INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM, 1994–2001 73
but he need not have done so. The movie brought in $30 million in its
opening weekend, in July 1998. By Christmas, it had made more than
$180 million. Neither Spielberg nor Hanks took a salary but rather a share
of the movie’s gross proceeds. Tom Hanks’s biographer David Gardner
writes that the money was “an incredible achievement for a 3-hour epic
with an R-Restricted rating, no romance and hideous violence.” 31 Of the
fi lm’s success, Spielberg says that he is thrilled. “The people have spoken.
They said they were ready to go back a half-century to a blasphemous
time and have the courage to experience Saving Private Ryan. I think
their courage was remarkable.” 32 Regarding Spielberg, Hanks says, “Making
this movie was like walking into Thomas Edison’s laboratory. You’re
in the presence of this genius who in real life is this badly dressed, nebbishy
kinda guy who talks in tangents and only vaguely answers a question.
But seeing him on the set, he’s a dynamo, a source of incredible vision
and information that’s hard to keep up with.” 33 Saving Private Ryan was
nominated for 11 Academy Awards and received fi ve, including Best Director,
about which Spielberg says, “I never, ever get blasé about this. This
day is always indelibly tattooed on the frontal lobe of my brain. I’m usually
never nervous about these kinds of things but this always makes me
so nervous.” 34 Spielberg and Hanks went on to help fi nance the D-Day
Museum in New Orleans and co-produce the World War II television
mini-series, Band of Brothers, based on the best-selling book by Stephen
Ambrose, Citizen Soldier.
TOM HANKS
Tom Hanks is someone who knows Steven Spielberg on both professional
and personal levels. They fi rst worked together when Amblin produced
the Hanks movie, The Money Pit, a 1986 slapstick comedy. They
found that they had much in common and have been friends ever since.
Both are products of divorce. Both live in the same neighborhood and
have wives and children who are involved in the same activities. Both
had fathers who served in the military during World War II. They mutually
admire each other’s capabilities and grab onto the better idea, no
matter who had it fi rst. In June 2004, they were interviewed together by
Barry Koltnow of the Orange County Register. When asked what made
their relationship work, Spielberg said that it was because they listen to
each other, have a mutual respect for each other’s opinions, and neither
have egos that come into play. This was proven when Hanks wanted the role
of Amon Goeth in Schindler ’ s List but Spielberg gave it to Ralph Fiennes.
Hanks says that Spielberg, “sees things that other directors don’t see.” 35

72 STEVEN SPIELBERG
he wanted to show that real war is “silent death.” 21 “Sure it’s grim,” says
Hanks, “but it’s brutally honest.” 22 Of course, such movies are fodder for
accidents, so Spielberg made sure that only stuntmen were close to the
explosives and made sure to use “crack” safety teams and supervisors. Even
so, there were some injuries, but the saddest occurrence was when a young
actor died in a car crash on his way home.
While Spielberg sees Saving Private Ryan as a chance to introduce World
War II heroes to today’s young people, his main purpose is to honor all
veterans, especially his father, with whom he grew closer during the fi lming.
(Trivia: Arnold Spielberg had told his son about an expression they
used during the war, “FUBAR: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition,” 23
and it became part of the script.) When word got out about the opening
scene, Spielberg feared that it would keep viewers away. In fact, about
halfway through fi lming, he told his actors not to expect a blockbuster at
the box offi ce but to think of what they were making as a tribute. “We’re
thanking all those guys, your grandparents and my dad, who fought in
World War II.” 24 In fact, Spielberg and Hanks did such a good job that on
Veterans Day, 1999, they were awarded the Distinguished Public Service
Award, the Navy’s highest civilian honor. The ceremony took place on
board the USS Normandy in Florida.
Reviews on the movie were mixed. John Simon of the National Review
writes that Spielberg failed to make his characters come to life and that
Saving Private Ryan is no better than many other war movies, that, “Only
as a catalogue of horrors does SPR outdo the rest.” 25 Stanley Kauffmann of
the New Republic agrees. “Steven Spielberg’s new fi lm begins as a monumental
epic; then it diminishes; and, by its fi nish, is baffl ing. . . . Once
the Private Ryan mission starts, the picture becomes a good war movie,
not much more.” 26 On the other hand, People magazine writes that Saving
Private Ryan is about whether it is worth risking one life for another.
“Why fi ght at all? What does any one man owe another? . . . The answers
the movie provides are never pat, jingoistic responses about country and
duty but rather more complicated ones about friends, family and simple
decency.” 27 In the end, the review labels the movie as “fl at-out great.” 28 In
Variety, Todd McCarthy writes that Saving Private Ryan is telling the stories
about war “that fathers never tell their families,” and that the movie is
“second to none as a vivid, realistic and bloody portrait of armed confl ict,
as well as a generally effective intimate drama about a handful of men on
a mission of debatable value in the middle of the war’s decisive action.” 29
Blogcritics.org writes, “The great power of Saving Private Ryan is how it
simply presents war and the effect of war on the men who must bear it.” 30
Spielberg may have worried that the movie might not appeal to audiences,

INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM, 1994–2001 71
Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944), and Frank Capra’s Why We Fight,
a series about World War II produced between 1943 and 1945. He wanted
a newsreel feel to the movie, so he used mostly handheld cameras and
toned-down color. He made no storyboards, because he wanted to attack
each scene like a newsreel cameraman following soldiers into battle. The
effect was achieved to such an extent that the camera’s lens was splattered
and the camera bounced around just as those used in wartime. He
and cameraman Janusz Kaminski used various tricks to get the result they
desired: different fi lm stock, stripped lenses, fl ashed fi lm, and desaturated
colors. They also used different shutters and speed changes. Since widescreen
movies did not appear until the 1950s, they used the 1.85:1 format
because, says Spielberg, it is more like what the human sees. Spielberg
credits his editor, Mike Kahn, with attaining these goals. “His rhythms
are the best in the world, and he tries to throw the audience off of their
expectations,” 18 says Spielberg.
To give his actors a concept of what war is really like, Spielberg hired
U.S. Marine Captain Dale Dye (a wounded veteran of three active tours
in Vietnam) to help with the accuracy of the movie and to drill the
actors. He began by putting them through a 10-day boot camp, which
actor Edward Burns says was the worst experience of his life. They hiked
in good weather and bad. They began training at fi ve in the morning.
They slept on the ground, ate rations, and used a latrine. Their source of
heat was tiny metal stoves. And Captain Dye yelled at them all the time.
All of this would be hard enough on non-Hollywood types, but these were
men used to the best life has to offer, and some of them rebelled. Dye responded,
“You’re embodying the souls of the fallen comrades who made the
world safe for democracy. So you’re not going to do that lightly. You’re going
to know the weaponry, you’re going to know the tactics, you’re going to
know the background, and you’re going to know the history.” 19 Tom Hanks
endured the camp and adopted his character’s leadership by encouraging
his fellow actors. (The only soldier not put through boot camp was Matt
Damon, who played Private Ryan. Spielberg wanted the others to resent
him and carry that resentment into their acting in the movie.) Spielberg
is known for quick fi lming, but part of the purpose in doing so on this
movie was to keep the actors in character. “I really wanted to keep all
of the actors off-balance . . . always . . . in combat . . . under fi re . . . in
jeopardy. . . . War doesn’t give you a break, and I didn’t want the producers
of Private Ryan to give them one either.” 20 As with real soldiers, the
actors became closer to each other and to their characters. They were so
good, in fact, that most scenes were fi lmed in just three or four takes. Spielberg
used no music during battle scenes and very little elsewhere, because

