June 19, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, both mainstream audiences and critics have wholeheartedly embraced Steven Spielberg throughout his long and prolific career. He is universally regarded by his peers and film historians as one of the greatest American filmmakers in the history of cinema. Our own Greg Hengler shares the story of his rise to success—and what kept him at the top of his game for so long.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from where the West begins.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In Fort Worth, Texas.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Steven Spielberg has been wholeheartedly embraced by both mainstream audiences
and critics alike throughout his long and prolific career. He's
universally regarded by both his peers and film historians as
one of the greatest American filmmakers in history.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Here's his story.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Stephen Alan Spielberg was born on December eighteenth, nineteen forty six,
in Ohio. World War II was over and the country
was finally getting back to normal. Stephen grew up in
suburbia with his three sisters. His Jewish parents, Leah and Arnold,
were the children of him Grits. Arnold, a World War
(01:02):
Two vet, loved science and machines. After finishing his studies
in electrical engineering, he quickly found work in the brand
new field of computer science. Here's Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
He was on the team that engineered the first commercial
data processor at RCA in the early fifties, and my
mom was a confort penist, so they got my attention
in two different directions.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
It was difficult to find a place where the family
could put down roots. Because Arnold was such an outstanding engineer,
he was always being offered new and better jobs, which
meant that the Spielbergs.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Moved a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Going from one school to another was hard for Stephen.
He was always the new boy in class. His refuge
was a cluttered bedroom, and he wrote stories instead of
doing his homework. Stephen often longed for a friend who
was different like he was. Sometimes he thought that a small,
(02:01):
kindly alien would be ideal. When he was required to
read A Tale of Two Cities, Stephen's doodles opened up
his future.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
So what right was?
Speaker 6 (02:11):
I just made little stick figures in the dog eared
sections of the book.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
You know, anime, one frame at a time, different positions.
It was like a flipbook. And I lifted flipbooks and
saw these images come to wife.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
And that was the first time I actually was able
to create an image that moved on the pages of
that classic.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
In nineteen fifty seven, Stephen's life changed when his father, Arnold,
received a movie camera as a Father's Day gift from
his wife. The eleven year old Stephen couldn't wait to
use it. At first, he staged film crashes with his
Lionel trains and watched the films over and over. He
thought they were great. His dad's movies, on the other hand,
(02:51):
were blurry and boring. Stephen had lots of suggestions for
improving them, but his father had a better idea. He
simply gave Stephen the camera.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
So I took over the camera, and I began to
make stories. My three sisters, younger sisters sold tickets to
these at late nolimeter movies I was making.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
They go door to door to door to door, selling tickets.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
In nineteen fifty eight, he became a boy scout and
made a nine minute film titled The Last Gunfight to
earn his Merit badge in photography. Spielberg cast his fellow
scouts as cowboys, and when he screened it for them,
the troop went wild, shouting, whistling, and cheering. In that moment,
Stephen later said, I knew what I wanted to do
(03:35):
with the rest of my life. He was twelve years old.
Here's Spielberg on how it all started.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
I was infatuated with the control that movies gave me
in creating a sequence of events or a feeling or
a train wreck with two lineal trains that I could
then repeat and see over and over and over again.
And I think it was just a realization that I
(04:04):
could change the way I perceive life through another medium
to make it come.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
Out better for me.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
And when I realized I could make life better for
me through this little eight middlemeter rinky dink medium, I
felt really good about my life, myself and possibly bringing
some other people into this amazing medium to.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Enjoy what I was putting together.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Young Spielberg didn't play sports and could barely run a mile.
He was practically invisible to girls. He was short and skinny,
and he was Jewish. Living in Phoenix, a city with
very few Jewish families, made him a little different. But
with a camera, he was less lonely and less of
(04:54):
an outsider. While making these films, he found out that
given his classmates parts was like inviting them to a
really great party, and they all wanted to come. In
high school, he attained the rank of Eagle Scout before
finding out that his family were moving again. This time
it was to Saratoga, California, where his dad would be
(05:17):
working for IBM. For Stephen Far worse than the move
was the news that his parents were separating. It was
the unhappiest time in his life. Yet the move brought
him much closer to the center of the film industry.
The chance came the summer before his senior year of
high school. While visiting cousins in Los Angeles, Stephen took
(05:40):
a tour of Universal Studios.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
They gave everybody a bathroom break about midday, and I
got off to go to the bathroom, and I hid
in the stall, and I waited until it was really
quiet in the bathroom, assuming everybody had left, and gotten
back on the bus and left again, and I came
out at half an hour later, and I was free.
I was on the Universal Studios a lot, but spent
the whole afternoon just walking in and out of doors,
basically soundstages and cutting rooms, and took my own tour
(06:06):
and had an amazing time. At the end of the day,
I went to borrow a telephone to call my cousin
to come pick me up, and I fortuitously borrowed the
telephone of the Universal Studios film librarian, a man named
Chuck Silvers, who asked me what I was doing there.
I told him the story I just told you, and
he laughed and thought that was had a lot of
(06:26):
hootspun and showed ambition and showed that I really wanted
to be a director, or at least I wanted to
break into the business in some way. And he gave
me a three day pass on his own name, and
I did that, and then I came back on the
end of the third day, and so I took a
shot at maybe the guard would recognize me without having
to show on my papers. And so on the fourth day,
(06:47):
I same clothes, walked onto the lot and waved at
Scotti the guard mirror Scotti. Scotti waved back. The next
two and a half months, during summer vacation, I was
on the lot five days a week, every day for
two and a half months until school began.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And you've been listening to Greg Hangler and to Steven
Spielberg himself telling the story of his early life and
at twelve, discovering that he was infatuated with the control
movies gave him, and gave him a direction that would
allow him to make a better life for himself. When
we come back more of the life of Stephen Spielberg
(07:26):
here on our American Stories. Plee habibe here again, and
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
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(07:46):
great stories you love from this show coming. Please subscribe
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or wherever you get your podcasts, and we continue with
(08:09):
our American Stories and the life of Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Let's return to Greg hanging.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Stephen roam the sound stages taking notes. One day, he
found an empty office on the lot, so he called
the switchboard and had the office's phone hooked up. Then,
with his fake office as a base, he spent his
days hanging around sets, talking with directors, editors and actors
and learned everything he could about the business. It was
(08:42):
the education of his dreams. Even getting kicked off in
Alfred Hitchcock's set was a thrill. Returning to high school
for his senior year was quite a letdown, so was
getting rejected by the film schools at the University of
Southern California USC and the University of California at Los
Angeles UCLA. Because of his poor grades, the only school
(09:07):
that would take him was California State at Long Beach,
and it didn't even have a film department. Stephen didn't
want to go, but his parents felt differently, so he
enrolled as an English major, went to as few classes
as possible, and spent most of his time at Universal
Studios as an unpaid intern. In order to get a
(09:29):
pain job at Universal Studios, Stephen had to persuade people
to take a look at his films. So Spielberg wrote
and shot a short love story and showed it to
the execs at Universal. They loved it and offered him
a seven year contract to direct television. Spielberg confessed later,
I quit college so fast I didn't even clean out
(09:52):
my locker.
