The Fabelmans (w/ Jeffrey Overstreet)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
It wasn't closely. What's the secret?
Thing. Just got to find something you
love to do and then do it for the rest of your life.
I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my
environment to be a product of me.

(00:38):
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot, a podcast
where we do deep dives and two directors and their
filmographies. I am your host Eli Price and we
are here on episode 115 of the podcast.
We are. It's, it's been a long time
coming, but we're finally covering Spielberg's last film

(00:58):
as of now at the Fablemen's. So I'm excited to jump into that
today. But before I do, I want to
welcome a first time guest. We have Jeffrey Overstreet
joining us for the first time. Jeffrey, how's it going?
It's going very, very well and it's good timing to talk about
this movie. So thanks for thanks for having
me on. It's a pleasure.
Yeah, yeah. Well, before we do that, I

(01:21):
always love to get get people plugged into what my guests have
going on. Whatever projects you have out
now or coming out soon or or oldprojects you want to plug.
But yeah, just if you want to give an overview of just who you
are and what you do and work, people can find your work.
Well, there are many branches to.

(01:43):
What's going on with me right now?
The the branch that's probably most on my mind today is that
school is about to start and I am an associate professor of
English and writing at Seattle Pacific University.
So I have some syllabuses or, orsyllabi depending on which
version you choose to revise in the next few days to get ready

(02:04):
for the classes that start in two weeks.
One of which will will be a filmclass called Film and faith,
where we watch great films from all over the world over the last
50 years. And then, and then we explore
what's possible when we approachthose films with questions about
faith. They aren't necessarily
explicitly faith related films, but we watch all kinds of great

(02:27):
stuff. And I, I always look forward to
that class. So that that's very much on my
mind right now. But I am a teacher because I was
a writer 1st and I grew up writing fiction and I have a
series of fantasy novels called the Aurelia Thread that have
been around for a while now. They came out between those four
books, came out between 2007 and2011.

(02:51):
But that was the dream for me asa kid was to be a fantasy writer
and following the footsteps of my my heroes like Tolkien and
Lewis and Madeline L'engle and Richard Adams.
Yeah. So that's a, that's another
branch. But film criticism is something
I was already doing in high school.
I did for my college newspaper. And soon after I graduated from

(03:12):
college, I got a call from Christianity Today.
They had seen some things I was doing online.
And they said we don't want to do the typical Christian media
thing of approaching movies as something families need to be
afraid of. We don't want to.
We don't want to treat movies with like lists of things that
could be harmful. We want to approach them

(03:33):
respectfully with curiosity as works of art and find out, you
know, anything that's true or anything that's beautiful.
We believe that's that's God's territory.
And that's what I believe as well.
So I got to write about movies and my love for movies of all
kinds for Christianity Today forabout 10 years and had a column

(03:54):
there and got all kinds of wrathful, judgmental emails
every week from from Christians who are afraid of culture and
the world and who think movies are toxic.
So that was a very formative experience for me.
I moved on from there to write about film for Image Journal.
And then I have some websites where I I can write when I want

(04:18):
to as much as I want to. The main one is called Looking
Closer, so go to lookingcloser.org.
That website is like a creaky old ship.
It's starting to fall apart. I'm working on getting ready to
relaunch it on a new platform, but you can still access many,
many years of reviews and archives there.
I'm also on Sub stack now. I have a site there called Give

(04:41):
Me Some Light, which Shakespearefans will know what that's from
and and what that's about. But I've been posting a lot
there in the last couple of years.
But all of this is leading to the other thing that's been most
on my mind next to school, and that is that I have a book
coming in May. This will be my second book
about film. The first one came out in 2007,

(05:05):
was called Through a Screen Darkly, and it was very much my
attempt after all of those angryemails from readers at
Christianity Today, my attempt to kind of justify the ways of
movies to readers, especially toChristian readers, to help them
fear not, which is the most repeated refrain in all the
Scriptures. And so it seems important to pay

(05:26):
attention to that one. This book, Lost and Found in the
Cathedral of Cinema, is a memoirabout how over the course of my
life, there has always been a movie or several helping me sort
of sort out what I really believe about God, about human
nature, about the world. And it's it's sort of a, a

(05:48):
discernment process over the course of the book.
I'm weighing the things I've heard in church as a small child
and then thinking about the the film Pinocchio or thinking about
the film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
And then on into adolescence with films like Moonrise
Kingdom, Watership Down, The Black Stallion, Dead Poet

(06:09):
Society, Do the right thing, on into adulthood to movies like
Patterson and the Tree of Life. And even in fact, the last film
in the book that the last film Idiscussed in the book is Marcel
the Shell with Shoes On. Oh, yeah.
Not necessarily films that wouldspring to mind if you're
thinking about faith formation, but but that's how it worked for

(06:30):
me and that's how it has worked for me over the course of my
life. So it's about how movies helped
me sort of separate true faith from the distortions that have
crept into Christianity and helped me find what I really
believe and, and what I need to leave behind.
So we've been, we've been hearing the word deconstruction

(06:51):
a lot these days in terms of faith.
So I guess it is sort of a deconstruction story, but it's
not just about leaving something, it's about
discovering something. It's AI was warned that movies
would ruin my faith, and in fact, movies strengthened by
faith. So Lost and Found at the
Cathedral Cinema is coming out in May and we're doing the the
last copy edits on the typeset file this week.

(07:14):
Just today I received the introduction written by Matt
Zoeller Sites, the editor at rogerebert.com.
So I'm very excited to get to share that with the world here
in several months. Yeah, that's exciting that that
sounds very similar to like my experience with just what movie,

(07:34):
what films have done for me. And even like some of the ones
you've named are a bit like a Patterson's My Favorite Jim
Jarmusch movie. Yeah.
Yeah, Tree of Life is my favorite Malik and I love, I
even love Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.
It was one of my favorite moviesthat year, so.
Yeah, yeah. In fact, that came out the year
of the Fablemans. Yeah, Yeah, that's true.

(07:55):
I think the Fableman's ended up at #5 on my list that year and
Marcel was #1. There you go.
But it's good we're talking about the Fableman's because
it's a similar kind of thing, right?
It's a movie about how how movies shaped somebody and how
how how creativity and art making became the way that that
person processes what they're what they've experienced.

(08:16):
So. Yeah, yeah.
And I even think reminded of this, there's a really good
George Miller quote that I don'thave in front of me, so I'm not
going to be able to actually give the quote.
But he's he talks about how cinema has become the new
cathedral. Basically, it's become the new
church that people go to, to have communal experiences that

(08:37):
are transcendent. And it's a it's a good quote.
I wish I had the actual quote infront of me.
I'll have to send it to you later when I can find it.
Yeah, that that idea goes goes way back.
I think it would had been aroundeven before the filmmaker Ingmar
Ingmar Bergman talked about how even though he didn't, does not

(08:57):
or did not identify as a Christian or, or as a as a as a
person of faith, he was much more a skeptic.
But he he, he too wrote that artlost much of its resonance and
power when it formally divorced itself from religion.

(09:20):
And he he was pointing to like the great cathedrals of the
world. I mean, we don't see any
architecture like that in the world.
Anything is extravagant and complex and beautiful.
And then those things still drawpeople from all over the world
all the time. And when it just became about
self-expression, he says we lostsomething.
And so he said, I always aspire,even as a skeptic, I aspire to

(09:45):
contribute something to the cathedral.
He understands that he wants to be a part of something bigger
than himself. And like, like you with the
George Miller quote, I don't have it right on the tip of my
tongue or I would try to quote it, But it's it's, it's along
those lines. It'll be in my book.
You can find the whole thing there.
Great, great. And I'll, I'm sure, do you have

(10:05):
like a, a pre-order or a place where like people can find it
whenever it comes out? Sure.
And I'll make sure I'll link that in the episode description.
Yeah, Yeah, I can give that to you.
Basically go to go to the website for Broadleaf Books,
that's who's publishing it. Cool.
And they have a pre-order link there.
Of course you can find pre-orders on on other sites.

(10:27):
I'm not a big fan of what probably springs to your mind is
the most obvious site to go to, right.
But you know, if you need to go that route, you can go that
route. Yeah, that's it, Won't it won't
be too hard to find at this point.
Cool. Well, Speaking of the Fablemans
that we mentioned a minute ago, I, I do love to hear about my
guests kind of first memories ofthe director we're discussing.

(10:52):
And so, yeah, what do you remember the first Spielberg
movie you saw or the first time you realized, you know, that
Spielberg was a director or sometimes it one comes before
the other, but for people. But what's what's your
experience with Spielberg? It's a complicated question with
me because I was so aware of himbefore I was allowed to watch

(11:13):
him. I was five years old looking or
sitting next to my dad at the breakfast counter looking
through the newspaper, and the ad for Jaws was there.
And I agree, it's one of my earliest memories.
I remember seeing the picture, you know, that iconic image of,
of the monster rising from the deep and the woman swimming

(11:33):
across the top of the frame and the space between them and just
that tension. I needed a way to resolve that
at five years old. And so the very first book, I'm
going to put that in quotes thatI made as a kid, was a picture
book of a sea monster chasing a swimmer.
And as you turn the pages, the sea monster gets closer and

(11:55):
closer and closer, and the jaws are open and the teeth are
enormous. And then on the last page, the
swimmer somehow inexplicably draws a sword and turns and
kills the beast and it sinks. And I, that's how I resolved
that tension. So I mean, not to jump too far
ahead too quickly, but you can imagine what I was thinking

(12:16):
about when I saw The Fablemans for the first time.
And he watches the train crash in that film and then is
obsessed with making something as a way of facing his fears and
working through them. And so that's my first encounter
with Spielberg, even though I wouldn't see Jaws for probably
10 years, I was probably, I, I probably saw it when I was old

(12:39):
enough to get babysitting jobs. That was a big, a big turn for
me when it came to my exposure to movies because I would end up
in houses where they actually had home video and I could watch
what they had in their collection.
I'm pretty sure that's when I saw Jaws for the first time.
But the big one, I, I, I remember ads for close
Encounters. Strangely, it didn't really grab

(13:02):
me, probably because by that point I was obsessed with Star
Wars. But I remember the poster for
Raiders of the Lost Ark, and since George Lucas was involved
and I was obsessed with Star Wars, I was very interested in
that. Han Solo was my favorite Star
Wars character, so I was very interested in Harrison Ford,
right? So I still have in my office at

(13:24):
work that big poster that says from the makers of Star Wars and
Jaws, and that original beautiful poster of Indiana
Jones. But I was not allowed to see it.
I was 11 years old. I had not been allowed to go see
The Empire Strikes Back because people in our church had said it
was, that there was an occult influence in it.

(13:46):
And then I might end up becominga Buddhist or a Hindu or
something if I watched it. All right.
Which is interesting because when I eventually saw it, I
thought, wow, there's Christianity all over this
thing. But then Raiders, I was, I was
reading everything I could get my hands on about it because if
I couldn't see the movie, sort of like the same thing with

(14:08):
resolving the tension with the sea monster.
I needed to know what it was about and how the conflict was
going to be resolved. So I remember ordering a a
Raiders Lost Ark storybook through my elementary school's
book order program and saw lots of images from the film there.
Read the story until I'd memorized it.

(14:29):
Read the novelization of the film, which is actually, I
think, more explicit than the film itself.
There's actually a sex scene in the novelization of Raiders of
the Lost Ark. But the most important thing I
remember is that my 5th grade teacher had the soundtrack, had
the score on vinyl and would play it during our lunch breaks.

(14:51):
And I was already a big fan of the Star Wars music and I knew
the name John Williams. So I would always ask her,
please play this again, please play this again.
And she would let me borrow the record.
And eventually she approached myparents and said, your son is
obsessed with this movie. Can I show it to him?
I don't think. I think he needs to see it.