70 STEVEN SPIELBERG
of soldiers who land at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and then are sent off
on a mission to fi nd a Private Ryan, who has recently become the sole
surviving son in his family. Knowing that Mrs. Ryan will be receiving
death notices for three of her sons, Uncle Sam wants to make sure that
she gets her fourth son back home. (Private Ryan was really Sgt. Frederick
Niland.) Spielberg didn’t want just another Hollywood war movie or
another action-adventure movie, but an accurate depiction of “combat
from the grunt’s p.o.v. as it is fought inch by inch, bullet by bullet, in all
its arbitrariness and surreality.” 17 He wanted the action to be seen through
the eyes of scared young men. Spielberg talked with World War II veterans
who had been there, the men who had stormed the beaches and battled
the Germans all the way to Paris to free France. The fi rst 25 minutes of
the movie depict the beach landings, and it is so diffi cult to watch that
many veterans cried and many could not watch it at all. With his usual
attention to detail, when Spielberg heard veterans describe the thousands
of dead fi sh and a lone Bible fl oating in the water, he added them
to the fi lm.
In 1998, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and their families fl ew to
England, where a Hatfi eld (in Hertfordshire) countryside village was
turned into a French village and a beach in Ireland’s County Wexford represented
Omaha Beach. (The two families spent their off-hours in Gorey,
Ireland, at the Marlfi eld House Hotel.) About 750 extras were borrowed
from the Irish Army, some of whom had worked on Mel Gibson’s Braveheart,
released in 1995. Some real amputees were fi tted with plastic limbs
that were blown off in the battle scenes. For uniform accuracy, Spielberg
located the same company that had made the boots for the real World
War II GIs. Many German uniforms were found in London, some original
tanks were found in Czechoslovakia, and some original landing boats
were found in a California desert. After the 3,000 uniforms and boots
were made, they were put through an aging process so they would appear
“battle-worn.” Since their Irish beach was not as broad as Omaha Beach,
Spielberg adjusted the camera lenses to produce the illusion of Omaha.
Spielberg wanted the audience to put themselves in the places of those
young men and see the horrors through the innocent eyes of a young man
who likely had never before been in battle. Those who survived the landing
did so only by ignoring the dead and dying all around them. Once
they survived, Spielberg wanted the audience to “be” in the Allies’ world,
to be unaware of what the Germans would do next, to be as surprised as
were the characters in the movie. He was inspired by the black-and-white
photos taken by Robert Capa for wartime issues of LIFE magazine, John
Ford’s 1942 documentary, The Battle of Midway, William Wyler’s Memphis

INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM, 1994–2001 69
depressed the Amistad survivors were, they sent them back to Africa in
1842. But it was too late. Their village had been destroyed, and Cinque
never again saw his wife and child. He worked as an interpreter in a mission
until his death in 1879.
Spielberg is sometimes criticized as making historical fi lms such as
Amistad and Schindler ’ s List to “get his tolerance fi x,” and even his partner
at DreamWorks, David Geffen, said that Amistad “was less about slavery
than ‘about white people saving black people.’ ” 9 But Spielberg has
never chosen his movies according to popular consensus. In the December
1997 issue of Smithsonian, Kenneth Turan quotes the director as saying,
“While making [ Amistad ], I felt I was telling everyone’s story—a story
that people of all nationalities and races should know.” 10 He has also said
that he made the movie, in part, for his seven children, two of whom
are African-American. In the November 2005 Smithsonian, Turan writes
that some of the best and most powerful scenes in the movie are played
without dialogue. In his December 1997 review, Ebert writes that Amistad
and Schindler ’ s List are “about the ways good men try to work realistically
within an evil system to spare a few of its victims,” and the most valuable
aspect of Amistad , he writes, is that the slaves are given names and
identities and not left as “faceless victims” 11 as they are usually portrayed.
Unfortunately, writes Ebert, the result of the real Amistad trial helped
only its defendants and not the millions of slaves in bondage. Amazon.
com reviewer Dave McCoy calls the movie Spielberg’s “most simplistic,
sanitized history lesson,” 12 while Fred Harvey of The History Place claims
the movie “is a masterpiece of fi lm making providing a thoroughly rewarding
entertainment and learning experience.” 13 McCoy adds that Spielberg
has, once again, turned the movie into an E.T. experience with title character
Cinque as the “adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and
trying to fi nd his way home.” 14 He calls McConaughey “a grown-up Elliot
who tries to communicate complicated ideas, such as geography, by drawing
pictures in the sand, or language, by having Cinque mimic his facial
expressions.” 15 The movie was released in December 1997. With a budget
of approximately $40 million, the movie’s opening weekend brought in
only $4,661,866.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Spielberg moved on to yet another nonfi ction story, Saving Private Ryan,
which takes place during Spielberg’s favorite time period, World War II
(“the most signifi cant event of the last 100 years” 16 ). Unbeknownst to
each other, he and Tom Hanks had read the script, which is about a band