Speaker 6 (09:53):
I think when I came back on the lot, this
time professionally, the first thing I realized when I moved
into my official office, not my life legal office, but
my legal office, was I knew where all the sound
stages were, I knew where post production was, I knew
where the back lot was, I knew where all the
bathrooms were, especially when I hit in. When I first
got off the bus, and I felt like I had
come home. I felt like Universal Studios had always been
(10:14):
my home, was ordained to be my home for the
rest of my life, and I realized I felt very,
very much at home.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Spielberg's first job at Universal was directing an early episode
of Night Gallery, a series of spooky half hour shows
with twisty surprise endings.
Speaker 6 (10:31):
Now I was doing my first television show, starring Joan Crawford,
no less, and the average age of the crew was fifty,
and I realized that, oh my god, this was the
crew that made my favorite movies of all time. This
was the generation that had produced the Golden age of Hollywood.
And when I showed up with my acne and my
(10:51):
long hair and the viewfinder pretentiously around my neck like
some kind of a talisman that would protect me from
all evil, I think they took one look at me
and they said, this kid better prove himself quickly, or
he's out of here. Because I remember being greeted by
tremendous hostility from the crew, from the motion picture crew,
and the only friends I had on that first television
(11:12):
show were my actors. Surprisingly, maybe not so surprisingly, Barry Sullivan,
Tom Bosley, John Crawford. They were the people that backed me,
but the rag and file of the crew were just
sending daggers my way, working as slowly as they could,
not to get themselves fired, maybe to get me pushed
off the show because I wound up four days behind
schedule on my first professional job.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
But I learned so much from doing that show.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Next, Spielberg directed an episode of Colombo starring Peter Falk,
which earned him the rights to direct two action films,
Duel and The Sugarland Express. And then there was The Shark.
It was decades before modern CGI, so a real mechanical
shark was made for a movie they were calling Joe,
(12:01):
weighing twelve tons with a body the size of a
stretch limo. Spielberg named the shark Bruce, after his lawyer,
but while shooting the opening scene of the movie, Bruce
sank to the bottom of the ocean and the crew
started calling the movie flaws. Here's Spielberg on how we
handled this setback.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
And the next morning we got the word that they
were going to be down maybe three to four weeks
with a shark.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
That's when I realized, okay, plan B Now, I never
planned for a Plan B, but that Monday I suddenly
had to improvise a Plan B, which was basically to
make the film as scary as I possibly could by
suggesting the shark without having to show the shark, and
that became my motif for the rest of the picture.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Johnny, take my wife for it, don't look by slap
Charlie sla.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
I promise you that if the shark had been working
that first day, and Chrissy Watkins had been taken in
that first scene and the way my storyboards had, I
had a fin in that shot. I had a conical
nose coming out of the water and never.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
See the whole shark out of a tail.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
Had there been any evidence of the shark, even on
the scene where the peerist pulled out and comes back
again and chases the swimmer back in the fishermen, I
promise you the audience wouldn't have left three feet out
of their seats and thrown their popcorn into the air
when the shark came out. When Roy Schotter was chumming,
you wouldn't have had that shock. Had the shark been
used too often and too clearly before that, the shark
(13:27):
not working when we needed it to work. Probably added
one hundred and seventy five million dollars to the box office.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Jaws was a spectacular hit, the first ever summer blockbuster,
earning a whopping two hundred and sixty million dollars. It
also became the top grossing film in history. Already planning
another film, Spielberg knew one thing for sure, My next
picture will be made on dry land, he said. When
(13:55):
Spielberg wrote Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he decided
that there would be no bad guys in it. But
looking back today, there is one thing he would have
done differently.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
The difference in when I wrote the story in my
twenties and what I would have done today is I
don't think today, with being a dad of seven kids,
I would have let my Richard Dreyfus character actually get
on the mother ship and abandon his family to this
alien obsession and leave the planet. But in my twenties
it was something that was absolutely.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Would have been my choice.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Spielberg's close friend George Lucas just wrapped Star Wars and
came to this set of Close Encounters to see how
things were progressing.
Speaker 7 (14:41):
Read five Standing by.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Here again is Spielberg ook trust Joe Felle.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
George came back from Star Wars a nervous wreck. He
didn't feel Star Wars came up to the vision that
he had initially had.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
He felt he had just made this little kids movie.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
And he came to Mobile, Alabama, where I was shooting
on the humongous set, and George hung out with me
for a couple of days and looked around and said,
oh my god, your movie's going to be so much
more successful than Star Wars.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
I can't believe the set, and I can't believe what
you're getting, And oh my goodness.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
So I'll tell you what. I'll trade points with it.
You want to trade some points, he say, I'll tell
you what.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
I'll give you two and a half percent of Star
Wars if you give me two and a half percent
of Close Encounters. So I said, sure, I'll gamble with that.
Great and I think I came out on top of
that bet.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
I think I did a lot better than George. Both
of our movies wildly profitable.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
Close Encounter has made so much money, rescued Columbia from bankruptcy,
and the most money I had ever made on the
movie before.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Was from Close Encounters.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
Close Encounters was just a meager success story, and Star
Wars was a phenomenon, and of course I was the
happy beneficiary of a couple of net points to that movie,
which I.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Am still seeing money on today.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Close Encounters brought Spielberg his first Oscar nomination for Best Director,
and Star Wars passed Jaws as the top grossing film
in history. It was time for these two mega directors
to team up. The two put a screenplay together and
hired actor Harrison Ford, who had just played Hans Solo
for Lucas and Star Wars. Lucas named Harrison Ford's character
(16:22):
Indiana Smith, and the movie would be called Raiders of
the Lost Ark. Spielberg liked everything but the hero's name. Well,
how about Indiana Jones, Spielberg suggested. George Lucas produced, Steven
Spielberg directed, and.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
You've been listening to Greg Hangler and Steven Spielberg telling
the life of Steven Spielberg, and we learn how he
got to where he got and it wasn't the usual way.
Rejected from UCLA and USC's film schools, ultimately his film
school was the backlots of Universe. And then he got
(17:01):
his chance, a seven year contract to direct TV and
his first reel shot a night Gallery episode, one of
the best ever, starring the great Joan Crawford, and the
actors thank goodness at his back because the technicians most
surely didn't. Then came Colombo, then came a few movies,
(17:21):
and then came Jaws, and the rest was history. And
if it weren't for Bruce the mechanical shark not working,
Spielberg noted, the movie would have made one hundred and
seventy million less dollars and John Williams soundtrack would have
been meaningless. And when we come back more of the
life of Stephen Spielberg. Here on our American stories. And
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Let's return to our own Greg Hengler.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Despite blistering heat a scene with seven thousand live snakes,
including five deadly cobras, in another scene with hundreds of tarangulas,
Spielberg finished almost two weeks early. When Raiders opened a
few months later, it was a smash, the most successful
film of nineteen eighty one. Spielberg became a household name.
(18:39):
During one of the nights on location for Raiders of
a Lost Ark, Spielberg began writing a story of a
little alien. What if I were ten years old again,
he wondered, and he needed me as much as I
needed him.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
When I first came up with the idea of ET.
