I would have brought a tomato to throw at Spielberg after yelling “HACK!”, but that’s just me.
How rude!!!!
that is a good insightful story
i once saw an interview on television with steven spielberg where he said he asked stanley kubrick if he could see sneak previews of his films and he never got the chance and had 2 wait 4 the films until they were released
they were great friends 4 inspiration it appears
You would have called him a hack? Really? Would you have honestly done that?
Are people so anti-Hollywood and stuck up the whole image of being a film buff that they hate even Speilberg?
Jaws
Raiders
Close Encounters
Empire of the Sun
Jurassic Park
Schindler’s List
Catch me if you Can
Munich
I guess he’s a hack?
I remember watching Spielberg on my Stanley Kubrick box set. After they had watched The Shining, Kubrick asked Spielberg what he thought of it. Spielberg was kind of uneasy and didn’t want to say what he truly thought, but after Kubrick kept asking him, he said that the Nicholson performance was a little over the top, kabuki like he said. However, now he regards The Shining as one of his top 15 films. Also, one of Spielberg’s favorite movies of all time is Lawrence of Arabia. I think somewhere on the Lawrence of Arabia DVD I have, Spielberg mentions that after seeing the movie in a theater, he purchased the soundtrack. That was back in the 60’s when the film had just came out.
Vocalities take off Catch Me If You Can and replace it with Saving Private Ryan and you have a valid point ;)
I would be nice to meet and talk with Spielberg. His popularity has somewhat diminished since the 90s when everyone wanted to be Spielberg to now when everyone wants to be Tarantino, but there are still some Spielberg movies I return to again and again.
I do not think that Jurassic Park IV will be all that exciting, though, nor do I care to see further Indiana Jones installments.
Why didn’t Wes Anderson get to do Tin Tin? That’s basically what he’s been doing for his entire career.
—PolarisDiB
Wow, totally forgot about SPR. Weird.
Nick Kostopoulos
Forgive me if this sounds stilted but it’s from my blog that I keep to document anything interesting that happens at USC, for the purpose of having people back home read. It sounds consciously “written”, if you know what I mean, but I hope you enjoy it regardless.
On Wednesday night, Steven Spielberg came to his namesake class being taught at USC for a Q&A. It was a night of surprising revelations and some really funny anecdotes.
Spielberg talked about his relationship with Stanley Kubrick. Spielberg said that he tried to approach him as a student would a master, but Kubrick would have none of it. In fact, when Spielberg became a “fanboy”, Kubrick would shoot him right down; he wanted to be colleagues. Kubrick, who lived outside London, conducted most of his relationships via phone. According to Spielberg, he once had a NINE HOUR phone conversation with Kubrick, with only two pauses. First, when a thunderstorm was passing over Spielberg’s house, he got nervous and said that he’d heard if lightning struck your house you could be electrocuted. Kubrick told him that was “Bullshit” but Spielberg hung up the phone just to be safe. Later, when it was dinnertime for Kubrick and lunchtime for Spielberg, Kubrick suggested that since Christiane, his wife, was fixing him a sandwich, they should each eat a sandwich and continue their conversation. So Spielberg left the phone and came back with a sandwich. When he got back on the phone, Kubrick asked Spielberg to write down a lengthy phone number. When Spielberg asked what the number was for, Kubrick told him that he was currently choking on his sandwich, and that the number was Christiane’s number down the hall; if he heard a long pause on the other end of the phone, call the number!
Our professor has been stressing in class that the common thread in all of Spielberg’s films is that they all contain elements of the fairy tale. So when one of the students asked Spielberg whether he consciously includes elements of the fairy tale, our professor turned to Spielberg and jokingly reminded him that his own credibility was riding on how Spielberg chose to answer the question. When Dr. Casper explained his thesis, Spielberg paused and said:
I should be taking this class on myself!
Other cool topics were: the use of motion capture technology in his new film “Tin Tin”; how to balance budgets and that pesky thing called perfectionism; the relationship between Judaism and his film making; the turning point in his decision to finally make “Schindler’s List”, which came when he and the screenwriter Steve Zallian visited Auschwitz.
Some surprising revelations were that “Hook” was originally supposed to be a musical (the numbers were cut out from the film, which he claims made it sag), that the project he most regrets getting away from him was “Rain Man” (he had worked with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman for five months until George Lucas excitedly told him he had the perfect idea for the third “Indiana Jones film and that they had to do it NOW!), and that he may be working on "Jurassic Park IV”. (This was of course met with huge applause.)
Now, I didn’t have a question at first, and I was originally going to ask a question about his relationship with Kubrick, but someone beat me to it. I still wanted to introduce myself, so I ended up coming up with a question about his relationship with Janusz Kaminiski, the cinematographer responsible for the gorgeous photography in “Schindler’s List” as well as every other film Spielberg has done thus far. I introduced myself, and like most others, mentioned how much his films influenced me; though when I mentioned that the number of times I’d seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark” bordered on the absurd, he laughed. According to him, he first saw Kaminski’s work watching Diane Keaton’s directorial debut on the Lifetime network. He was so impressed, he convinced a director to hire him for a TV pilot. When he saw the dailies for the show, he met with Kaminski and asked if he wouldn’t mind shooting his next film, which was going to be in black and white. Kaminski told him that he was in luck; he’d worked on only B&W in his native Poland.
It was a really fun night, and I was struck by how down to Earth Spielberg was. He seemed truly happy to be there, and very gracious. After the Q&A, there was a 35 mm screening of what he claims is his favorite film of his own, “Schindler’s List”….