68 STEVEN SPIELBERG
Djimon Hounsou. John Williams, as always, composed the music, and
Janusz Kaminski did the cinematography.
The idea for the movie came from actress and choreographer Debbie
Allen who, in 1978, read Amistad I, published in June 1970 for the Howard
University Press. The book’s editors are John A. Williams and Charles
F. Harris. This was the fi rst Allen had heard of the event. In 1984, she
optioned the rights to William Owens’s book, Black Mutiny: The Revolt on
the Schooner Amistad, which was fi rst published in 1953. Allen continued
her show business career for the next 10 years, yet the movie idea was
always in the back of her mind. She continued to research the story while
considering which director would not shy away from its controversial
topic. When she saw Schindler ’ s List in 1994, she knew that Steven Spielberg
was that director, and he agreed with her that the story must be told.
According to the Maran/McGrath book, Spielberg said, “There was one
side of my brain saying, wait two, three, or four years before you do this
story, because everything you do will be compared to Schindler ’ s List. But
I’ve never planned my career and never made good on phantom conversations
with myself like that. In the end I do what I think I gotta do.” 7
Allen’s 10 years of research provided primary information from court
records and newspaper accounts plus the research of historians. This was
the information she and Spielberg wanted to use versus the numerous
books that by this time had been written on the subject. Recreating the
fi lthy, dehumanizing, and unsanitary conditions of the slave trade, particularly
during the voyages, was hard for Allen to witness. For example, those
who survived the trip from Africa to Havana were fed and greased down
to make them look healthier for selling, and men like Cinque fetched
around $450. Prospective buyers sometimes inspected every inch of the
African to make sure he or she was healthy enough for the morningto-
night work that lay ahead of them. Incarcerated for almost three years,
the men were twice tried and twice found innocent, but the acquittals
were overthrown by President Van Buren. The third trial, and third acquittal,
was in front of the Supreme Court in February 1841. The case is
considered a milestone in American history because it gave abolitionists
ammunition for ending slavery. President Martin Van Buren was furious,
because he was running for reelection and did not want to anger the
southern states who saw the decision as yet another cause for war. But instead
of being taken back to their homes, the freed Africans were housed
in Farmington, Connecticut, and used by the abolitionists in meetings
and rallies. Many of the men tired of being taken from place to place and
put on display, often not being allowed to sit with their white companions
and often called “savages.” 8 When the abolitionists fi nally saw how

INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM, 1994–2001 67
what he wants and is always prepared, he fi lms one scene while the next
set is going up, so sets are always ready. Since the actors had to play to
blue screens, Spielberg had dinosaur heads stuck onto sticks that were carried
by crewmembers so the heads were at the correct height of the real
creature. This enabled the actor to look in the correct direction and at the
correct height. A fi eld of real grass was even grown to make a scene with
running raptors appear more realistic.
The movie’s cost was estimated at $73 million, and its May 1997 opening
weekend’s U.S. box offi ce was $92,729,064. It was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and most reviewers agree that
the movie is “a beautifully crafted series of nightmarish set pieces with no
other goal in mind than to scare and delight the audience.” 5
AMISTAD
Spielberg’s next project was another serious story based on another true
event: the 1839 mutiny onboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad. As the
ship was going from Havana to another port in Cuba, the slaves killed
everyone but the two men who purchased them, saved only on the promise
that they will take the Africans back home. Instead, they took the
slaves to the United States and handed them over to a U.S. Navy ship
near Connecticut. Laws regarding slavery were complicated and changed
many times. In 1839, the international slave trade had been outlawed,
but slavery was still very much in effect. Those who were already slaves or
were the children of slaves were returned to their masters if they escaped.
The Amistad slaves were put on trial. Their defense was that they were
never slaves but were kidnapping victims, but if the state proved that the
Amistad slaves were children of slaves, then they were not kidnapping victims
but murderers. David Franzoni wrote the story from Cinque’s point
of view. He did not want it to be just an antislavery story, especially since
Cinque was never a slave. Steve Zaillian, the writer of Schindler ’ s List,
was brought in for rewrites because Spielberg likes his realistic dialogue.
Spielberg used little camera movement, so the viewer feels transported
to the nineteenth century. In the book Amistad: “ give us free ” : A Celebration
of the Film by Steven Spielberg, authors Meredith Maran and Anne
McGrath write that the cast had to be “physically, emotionally, culturally,
and linguistically prepared to reenact a painful time in history.” 6 The
chains were real. Some of the scenes were so harsh that some cast and
crew were moved to tears. The movie boasts a high-class cast with Sir
Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, and Pete
Postlethwaite. The slave who began the rebellion, Cinque, is played by