(15:13):
So I'm sure this wouldn't be allowed today, but my 5th grade
teacher had me over to her apartment to watch a home video
to watch Avhs of Raiders of the Lost Ark on a very small TV.
And that was how I saw it for the first time.
And Spielberg came to rival very, very quickly Lucas for me,

(15:35):
and then very quickly surpassed Lucas for me as the name that
would most get my attention whenit came to movies.
And I think it stayed that way probably all the way up through
high school, when just about thetime I was graduating, Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade came out.
Yeah. So.
So my childhood and adolescence both are kind of framed by

(15:55):
Indiana Jones movies. But that was also around the
time that Empire of the Sun cameout.
A much more adult film, if you know what I mean.
A much more mature story, a muchdarker story, one that does not
have a conclusion that is designed to satisfy an audience.
It's a conclusion that challenges us and sobers us and

(16:17):
maybe breaks our hearts. I remember seeing that with
friends who were Spielberg fans and they came away complaining
about how well that wasn't fun. But I came away with just, my
head was spinning. I was moved.
I felt a little more grown up after seeing Empire of the Sun.
Like. Christian Bell's character.

(16:38):
Yeah, yeah. I felt like I'd been told, told
a truth that had been kept from me in some way.
Yeah. And I see echoes or I see
reflections of or hear echoes ofthat film all through the
Fablemans as well, for reasons we can get to later.
But yeah, that my, my middle school and height, well,
elementary, middle and high school are all punctuated with

(17:00):
the arrival of Spielberg films. And while I don't have any
chapters on Spielberg in the book that's coming out, I talked
about him a lot in the previous book.
But I could do a whole book on growing up with Spielberg and
how these films, how these filmsinfluenced me and gave me new
vocabularies for thinking about complicated things.

(17:22):
Yeah, yeah. That's very cool.
And yeah. And I think that your story with
Spielberg, out of all the guestsI've had, is the most
appropriate probably for the Fablemans.
Yeah, yeah. You know, just that that kind of
growing up with those films paralleled with, you know, the

(17:45):
the Spielberg stand in and SammyFableman kind of growing up
making, making these particular films he was making and, and
those being how he he processed to the different stages of his
life. But but yeah, but I love that.
Before we get to Sammy Fableman,I do like to start back at the

(18:05):
beginning. And this has been, this has been
the sort of story that Spielberg's wanted to tell since
he started making movies, reallyin 1978, during the production
of 1941, he had already commissioned a script about his
youth. It was going to be called
Growing Up. It was officially announced back

(18:26):
then. But then he ended up making ET
and that kind of went by the wayside.
I don't know if he ever got likea script written for that, but
it was like public knowledge. And then there was this
long-awaited I'll be home scriptfrom his sister and that never.
I don't I still don't think that's ever been made either.

(18:46):
But it was a a similar thing about their childhood.
And he just, I think for a long time he was scared for a lot of
reasons to make this sort of movie that was so very
autobiographical in a more literal way than all of his
other movies, which you could argue are all autobiographical
in one way or another. Very much so, yeah.

(19:10):
But yeah, I mean, he was scared to do it for a long time.
I think scared because probably the things he would have to face
making it and probably probably a little bit worried about how
his parents would be scrutinizedin a way.
So. So jump forward to 2005.
On this first day of shooting Munich, Tony Kushner, who that's

(19:30):
the first movie they worked together on.
Tony Kushner asked him if he remembered the first time he
wanted to be a filmmaker. And Spielberg went on to tell
him the story of the camping trip that we see in the movie.
And you know how he discovered what was going on with his mom
and and their dad's best friend through that that camping trip

(19:51):
editing. And Kushner immediately
suggested that he make a movie out of that.
Spielberg said maybe one day. And so that was the that was
kind of the launching point of of what we get in the Fableman's
they Kushner was Kushner was honestly like probably the
biggest proponent. He kept bringing it back up with

(20:11):
Spielberg through their relationship over the years.
And even after, after they made Lincoln together, Kushner wrote
a sort of short story based on anecdotes Spielberg had told us,
told him about this event and others.
And. Again, it was kind of like a
Spielberg's interested but doesn't quite want to pull the
trigger on that yet. It really wasn't until that

(20:35):
documentary in 2017 called Spielberg came out that he he
really started feeling like he could do it.
Him and his family opened up a lot in that movie to the public.
And I have this quote from Spielberg.
He said, quote, right after my mother's, right after we were
having lunch at her restaurant when suddenly she took my hands
in hers and said, Steve, why don't you make a movie of our

(20:57):
story? I give you, I gave you such good
material. And and then his mom shortly
died after that at the age of 97.
And so, yeah, that was, I think that after that was the moment
where Spielberg really started to work toward this more
seriously. Sometimes, sometimes an artist
needs needs to live more life before they're ready to tell

(21:18):
tell a certain story. I mean, if I had tried to write
Lost and Found in the Cathedral of Cinema 10 years ago, it would
have been a very, very differentbook.
And I'm sure if I'd waited another 10 years, it would
become a very different book. But I think all of the films
he's made-up to this point have influenced the way he tells this
story. Because I, I would, I would

(21:39):
guess that he would say that he has discovered more and more
about himself by telling these other stories.
I mean, that's just, that's the nature of art.
We don't usually get good art out of somebody who already
knows what they're making. We get the best art from people
who are following questions and notions and intuitions and
making discoveries along the way.

(22:00):
Right. I remember people coming to me
after my first novel and saying,it's so clear to me that this
was, you know, this was your wayof working through the trauma of
the failure of your first marriage when you were so young
in college. And I'm, and I was just like,
what are you talking about? This is a fantasy story.
I wasn't thinking about that. But then I would go back and
look at it and go, wow, I can really see myself sort of

(22:22):
growing up and working through alot of anger and working through
a lot of grief and working through this sense of what am I
going to do with my life. And, and now when I talk about
those books, I'm like, yeah, I was clearly working through the
shock and the loss and the pain of that.
So I'll bet even a film like West Side Story or The BFG, when
he sort of revisits children's stories for the first time in a

(22:45):
while, I'm sure, I'm sure those were processes of growing up a
little bit more for him and and gaining more perspective on
these things. Yeah, yeah.
And this, this and West Side Story were both like long time
passion products. Yeah.
And you know, I, I think I'm at the end of West Side Story.

(23:06):
You know, my final thought take away was just, you know, it's
never too late, you know, to pursue that that dream you might
have. Yeah.
It's so it's just, you know, it's just kind of like in a
almost cliche way, inspirationalto see someone as old as
Spielberg is kind of taking on these passion projects, you

(23:30):
know, and it makes me wonder andget excited for whatever this
UFO project he's working on could be, you know, is it the
one? Is it the, is it the sort of
movie he's always wanted to make?
But maybe he didn't pull the trigger on with stuff like close
Encounters and ET, you know, maybe held back something and
those that he now wants to get out of his system so.

(23:52):
Yeah, and then there's the remake of Bullet, which he's
been talking about forever, too.And you know, when you're
thinking about the Fable lens and you're thinking about the
portrayal of his father as a manof science and innovation and
machines, you can see right away, looking back through his
catalog, how important technology is to his success and

(24:12):
to his innovation, but also his his obsession with machines as
subjects themselves in front of a camera.
And that takes you back to duel,right?
The first, the first that he made that or I guess it's a
short. It was a feature.
I'm trying to remember. I haven't seen Duel in a long
time. Yeah.
It was a it was a TV movie that he.

(24:34):
Right. That he that he shot some extra
stuff for for like a little European theater tour.
So. Yeah.
But it was feature length from from the get go.
It's it's it's it's a movie about about vehicles as much as
people. Yeah.
It'll be interesting to see how a remake of that from someone
his age might be different from what it would have been if he'd

(24:57):
made it as a much younger film maker.
Yeah, and and what I appreciate about Spielberg too is that I
know if he did finally make thatbullet film it, you know, it
would be partially out of kind of AI guess like a reminiscence
on something he loved as a kid. But he also he doesn't let that

(25:17):
take over is something that I'vealways appreciated of about him.
Is he he has the nostalgia, but he also like has the the take of
a modern take on things. You know, when you think about
movies like the Post, that is like a old period movie and he's
he's you know, he kind of has a lot of nostalgia for 70s film in

(25:40):
that movie, but it's a very modern movie in a lot of ways
too. And so I would be interested to
see, interesting to see his takeon something like Bullet because
of stuff like that. Yeah.
But yeah, you know, with this one, he and Kushner really
started working on it during theCOVID lockdown.

(26:02):
And it kind of came out of this conversation he had with his
wife and kids that kind of kind of going back to, you know, what
you were saying a minute ago of like, this is a movie he had to
wait this long to make because Iasked him something that he
about a story he regretted not telling yet.
And this is all of these life stories are what came to mind.

(26:23):
So yeah, he he poured his heart out to Kushner.
We got we got some bullet going on outside.
Yeah, it's as if it's as if we summoned the drag racers here on
the street outside my house. But yeah, yeah, he poured his
heart out to Kushner. Kushner drafted an 81 page
version of this. And you know, then really so

(26:47):
August, in August of 2020, his father died at the age of 103.
And then October, I mean, withina few weeks of his father dying,
they begin writing the script for this movie together.
Spielberg and Kushner via video conference.
They worked on it for about two months, a few days a week and

(27:08):
together. And Kushner said this, he said,
quote, I had never written so fast, but I kept to that pace so
that Steven wouldn't flinch, UN quote.
And, you know, he was worried about him pulling punches and,
you know, worried about him not,you know, not giving him what he
needed to really make this his real actual story.

(27:31):
But yeah, they that's, you know,that's the beginning of this
movie. It's it's not, it's actually the
first Spielberg riding credit since I want to say I can't, I
can't remember if he has writingcredit on Poltergeist.
So, but it seems like he might have had a writing credit on
Poltergeist, which he did not direct, depending on who you

(27:53):
talk to. But he did the last movie he
wrote himself, I think was closeEncounters that he wrote and
directed himself. So yeah, it's been a it's been a
long while since Spielberg had wrote and directed a movie.
Yeah. I mean, you, you he kind of
would have to for this one. I mean, it's it's his story.

(28:15):
It would be strange if he didn'thave writing credit on it.
But but as far as other crew goes, it's kind of a lot of his
his common players. Janusz Kaminsky was the director
of photography that he brought. In fact, last week I said that
West Side Story was the last movie Michael Kahn edited, but

(28:37):
he did bring him out of retirement for this to to work a
little bit on it. Sarah Brochure was the main
editor on this. But I think Michael Kahn did do
some work as well. You know, this this being just
an important film, not just for him, but for, you know, his his
common collaborators that he's had for so many years and that

(28:59):
if worked with him that have known his parents when they've,
you know, come to visit him on set and stuff.
And you know, this meant a lot to them as well.
Guys like John Williams, who waskind of semi retired at the
time. I think I think John Williams
was like 90 years old at this point.
Yeah. Rick Carter, Production designer

(29:21):
is has been his probably most common production designer over
the years. So a lot of guys that he's just
worked with for a long time on this film.
If you're interested in specifics on John Williams
involvement in this, in this particular film, there's a
wonderful first book of its kind, a new biography of John

(29:44):
Williams called John Williams, AComposer's Life by Tim Grieving,
who writes about film music for NPR, The New York Times.
I mean it when when a when a great publication needs the best
writing on film music, they callTim.

(30:04):
I'm lucky enough to to know him because I once posted maybe I
should say I once confessed my that I'm a fanboy for the very
controversial musical score for the fantasy film Ladyhawk from
the mid 80s. A lot of people don't like that
score. It has a lot of guitar solos and
synthesizers for a fantasy movie.