I came up with the actual idea probably when I
was a little little kid, feeling very lost and alienated,
being this Jewish kid in always all gentile neighborhoods. But
then later in life when my parents were divorced, feeling
very much.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Lost and alone.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
And I remember on the set of Close Encounters, when
I had Richard Dreyfus and Et returning to the mothership.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
It's when I get swallowed up into the light.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
And I had this kind of amazing epiphany at that
moment while the cameras were rolling, and I thought, I
wonder if I should change the ending of this movie,
not another movie, but Close Encounters.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
What if ET is an foreign exchange student.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
What if that extraterrestrial who we called Puck stayed behind
with Truffau and Dreyfus goes and they take that ET
back to Langley or write Patterson Air Force Base, and
start to study him and communicate with him and really
try to figure out what their race is like and
how we can further our relationship.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
Wouldn't that be a great movie?
Speaker 6 (19:56):
Then I said, no, no, no, I'll save that for
another movie. But I was haunted by this idea of
an Et that gets trapped on Earth and doesn't go
back into the mothership. So in a sense, when I
wrote the story of Et, that was the progression of
epiphanies that led up to the actual story of Alien
(20:17):
who's lost and alone in three million miles from home.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
He doesn't go a well, he's curious.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
He's his curiosity gets the better of him, and maybe
the other aliens were the botanists were too busy categorizing
and finding plants on Earth to put in their little greenhouse.
But Et was interested in the big redwood trees, and
he was walking away. Six hundred year old Et is
probably the most lost of all the kids I've ever
had in a film, but he's no less lost than Eliot,
(20:44):
lost in a divorce, no real friends in his life.
And that was the bonding of Et and Elliot, the
alien and the alienated, the two souls, lost souls who
absolutely require each other for a very short amount of
time so they can both survive in a spiritual way.
(21:05):
I mean, for me, T it's the most spiritual movie
ever made. And that was not an accident. I mean
it was something that I always deeply felt.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
And what Spielberg movie would be complete without the music
of composer John Williams.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
John Williams has made the most remarkable contribution to all
of my movies, and they reach the heart universally in
every country, on every continent of the planet. John Williams
speaks to people, and John rewrites my movies musically, and.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
I think with ET, especially at the end, I lem
and I can make.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
Those bicycles lift off and get off the ground. We
can do that, but John Williams is the only one
who can make them truly airborne, because the audience lifts
off the ground on John Williams violins, and the audience
is carried across the moon or the sun with John
Williams string section and his horns later on when they land.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
And I think the last.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Fifteen minutes of ET is as close to an opera
because of John Williams contributions to that movie. Did anything
I've ever done before in my life.
Speaker 8 (22:18):
Right, here's a clip of Spielberg and Williams collaborating on
(22:43):
the music for et.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Spielberg operates the film projector well, Williams sits in front
of the piano. If it would be convenient to go
into the call.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
And done?
Speaker 9 (23:02):
Yeah, I like that matter. It seems like a very
natural transition into the loneliness and out of the tenderness.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Let's see if you can't do it, okay, let me
go think.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
The thing is, where do we shift from the call
to the theme? Is it on his smile? Is it
when he touched his face?
Speaker 7 (23:21):
And the wonderful question?
Speaker 9 (23:23):
And your choices are as many frames long as a sequence.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
It wouldn't let anybody.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We could go up together in the team.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
That's certainly the call.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
Yes, that's the call. That's the call.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
And this is the loneliness. This, this is Elliott's love,
this is his heartbreaking?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Is he looked up again?
Speaker 7 (23:45):
He looks up a second time?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
But then the call has to be there?
Speaker 7 (23:48):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, I think you're right. Let's get that absolutely.
Speaker 9 (23:54):
I always get that confused or sometime sometimes has on
the movie. Yet it hasn't gone up yet.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, I'll say et with Spielberg's biggest hit yet it
made more money than any other movie in history, topping
Jaws and even Star Wars. Then there's Jurassic Park.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
Well.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
To Jurassic Buck.
Speaker 6 (24:33):
I'd want to make a dinosaur picture all my life
because I'm a huge fan of Ray Harry Holsen, but
I could never find a realistic way to do dinosaurs
until Michael Crichton figured out a science that would make
it almost allowable, which is, hey, if a mosquito bites,
say dinosaur one hundred fifty million years ago, it gets
trapped an amber and it's preserved in amber, and you
(24:55):
extract the DNA from the blood inside the mosquito of
the Trantosaurus Rex, can we not bring back the t Rex?
And it was enough credible science that I went that
is one of the most genius combinations of science and
imagination I had ever witnessed anybody come up with.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
And that was all Michael Crichton.
Speaker 6 (25:17):
There were a lot of risks involved in an art
form that had never been perfected. A main character digital
dinosaur had never been done before for the movie, So
in a way, Jurassic Park was the first movie that
ever made. Its made characters where the entire success or
failure of the story was dependent on these digital characters.
That was the first time that was ever done, and
(25:39):
that was the risk I think all of us took.
When you have something which is so unfamiliar to us
in our.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Time, which is a Tyrannosaurus.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Rex thirty four feet standing upright, something that menacing. It's
not as interesting for me to have people running through
a jungle being menaced by a t rep because the
people are in a prehistoric terra firma. But it's much
more interesting for an audience, I think, to put a
t Rex next to a modern car, or put raptors
(26:12):
inside a modern industrial kitchen or inside a laboratory with
computers everywhere.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Jurassic Park was a landmark in visual effects and earned
an unprecedented nine hundred and fourteen million worldwide.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And you've been listening to Greg Hanglo tell the story
of Steven Spielberg, and we heard about raiders in the
Lost arc A huge hit then came et and even
bigger hit et and Elliott Spielberg noted with the alien
and the alienated, they required each other to survive in
a spiritual way. Quote it was the most spiritual movie
(26:50):
I ever made, end quote. And the last fifteen minutes
of et, Spielberg would go on to note was the
closest thing to an opera than anything I've ever done
in my life. And that, of course was thanks to
the music of John Williams. And then, of course came
Jurassic Park. And that was the first movie, Spielberg noted,
(27:12):
in which the movie is dependent on digital characters. When
we come back more of the remarkable story of Stephen
Spielberg here on our American stories, and we continue with
(27:37):
our American stories and the life of Steven Spielberg. Let's
pick up where we last left off with Greg Hengler
and Spielberg himself.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
The tremendous success of what Spielberg dubbed his popcorn movies
gave him more creative freedom, freedom to create Schindler's List.
Schindler's List relates a period in the life of Oscar Schindler,
a Nazi German businessman who saved the lives of more
than thirteen hundred, mostly Polish Jewish refugees from the Holocaust
(28:12):
by employing them in his factories during World War II.
Spielberg did post production work on Jurassic park at night
in Poland and film Schindler's List during the day. Here's
Spielberg sharing with us the story of casting real Germans
to play the Nazi SS soldiers and why people should
(28:32):
see Schindler's List.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Many of the German actors who interviewed for Schinder's List,
and I saw many of the interviews on tape, many
of them actually knowing I was watching the tape or
would be watching the tape, apologized for the generation for
sitting theirs when I got there, and I began to work.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
On Schimmler's List.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
Once those same German actors put on the uniforms of
the Waffen SS, my attitude chained and I couldn't talk
to them. I couldn't, and in between shots they would
be smoozing with me, trying to ask me questions about
et and Raiders of the Lost Ar, questions that someone
who liked those movies would ask the director. And I
didn't really want to make small talk. I couldn't get
(29:13):
past the uniform, and then my prejudice began to come out,
and I began to look at it and I began
to say, my goodness, you know, how can I be
blaming you know, the sins of the fathers on to
the sons and daughters. And then one day an amazing
thing thing happened, very early in the schedule, Thank goodness,
we had passover.