66 STEVEN SPIELBERG
make them, but he knows that his audiences are savvy and expect more
in each sequel. Before Jurassic Park, they wondered if he could make dinosaurs.
Now they knew he could make them, but what else could he do
with them? (There will never be a sequel to E.T. Spielberg says, “I didn’t
want to do anything that would blemish its memory with a sequel that
would not be—could not possibly be—its superior.” 2 ) One fan who really
wanted a Jurassic Park sequel was an elementary school student who
requested that a stegosaurus be added to the second movie. But, the child
wrote, “Whatever you do, please don’t have a long, boring part at the beginning
that has nothing to do with the island.” 3 Spielberg did not want
long boring scenes at the beginning either, but he had to explain why
intelligent human beings would return to such a dangerous place, which is
actually one of the reasons that he wanted to make the movie: the idea of
dinosaurs living in the wild. Spielberg sees Jurassic Park as the “failure of
technology and the success of nature,” and The Lost World as the “failure
of people to fi nd restraints within themselves and the failure of morality to
protect these animals.” 4 The plot of the The Lost World Jurassic Park: John
Hammond (Richard Attenborough) tells Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)
that the dinosaurs had been bred on a different island than the one with
the park and that the remaining animals have thrived and multiplied. He
wants Malcolm to research them, but when Malcolm and his group arrive,
they fi nd Hammond’s nephew (Arliss Howard) making plans to take the
animals to a dinosaur park in San Diego.
Spielberg set Michael Crichton up to writing the sequel and then
began working with scriptwriter David Koepp. This time Spielberg used
moving three-dimensional (3D) storyboards so that he could see if some
of his ideas could really be done. He defi nitely wanted the creatures to be
even better than in Jurassic Park, which meant they had to move more
smoothly and be authentic enough to convince the paleontologist who
helped create them from research to drawing to 3D sculptures to full size.
Computer graphics and puppets were both used, with the former used for
distance/action shots and the latter for close-ups. Real animals were videotaped
and studied to assure even more reality to the movement of the
creatures. By the time The Lost World Jurassic Park was made, the price of
computer graphics was going down and the price of the robotic puppets
was going up. Inner parts of the robots can be saved and used again, but
the rubber skin cannot. Audiences become jaded very quickly, and, says
Spielberg, the magic of movies is making the audience forget it is watching
magic. The movie was fi lmed in Kauai, Hawaii, and Eureka, California, with
a catholic girls’ school in Pasadena used for Hammond’s offi ce. With 35–45
set-ups per day, it was fast moviemaking. Since Spielberg always knows

Chapter 6
INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM,
1994–2001
TAKING A BREAK FROM DIRECTING
With Schindler ’ s List, Steven Spielberg achieved the serious respect previously
denied him. But it was such an emotional project that he was
tired and needed a break—but a break to Steven Spielberg does not mean
a vacation. As one of the creative consultants to Islands of Adventure,
Spielberg helped create Universal Orlando’s main attraction. Based on
Jurassic Park, the site has a river ride that drops you 80 feet beneath the
open jaws of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. There are shady spots complete with
caves and water cannons and a Discovery Center where you can watch
the hatching of velociraptor eggs. There will also be War of the Worlds destruction
by the 747 Jetliner. In April 2006, it was announced that there
was to be a “Jurassic Park Institute Tour,” an educational exhibit traveling
through Asia. Spielberg is also producing movies and television programs
for his studio, Amblin.
THE LOST WORLD JURASSIC PARK
When he felt like directing again, he returned to something familiar
and fun: The Lost World Jurassic Park. Spielberg was not a big fan of sequels,
but producer Kathleen Kennedy encouraged him to make them
after audiences assumed that he had made the inferior sequels to Jaws .
“There’s a proprietary creative interest to protect and ensure the quality,”
she says. 1 Spielberg decided that if each sequel is a new story that
can stand on its own with only the characters repeated, then he would