(30:24):
I love it and I remember when I made that comment I got a note
from Tim Greiving saying so gladto find another fan of of this
score. As a matter of fact, I'm writing
the liner notes for a deluxe version of that score that's
coming out soon or that soundtrack.
And that's how we met. And we've we've kept in touch

(30:45):
over the years. And so he's been telling me
about the, the, the lifelong dream of this tribute to John
Williams. And because he he planned it so
carefully and went about everything with such expertise
and professionalism and respect,John Williams actually came
around to agreeing to be a part of the project.
And he has many, many hours of interviews with John Williams

(31:08):
for this book. And there is a big section,
there's a section on the Fablemans, which it's
interesting. Tim Grieving is not a big fan of
that score and and he's sort of stirred up some controversy by
some of the things he said aboutwhy the music, why John Williams
music for that film really frustrates him.

(31:29):
He thinks there should have beena lot more of it.
He's really surprised by how sparing the score is in that
film. But then he shares interesting
perspectives from both Spielbergand John Williams about why that
is. And that's he blogged about it
on Substack recently. So you can look that up and it's
inspiring a lot of reactions andresponses.

(31:51):
But it I was thinking a lot about that as I revisited the
film today, noticing just how much more Spielberg is allowing
silences and how much more he's relying on the music of the
time. Right.
So that's a it. It's kind of an anomaly in
Spielberg's body of work that way.

(32:12):
Yeah, yes. I mean, he usually has Spielberg
is kind of notorious for the score being almost another
character or, or, you know, giving your your emotional cues
in the best ways, you know, mostof the time.
But yeah, this one, there's a lot of pieces that his mother
would play kind of worked throughout the film.

(32:33):
Probably the biggest the biggestexample of that is during that
kind of intercut montage of Sammy editing the camping trip
and his parents in the in the living room.
It's her playing this Bach Bach concerto that she would play all
the time. So there's a lot of that in the
movie. That's not, you know, John
Williams score. And in fact, I think I want, I

(32:55):
want to say the first time Spielberg mentions that the
first time John Williams score even comes in is when Mitzi
Fableman is dancing in front of the car at the camping trip,
which is a long ways into the movie.
Yeah, yeah, it works for me because it feels like in this

(33:16):
film he wants us to be paying attention to the things that
would incline him towards certain kinds of images, certain
kinds of stories, certain kinds of sounds.
And by the reverence with which he attends to those performances
at the piano. What I'm hearing and what I'm

(33:37):
seeing is young Spielberg developing a relationship with
that kind of music. And then you hear the piano
score for ET. Right.
And the longing in the piano score there, the longing in the
choral pieces, the class, the classical choral pieces and
Empire of the Sun. And it it may just make so much

(34:00):
sense. Yeah.
So I think it works for this film.
Yeah, I, I, I think it does too.It's not something that I was
like cued in strongly to while Iwas watching the movie, but kind
of hearing that sort of stuff and thinking about it in
hindsight, you know, I, I appreciate that this late in his
career, you know, he's trying new things, trying new ways of

(34:22):
using music and, and his movie. And it's not, I would say as far
as John Williams scores goes, it's it's a fine score.
I think it, you know, it does its job sparingly and it doesn't
really it's, you know, it's never going to be on the level
of like AET or Jurassic Park or or even Empire of the Sun as you

(34:43):
just mentioned. But, but as far as there's not
very many John Williams scores that are bad, I don't know if
there are actually any that are bad.
There, there are some that work better than others, but I think
I think this is just one of those that it's not distracting
and it does its job. And to me that's, that's fine.
As far as the score goes, I'm I'm happy if I don't notice the

(35:06):
score too much, but just enough so.
Another thing that comes to my mind when I think about
Spielberg and music that I couldn't stop thinking about as
I watched this film. I don't know if you've ever seen
this. I think it's easy to find on
YouTube, but I wish I could remember what year it was.
Spielberg appeared on Inside theActors Studio with James Lipton,

(35:27):
and they were sort of going overhis career up to that point.
And so this is the two of them. James Lipton, who Will Ferrell
has famously spoofed on SaturdayNight Live, sitting across from
Spielberg and what? And he'll he'll name a movie and
get Spielberg talking about it. And they got to close Encounters

(35:47):
of the Third kind and got into talking about the story.
And then Lipton kind of very abruptly turned the conversation
and said, and I'm not going to again, I'm not quoting.
I'm this is all from memory, right?
But basically said, so your dad was a scientist who worked on
the first personal computers andyour mother was a a concert

(36:08):
pianist. And so your home was was very
divided, it seems like, between science and art.
And Spielberg was like, yeah, yeah, that's that's very, very
true. And talked a little bit about
that. And then Lipton says, and here
in close Encounters, when the aliens come and everyone's
waiting to see what's going to happen.
And moviegoers have been conditioned to believe that

(36:31):
something terrible is going to happen, that this mysterious
other from outside has come and the world is in trouble.
But then the scientists reach out to the aliens with music on
computers, and the aliens answerback music on computers.

(36:53):
And it begins a conversation that grows in harmony until
everyone is is celebrating and everyone is laughing with joy.
And Spielberg's like, yeah, yeah, that's that's what happens
there. And then Lipton says, and it's
amazing to watch Spielberg's face as Lipton says this.
So for you, a picture of hope isthe reconciliation of science

(37:17):
and art is music played through machines.
What you, what you have done there is you have presented for
us the longing you have had since childhood for the reunion,
the reconciliation of your father and your mother.
And by that point, you can see tears in Spielberg's eyes.
And he says, I get emotional just talking about this.

(37:40):
He says, I have never thought about that before.
And that has stuck with me as one of the greatest examples
I've ever seen of art knowing more than the artist of of art
drawing things out of the artists that are very much
belong to the artist, but often without the artist even knowing

(38:02):
what they've tapped into. Right.
And I just think it's such a profound thing.
And to have to have that conversation logged now in his
history. And now he makes the movie.
And I wonder, you know, if that was on his mind as he is showing
us this, this young man who clearly is an avatar of, of his

(38:24):
younger self, longing for harmony between his mother and
father, but also being merciful in his portrayal of that, that
tension. I I, I think about that a lot.
Yeah, yeah. And it is as you, as you were
getting to the the, you know, the thing that Lipton said.
I was like, oh, I have seen thisbefore.

(38:46):
And it is a very like magical moment of spill it dawning on
Spielberg. You know what he's what he's
created and, you know, wrestlingwith that in real time, really,
really cool moment. And, you know, it is something
that, you know, in this movie. I I think it's it's strange

(39:08):
that, you know, because at the end of their life, his mother
and father were reconciled. You know, you can see it in that
2017 documentary. They're they're kind and playful
with each other. In fact, Spielberg talks about
how his father had remarried andafter, I can't remember the
guy's real name, but it's the the Uncle Benny character that

(39:31):
his mom eventually married, thatbest friend of his father.
And when he died, his mom and his father and stepmother
actually became really good friends again and kept that
through the rest of their life. And Spielberg even mentioned
that line that Burt Fableman says at the very end, towards

(39:55):
the very end of the movie, abouthow, you know, why that picture
got to him so deeply. He kind of says something to the
effect of, you know, this. I can't let this be the end.
And Spielberg mentioned how important that line was to him
because of the, you know, that it really actually wasn't the
end of their relationship together.

(40:17):
That's great. Yeah.
And you know, I loved that. It's it's one of those movies
where, you know, a lot of times you can get a lot out of a movie
just watching the movie. And you can with this one.
But you also get a whole lot outof just watching Spielberg talk
about the stories behind it and giving more context to these
stories and and why they were important.

(40:38):
So. Yeah.
Hi, quick reminder that you yes you can be a huge help to the
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establishingshoppod.com/donate you'll find out how to join the
establishing shop family throughsome giving peers starting as

(40:58):
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to a discord server where we canchat it up about the show and
movies in general, and more. Might even let you choose a

(41:21):
movie for me to review for the show.
Check out that link in the show notes to learn more.
Back to the show. What did you think about the
kind of main actors in the in the cast?
What? What were some standouts for
you? I mean, I think, I think Gabriel
LaBelle is such a perfect choicefor Sammy.

(41:43):
I mean, it's the, I say young, there's a younger Sammy in this,
of course, sure. But most of the time, most of
the, the film, LaBelle is the lead.
And I, I think it's a perfect choice because it should not be
the performer we can't take our eyes off of.
It should not be the performer who commands the screen every

(42:04):
time he's on the screen. It should be someone who is
watchful and our attention goes to whatever he is looking at or
whomever he is looking at. And LaBelle is really good at
being quiet when he needs to be having outbursts on occasion,

(42:25):
typically awkward outbursts thatlet you know that he's much
better at communicating through images than he is speaking.
But he there's just enough of a resemblance to a young Spielberg
that I think it works. And yet he's he's very flexible
too. He does the physical comedy well
when he's in awkward interactions at at school with
the bullies, or when he's on thesets of his early sort of

(42:48):
experimental films. But he's a Christian girlfriend.
So I think it's just, I think that's just perfect casting
works much better than seeing the same actor play Lorne
Michaels a few years later in the movie about Saturday Night
Live. Although I didn't think he was
bad in that. I just thought that was a much,
that film didn't work very well.Paul Dano was a very surprising

(43:10):
choice when I heard about the casting for the film.
But I could see right away why he cast Dano, because Dano can
convince you of the intensity ofthe passion for technology and
for science and wanting to be the best at something.
And there's that wonderful conversation about how maybe the
problem here, I think it's. Yeah, it's Sammy's sister who

(43:33):
observes. It's got to be difficult for our
mother to be married to a genius, knowing that she will
never do anything that is as successful or as important as
him. And maybe she needs a kindred
spirit or a soulmate or a love that is someone with whom she
feels on equal ground and important and and loved.

(43:55):
I know again, botching the the lines.
But yeah, that made a lot of sense to me.
And yet it would have been easy.And maybe earlier in his life,
we would have gotten a differentversion of the father.
It would have been easy to make him seem very self absorbed and
and for us to get an illustration of someone where

(44:17):
the the lines, the caricature has been shaped with with anger.
And I don't think I don't think that's the case.
I think we see that in other Spielberg films earlier where
the father figure can be very complicated and even off
putting. Even in close Encounters of the
Third Kind, when the protagonistis a father, the audience often
comes away from that going What a selfish character.

(44:39):
Yeah. And I think rightfully so here.
There's just so much mercy in inthe portrayal and in the
performance. I think it needed that soft
touch that that Dano does so well.
It's funny to be saying that considering the the rage monster
he played in There Will Be Blood.
But yeah, there's a real sensitivity here.

(45:01):
Michelle Williams is just so good in so many movies.
It's taken me a while to warm upto that performance, and I think
it's because I think it's my problem.
I don't think it's hers. I think it's because I often
find myself sort of backing awaywhen I'm around theater kids.

(45:21):
Sure. Because they're so flamboyant
and so expressive and so overconfident in themselves a
lot of the time. And I'm an introvert and I'm
insecure and I'm uncertain. OK, so now we have a small plane
going over my house, which neverhappens.
I don't know. Maybe this is a maybe we're
supposed to talk about Empire ofthe Sun again.
I don't know, maybe. But it's it's gone now.