Speaker 7 (29:31):
It was a rabbi there and a lot of.
Speaker 6 (29:32):
My crew and cast came in and then in walks
all the German actors they put on yamkas. They sat
next to the Israeli actors and these really has opened
up the ha Goddess the prayer books and began to
show the German actors what Passover is all about.
Speaker 7 (29:48):
And I cried because.
Speaker 6 (29:50):
I saw something beautiful that was essentially an entire generation
of young German actors that are not culpable and should
never be blamed and should never have any fingers pointed
at them for something that.
Speaker 7 (30:05):
They weren't around to stop.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
And that was the message I wanted people to hear,
that generations were saved by Oscar Schindler. Thirteen hundred people
spawned six thousand descendants, compared to the four thousand descendants
that are alive in Poland today, down from three million
(30:27):
Jews before nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
One of the reasons Spielberg made Schindler's list was that
he wanted his children to understand this terrible time in
Jewish history. It was the first time my children ever
saw me cry, he said. When Schindler's List opened, audiences
cried too. Though it was sad and sometimes shocking, it
(30:51):
also showed courage and decency overcoming terrible evil. The film
won the Oscar for Best Picture in nineteen ninety three,
and Spielberg won his first Oscar for Best Director. In
nineteen ninety four, Spielberg's friends Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen
approached him about starting a film studio together. It was
(31:13):
a daring idea. Nobody had launched a new studio in
decades because it was so difficult and expensive. Yet Katzenberg
had produced a string of animated mega hits for Disney,
including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The
Lion King. David Geffen, whose work in the music business
had made him a billionaire, was one of entertainment's most
(31:35):
powerful deal makers. Spielberg was now considered the world's most
successful director. If anybody could launch a new studio, it
was these three. In October nineteen ninety four, DreamWorks Studios
opened for business. It was under the DreamWorks label that
Spielberg shot saving Private Ryan. Here's Spielberg.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
What motivated me to do Private Ryan was this was
a tribute to my dad. This was one hundred percent
for my dad. When I got the Oscar for Ryan
and I said, Dad, this is for you, This is yours.
I mean, I told my dad many many years ago
I was going to make a World War two movie
for him.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
The only thing the.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
Disappointed my dad was it was about Europe, not Asia.
And my dad said, but Steve, you didn't tell my story.
What about the four four hundred and nineteth bomb squadron.
You know, what about those who flew the Hump, my
friends who were lost flying the Hump?
Speaker 7 (32:25):
You know?
Speaker 5 (32:26):
I said, oh, Dad, you're right, I didn't tell that story.
But this is for your generation.
Speaker 6 (32:30):
I remember having the first industry screening of Raiders the
Lost Ark, and I had two director friends of mine
who I really respect, saying, wow, the greatest sequence of
this movie is the first fifteen minutes for that rolling
ball and the spiders on the guy's back.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
And I kept thinking, oh my god.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
I taught myself and Raiders and the movie never recovered,
and I felt that I was about to do the
same thing.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
When I shot Saving Private Ryan.
Speaker 6 (32:55):
I didn't quite know what that opening sequence was going
to be, because I shot the whole movie in continue
and I also certainly shot the whole first sequence in continuity.
The first shot of the movie is Tom Hanks's hand
shaking his canteen to his face, reveal his captain's bard
and show its Tom Hanks and pull the camera back
in the Higgins boat.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
That was the first shot of the movie.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
And I went right through to the end of the
picture in continuity, which meant that I was making up
the entire opening attack of Omaha Beach the landings. When
I say made it up, I didn't make up things
that didn't actually happen, that Steven Ambrose hadn't written about her,
other veterans hadn't informed me of. But I did the
(33:36):
whole thing stream of consciousness. I had no storyboards, no
pre visualization on the computer. Did the whole thing from
actually up here in a weird way because the whole
thing was being improvised in a very safe, rational control way.
But improvided nonetheless, and I think if anything gave that
scene its impact, its first person in your face impact
(33:59):
It was because I didn't know what was going to
happen next.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Just like real combat, Spielberg knew that, like Schindler's List,
saving Private Ryan could be painful to watch, and he
was prepared for his audiences to stay away.
Speaker 6 (34:14):
This particular movie. We felt like we were making a contribution.
We're actually thinking, you know, without patting ourselves in the back,
that this movie was going to come out. And I
thought nobody would go to see this picture. They might
see a few people go the first weekend because Tom
Hanks to the Star, but they're going to be so
turned off by the violence they're not going to come
back to the second weekend. And I thought this would
be a one weekend wonder But I thought the film
(34:35):
was going to add something to inform audiences what soldiers
have to really go through when they're in the hell
fire of combat. It's honoring all the dads who were
part of the Greatest Generation by having an old man
going to the American semeteritarian Normandy and visiting that actual site.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Every time I go, I cry. I think the book
and place it.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
In a much larger historical context and show audiences today
that this really is about the old men now, who
were the boys then who allowed us to have a
life today the way we live our lives and to
have the relative freedoms that we now enjoy.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Saving Private Ryan was far from a one weekend wonder.
It was the most successful film of nineteen ninety eight.
It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won Spielberg
his second Oscar for Best Director. In closing, here's Spielberg
on the secret to his success.
Speaker 6 (35:37):
My job is to put the audience inside the movie.
My job is to reduce the esthetic distance between the
audience and the experience. I don't say, okay, now, I
just have to make light audience popcorn movies to give
them relief from whatever my subconscious demons are that have
(35:57):
pushed me into more historical, darker sub I don't think
that way, and I think my intuition has been about
seventy five percent right on and twenty five percent not
right on, And so I'm.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
Going with the odds. I'm just going with the odds.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Steven Spielberg has one hundred and fifty nine credits as
a producer, in fifty six as a director. A few
more of those include Poltergeist, The Color Purple Hook, Catch
Me if you can, Munich and Lincoln. His films have
set and broken box office records for decades. They often
(36:35):
show how acts of personal courage can change history. They
have made people, millions and millions of people laugh, think
and cry. Nobody, not even Walt Disney, has been so
completely wired into what the public wants to see in
the cinema, and as a result, his personal wealth is
(36:57):
now so vast people have given up trying to estimate it.