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 63
27 . Quoted in Rubin, 73.
28 . Quoted in Bahiana, 156.
29 . Quoted in Richardson, 164.
30 . Quoted in Stephen Schiff, “Seriously Spielberg.” New Yorker, March 21,
1994, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 176.
31 . Schiff, 176.
32 . Schiff, 180.
33 . Quoted in Rubin, 70.
34 . Ibid.
35 . Richardson, 158.
36 . Quoted in Richardson, 159.
37 . Quoted in Sanello, 228.
38 . Quoted in Richardson, 161.
39 . Quoted in Rubin, 74.
40 . Quoted in Sanello, 228.
41 . Ibid.
42 . Quoted in Rubin, 73.
43 . Hebrewsongs, “Oyfn Pripetchik,” www.hebrewsongs.com, accessed May 23,
2006.
44 . Quoted in Rubin, 76.
45 . Quoted in Rubin, 76–77.
46 . Quoted in Tom King, The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the
New Hollywood (New York: Random House, 2000), 527.
47 . King, 528.
48 . King, 521.
49 . King, 522.
50 . Ibid.
51 . Quoted in Rubin, 78.
52 . King, 583.
53 . Dubner.
54 . Andrew Ross Sorkin, “A Happy Ending for Some, a Comedy of Errors for
Others,” The New York Times, March 12, 2006. www.nytimes.com.
55 . Walter Scott, “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade,” Parade Magazine in Seattle
Times , September 11, 2005, 2.

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 63
27 . Quoted in Rubin, 73.
28 . Quoted in Bahiana, 156.
29 . Quoted in Richardson, 164.
30 . Quoted in Stephen Schiff, “Seriously Spielberg.” New Yorker, March 21,
1994, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 176.
31 . Schiff, 176.
32 . Schiff, 180.
33 . Quoted in Rubin, 70.
34 . Ibid.
35 . Richardson, 158.
36 . Quoted in Richardson, 159.
37 . Quoted in Sanello, 228.
38 . Quoted in Richardson, 161.
39 . Quoted in Rubin, 74.
40 . Quoted in Sanello, 228.
41 . Ibid.
42 . Quoted in Rubin, 73.
43 . Hebrewsongs, “Oyfn Pripetchik,” www.hebrewsongs.com, accessed May 23,
2006.
44 . Quoted in Rubin, 76.
45 . Quoted in Rubin, 76–77.
46 . Quoted in Tom King, The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the
New Hollywood (New York: Random House, 2000), 527.
47 . King, 528.
48 . King, 521.
49 . King, 522.
50 . Ibid.
51 . Quoted in Rubin, 78.
52 . King, 583.
53 . Dubner.
54 . Andrew Ross Sorkin, “A Happy Ending for Some, a Comedy of Errors for
Others,” The New York Times, March 12, 2006. www.nytimes.com.
55 . Walter Scott, “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade,” Parade Magazine in Seattle
Times , September 11, 2005, 2.

62 STEVEN SPIELBERG
made a good deal. Among other suggestions is, “It may be more about images
than numbers. Paramount will have the cachet of being associated
with Mr. Spielberg . . .” 54 Not only does the director still have Amblin
Entertainment and a “long-term deal with NBC Universal,” 55 but he will
continue to direct and produce some movies for DreamWorks.
NOTES
1 . Frank Sanello, Spielberg: The Man, The Movies, The Mythology (Dallas:
Taylor, 1996), 205.
2 . Sanello, 206.
3 . Quoted in Sanello, 206.
4 . Sanello, 206.
5 . Quoted in Ana Maria Bahiana, “ Hook, ” Cinema Papers, March–April 1992,
reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 153.
6 . Sanello, 208.
7 . Quoted in Bahiana, 153.
8 . Quoted in Sanello, 211.
9 . Quoted in Sanello, 213.
10 . Ibid.
11 . Ibid.
12 . Quoted in Susan Goldman Rubin, Steven Spielberg: Crazy for Movies (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 60.
13 . Ibid.
14 . Quoted in Marcus Hearn, The Cinema of George Lucas (New York: Harry
N. Abrams, 2005), 174.
15 . Quoted in The Making of Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg. Jurassic
Park Collector’s Edition, DVD. Universal City, CA: Universal, 2000.
16 . Quoted in Rubin, 66.
17 . Quoted in Rubin, 65.
18 . Quoted in Sanello, 218.
19 . Sanello, 218.
20 . Stephen J. Dubner, “Inside the Dream Factory,” Guardian Unlimited, March
21, 1999. www.guardian.co.uk.
21 . Ibid.
22 . Ibid.
23 . Quoted in Rubin, 67.
24 . Quoted in Sanello, 227.
25 . Quoted in Rubin, 68.
26 . Quoted in John H. Richardson, “Steven’s Choice.” Premiere, January 1994,
reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 165.