(45:42):
But there's a flamboyance and analmost overconfidence to
Michelle Williams performance here that the first couple of
times I was like, boy, she's really going for that Oscar.
And the more time I've spent with the film, the more I've
come to feel like, no, I think this is probably just a very
honest, authentic portrayal of what his mother was like.
Yeah. And then you think about other

(46:04):
female leads, other other characters in Spielberg's film
history, and you start to realize how many of them were
probably influenced by his mother, especially Willie in
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Kate Capshaw's performance there, I started noticing right
away a strong resemblance between the personality of

(46:27):
Mitzi, a Sammy's mother in this film and the demeanor and
laughter and nervous energy of that character in Indiana Jones
and the Temple of Doom. And so again, the problem is
probably me. It's probably a very strong
performance based on the the likeness of Sammy's mother or of

(46:48):
of Spielberg's mother. Yeah.
And maybe you can see why the character of Sammy at at one
point actually, or actually, no,it's yeah, it's Sammy.
But it's also the sisters who are at times telling Mom to kind
of chill. Yeah, you're right.
Why do you have to be the centerof attention all the time?
Right. So yeah, yeah.
And so I know too. Spielberg cast her off of this

(47:12):
TV miniseries Fosse Verdun, which I've I've never seen.
I've seen pieces of it. I have not stuck with it through
the whole thing, but. Yeah, but there, you know, he,
the way he described it was, it was just, there wasn't any one
particular thing. It was just a feeling he got
from from her that reminded her him of his mother in some way.

(47:33):
And you know, you with Spielberg, you just got to go.
Yeah, sure. You whatever your intuition is,
go with it, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. But she, she, I know she watched
a ton of his mother's like footage of his mother over the
years. You know he kind.
Of really is drumming on a lot of her strengths.

(47:54):
I mean, right. I think the first time I ever
really noticed Michelle Williams, I remember her being
on television. But there's a little movie
called The Station Agent. That was also my introduction to
Peter Dinklage as a serious actor.
It's become one of my favorite films.
It was also my introduction to Bobby Cannavale, who has been
everywhere since then. And Patricia Clarkson.
Is that the name I'm looking for?
The other The other actress, yeah.

(48:16):
But Michelle Williams plays justlike a local librarian who
strangely gets like, a crush on awkward visitor from out of
town, played by Peter Dinklage. And they end up having some very
tender scenes together. And I remember thinking there
there is a a warmth and a glow and a curiosity and a just sort
of unselfconsciousness to this actresses performances.

(48:40):
And then she would go on to playMarilyn Monroe and do these
huge, incredibly intense, dramatic things like Blue
Valentine. Yeah.
So she has such incredible range.
She does. I actually just watched the the
Kelly Reichert film Wendy and Lucy and she's you know, she's

(49:00):
so reserved in that and it made me think too, I've never seen
Wendy and Lucy, which was a older Reichert film, but just I
it might have been that same year as 20/22 she played she was
in showing up where another Reichert film where she's so, so
reserved. I love that film and I love that

(49:22):
performance. Another, another performance
that gets to the complicated truths of what it's like to be
an artist when you're surroundedby more more dominant
personalities, family crises, and trying to stay true to your
calling. It's one of my favorite films

(49:42):
about art making that I've ever seen.
And yeah, I'm much more reserved.
Subtle, understated performance,but so good.
Yeah, maybe a good companion movie with this.
Yeah, sure. They're different in a lot of
ways, but touch on a lot of the same sorts of themes of family
and art for sure. Well, and Judd Hirsch in, in, in
in both films, right? I didn't realize that but.

(50:04):
Yeah, yeah, he plays. He plays the uncle in the
Fablemans. He's the the one who kind of
barges into the family and and preaches to Sammy Fableman about
what it is to be an artist and how artist is going to how art
making is going to tear, tear you in two and then in showing

(50:25):
up, he's the father. Yeah, I think you're right.
Again, very brusque, very abrasive, tends to make life
more complicated for people. Yeah, he's really good at
playing that character. I may be misremembering this,
but I seem to remember reading the Michelle Williams asked him
wanted him for showing up because they were working

(50:45):
together on the Spielberg film. I'll have to go back and check
that. Don't quote me on that, but I
seem to remember there being some kind of connection there.
Yeah, that would make sense thatthat happens a lot.
But yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, she's she has, you know,
Michelle Williams even talked about she didn't just watch, you
know, footage of his mom. She like obsessively watched
footage of Leah, Leah Spielberg laughing because she loved her

(51:09):
laugh. And so a lot of the a lot of the
her laughs in this movie are herreally doing her best trying to
imitate Spielberg's mother. So yeah, I think she's really
good in this. It's, you know, knowing Michelle
Williams range helps with kind of pushing down that thought
that, oh, she's just trying to overdo it because, you know,

(51:31):
that she doesn't have to to givea good performance.
So there must be something therethat she's tapping into, trying
to tap into that's not just likeover performing.
I'm going for an Oscar sort of thing.
Right, Right. Yeah.
But yeah, going back to Gabriel LaBelle too, I just wanted to
say Spielberg, Spielberg on their Zoom calls, the thing that

(51:56):
stood out to Spielberg the most was that Gabriel LaBelle would,
like, dominate their calls, justlike berating him with
questions. And Spielberg was like, his
curiosity was so huge and it reminded me so much of myself.
And, you know, it's it was it's very abnormal for someone else

(52:16):
to dominate a phone call with me.
And, you know, he was like, that's that's how I knew that I
had cast the right person. You know, he's Gabriel Bell
saying stuff like, what can I dothis your walk?
You, you do this Like, you know,he named like the sort of walk
he does. And spoilers like, yeah, yeah, I
guess you can do that because hewas trying to tell him, I don't

(52:36):
want you to imitate me. I want you to like, you know,
find the character yourself. And so Gabriel's like saying,
what can I do your walk? And he's like, can I do your
smile? You have this kind of this kind
of silly smile. You do.
And Spiller was like, well, what's silly about my spot
smile? And Gala Bell's like, well, you
kind of have this like dead upper lip when you smile.

(52:57):
He's like, yeah, so I thought that was great of just.
And you can see it comes out in the movie that that kind of
curiosity that he that he has comes through.
And Sammy, I think as you watch the movie, yeah, there's there's
a lot of great performances. I think Seth Rogen is really
good in this movie. Spielberg, Spielberg saw him as

(53:18):
a dramatic actor when he cast them and didn't really have
anybody else in mind. And Rogen has always been a guy
that has that in him, even if it's not, you know, what he's
most known for. I think not.
Not all the comedic actors do, but he does.
I mean, the great comic actors tend to have these deep wells of
trauma, share grief. Not all of them.

(53:39):
I mean, I think I've heard some wonderful conversations about
Steve Carell and how he seems tobe unusual this way when it
comes to leading leading men in comedies.
That he doesn't have any dark secrets or devastating losses in
his past that he's drawing on orreacting to or trying to turn
from. Again, forgive the background
noise. I live next to a fire station

(53:59):
and things can get really. There's.
Always me around here. I'm trying to make a connection
to a Spielberg film here, but these don't sound anything like
the spaceships in close Encounters.
They don't. There's not enough notes, there
needs to be 5. But I I feel like this movie
open probably opened some doors for Rogan because if you look at

(54:21):
what he's done since then, it's there's always an edge of comedy
to what he's doing. But he's had some pretty
prominent roles since then, including like right now in that
series Call Is it called the studio that he's.
Yeah, I've been wanting to to catch up with that.
Yeah, yeah. What did you think about David
Lynch as? Oh boy, I'm so glad we can talk

(54:41):
about this now because when I reviewed this and when I did my
own podcast for for subscribers on my sub stack, the film was
still in theaters and I so wanted people to be surprised by
this. And I feel like there's been
enough time now we don't have toworry about that so much because
every it's been so, you know, widely talked about and we're.
A spoiler podcast, so. But strikes me as maybe the

(55:05):
single most daring casting choice in Spielberg's whole
career because Lynch is a big personality.
And the way he talks, nobody talks like him.
And I think it's such a credit to to Spielberg and to Lynch's
respect for him that Lynch givesa real performance there.
I mean, you can tell it's him. You could tell it's his voice.

(55:26):
Oh, yeah. But he, he really adopts some
sort of abrasiveness that's not typical for David Lynch.
There's the way he's smoking, There's just the body language.
It's a, it's a, it's a great performance.
It's also really a tribute to toSpielberg's respect for Lynch
that he cast him in this role. And as I wrote on Letterbox

(55:52):
right after I saw the film for the first time, there's
something about that scene and maybe I should frame it a little
bit more. But we're we're near the end of
the film. Sammy is already becoming an
accomplished young filmmaker, but he's looking for a way in.
He gets ushered into unexpectedly and abruptly
ushered into the office of the great John Ford and sort of on

(56:14):
the spot, sort of like what it must have been like for LaBelle
to talk to. Spielberg has to really live up
to the moment and not screw thisup.
And John Ford is a really brusque, abrasive personality in
that exchange. But what I'm seeing as I'm
watching this, I'm it's 1979 andI am watching Kermit the Frog

(56:35):
standing in front of Orson Welles at the end of The Muppet
Movie. Because you've got this
performer who has come to Hollywood with a banjo and a
whole bunch of dreams and not a whole lot of networking
connections to work. And suddenly, out of the blue,
he finds himself in front of theman who pulls the strings, the

(56:55):
man who can open doors. And it's the the big bearded guy
behind the desk with a cigar. And that guy looks at him and
says, what do you got? And he gives him what he can.
And while it doesn't turn out exactly the same way, you can
tell that that is a, a turning point.
He's kind of been handed a golden ticket from someone who

(57:19):
probably dismisses 19 out of 20 people he sees.
And I, I, I, I would, if, if I ever got to interview Spielberg
and I haven't given up, I, I would ask if, if that scene had
any influence on this one. Because the, just the spirit of
the scene and the role that it plays at the, at the conclusion

(57:43):
of this film felt so familiar. And yet, from what I can tell,
it's based on something that really happened too.
Yeah, I mean, he, if he, you know, from interviews I've seen
with him, for one thing, this he's told the story for a long
time and and it it's there's different versions of this
story. The one we get in the movie is

(58:04):
probably one of the more comicalversions of it.
And you know, in the in the special features for this, he he
says, no, that's this is exactly, you know how it
happened, you know, almost word for word.
And but he's told it so many different ways.
You're like, well, you know, we'll we know how memory works.
But but he yeah, apparently he was in this office.

(58:26):
It wasn't in, it wasn't in Hollywood like that.
It was it was in some offices, but it really was the Hogan's
Heroes guy, the Bernie fine thathe was like, well, you shouldn't
be talking to me, you should be over here and pushes him in
there. He says, he says he really came
in with lipstick, you know, on his on his face and you know,

(58:50):
did the whole horizon thing. The horizon thing has always
been a part of the story. It's such a such a great line
and such a profound one because we can see the influence of that
line in so many iconic scenes throughout Spielberg's career,
right? So it's easy to believe.
Yeah. And you know, I, I loved David

(59:12):
Lynch in this. I've kind of, I steeped myself
in Lynch earlier this year afterhe passed.
I kind of used that just as an excuse to catch up with all my
blind spots. And so I was watching Inland
Empire and. I.
Finally got around to Twin Peaks, the return, and.

(59:33):
Man. And watch some of his shorts
even. And so I, I've just been steeped
in him. And so it was just just a breath
of fresh air for me watching re watching this and getting to see
Lynch come in and just this incredible artist.
He didn't want to take the role at first because he was like,
I'm not an actor. I'm not like on the level of

(59:53):
John Ford and, you know, very modest, but, you know, I think a
lot of people would disagree that he is on that master level,
so. Yeah, no, he is as influential
for young film makers today and even accomplished film makers
today as Ford was for Spielberg's generation, I think.
Yeah, I think so. In a very different way.
I mean, it's hard to make many connections between a John Ford

(01:00:14):
film and a David Lynch film unless you're watching something
like maybe The Straight Story. Sure, but but also it was so
late in his career and he does have that reputation and he
could speak with that kind of authority and just bring that
gravitas to it. I I thought it was just a, just

(01:00:34):
a stroke of genius. I was so delighted when I saw
that it was him. It was actually Tony Kushner's
husband, Mark Harris that suggested him, which is wild to
me. Why would he think of Lynch?
You know, I would love to know what made him think we should
put Lynch in in for that role. But I'm so glad they followed
that path and and got made it happen because it's.