And it all started in nineteen fifty seven when he
borrowed his father's movie camera.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Had a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Engler, And we'd like to thank
the John Williams Fan Network, NDTV, the Times of Israel,
and the Federal News for the interview footage we used
in the storytelling. We learned in this last segment why
Spielberg was doing those popcorn movies because in the end,
(37:30):
he wanted the creative freedom, the freedom to make Schindler's List,
which would win him an Oscar for Best Picture in
nineteen ninety seven and his first Oscar as Best Director,
and of course soon thereafter dreamwork starts and a new
studio hadn't been launched in decades, and here were Spielberg, Katzenberg,
(37:50):
and Geffen starting it up and their first film, Saving
Private Ryan. What he says in the end about what
films are about and what he tries to accomplish is
putting the audience inside the movie. No market researchers, just
one man's instinct and creative talent.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
The story of Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from where the West begins.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In Fort Worth, Texas.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Steven Spielberg has been wholeheartedly embraced by both mainstream audiences
and critics alike throughout his long and prolific career. He's
universally regarded by both his peers and film historians as
one of the greatest American filmmakers in history.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Here's his story.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Stephen Alan Spielberg was born on December eighteenth, nineteen forty six,
in Ohio. World War II was over and the country
was finally getting back to normal. Stephen grew up in
suburbia with his three sisters. His Jewish parents, Leah and Arnold,
were the children of him Grits. Arnold, a World War
(01:02):
Two vet, loved science and machines. After finishing his studies
in electrical engineering, he quickly found work in the brand
new field of computer science. Here's Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
He was on the team that engineered the first commercial
data processor at RCA in the early fifties, and my
mom was a confort penist, so they got my attention
in two different directions.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
It was difficult to find a place where the family
could put down roots. Because Arnold was such an outstanding engineer,
he was always being offered new and better jobs, which
meant that the Spielbergs.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Moved a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Going from one school to another was hard for Stephen.
He was always the new boy in class. His refuge
was a cluttered bedroom, and he wrote stories instead of
doing his homework. Stephen often longed for a friend who
was different like he was. Sometimes he thought that a small,
(02:01):
kindly alien would be ideal. When he was required to
read A Tale of Two Cities, Stephen's doodles opened up
his future.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
So what right was?
Speaker 6 (02:11):
I just made little stick figures in the dog eared
sections of the book.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
You know, anime, one frame at a time, different positions.
It was like a flipbook. And I lifted flipbooks and
saw these images come to wife.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
And that was the first time I actually was able
to create an image that moved on the pages of
that classic.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
In nineteen fifty seven, Stephen's life changed when his father, Arnold,
received a movie camera as a Father's Day gift from
his wife. The eleven year old Stephen couldn't wait to
use it. At first, he staged film crashes with his
Lionel trains and watched the films over and over. He
thought they were great. His dad's movies, on the other hand,
(02:51):
were blurry and boring. Stephen had lots of suggestions for
improving them, but his father had a better idea. He
simply gave Stephen the camera.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
So I took over the camera, and I began to
make stories. My three sisters, younger sisters sold tickets to
these at late nolimeter movies I was making.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
They go door to door to door to door, selling tickets.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
In nineteen fifty eight, he became a boy scout and
made a nine minute film titled The Last Gunfight to
earn his Merit badge in photography. Spielberg cast his fellow
scouts as cowboys, and when he screened it for them,
the troop went wild, shouting, whistling, and cheering. In that moment,
Stephen later said, I knew what I wanted to do
(03:35):
with the rest of my life. He was twelve years old.
Here's Spielberg on how it all started.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
I was infatuated with the control that movies gave me
in creating a sequence of events or a feeling or
a train wreck with two lineal trains that I could
then repeat and see over and over and over again.
And I think it was just a realization that I
(04:04):
could change the way I perceive life through another medium
to make it come.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
Out better for me.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
And when I realized I could make life better for
me through this little eight middlemeter rinky dink medium, I
felt really good about my life, myself and possibly bringing
some other people into this amazing medium to.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Enjoy what I was putting together.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Young Spielberg didn't play sports and could barely run a mile.
He was practically invisible to girls. He was short and skinny,
and he was Jewish. Living in Phoenix, a city with
very few Jewish families, made him a little different. But
with a camera, he was less lonely and less of
(04:54):
an outsider. While making these films, he found out that
given his classmates parts was like inviting them to a
really great party, and they all wanted to come. In
high school, he attained the rank of Eagle Scout before
finding out that his family were moving again. This time
it was to Saratoga, California, where his dad would be
(05:17):
working for IBM. For Stephen Far worse than the move
was the news that his parents were separating. It was
the unhappiest time in his life. Yet the move brought
him much closer to the center of the film industry.
The chance came the summer before his senior year of
high school. While visiting cousins in Los Angeles, Stephen took
(05:40):
a tour of Universal Studios.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
They gave everybody a bathroom break about midday, and I
got off to go to the bathroom, and I hid
in the stall, and I waited until it was really
quiet in the bathroom, assuming everybody had left, and gotten
back on the bus and left again, and I came
out at half an hour later, and I was free.
I was on the Universal Studios a lot, but spent
the whole afternoon just walking in and out of doors,
basically soundstages and cutting rooms, and took my own tour
(06:06):
and had an amazing time. At the end of the day,
I went to borrow a telephone to call my cousin
to come pick me up, and I fortuitously borrowed the
telephone of the Universal Studios film librarian, a man named
Chuck Silvers, who asked me what I was doing there.
I told him the story I just told you, and
he laughed and thought that was had a lot of
(06:26):
hootspun and showed ambition and showed that I really wanted
to be a director, or at least I wanted to
break into the business in some way. And he gave
me a three day pass on his own name, and
I did that, and then I came back on the
end of the third day, and so I took a
shot at maybe the guard would recognize me without having
to show on my papers. And so on the fourth day,
(06:47):
I same clothes, walked onto the lot and waved at
Scotti the guard mirror Scotti. Scotti waved back. The next
two and a half months, during summer vacation, I was
on the lot five days a week, every day for
two and a half months until school began.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And you've been listening to Greg Hangler and to Steven
Spielberg himself telling the story of his early life and
at twelve, discovering that he was infatuated with the control
movies gave him, and gave him a direction that would
allow him to make a better life for himself. When
we come back more of the life of Stephen Spielberg
(07:26):
here on our American Stories. Plee habibe here again, and
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get
your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded there daily,
and your support goes a long way to keeping the
(07:46):
great stories you love from this show coming. Please subscribe
to the Our American Stories podcast at the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts, and we continue with
(08:09):
our American Stories and the life of Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Let's return to Greg hanging.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Stephen roam the sound stages taking notes. One day, he
found an empty office on the lot, so he called
the switchboard and had the office's phone hooked up. Then,
with his fake office as a base, he spent his
days hanging around sets, talking with directors, editors and actors
and learned everything he could about the business. It was
(08:42):
the education of his dreams. Even getting kicked off in
Alfred Hitchcock's set was a thrill. Returning to high school
for his senior year was quite a letdown, so was
getting rejected by the film schools at the University of
Southern California USC and the University of California at Los
Angeles UCLA. Because of his poor grades, the only school
(09:07):
that would take him was California State at Long Beach,
and it didn't even have a film department. Stephen didn't
want to go, but his parents felt differently, so he
enrolled as an English major, went to as few classes
as possible, and spent most of his time at Universal
Studios as an unpaid intern. In order to get a
(09:29):
pain job at Universal Studios, Stephen had to persuade people
to take a look at his films. So Spielberg wrote
and shot a short love story and showed it to
the execs at Universal. They loved it and offered him
a seven year contract to direct television. Spielberg confessed later,
I quit college so fast I didn't even clean out
(09:52):
my locker.
Speaker 6 (09:53):
I think when I came back on the lot, this
time professionally, the first thing I realized when I moved
into my official office, not my life legal office, but
my legal office, was I knew where all the sound
stages were, I knew where post production was, I knew
where the back lot was, I knew where all the
bathrooms were, especially when I hit in. When I first
got off the bus, and I felt like I had
come home. I felt like Universal Studios had always been
(10:14):
my home, was ordained to be my home for the
rest of my life, and I realized I felt very,
very much at home.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Spielberg's first job at Universal was directing an early episode
of Night Gallery, a series of spooky half hour shows
with twisty surprise endings.
