- Get a hug? - Arnold: I was

hurt by it, but quietly hurt.

Confusing handshake?

Kick in the teeth?

Arnold: I didn't

broach it with Steven.

I just ate it up

a little bit

and hurt a little bit.

- ( gasps ) - I thought

I had lost you, boy.

( sighs ) I thought

you had too, sir.

Spielberg: My dad and I finally

resolved our differences,

and we're probably closer now

than we ever were before.

Arnold: 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.

( horn beeping )

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.

Woman:

Animals!

Kasdan: He is drawn

to all the themes

that are inherent

in the American character

and the American society

and how it developed.

Insdorf:

There are people struggling

in one way or another

for freedom in these movies.

Give... us free.

He doesn't take freedom

for granted.

Kaminski:

Liberty and equality,

the Constitution,

and the rights

of the individual.

( cheering )

Kaminski: 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.

Tom:

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.

Spielberg: 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!

James: ...peace commissioners

appear today, or...

( overlapping voices )

( argument stops )

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.

Kushner: 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.

Schuyler: 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.

- ( gravel bangs )

- 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.

( crowd laughing,

applauding )

♪ We are coming,

Father Abraham ♪

♪ 300,000 more ♪

♪ From Mississippi's

winding stream ♪

♪ And from

New England's shore ♪

♪ We leave

our ploughs... ♪

( music playing )

( moaning )

Oh, yeah!

( chattering )

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.

( chatter on TV )

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.

Spielberg: That dark,

futuristic dystopian tone

was so compelling for me

at that time.

Kushner: 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...

Hoberman: The film anticipated

the whole post-9/11 mentality

of arresting people

before they can commit crimes

and preventive detention

and so on.

Spielberg:

But the movie that I made

that was a real statement

about 9/11

was "War of the Worlds."

( people screaming )

Spielberg: 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?

( people screaming )

Koepp: 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!

- ( water running )

Koepp: 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.

( all shouting )

( shouting continues )

( screaming )

( shouting continues )

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.

- ( chatter ) - Kushner: 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.

- Jim: This is building number 31.

- ( chatter )

At this moment,

eight or nine terrified

living human beings

- are being held prisoner.

- ( chanting )

Spielberg: I felt I could

not make this one-sided.

And so, I knew it would be

controversial from the very get-go.

( woman vocalizing )

- ( chatter on TV )

- ( overlapping voices )

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.

( chuckles )

Are you...

are you Wael Zwaiter?

He said yes already.

He already said yes.

( speaking Arabic )

What are we doing?

( speaking Arabic )

What do I do?

Do you know

why we're here?

( speaking Arabic )

Hoberman: 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.

Bana: 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.

Spielberg: 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.

Spielberg: 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?

Spielberg:

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.

( phone rings )

Spielberg: The suspense

of that sequence

is letting the audience

know geographically

where everybody is

at all times.

Allô? Allô?

Allô?

( muffled sound )

( siren wailing )

Stop!

( whispering )

Stop, stop. Abort.

Kushner: 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.

( phone ringing )

- Oui?

- Man: Mahmoud Hamshari?

Yes.

( explosion )

Kushner: 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.

Hoberman: 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.

Kaminski: 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?"

Spielberg: 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.

Scorsese: 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.

( music playing )

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.

Scott: 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.

( tires screeching )

Whoa! Hey!

Ronnie, hold it.

Hold it. Wa...

- ( tires screech )

- Hold it.

Spielberg: 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.

( screaming )

( gunfire )

- ( sobbing )

- ( glass rattling )

( screams )

Barry!

I've made

a lot of movies

about a family

disintegrating

and then a family finding

common ground to reunite.

( music playing )

Kushner: 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.

( piano music playing )

Man:

Now slowly.

Spielberg: 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.

- ( music playing ) - Nancy: 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?

( music continues )

( laughs )

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.

Hanks: 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.

- Spielberg: Tom, action. - Kennedy: 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.

Kaminski:

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.

Muren:

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...

Williams: He understands that

people and can serve him

and how to synchronize

his wishes with your own.

He would've made

a great general.

Day-Lewis: 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.

Day-Lewis: 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.

( music playing )

Spielberg: 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!

( chatter )

Spielberg:

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.

Kahn: 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?

Spielberg: 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.

Kennedy: 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.

( boat horn blaring )

Spielberg: 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."

( music playing )

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.

Spielberg: 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.

( music playing )

Maslin: 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.

Scorsese: He has a dynamic

sense of real filmmaking.

I'm talking

about filmmaking of...

in the great narrative

tradition of American cinema.

( distant explosion )

Coppola:

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 both,