(01:00:57):
It's great. Yeah.
And the and the end of the film really needs something that
stands up with the best scenes in the film.
And it's it had to have been a complicated thing to write
because the peaks of the film have been about the family.
Right. You can feel that the the film

(01:01:18):
is a little bit in danger of going off the rails the more it
gets involved with the bullying situation and the I'm going to
be used Christian in quotes Christian girlfriend.
I'm not sure or what church she's going to but it's it's
wild. Yeah.
But there the film's in danger there of kind of becoming a
bunch of just amusing anecdotes at that point, the the more we

(01:01:40):
sort of stray from the central family story.
So to make that to give that scene such prominence at the
end, I'm sure was a storytelling, a screen writing
challenge. But it really does work sort of
as a transition that now, you know, now he's on his own.
And again, I think we might evenfeel there a little bit that his
dad had passed that sense of there.

(01:02:02):
There's a sense of freedom, not not celebrating that well now
all that's behind me, but celebrating that my feet are
under me and I'm on my way now I'm in the door.
And that, I think was that worksas a kind of a closing note
that, I mean, that's not the endof the story for Spielberg.
In a sense, it's the beginning. These are the things that
prepared him for Jaws and and close Encounters and Poltergeist

(01:02:27):
and Raiders, etcetera. Right.
We've said very little about so many of them so far.
ET, Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List,
But and then Hook, which has so much autobiographical stuff in
Hook, a movie I don't even like very much.
The same. But yeah, definitely, it's
definitely all there. Maybe, you know, maybe there

(01:02:48):
could be another I I don't thinkhe would make it, but but you,
you know, there's a whole second-half to the story that
that's right, that that's, you know, back to the line about the
horizon that's on the horizon atthe end there.
Yeah, yeah. And I, I know there's a lot of
great film makers, but I'm just like, I don't know if anyone

(01:03:11):
could or should make a film other than Spielberg about, you
know, the rest of his life. But yeah, I I do love.
So, you know, talking about likethe ends there, the end.
And kind of like his dad passingthe that last scene between
Sammy and Bert, you know, where it kind of jumps ahead a year
and they're they're in the apartment.

(01:03:32):
They actually shot that on the day of Arnold Spielberg's first.
It's I'm kind of probably not pronounced this correctly.
It's a yarzite. It's like a it's a Jewish word
for the anniversary of a loved one's death, a he, I guess a
Hebrew term. But so, you know, that's
something that is very important.

(01:03:53):
It was it had been one year since his father died when they
shot that that scene. And Spielberg, Kushner said that
Spielberg told him it was his Qadish, which is a Jewish prayer
of mourning shooting that scene.And I thought that was really
special. And I think I think too, it's
shows how it's just another example.
Spielberg processing through films.

(01:04:14):
It's him looking back on this critical moment between him and
his dad, where his dad finally, you know, with some reserve,
obviously, but finally, you know, kind of gives his blessing
in in the in the best way he could to his choice in
filmmaking. And he's shooting that on the
anniversary of his father's death.

(01:04:36):
And what an incredible opportunity as an artist to be
able to process that in that wayand celebrate, I think in a way
to his father in that way and, and what his father meant to
him. I just, I just loved that.
I thought that was very cool. And there's, I mean, I've
experienced this again, the, the, I've been thinking a lot

(01:04:58):
about this film with my experience with, with the book
I'm writing. And my father passed in
November, and there are a lot offamily stories in the book.
And I felt a lot more pressure and conflict about writing a lot
of those stories before he passed.
And it wasn't because I was afraid of what he would think.
It wasn't because I felt like I was misrepresenting him or, you

(01:05:21):
know, that I needed to avoid some kind of controversy.
It was more that the story isn'tover yet, You know, that his
story wasn't over yet. And so I was writing these
reflections on him in childhood,but what happens late in the
story changes the way you tell the early parts of the story.
Yeah. So he passed in November as I

(01:05:46):
was writing the last chapters. And that really did influence my
final revisions of things because, you know, once the
story is told, you can step backfrom the whole thing and
reflect. And it hasn't been very long.
I'm sure I will be reflecting for many years to come and
making new and new discoveries. But seems like the timing was a
little bit similar here. And I wonder if that closure

(01:06:11):
gave him a sense of permission to say, now, now the story is
told and there's not going to beany surprise twists at this
point. And I can step back and, and as
a storyteller, give it the shapethat I see in it at this point.
Yeah. You know, that's, I love that.
That's a great perspective and makes a lot of sense to me.

(01:06:32):
And it makes me think too, you know, how he actually had more
time to process his mom and you know how he portrays her.
And I think the I think the incredible thing about this
movie and how he, he and Kushnerwrote it, I love that he got
someone like Kushner to write itwith him.
And he talked about he Kushner is the only one he could have

(01:06:55):
because he just the way he and Kushner Kushner communicate, he
feels like he can, you know, pour his heart out.
He he doesn't have to hold anything back with Kushner,
which is which makes for great writing, you know, But I love
that he doesn't like sugarcoat his parents, really.
He shows kind of like the good and bad of both of them.

(01:07:15):
And, you know, he shows all the great parts of his mom and how,
how full of life she was and, you know, how inspirational she
was and how loving she was and supportive.
But he also shows that she couldmake some, you know, really bad
choices that came out of that personality as a parent.

(01:07:38):
And and the, you know, the this the selfishness that she had
with her choice that, you know, it was something that he
understood and probably has cometo understand better now than he
did when he was 16 of why she made that decision.
And I think that conversation inthe kitchen is a lot of him kind

(01:08:00):
of processing how much he understands her now that that
tension of like what she needed and what her family needed.
Yeah. So I just love that he didn't he
didn't try to. You could very much end up with
this kind of like Angelica mother figure right in a

(01:08:20):
autobiographical movie. But he doesn't do that.
And I I respect. That take take for example, the
scene where he comes, he hears screams coming from the house
and he he goes in and his motherhas has a has brought home a
monkey. Yeah.
In the context of the story, that's a it's a big jump.
But we've seen how impulsive sheis by that point, right?

(01:08:41):
We also know how frustrated she is and how badly she needs to
laugh. She is missing the troublemaker
in her life at that point, but being separated from from
Bernie. And of course, Spielberg fans
are looking at that scene going Marion has a monkey and Raiders
of the Lost Ark, and that monkeyis a troublemaker.

(01:09:02):
And that monkey, in a story thatSpielberg told several decades
earlier, is the enemy. That monkey works for the Nazis.
That monkey is a spy and a traitor trying to break up
something. And in Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Spielberg the storyteller, Spielberg the judge, mental God

(01:09:22):
gets to gets to judge the monkey.
Yeah, in this film, he's much more, you know, he's he's older,
much more mature, much more understanding.
But we get a very empathetic picture of why the mother brings
the monkey home. And but I had to laugh at that
because of how how much it revealed who he was then and who
he is now. But also there, there are winks

(01:09:44):
like that. I don't know if they're all
deliberate, but it feels like there are so many deliberate
winks all the way through the film.
They're sort of like, do you seehow that?
Do you see where that came from now?
Yeah, you you think about like, you know, riding the bikes down
the road with his scout friends and you think about ET.
Yep, or the the grocery carts running across the street in

(01:10:06):
front of the car during the tornado and you think of close
Encounters. Right.
Him sitting in front of a flickering screen with tears in
his eyes and you think of Tom Cruise and Minority Report.
I even was thinking about, you know, Spielberg does not have
blue eyes, but the the kid he cast to play the young Kim has
these bright blue eyes and there's that image of those.

(01:10:29):
The close up of those eyes made me think of AI.
Yeah, AI and Elliot and ETI. Don't remember if Elliot has
blue eyes, but yeah, yeah, definitely.
There's a lot of AI in here which reminds me now that it
comes up, I think he has a Co writing credit on that.
The. Original screenplay was was
heavily Kubrick. Right, but he does have.

(01:10:51):
The right thing, he messed with it a little bit.
I'll have to go back and check that.
I think he has the sole writing credit on that now that you say
that. OK.
Because he, he didn't really want, because it was Kubrick's,
he didn't want anyone else to, to mess with it.
He wanted to risk, you know, do the best job he could to make it
how he thinks to honor Kubrick. So yeah, he I think he does have

(01:11:13):
the sole credit on that one. So that is probably the last one
since close Encounters than that.
And but even that was like, yeah, he has the sole credit,
but a lot of it was already fromKubrick, so.
The the the aggressive girlfriend in the aggressive

(01:11:36):
Christian girlfriend in the families.
I can't help but wonder if we aren't supposed to think of Amy
Adams character in Catch Me If You Can as the rather
aggressive, rather horny young woman.
Yeah, throwing herself at Leonardo DiCaprio.
Yeah, there's a lot of talking about website and how the planes
in Empire of the Sun sort of play the role of movies here

(01:11:59):
representing the dreams and hopes of this young man in the
concentration camp. I don't know very many people
who would put Empire of the Sun in their in their Spielberg top
five, but but I I would it, it stays with me as one of the most
personal, it feels to me like one of the most personal films
for him. And again about separation from

(01:12:21):
your mother and father, and whatit feels like to have your world
falling apart as a kid. And to to have to grow up before
you're supposed to have to grow up.
Yeah. You know, there's a lot of that
in the Empire of the Sun and andSpielberg's life personally.
Yeah. And you took a lot of liberties
with the source material in thatone.

(01:12:42):
It's if you go and read. I did read it.
It's a very different, that's a very different writer.
I'm not surprised he hasn't goneback and done any more of
Ballard's works. But.
It's it, it's definitely all over it and really like the, you
know, it makes me think about just the way he shoots movies.

(01:13:06):
He really kind of pulls out all of this, all the stops in this
one, all the shots that he's done over the years, you know,
all the different sorts of close-ups that he's, he's kind
of perfected the, the low, thoselow angle close-ups, the, the
push insurance and the, you know, he, he's, he does this

(01:13:27):
thing in this movie that I haven't seen in a while that I
used to. I feel like in like the his he's
90s run, he was doing this a lotwhere he'll have a character
kind of walk up into their closeup on on on screen and he does
that with the one of the bully kids does it while they're

(01:13:47):
playing volleyball. And this one, and I was like,
there's that there's that shot that I haven't seen him forever.
You know, part of that is just I've been watching Spielberg
movies for two years straight and analyzing them so hot.
You know, that's not necessarilysomething most people would
probably recognize as like, oh, he's, he's doing shots that he
hasn't done in forever, really. But there's that meta element of

(01:14:09):
the whole thing too, where as he, as we watch Sammy practicing
editing, the scene itself is edited brilliantly.
So you're, you're constantly thinking about we are seeing the
result that we are seeing what he can do now as we watch him
edit a scene about him learning to edit.