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 61
Spielberg design. Spielberg’s spokesperson, Marvin Levy, says the boy is
“trolling for ideas.” 51
Author Tom King writes that business for the three men did not change
noticeably. Spielberg continued to run Amblin, Geffen was involved with a
record label, and Katzenberg was running a feature/animation department.
In addition, Spielberg had agreed from the beginning that he would still
direct movies for other studios. The studio’s fi rst movie, Amistad (1997)
(see chapter 6), was not a fi nancial success. When Spielberg wanted to
direct Saving Private Ryan (see chapter 6), Geffen went to the head of
parent company Paramount (who owned the script) and told them that
Spielberg would not direct unless DreamWorks got 50 percent of the profits
and 50 percent of the distribution rights. The other selling point was
that DreamWorks would split their profi ts with Paramount on the disaster
movie Deep Impact (1998), which turned out to be the second highest
grossing fi lm in DreamWorks’s fi rst fi ve years. When Saving Private Ryan
turned out to be a huge hit, investor/entrepreneur Paul Allen purchased
more shares of DreamWorks stock and became the company’s largest
stockholder with 24 percent. The SKG men held 22 percent. Spielberg
won the Best Director Oscar for Saving Private Ryan, but the movie lost
out to Shakespeare in Love for best movie. Because of the studio losing the
big award, the DreamWorks/Paramount after-Oscar party was “more like
a wake than a party,” 52 writes King.
One of Spielberg’s dreams for the new fi lm company was to build a
studio at a site known as Playa Vista near the Los Angeles International
Airport. In April 1999, DreamWorks signed on to buy the 47 acres for $20
million, but the fi lm company could not get conventional bank fi nancing
to back the construction. The three owners plus entrepreneur Paul Allen
could have raised the money easily with personal funds, but they fi nally
decided that they did not want to invest so much and backed out. Dream-
Works would not have its large new building. In fact, by mid-2005, the
company was having problems, and talk of selling became headline news.
In their article for Time magazine, Daniel Kadlec and Jeffrey Ressner write
that none of the owners are professional CEOs and that they have made
some mistakes. Stephen Dubner reports that Spielberg told him that “expectations
were too high to begin with.” 53 In December 2005, Paramount
Pictures announced that it was buying DreamWorks for $1.6 billion in
cash and debt. (The purchase did not include DreamWorks Animation
SKG Inc.) Then, in March 2006, Paramount announced that it was selling
the fi lms of DreamWorks to billionaire George Soros for $900 million. On
March 12, 2006, a New York Times article describes all of the ins and outs
of the fi nancial dealings and speculates as to whether or not Paramount