Speaker 6 (10:31):
Now I was doing my first television show, starring Joan Crawford,
no less, and the average age of the crew was fifty,
and I realized that, oh my god, this was the
crew that made my favorite movies of all time. This
was the generation that had produced the Golden age of Hollywood.
And when I showed up with my acne and my
(10:51):
long hair and the viewfinder pretentiously around my neck like
some kind of a talisman that would protect me from
all evil, I think they took one look at me
and they said, this kid better prove himself quickly, or
he's out of here. Because I remember being greeted by
tremendous hostility from the crew, from the motion picture crew,
and the only friends I had on that first television
(11:12):
show were my actors. Surprisingly, maybe not so surprisingly, Barry Sullivan,
Tom Bosley, John Crawford. They were the people that backed me,
but the rag and file of the crew were just
sending daggers my way, working as slowly as they could,
not to get themselves fired, maybe to get me pushed
off the show because I wound up four days behind
schedule on my first professional job.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
But I learned so much from doing that show.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Next, Spielberg directed an episode of Colombo starring Peter Falk,
which earned him the rights to direct two action films,
Duel and The Sugarland Express. And then there was The Shark.
It was decades before modern CGI, so a real mechanical
shark was made for a movie they were calling Joe,
(12:01):
weighing twelve tons with a body the size of a
stretch limo. Spielberg named the shark Bruce, after his lawyer,
but while shooting the opening scene of the movie, Bruce
sank to the bottom of the ocean and the crew
started calling the movie flaws. Here's Spielberg on how we
handled this setback.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
And the next morning we got the word that they
were going to be down maybe three to four weeks
with a shark.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
That's when I realized, okay, plan B Now, I never
planned for a Plan B, but that Monday I suddenly
had to improvise a Plan B, which was basically to
make the film as scary as I possibly could by
suggesting the shark without having to show the shark, and
that became my motif for the rest of the picture.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Johnny, take my wife for it, don't look by slap
Charlie sla.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
I promise you that if the shark had been working
that first day, and Chrissy Watkins had been taken in
that first scene and the way my storyboards had, I
had a fin in that shot. I had a conical
nose coming out of the water and never.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
See the whole shark out of a tail.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
Had there been any evidence of the shark, even on
the scene where the peerist pulled out and comes back
again and chases the swimmer back in the fishermen, I
promise you the audience wouldn't have left three feet out
of their seats and thrown their popcorn into the air
when the shark came out. When Roy Schotter was chumming,
you wouldn't have had that shock. Had the shark been
used too often and too clearly before that, the shark
(13:27):
not working when we needed it to work. Probably added
one hundred and seventy five million dollars to the box office.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Jaws was a spectacular hit, the first ever summer blockbuster,
earning a whopping two hundred and sixty million dollars. It
also became the top grossing film in history. Already planning
another film, Spielberg knew one thing for sure, My next
picture will be made on dry land, he said. When
(13:55):
Spielberg wrote Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he decided
that there would be no bad guys in it. But
looking back today, there is one thing he would have
done differently.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
The difference in when I wrote the story in my
twenties and what I would have done today is I
don't think today, with being a dad of seven kids,
I would have let my Richard Dreyfus character actually get
on the mother ship and abandon his family to this
alien obsession and leave the planet. But in my twenties
it was something that was absolutely.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Would have been my choice.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Spielberg's close friend George Lucas just wrapped Star Wars and
came to this set of Close Encounters to see how
things were progressing.
Speaker 7 (14:41):
Read five Standing by.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Here again is Spielberg ook trust Joe Felle.
Speaker 6 (14:47):
George came back from Star Wars a nervous wreck. He
didn't feel Star Wars came up to the vision that
he had initially had.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
He felt he had just made this little kids movie.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
And he came to Mobile, Alabama, where I was shooting
on the humongous set, and George hung out with me
for a couple of days and looked around and said,
oh my god, your movie's going to be so much
more successful than Star Wars.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
This is gonna be the biggest hit of all time.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
I can't believe the set, and I can't believe what
you're getting, And oh my goodness.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
So I'll tell you what. I'll trade points with it.
You want to trade some points, he say, I'll tell
you what.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
I'll give you two and a half percent of Star
Wars if you give me two and a half percent
of Close Encounters. So I said, sure, I'll gamble with that.
Great and I think I came out on top of
that bet.
Speaker 5 (15:32):
I think I did a lot better than George. Both
of our movies wildly profitable.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
Close Encounter has made so much money, rescued Columbia from bankruptcy,
and the most money I had ever made on the
movie before.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Was from Close Encounters.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
Close Encounters was just a meager success story, and Star
Wars was a phenomenon, and of course I was the
happy beneficiary of a couple of net points to that movie,
which I.
Speaker 5 (15:55):
Am still seeing money on today.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Close Encounters brought Spielberg his first Oscar nomination for Best Director,
and Star Wars passed Jaws as the top grossing film
in history. It was time for these two mega directors
to team up. The two put a screenplay together and
hired actor Harrison Ford, who had just played Hans Solo
for Lucas and Star Wars. Lucas named Harrison Ford's character
(16:22):
Indiana Smith, and the movie would be called Raiders of
the Lost Ark. Spielberg liked everything but the hero's name. Well,
how about Indiana Jones, Spielberg suggested. George Lucas produced, Steven
Spielberg directed, and.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
You've been listening to Greg Hangler and Steven Spielberg telling
the life of Steven Spielberg, and we learn how he
got to where he got and it wasn't the usual way.
Rejected from UCLA and USC's film schools, ultimately his film
school was the backlots of Universe. And then he got
(17:01):
his chance, a seven year contract to direct TV and
his first reel shot a night Gallery episode, one of
the best ever, starring the great Joan Crawford, and the
actors thank goodness at his back because the technicians most
surely didn't. Then came Colombo, then came a few movies,
(17:21):
and then came Jaws, and the rest was history. And
if it weren't for Bruce the mechanical shark not working,
Spielberg noted, the movie would have made one hundred and
seventy million less dollars and John Williams soundtrack would have
been meaningless. And when we come back more of the
life of Stephen Spielberg. Here on our American stories. And
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and the story of
Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Let's return to our own Greg Hengler.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Despite blistering heat a scene with seven thousand live snakes,
including five deadly cobras, in another scene with hundreds of tarangulas,
Spielberg finished almost two weeks early. When Raiders opened a
few months later, it was a smash, the most successful
film of nineteen eighty one. Spielberg became a household name.
(18:39):
During one of the nights on location for Raiders of
a Lost Ark, Spielberg began writing a story of a
little alien. What if I were ten years old again,
he wondered, and he needed me as much as I
needed him.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
When I first came up with the idea of ET.