(01:14:30):
And so I can't help but wonder if we aren't getting a little
bit of a comment on what sort ofthe, the cliche that he is best
known for, which is that, that that emotional zoom, right?
I don't know if you remember theJoe Dante film, the burbs on
early Tom Hanks comedy, but thatfilm in the mid 80s was already

(01:14:52):
spoofing the Spielberg zoom. So that if something dramatic
happened in the cul-de-sac that is the location for that film,
if anything dramatic happened there, there would be like 12
zooms on the different neighborsfaces, all of them reacting to
the thing to the point that it just became absurd.
And then at one point I rememberthere was even a slow zoom on a

(01:15:13):
dog who just is not paying any attention at all.
And we were all just laughing because we knew what that was at
that point. But then you watch this and you
see, first of all, I think it's a it's a budget thing, right?
He at, at in those early films, he can't create these massive
panoramic dramas. So he's got to convince you of

(01:15:34):
the drama by the expressions of the people watching and those
scenes where we see him paying such close attention to his
mother's face as he's starting to realize there's something
going on here that I am only nowdiscovering.
And he keeps going back over andover and over, frame by frame,
to look at her eyes, to look at her face and try to read those

(01:15:57):
expressions when she's falling into, you know, Bernie's arms or
she's falling or she's on the tree and she's laughing and
feeling carefree. Yeah, there are so many moments
where he's zooming in because he's trying to understand
something, and I almost wonder if that isn't kind of a yeah,
well, here's where that came from, too.

(01:16:18):
Right. Yeah.
And even like, I think because of that later in the film when
you get you get him filming the new house they have in
California, you know, with Burt the dad running around and
showing him everything, which Spielberg, by the way, I think
all or most of those kind of eight, 8mm and 16mm a shot.

(01:16:42):
Spielberg shot most of those himself, which is which is cool.
But even in that, as you're saying that it made me think he
is making sure to film his mom and those because the dad's
like, wait, why'd you go away? And he's gone over to his mom
outside the the window. And it makes me wonder like, is

(01:17:04):
he, you know, is he going and trying to capture what his mom
is thinking so that he can go back and look later and try to
understand his mom better? And, you know, there's that that
moment where his dad carries herthrough and she's laughing, but
then her eye, she makes eye contact with the camera and that
just distant depressed look in her eye.

(01:17:24):
Really like that look made me emotional and tear up even more
than the the announcement scene that follows.
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's
incredible. It's.
Well, and that makes sense too. I mean, most directors would
make that scene, the scene of the the announcement, be the
emotional peak of the movie. But for him, it's not

(01:17:47):
uncharacteristically. It's not about making us
emotional at that point. It's about how the only way he
could process it was to detach. And so you see that sort of
fantasy image of him filming theannouncement when he's really
just sitting on the stairs and he you realize that some of what

(01:18:07):
he does so well, some of his strength comes from PTSD, comes
from trauma, unable to cope withwhat's in front of him.
Just like the little boy watching the train crash at the
beginning of the film, he detaches and thinks about how he
can gain control over the situation by filming it, to use
his mother's words from earlier in the film.

(01:18:29):
And I I think that's a much moreinteresting storytelling choice.
It's a much more personal and revealing thing.
Rather than just to go for the audience's emotion, give the
audience a chance to learn something by observation
themselves, and that way the emotions the audience feels are
very much their own. We are.

(01:18:50):
Being told what to feel. And I think too, there's a lot
in this movie of showing that like the his films, once he's
made them, they're not really for him anymore.
It seems like every time he's showing a film before an
audience, he's disengaged. He's thinking about something
else. He's you know, and the the war

(01:19:12):
film, he's watching his mom and Benny, because he's made that
discovery at that point at the ditch day film, he's like, you
know, he's just down. He's he's been dumped.
He's not thinking about what he filmed anymore, but when you the
way Spielberg films it, he makessure to hone in on the audience,

(01:19:33):
not so much on the screen showing the movie, but the
audience faces as they watch it.I think about the war film, it,
it kind of slowly pushes in closer and closer to his mom's
face and, and what the move, what the movie is doing for her
in that moment is just as movingfor you as an audience member as

(01:19:53):
the film itself. Or, you know, the excitement of
the students watching the ditch day film, seeing their reaction
is, is just as important as, youknow, whatever, however good the
film looks, you know, on the screen.
It's and that's something that Spielberg has always been, he's
always had audience on his mind.So I thought that was another

(01:20:16):
kind of like self, self referential thing with the way
he shot those scenes. Was just that idea that he he's
always cared what the audience thoughts, not in the not in the
way that like it fundamentally changes his films, but in the
fact that he does want the audience to be entertained to to

(01:20:37):
think, wow, that's a cool shot to to be moved or you know, you
know, he has this run of very political movies in the 2000s
and and twenty 10s that he does want to portray important things
through his movies. He he always has the his
audience and mind in in a good way, in the best way possible

(01:21:01):
for an artist like Spielberg. So that was something that stood
out to me. And the beach scene in
particular, and the movie he makes there and then shows is
also, He's also hoping that the audience is going to notice how
he's sort of playfully engaging the the legacy of Leni

(01:21:22):
Riefenstahl and the Nazi propaganda movies that she made,
sort of celebrating the Aryan ideal.
Here he's being abused and and persecuted by racists by
anti-Semitism in the school. And what does he do when he is

(01:21:43):
asked to film an event that is going to let the bullies shine?
He gives them such reverent attention that it's funny when
you watch it and it makes them uncomfortable.
It makes makes the bully uncomfortable, but it does sort

(01:22:04):
of make us think about those thethe power of film to do harm by
glorifying a certain kind of person at the expense of others.
Right. I think, I'm not sure I think
that that branch of or that thatthat thread of the movie's
tapestry might not be its strongest thread.

(01:22:25):
It sort of raises sort of teasesus with questions and issues
that it then doesn't really havethe time at that point to dig
very deeply into. But it's an acknowledgement that
that's been an important part ofhis experience as well in
Hollywood. And so much, I mean, not as much
as the Coen brothers, I would say, but there, there has been a
thread throughout his filmmakingabout Jews in America and about

(01:22:49):
racism, about about hatred, about prejudice.
So there, yeah, he probably couldn't make many deliberate
connections to Schindler's List in this film, but that's.
Yeah. That's a nod in that direction
and by that point we are thinking about how everything
he's done has been a way of facing fears.

(01:23:11):
Yeah, yeah. The the the way a tank comes
over a hill in Saving Private Ryan has such aesthetic
parallels to the T Rex breaking out of its boundaries in
Jurassic Park and attacking. It's like all these are all
doing the same thing. In a way, they are all

(01:23:32):
addressing these these things that are too big for him to
process, too scary for him to understand, and so he has to try
to make sense of them in film. It's interesting that those
those films came out at the sametime.
Yeah. He was, I think we see a lot of
the emotional evidence of what he was going through making
Schindler's List showing up in Jurassic Park.

(01:23:55):
Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think another
thing jumping off of that is, you know, at this point in his
career, it's it's one of those things where, you know, I always
wonder what people like Spielberg, how they kind of
process their celebrity. I guess, you know, you're,
you're constantly hearing peoplecall you a master and a genius.
And, you know, how do you deal with that?

(01:24:18):
But there there has to be a point where someone like
Spielberg realizes that he is going, whether he wants to be
modest about her or not, he is going to be considered one of
the greatest of all time. You know, there's no denying
that for him. And so I think part of what he's
doing in this movie is kind of trying to wrestle with with I

(01:24:40):
have this gift. I don't always know how to wield
it in the right way. And it has this power over
people. You know, you think about when
he shows the the footage, the that he cut out of the camping
trip to his mother and you know,you have the camera just sits on
her face and slowly pushes in and you if you watch her

(01:25:01):
expressions, you can see that he's showing her something.
Maybe she didn't even fully understand about herself.
And that's a that's a very powerful thing to be able to
show something to someone that they didn't even realize fully
about themselves. And it's it's the same thing
with the bully. He'd his mom is mature, so she

(01:25:22):
can she she understands and can express it.
The bully doesn't even know whathe's upset about, but it's but
it's wielded this power over him.
And so he, I think he is in a way wrestling with that.
What? What is it?
Acknowledging. Acknowledging that there have
been times when he has used it, maybe almost vengefully.

(01:25:42):
Yeah, yeah. That would probably take you
back to the early Indiana Jones movies and the Controvert.
They've never been big, raging controversies, but there have
been debates about cultural stereotypes.
And just how is it healthy to make a movie where you just line
up a whole bunch of Nazis and have somebody shoot a bullet

(01:26:04):
through 12 of them at a time? You know, that's that That's
cathartic. But is it?
Is it helpful? And the much older Spielberg now
seems to be acknowledging that the bullies are humans, too.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
And I and I think he's, he does in this movie, really.
And he, I think he says it in the special features.

(01:26:25):
Nobody in this movie is a villain, you know, and, and that
that comes through to me, even the boys, which are the closest
thing to that in the end, you know, he shows their humanity
with the one crying and the other, you know, running away
scared, you know, from the from the low.
I think Logan is the big guy. And so, yeah.

(01:26:48):
And I think it's just part of he's softened up a whole lot
over the years as as you kind ofdo, as you grow older and, you
know, have families and, you know, you really do soften up.
You know, I'm, I'm way softer now in my 30s than I was, you
know, a decade ago in my 20s andable to process things
emotionally and see people with a lot more compassion than I

(01:27:10):
was, you know, back then. And.
I hope you know that's not normal.
There are too many men in this world, and especially in this
country, who are not growing up like that, who are not.
That's a good. Cultivating empathy, not not
cultivating compassion and just getting more and more hardened
and vengeful and and bitter as they realize this ideal of

(01:27:37):
masculinity they've been sold isis or even admired.
Yeah, and I think Spielberg's done a lot in the past like
decade to really try to push against that that sort of thing.
You know, you think really like when you think about the tree of
Bridge of Spies, Lincoln and thePost, you know, those are I

(01:27:59):
think I think I've talked with Elijah Davidson on Bridge of
Spies episode about how, you know, those are really films
where he's holding up these ideals of people and saying
these are the sorts of values weshould be holding as people.
These are the sorts of values that we should be standing up
for. Not all this other, you know, oh
crap that people stand up for and, and, you know, push.

(01:28:22):
But these ideals of freedom and of compassion for others and of,
you know, doing the right thing because it's the right thing,
not because it's going to get you somewhere in life, you know?
Yeah, and making, making the focus of the films.
Not always a white male hero saving the day, or even

(01:28:43):
necessarily a white male hero learning to empathize.
I mean when he made Oh Wow the name of it just sailed out of my
head. The historical film about
slavery. Amistad.
Amistad, thank you. That's the one I don't have here
in my home video collection because I've never really liked
that movie very much. But part of the part of the
problem with it for me was that here was this movie about racism

(01:29:08):
in American history and it mostly it gave the big glorious
moments to a white male characters.
But that you can see the change even by Lincoln.
I remember so many, so many not particularly thoughtful critics
reacting to that film being like, why did they give Lincoln
to such a such a weak voice? You know, Lincoln was a strong

(01:29:31):
hero. You know, he was our iconic
leader. I'm like, yeah.
And historically, Daniel Day, I mean, Daniel Day Lewis does his
homework, Spielberg does his homework that is based on the
few recordings we have and testimonies we have about
Lincoln's voice. You can see there that he's he's
making choices to tell the tell the truth.
And and even in that challenge, all right, our unhealthy ideals.

(01:29:55):
But there's a line, There's a key line in this movie where
where somebody, I think it's oneof his high school classmates,
says, well, maybe it's one of his sisters.
When are you going to make a movie about the girls?
Yeah, it's after his war film. Showing his.
Sisters ask that. And asks that in the movie that

(01:30:16):
is in a way doing that by makinghis mother really the heart of
the film. He's doing that more than he
ever has before. Because you could argue that the
BFG shifts in that direction as well.
The post to in a lot of ways. I'm sorry.
The post as well in a lot of thepost.
Yes, yes, of course. So you can see him, him, you
know, responding to those critiques over the years.

(01:30:39):
Yeah. Hello again.
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(01:31:02):
In fact, just hit that pause button right now and drop the
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that rating and review. Now back to the show.
There are there any other like standout images that you think

(01:31:25):
of that we haven't talked about yet?
From the Fablemans. Yeah.
Excuse me? I mean, it's easy to get
preoccupied with the images thatremind you of other images.
Sure. From a hit from his body of
work. But I want to, I kind of want to
move on from that because it's not all that there are the the

(01:31:45):
scene where he is, that we referenced earlier where he is,
he is discovering the the affair.
The way the camera moves around him as he's editing it, excuse
me, it moves not just around him, but in a spiral in a way
that sort of mimics the reels and the way he the way he's
working with the film. I think that's really powerful.

(01:32:08):
Excuse me, how? We're talking about editing, but
also the scene where she's dancing.
Yeah. And they turn on the car
headlights. But then we're seeing the movie
itself that he made. And that's when we discover that

(01:32:29):
he's cropped it so that you see the flames of the campfire in
front of her. And that is an incredible image.
Yeah. I'm sorry.
Oh, it's fine. I'd like to pretend that I'm
just being moved by the by the memory, but I'm not.
My voice is starting to go. I'll say that again.

(01:32:52):
The the image of his mother dancing.
We see the lights of the of the car gleaming through her dress.
We get the daughter panicking about that.
I think that's wonderful. But then what?
Later, when we see what he was shooting and you realize that
the the flame of the campfire isin the at the bottom of the

(01:33:16):
frame. So you've got the fire in the
foreground and you've got her inthe center, and then you've got
the lights of the car behind herand the flame becomes almost
symbolic. There are so many points in this
movie. When I think of Malik's The Tree
of Life, I talk about that more than any other Malik film.

(01:33:36):
It's not my favorite Malik film,but it is the most ambitious
visually and innovative visually, and I can see the
influence of that all over this film, especially in the
treatment of the mother. I kept thinking of the moment in
the Tree of Life when you see Jessica Chastain's character
playing basically Malik's motherdancing under the tree in their

(01:33:59):
front yard and levitating. Yeah.
And I mean that that must be oneof the inspirations for this,
how he shoots this scene. But then you've got that flame
in the foreground. And it reminds me of the flame
that is the first thing we see in the Tree of Life.
This, this sort of mysterious supernatural flame that may be

(01:34:20):
representing the Holy Spirit or the spark of creation or the
soul of his mother. I don't know.
But that, that's a really powerful image, I think.
And it's such an iconic image, such a such a familiar image to

(01:34:40):
have to see the beacon. Oh boy, here we go with another
siren to see the beacon of a film projector gleaming out over
an audience. And we are looking at the
audience's faces. I've seen that in so many
movies, from Amelie to the long The Long Day Closes to even the

(01:35:04):
Muppet Movie. But in this one, he does a
little bit of showing off. He takes even that very familiar
thing and does it in a way we'venever seen before.
The way that the camera was justsweeping over this vast
audience. And we're we're seeing just how
much power the images on the screen that we cannot see have

(01:35:25):
over them. That one sticks with me from
this film, even though it's a even though it's a kind of shot
that has become rather cliche for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
What about you? Yeah, I, you know, as you were
saying that, I, I do think there's a bit of like there are
several moments where, you know,I go back to his mom in the

(01:35:47):
closet watching that where he's kind of shooting at this angle
where the, you know, the projector is kind of gleaming
past his mom, you know, in the frame.
And you get those kind of those light flares, you know, in the
camera. There's more to that than just
it looks cool, which most of thetime when you see that in a

(01:36:08):
movie, it's like, oh, this is just a cool shot.
But in that one, you know, the the projection of the camera,
you know, of the of that film that that, that he's projecting
and showing his mom is invading the frame there with his mom.
In a way, that's what it's doingin her that you see on her face.

(01:36:30):
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think that's very powerful.
And probably with someone like Spielberg, probably pretty
purposeful in a lot of ways. And yeah.
The specificity of a lot of the family interactions reminds me
of something in Spielberg, and Iwould say to some extent even in
Malik's films that I really missed.

(01:36:51):
That is very much a 70s thing. And it is that chaos of a family
situation is the paying attention to every little detail
so that it seems as rough and complicated and prone to
accidents as possible. When I think about the family
interactions and close Encounters of the Third Kind,

(01:37:13):
it's just bedlam in that house. It's someone who has lived that
kind of family situation. And as he's gotten older, his
movies, as much as I love them, have become more and more movies
made by somebody who has watcheda lot of movies.
And so this is what a family looks like in a movie.
Why I think of War of the Worldsand how little that movie

(01:37:36):
affected me because the movie was the movie's character for
the family at the heart of the film was such a movie family.
I didn't believe in them at all.I'm not moved by that final
image of the reunion between father and son at all, because I
don't believe that's a father and a son in this film.
Something as simple as taking the tablecloths at the dinner

(01:37:57):
table and these disposable tablecloths and folding them
over the plates and the plastic utensils and bundling it all up
and taking it to the trash. That grumpy grandma makes.
Me believe, yeah, that that suspends my disbelief because
it's got to be it's got to be from experience.

(01:38:19):
But sometimes it's even something simpler than that.
And I think maybe the the allusion to one of his previous
films that hit me hardest. Watching it again today was the
scene of the grandmother dying in the in the hospital and how
the film how the how the the differences in personalities

(01:38:39):
come through there. You've got the dad looking at
the machine, looking at the heart monitor.
You've got the mom lying on top of her mother and feeling and
emoting and speaking and listening.
And you've got Sammy on the side, and he is looking at the
pulse in his grandmother's neck.And as the camera zoomed in on

(01:39:03):
that, my mind went to the tremor, the impact tremor of the
T Rex in Jurassic Park. Yeah.
This is how you know death is coming.
Look at that ripple on the water.
Look at that. Look at that twitch in the neck.
And who, who is the person who knows first when grandmother has

(01:39:24):
passed, Right? It's an amazing way.
It's an amazing example of showing and not telling.
It's not the dialogue that lets us know what's going on there.
It's it's, it's what. It's what he chooses to give his
his camera to. Yeah.
And it's, it's a, it's him like kind of giving us this like

(01:39:47):
these moments of how he sees theworld, you know, and because he
is such an intuitive director, you know, his, he's, he's talked
about over and over again. He's in most of his element when
he can show up on a set and justfeel, feel the space and fill

(01:40:08):
his actors within the space. And that's how he gets always
gets his best to his best stuff.And, you know, another moment
like that is after he's been punched in the nose by the
bullies and he's, you know, the dad comes home and mom's
freaking out. He's dad is freaking out a
little bit. And they're they're arguing with
each other at that point in the film.

(01:40:29):
And there's this quick, subtle moment where you see Sammy
seeing everything in the mirror.He sees himself sitting there
with his bloody nose, and he sees his parents kind of over
him arguing. And you can tell in that moment,
Sammy is almost processing, oh, this would look good in a film
one day, you know? And that's how he sees the

(01:40:51):
world. And, you know, we get that
impressionistic image of him in the mirror when they're
announcing the divorce that we've talked about.
They're all these moments that are kind of like giving us eyes
how Steven Spielberg processes and sees the world.
And I think that's really cool too.
Yeah. And I, I mean, I've, I've felt
some of that in trying to, trying to capture in writing

(01:41:14):
some of the events of my own childhood recently.
There is a fundamental loneliness at the at the heart
of that that says if your brain is working that way, part of
what you want is for other people to be there with you in
that moment. Even if you have to wait 20
years for it to happen. You are looking for a way to
express this is what I am feeling.

(01:41:34):
This is what I am going through.So how can I, even now, as it's
happening, find a way to testifytruthfully in a way that people
will believe me? Right.
That's why the moment I remembermost from Hook of all of the
fantasy, of all the flying, of all the Captain Hook stuff, what
I remember first and foremost whenever I think of that film is

(01:41:55):
a moment when Robin Williams turns in anger and lashes out at
one of his children. I think it's one of the scariest
moments in all of Spielberg's films because that is an
emotional truth that he somebody, I'm assuming his
father at some point, lashed outat him like that.
And it it feels like a punch in the face when you see it in that

(01:42:16):
film. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah. And yeah.
Did you have any any final thoughts as we kind of wrap up
final takeaways on the film thatyou wanted?
To I mean, I think it's kind of AI don't want, I shouldn't throw
the word miracle around, but I, I think it's, it's, we are very,

(01:42:38):
very blessed to use a word that's also kind of overused,
but blessed that we got this. And it's, it's as good as it is
because in some ways I don't think he's as strong a filmmaker
as he used to be. He's grown and changed.
And I do think spending so much time in filmmaking and watching
other films and living in Hollywood and he can't help it.

(01:43:00):
Privilege changes you. I think it's harder for him to
find those moments of emotional authenticity than it used to be.
I miss the Spielberg that had tomake a movie struggling with
limitations. I think Raiders of the Lost Ark
is one of the most incredible things ever made.
Because it makes me believe in the most outrageous things.

(01:43:24):
And one of the ways it does thatis it's abrasiveness.
It's it's, it's roughness. You can feel the dust and the
dirt in that movie in a way thatyou can't even just a few years
later with Last Crusade. Yeah, absolutely.
The more powerful he became, themore resources that became
available to him, the harder I think it is for him to make us
feel like our feet are on the ground.

(01:43:46):
He gets some of that back in Jurassic Park in them in that T
Rex sequence when we can really feel the weight of the dinosaur
in a way that we haven't in any of the sequels since.
In my opinion, I still think what he achieves in the balance
of practical effects and animation in Jurassic Park is
unmatched since then in digital animation, Peter Jackson does

(01:44:09):
does some pretty amazing things and innovates in a ways in The
Lord of the Rings, but that scene always gets me in a way
that no other CGI creature has. Again though, he was pushing
against limitations there to find out what was possible, and
I think the best work he does going forward will be in those
moments when he finds ways to push against something.

(01:44:32):
Yeah. So the Fablemans, it's it's
weakest moments for me have to do with a quality of imagery,
whereas things just feel a little too slick, sometimes a
little too easy. And it's best parts happen when
he's really attending to the performances and not bringing
all of the tools to bear. I, I look back at movies like

(01:44:52):
Minority Report and and wish that it had that gritty quality.
It's a sci-fi film. It's a futuristic film.
It's not going to feel gritty insome ways.
It's going to feel streamlined and artificial and slick.
But that puts a distance betweenme in the film in a way that

(01:45:13):
again, I go back to Raiders or even Temple of Doom, a movie I
have all kinds of problems with.But I am on that rope bridge
across that chasm at the end of Temple of Doom.
I am feeling the heat of the fires in the temple.
I am feeling the humidity of thejungle in that film.
And so here again, I think it's a it's a testament to what Lars

(01:45:35):
von Trier made a whole documentary about, which is a
film called The Five Obstructions, which is that the
the greatest creativity comes about under pressure, or as the
great Wendell Berry would say, the it's the impeded stream that
is the one that sings. It's creativity that is trying
to that is wrestling something is the creativity that that

(01:45:57):
gives us the best work and the best revelation because the the
artist is discovering things along the way.
And so this film is such an interesting mix of his strengths
and his weaknesses. But I'm so glad, lad, to get
back to where I started with this, this rambling conclusion
here. I'm, I'm just so pleased that
it's as good as it is coming so late in his career that he's

(01:46:21):
still, that he's clearly having these emotional epiphanies and,
and interpretations of his earlylife with an old man's wisdom,
with a lot of love and a lot of compassion.
But that he was really pushing himself as a filmmaker to do new
things here that he hadn't done before.
And, and that is why at times, Ithink it's some of his finest

(01:46:41):
work. It'll be really interesting if
he remakes Bullet to see if he imposes limitations on himself
so that we can feel those tires spinning in the dirt.
Yeah, or. Whatever he takes on next,
whether his his next UFO movie is going to to have the kind of
magic that that I think is closeEncounters does in ways that no

(01:47:04):
other film has achieved since. Yeah, ET two in a lot of ways as
well in that regard. And he may not have John
Williams going forward, right? So it'll be interesting to see
if he starts paring back or if he starts trying to find other
tools to replace those things. I'm kind of hoping he pulls

(01:47:25):
back. Yeah, yeah.
And I think I think with this one too, it's it's got it is his
memories, you know, and so thinkof a lot of the quality of
things are kind of have that memory Sheen to them that kind
of tends toward that more slick look, you know, even talked

(01:47:47):
about. I cast, I cast Gabriel LaBelle,
who's a little bit more good looking than I was back then.
And, you know, you you cast kindof good looking people to play
the memories and you kind of kind of have this this
fantastical sort of look that heand Kaminsky and their
collaborations have have leaned into a lot over the course of

(01:48:08):
his career is all through this that that fits well with the
memory. But but yeah, you know, the, the
only, the only thing I could seethe the quibble that might come
up up with this one is, you know, the, you know, just the
episodic nature, you know, may or may not work for for people.