I came up with the actual idea probably when I
was a little little kid, feeling very lost and alienated,
being this Jewish kid in always all gentile neighborhoods. But
then later in life when my parents were divorced, feeling
very much.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Lost and alone.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
And I remember on the set of Close Encounters, when
I had Richard Dreyfus and Et returning to the mothership.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
It's when I get swallowed up into the light.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
And I had this kind of amazing epiphany at that
moment while the cameras were rolling, and I thought, I
wonder if I should change the ending of this movie,
not another movie, but Close Encounters.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
What if ET is an foreign exchange student.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
What if that extraterrestrial who we called Puck stayed behind
with Truffau and Dreyfus goes and they take that ET
back to Langley or write Patterson Air Force Base, and
start to study him and communicate with him and really
try to figure out what their race is like and
how we can further our relationship.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
Wouldn't that be a great movie?
Speaker 6 (19:56):
Then I said, no, no, no, I'll save that for
another movie. But I was haunted by this idea of
an Et that gets trapped on Earth and doesn't go
back into the mothership. So in a sense, when I
wrote the story of Et, that was the progression of
epiphanies that led up to the actual story of Alien
(20:17):
who's lost and alone in three million miles from home.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
He doesn't go a well, he's curious.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
He's his curiosity gets the better of him, and maybe
the other aliens were the botanists were too busy categorizing
and finding plants on Earth to put in their little greenhouse.
But Et was interested in the big redwood trees, and
he was walking away. Six hundred year old Et is
probably the most lost of all the kids I've ever
had in a film, but he's no less lost than Eliot,
(20:44):
lost in a divorce, no real friends in his life.
And that was the bonding of Et and Elliot, the
alien and the alienated, the two souls, lost souls who
absolutely require each other for a very short amount of
time so they can both survive in a spiritual way.
(21:05):
I mean, for me, T it's the most spiritual movie
ever made. And that was not an accident. I mean
it was something that I always deeply felt.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
And what Spielberg movie would be complete without the music
of composer John Williams.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
John Williams has made the most remarkable contribution to all
of my movies, and they reach the heart universally in
every country, on every continent of the planet. John Williams
speaks to people, and John rewrites my movies musically, and.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
I think with ET, especially at the end, I lem
and I can make.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
Those bicycles lift off and get off the ground. We
can do that, but John Williams is the only one
who can make them truly airborne, because the audience lifts
off the ground on John Williams violins, and the audience
is carried across the moon or the sun with John
Williams string section and his horns later on when they land.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
And I think the last.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Fifteen minutes of ET is as close to an opera
because of John Williams contributions to that movie. Did anything
I've ever done before in my life.
Speaker 8 (22:18):
Right, here's a clip of Spielberg and Williams collaborating on
(22:43):
the music for et.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Spielberg operates the film projector well, Williams sits in front
of the piano. If it would be convenient to go
into the call.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
And done?
Speaker 9 (23:02):
Yeah, I like that matter. It seems like a very
natural transition into the loneliness and out of the tenderness.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Let's see if you can't do it, okay, let me
go think.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
The thing is, where do we shift from the call
to the theme? Is it on his smile? Is it
when he touched his face?
Speaker 7 (23:21):
And the wonderful question?
Speaker 9 (23:23):
And your choices are as many frames long as a sequence.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
It wouldn't let anybody.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We could go up together in the team.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
That's certainly the call.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
Yes, that's the call. That's the call.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
And this is the loneliness. This, this is Elliott's love,
this is his heartbreaking?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Is he looked up again?
Speaker 7 (23:45):
He looks up a second time?
Speaker 2 (23:46):
But then the call has to be there?
Speaker 7 (23:48):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, I think you're right. Let's get that absolutely.
Speaker 9 (23:54):
I always get that confused or sometime sometimes has on
the movie. Yet it hasn't gone up yet.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, I'll say et with Spielberg's biggest hit yet it
made more money than any other movie in history, topping
Jaws and even Star Wars. Then there's Jurassic Park.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
Well.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
To Jurassic Buck.
Speaker 6 (24:33):
I'd want to make a dinosaur picture all my life
because I'm a huge fan of Ray Harry Holsen, but
I could never find a realistic way to do dinosaurs
until Michael Crichton figured out a science that would make
it almost allowable, which is, hey, if a mosquito bites,
say dinosaur one hundred fifty million years ago, it gets
trapped an amber and it's preserved in amber, and you
(24:55):
extract the DNA from the blood inside the mosquito of
the Trantosaurus Rex, can we not bring back the t Rex?
And it was enough credible science that I went that
is one of the most genius combinations of science and
imagination I had ever witnessed anybody come up with.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
And that was all Michael Crichton.
Speaker 6 (25:17):
There were a lot of risks involved in an art
form that had never been perfected. A main character digital
dinosaur had never been done before for the movie, So
in a way, Jurassic Park was the first movie that
ever made. Its made characters where the entire success or
failure of the story was dependent on these digital characters.
That was the first time that was ever done, and
(25:39):
that was the risk I think all of us took.
When you have something which is so unfamiliar to us
in our.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Time, which is a Tyrannosaurus.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Rex thirty four feet standing upright, something that menacing. It's
not as interesting for me to have people running through
a jungle being menaced by a t rep because the
people are in a prehistoric terra firma. But it's much
more interesting for an audience, I think, to put a
t Rex next to a modern car, or put raptors
(26:12):
inside a modern industrial kitchen or inside a laboratory with
computers everywhere.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Jurassic Park was a landmark in visual effects and earned
an unprecedented nine hundred and fourteen million worldwide.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And you've been listening to Greg Hanglo tell the story
of Steven Spielberg, and we heard about raiders in the
Lost arc A huge hit then came et and even
bigger hit et and Elliott Spielberg noted with the alien
and the alienated, they required each other to survive in
a spiritual way. Quote it was the most spiritual movie
(26:50):
I ever made, end quote. And the last fifteen minutes
of et, Spielberg would go on to note was the
closest thing to an opera than anything I've ever done
in my life. And that, of course was thanks to
the music of John Williams. And then, of course came
Jurassic Park. And that was the first movie, Spielberg noted,
(27:12):
in which the movie is dependent on digital characters. When
we come back more of the remarkable story of Stephen
Spielberg here on our American stories, and we continue with
(27:37):
our American stories and the life of Steven Spielberg. Let's
pick up where we last left off with Greg Hengler
and Spielberg himself.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
The tremendous success of what Spielberg dubbed his popcorn movies
gave him more creative freedom, freedom to create Schindler's List.
Schindler's List relates a period in the life of Oscar Schindler,
a Nazi German businessman who saved the lives of more
than thirteen hundred, mostly Polish Jewish refugees from the Holocaust
(28:12):
by employing them in his factories during World War II.
Spielberg did post production work on Jurassic park at night
in Poland and film Schindler's List during the day. Here's
Spielberg sharing with us the story of casting real Germans
to play the Nazi SS soldiers and why people should
(28:32):
see Schindler's List.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Many of the German actors who interviewed for Schinder's List,
and I saw many of the interviews on tape, many
of them actually knowing I was watching the tape or
would be watching the tape, apologized for the generation for
sitting theirs when I got there, and I began to work.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
On Schimmler's List.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
Once those same German actors put on the uniforms of
the Waffen SS, my attitude chained and I couldn't talk
to them. I couldn't, and in between shots they would
be smoozing with me, trying to ask me questions about
et and Raiders of the Lost Ar, questions that someone
who liked those movies would ask the director. And I
didn't really want to make small talk. I couldn't get
(29:13):
past the uniform, and then my prejudice began to come out,
and I began to look at it and I began
to say, my goodness, you know, how can I be
blaming you know, the sins of the fathers on to
the sons and daughters. And then one day an amazing
thing thing happened, very early in the schedule, Thank goodness,
we had passover.