(01:48:29):
It it works fine for me. But and then the ending is a
little bit not the not the finallike see like sequence, but just
like you end with you got the bully thing.
You got the thing with his mom. You jump for it a year.
You have the thing with his dad.It's a little bit like broken up
and it feels a little bit removed from the the thread of

(01:48:50):
the rest of the movie that that's there.
But but man, that closing shot, I love the little let's move,
let's move the camera down to the horizon.
And that's something he came up with.
It's that intuition. He came up up with that on the
spot on the day like, hey, let'slet's see if we can do this
adjustment to kind of go along with the John Ford advice and it

(01:49:11):
it kind of takes you out of the movie in a in the best way, you
know, and and reminds you that you're.
Watching it makes you feel like you're sitting next to him
because, you know, we're watching young Spielberg walk
off to the horizon. But then that that makes you
self aware that we're watching amovie and that he's the one

(01:49:31):
making the calls, and it's almost like he's next to you,
sort of elbowing you. Yeah, I actually thought that
that made me feel closer to him.Yeah, yeah.
Unexpectedly, as as meta as thatmoment is, yeah.
Absolutely, yeah. I loved it.
It made me It made me like grin,you know, ear to ear watching
that final shot. I I think.

(01:49:53):
But yeah, you know, just my final thought is, is something
that Spielberg has said a lot over the years that he talked
about again with this movie. He he likes to say that I've
never been to a shrink and that storytelling and making movies
as his therapy. Yeah.
And, and really like it. It was making me think of that.

(01:50:13):
You know, that might be a clichething to say for anyone but
Spielberg, you know, and you know, there's a lot of artists
that that would be true for. But but just in this series,
particularly going through all of his films, I find that to be
such a a huge truth that you cansee as a thread throughout his

(01:50:34):
filmography. And I think this is kind of, you
know, the skeleton key to all ofthat this film is it unlocks so
much about who he is and all therest of his movies, going all
the way back to duel and going going even all the way back to,
you know, the really bad qualityTV movie Something Evil that he

(01:50:55):
made, you know? The first time I saw it, the
first 3 words I put on letter onmy letterbox notes were the
Rosetta Spielberg. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It really is the the the key to all of it, as you said.
Yeah, and, and you know, with that, you know, people often
say, and I think it's true aboutthis as well, that the most
personal stories, the most specifically personal stories

(01:51:18):
are often the most relatable. And I think that rings true for
this one too. So I'm just glad, like you said,
you know, my I think my final thought goes a lot in line with
what you said. I'm just glad we have this.
It's, I think it's, it was a very special movie for
Spielberg. And I think it's a very special
movie for Spielberg fans too, that, you know, it's a gift to

(01:51:39):
himself and a gift to his fans Ithink is what this movie is.
Do you, where do you kind of rate this in his filmography?
Is it? Well, that's a good question and
as I am an obsessive list maker.Same.
I'm sure that I'm sure I have a letter boxed if anybody wants to

(01:52:03):
track me down on the letterbox. Yeah, I'll make sure to link it
in the. Letterbox.com/jover St.
J Overstreet, All lowercase. I'm scrambling through my tags
here. Yeah, here, here it is.
OK, so I don't know how up to date this is, but let me see if
it rings true for me. I've got the Fablemans at #7

(01:52:25):
yeah, maybe even higher than I expected on my list.
And yeah, this is, this is the most up to date version of this.
I've got Raiders at #1 and that,that will always go
unchallenged. I think it's such a formative
film for me. And I've, I've been so
dissatisfied with all of the Indiana Jones sequels since
then, including Last Crusade. I have a lot of problems with
that. I enjoy it a lot, but it doesn't

(01:52:46):
feel like it takes place in the same world to me as Raiders.
The close Encounters, Empire of the Sun, ET and Jaws, those are
my top five. The Schindler's List, partly
because of its cultural importance, its historical
importance, and then the Fablemans.
And after that, that's where it starts to get murky for me.
But I would probably pick Lincoln, Catch Me If You Can and

(01:53:09):
Munich. Yeah, but ask me tomorrow when I
might replace Munich with SavingPrivate Ryan.
I love seeing Munich that high. Even the BFG which I really
like. Yeah, love seeing what about you
that high Munich is Munich is. I'll probably reflect on this
and the epilogue episode, but I think Munich will end up being

(01:53:29):
my biggest surprise of the series.
It was, I had never seen it before.
It was a blind spot and I thought it was incredible and
was just taken aback by how relevant it still is today.
But yeah, that that one I have alittle bit.
So I my hot take is that his last two movies are two of the

(01:53:50):
best ones he's ever made in WestSide Story in the Fablemans.
I my top, my top like probably 6:00 or 7:00 or 8:00 or so or
probably could move any, you know, anywhere on any given day
depending on how I feel. I have Jaws at the top and it's
always been my favorite Spielberg since I saw it.

(01:54:12):
I didn't. So I did not grow up with the
Indiana Jones movies. I saw them I think when I was a
kid, but I didn't really grow upwatching them a whole lot or
having them be a big part of my childhood.
So funnily enough, Last Crusade is my favorite Indiana Jones
movie. I know a lot of people that

(01:54:33):
would say that. I think emotionally it really
connects with people, especiallyfathers and sons.
Yeah, it's also, it's also very,very funny in a, in a way that
Raiders doesn't even try to be. Yeah, but but yeah, I have.
So I have the Fableman's at six,right ahead of Last Crusade at
seven. Yeah, cool.
And then right above it is Jurassic Park and right above

(01:54:56):
that I have West Side Story, which I was just I just loved on
this rewatch, but. Yeah, I need to see it again.
I was. It blew my mind technically.
Yes. The the story gave me trouble
but. But the story, I need to see it
again. Yeah.
And I and I talk about that on that episode whenever it's not
out yet as we recording. But my my big thing with that is

(01:55:21):
I think it's more of a Romeo andJuliet story problem than it is
a problem with the movie or, youknow, Spielberg or, you know,
any of that. So yeah, I was able to work past
that, those issues with this past viewing and loved it.
So ET and Schindler's List are are are at 2:00 and 3:00 or

(01:55:41):
Schindler's List in ET for me. So I don't know if I'll
rearrange that before I do my epilogue episode.
I'm going to think real hard on my final rankings, but yeah, I
only have, I only have one movieof Spielberg's that I think is
just outright not a good movie and pretty much all the other.

(01:56:03):
You could probably guess which one it is if you if you had
enough guesses, but. I mean I, I I may have a
different pick than you for whatthe bottom 3 would be, but but
what's yours? My my absolute bottom is 1941.
Oh wow. That is the one I haven't seen.
For for a movie that's supposed to be a straight comedy, I don't

(01:56:25):
I don't think I laughed maybe atall.
And watching it, it was fun to like the the technical side of
things was a lot of fun in a in a lot of ways, you know, with
miniatures and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, just doesn't work. I also my my bottom three are
that the terminal and always. Oh wow.

(01:56:46):
OK. And then if you if you were to
count his, his section of the Twilight Zone movie, I would
have that down there as well. I haven't seen always in so long
that I can't I I, I can't say anything about it confidently.
I just remember it didn't make much of an impression on me it
looks. Great.
But yeah. It, it didn't make, I don't

(01:57:07):
remember making it making me angry.
And I, I mean, I'll have to go listen to your episode on Ready
Player One, but Ready Player 1 made me angry.
Yeah, it's, it's Ready Player 1 is, is the next one on at the
bottom there. Yeah, there's, it has a lot of
issues. Now, I will say this about Ready
Player One. It is a time where Spielberg is

(01:57:29):
trying to like push into some technological limitations.
He's he's trying to do somethingand I respect that.
I just don't think it works, andit's not the technical side that
doesn't work. I think the CGI stuff is pretty
impressively done. It's the story that's just.
Yeah, it's the storytelling, andI will always hold a grudge

(01:57:51):
about what he does to the Iron Giant in that movie.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the the glory of the
Iron Giant, is it the arc of thestory that leads us to a place?
Yeah, I am not a gun. And anyway, that's, that's for
the conversation for another time.
Yeah. You know, given how much he's

(01:58:12):
given us, I'm these are not serious grudges.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's great to hear.
I don't really have anything else for us to discuss.
We've we've done it all, I think.
Well, I will look forward to talking with you in the future
at some point. Yeah, in a podcast or otherwise,
about the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, because I'm sure

(01:58:35):
you, you probably noticed this last week.
Steven Spielberg can't stop talking about it.
No, I did not notice that. He interviewed Paul Thomas
Anderson on stage, I guess for the.
DGA premiere. Yeah, yeah, it's called 1 battle
after another I think. Yeah.
And he said he'd already seen itthree times, and he thinks it's

(01:58:55):
one of the greatest American films of the last.
I can't remember how long. 2025 years, yeah.
You know, funnily enough, Paul Thomas Anderson interviewed him
about this movie. Oh wow.
On the DGA. The DGA has like the the
director's cut, OK, They have a podcast form and I think they
have the. The I had forgotten all about
that. I remember now.
I remember reading that but I never saw the interviews so.

(01:59:18):
Yeah, yeah, excellent. Well, yeah, I'll, I'll be
looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to that
movie too. So yeah, I'll, you know, make
sure you go follow Jeffrey on Substack and on Letterboxed and
be tuned in for his new book. I'm going to make sure to put
links to all that in the episodedescription so you can just open
that up and click the links instead of trying to remember

(01:59:39):
URLs. Or for that matter, trying to
remember that ridiculously long title that I gave the book.
But I will say it does have a couple of prominent mentions of
the Fablemen's, even if it doesn't get a whole chapter.
But yeah. Forward by Matt Zahler sites who
was probably my definitely my main source for the Wes Anderson
series. Oh, man, yeah, he is a such a
great writer and and such a great supporter of writers.

(02:00:02):
I'm I'm very, very grateful thathe.
He was willing to participate inthis.
Yeah. Yeah.
So. Yeah, make sure you go follow
Jeffrey on all all of the things, click all the links that
I put in the episode description.
But that's all we have for this week.
Next week, I'm not sure if I'll have a supplemental episode or

(02:00:24):
if we'll go straight into the Spielberg epilogue, but but
yeah, you'll find out so. But that's all we have for this
week for Jeffrey Overstreet. I've been Eli Price and you've
been listening to the establishing shot.
We will see you next time. We were happy here for a little

(02:00:44):
while. But look, I think it was this
way. Better to be king for a night
than smoke. For a lifetime.

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