Speaker 7 (29:31):
It was a rabbi there and a lot of.
Speaker 6 (29:32):
My crew and cast came in and then in walks
all the German actors they put on yamkas. They sat
next to the Israeli actors and these really has opened
up the ha Goddess the prayer books and began to
show the German actors what Passover is all about.
Speaker 7 (29:48):
And I cried because.
Speaker 6 (29:50):
I saw something beautiful that was essentially an entire generation
of young German actors that are not culpable and should
never be blamed and should never have any fingers pointed
at them for something that.
Speaker 7 (30:05):
They weren't around to stop.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
And that was the message I wanted people to hear,
that generations were saved by Oscar Schindler. Thirteen hundred people
spawned six thousand descendants, compared to the four thousand descendants
that are alive in Poland today, down from three million
(30:27):
Jews before nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
One of the reasons Spielberg made Schindler's list was that
he wanted his children to understand this terrible time in
Jewish history. It was the first time my children ever
saw me cry, he said. When Schindler's List opened, audiences
cried too. Though it was sad and sometimes shocking, it
(30:51):
also showed courage and decency overcoming terrible evil. The film
won the Oscar for Best Picture in nineteen ninety three,
and Spielberg won his first Oscar for Best Director. In
nineteen ninety four, Spielberg's friends Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen
approached him about starting a film studio together. It was
(31:13):
a daring idea. Nobody had launched a new studio in
decades because it was so difficult and expensive. Yet Katzenberg
had produced a string of animated mega hits for Disney,
including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The
Lion King. David Geffen, whose work in the music business
had made him a billionaire, was one of entertainment's most
(31:35):
powerful deal makers. Spielberg was now considered the world's most
successful director. If anybody could launch a new studio, it
was these three. In October nineteen ninety four, DreamWorks Studios
opened for business. It was under the DreamWorks label that
Spielberg shot saving Private Ryan. Here's Spielberg.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
What motivated me to do Private Ryan was this was
a tribute to my dad. This was one hundred percent
for my dad. When I got the Oscar for Ryan
and I said, Dad, this is for you, This is yours.
I mean, I told my dad many many years ago
I was going to make a World War two movie
for him.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
The only thing the.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
Disappointed my dad was it was about Europe, not Asia.
And my dad said, but Steve, you didn't tell my story.
What about the four four hundred and nineteth bomb squadron.
You know, what about those who flew the Hump, my
friends who were lost flying the Hump?
Speaker 7 (32:25):
You know?
Speaker 5 (32:26):
I said, oh, Dad, you're right, I didn't tell that story.
But this is for your generation.
Speaker 6 (32:30):
I remember having the first industry screening of Raiders the
Lost Ark, and I had two director friends of mine
who I really respect, saying, wow, the greatest sequence of
this movie is the first fifteen minutes for that rolling
ball and the spiders on the guy's back.
Speaker 5 (32:45):
And I kept thinking, oh my god.
Speaker 6 (32:47):
I taught myself and Raiders and the movie never recovered,
and I felt that I was about to do the
same thing.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
When I shot Saving Private Ryan.
Speaker 6 (32:55):
I didn't quite know what that opening sequence was going
to be, because I shot the whole movie in continue
and I also certainly shot the whole first sequence in continuity.
The first shot of the movie is Tom Hanks's hand
shaking his canteen to his face, reveal his captain's bard
and show its Tom Hanks and pull the camera back
in the Higgins boat.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
That was the first shot of the movie.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
And I went right through to the end of the
picture in continuity, which meant that I was making up
the entire opening attack of Omaha Beach the landings. When
I say made it up, I didn't make up things
that didn't actually happen, that Steven Ambrose hadn't written about her,
other veterans hadn't informed me of. But I did the
(33:36):
whole thing stream of consciousness. I had no storyboards, no
pre visualization on the computer. Did the whole thing from
actually up here in a weird way because the whole
thing was being improvised in a very safe, rational control way.
But improvided nonetheless, and I think if anything gave that
scene its impact, its first person in your face impact
(33:59):
It was because I didn't know what was going to
happen next.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Just like real combat, Spielberg knew that, like Schindler's List,
saving Private Ryan could be painful to watch, and he
was prepared for his audiences to stay away.
Speaker 6 (34:14):
This particular movie. We felt like we were making a contribution.
We're actually thinking, you know, without patting ourselves in the back,
that this movie was going to come out. And I
thought nobody would go to see this picture. They might
see a few people go the first weekend because Tom
Hanks to the Star, but they're going to be so
turned off by the violence they're not going to come
back to the second weekend. And I thought this would
be a one weekend wonder But I thought the film
(34:35):
was going to add something to inform audiences what soldiers
have to really go through when they're in the hell
fire of combat. It's honoring all the dads who were
part of the Greatest Generation by having an old man
going to the American semeteritarian Normandy and visiting that actual site.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Every time I go, I cry. I think the book
and place it.
Speaker 6 (35:00):
In a much larger historical context and show audiences today
that this really is about the old men now, who
were the boys then who allowed us to have a
life today the way we live our lives and to
have the relative freedoms that we now enjoy.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Saving Private Ryan was far from a one weekend wonder.
It was the most successful film of nineteen ninety eight.
It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won Spielberg
his second Oscar for Best Director. In closing, here's Spielberg
on the secret to his success.
Speaker 6 (35:37):
My job is to put the audience inside the movie.
My job is to reduce the esthetic distance between the
audience and the experience. I don't say, okay, now, I
just have to make light audience popcorn movies to give
them relief from whatever my subconscious demons are that have
(35:57):
pushed me into more historical, darker sub I don't think
that way, and I think my intuition has been about
seventy five percent right on and twenty five percent not
right on, And so I'm.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
Going with the odds. I'm just going with the odds.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Steven Spielberg has one hundred and fifty nine credits as
a producer, in fifty six as a director. A few
more of those include Poltergeist, The Color Purple Hook, Catch
Me if you can, Munich and Lincoln. His films have
set and broken box office records for decades. They often
(36:35):
show how acts of personal courage can change history. They
have made people, millions and millions of people laugh, think
and cry. Nobody, not even Walt Disney, has been so
completely wired into what the public wants to see in
the cinema, and as a result, his personal wealth is
(36:57):
now so vast people have given up trying to estimate it.
And it all started in nineteen fifty seven when he
borrowed his father's movie camera.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Had a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Engler, And we'd like to thank
the John Williams Fan Network, NDTV, the Times of Israel,
and the Federal News for the interview footage we used
in the storytelling. We learned in this last segment why
Spielberg was doing those popcorn movies because in the end,
(37:30):
he wanted the creative freedom, the freedom to make Schindler's List,
which would win him an Oscar for Best Picture in
nineteen ninety seven and his first Oscar as Best Director,
and of course soon thereafter dreamwork starts and a new
studio hadn't been launched in decades, and here were Spielberg, Katzenberg,
(37:50):
and Geffen starting it up and their first film, Saving
Private Ryan. What he says in the end about what
films are about and what he tries to accomplish is
putting the audience inside the movie. No market researchers, just
one man's instinct and creative talent.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
The story of Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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