60 STEVEN SPIELBERG
and the Geffen Film Company, which produced the movies Beetlejuice
and Interview with the Vampire. Spielberg and Katzenberg teamed up in
1988 to produce Who Framed Roger Rabbit and became partners in Dive!
a family-oriented submarine-shaped restaurant in Los Angeles. (Dive!
went out of business in January 1999.) It was originally Katzenberg’s
idea to form the movie company. Spielberg did not want to leave MCA/
Universal because its president, Sidney Sheinberg, had given him his
fi rst directing job and become the young director’s mentor and friend; but
when Spielberg learned that Sheinberg was leaving MCA, he talked to
the older man about his plans. Sheinberg asked Spielberg why he wanted
his own company, and Spielberg replied, “It benefi ts me because the idea
of building something from the ground up, where I could actually be a
co-owner, where I don’t rent, I don’t lease, I don’t option but actually
own; that appeals to me.” 46 Sheinberg gave his blessing. Now past the
fi rst hurdle, Spielberg and Katzenberg could give into their dreams of creating
“a studio designed from the perspective of fi lmmakers.” 47 The two men
thought of themselves as trailblazers such as those who had formed United
Artists in 1919: Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and
D. W. Griffi th.
The second hurdle was Mrs. Steven Spielberg: Kate Capshaw.
Katzenberg was a known workaholic, so Capshaw put down ground rules.
Her husband is available to work only after he takes the kids to school in
the morning; and he must be home by six on weekdays. He must be home
all day every weekend. This is also what Spielberg wants, because his
family is so important to him. He is often described as a family man who
might drive a Porsche, but who drives that Porsche into a 7-Eleven to buy
a Slurpie. Finally, Katzenberg had to convince Spielberg that they needed
David Geffen: “an executive who was schooled in the music business but
who was also a fi nancial wizard with outstanding creative instincts.” 48 In
Tom King’s biography of David Geffen, he writes that Steven Spielberg
and David Geffen had a history of “butting heads” 49 because Spielberg
had a strong moral conscience while Geffen “had his own ideas of what
was right and what was wrong.” 50 But King also writes that Geffen may
be the only person who can speak to Steven Spielberg as an equal, which
helped especially when dealing with fi nances. Geffen had sold Geffen
Records in 1990 and was enjoying a quiet life, but after some indecision,
he decided to join the other two moguls. When the press nicknamed
them “The Dream Team,” Spielberg suggested that their offi cial company
name be DreamWorks SKG (SKG standing for each man’s last initial).
(Trivia: DreamWorks insured Spielberg’s life for $1.2 billion.) The
logo is a little boy sitting on the moon with a fi shing pool—an obvious

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 59
THE SCHINDLER/SPIELBERG LEGACY
With his percentage profi ts, Spielberg founded the Shoah Foundation,
whose founding advisory committee includes the movie’s producers, Jerry
Molen and Branko Lustig. (“Shoah” is Hebrew for “Holocaust.”) So many
survivors wanted to tell Spielberg their personal stories that he realized
they needed a place to do so, and a place where their stories would be
saved forever. The foundation records fi rsthand accounts and prepares
them so that anyone anywhere can call them up and learn about history
from someone who witnessed it. He knows the importance of hearing the
real voices and seeing the real faces as they speak. And Spielberg wants
these accounts from all survivors, “all those people that the Nazis considered
‘subhuman’: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and
others.” 44 Thousands of volunteers are trained and then sent to all corners
of the globe to get these stories. They usually begin the interview by asking
for descriptions of the person’s life before the war. This makes the
person comfortable sharing personal information with a stranger before
they describe their wartime experiences. The camera fi lms the interview
in an unobtrusive manner. Each survivor receives a copy of his or her
fi lmed interview. The original is put in computer format, catalogued, and
then stored in an underground vault. The information is cross-indexed
to aid victims locate lost friends and family members. Spielberg’s dream
and dedication is “to take as many testimonies as is humanly possible and
make their stories available for no fee for those who want it.” 45 As of September
2005, almost 52,000 testimonies have been collected in 56 countries
and 32 languages. An interesting aspect of the foundation, too, is
that Spielberg’s father, Arnold Spielberg, is a consultant on the projects.
Spielberg has also produced a CD-Rom with the stories of four survivors,
which he gives to teachers, and the Shoah Foundation produced
three documentaries, one of which, Last Days, won an Oscar in 1998. In
2006, Spielberg produced Spell Your Name, in which survivors describe
the World War II Babi Yar massacre in the Ukraine.
DREAMWORKS (SKG)
On October 12, 1994, Steven Spielberg took another large step when
he teamed with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form their own
fi lm, television, music, and interactive software company. A former
president of Disney, Katzenberg had had successes with The Little Mermaid,
Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. Geffen was a music agent
who founded two record companies, Asylum (1971) and Geffen (1980),

58 STEVEN SPIELBERG
as the happy faces of the survivors’ and/or their descendents begin descending
down a hill. Each person is accompanied by the actor who
portrays him or her in the movie, and each person places a rock on
Oskar Schindler’s grave. When Schindler died in 1974, his will revealed
that he wanted to be buried in the Catholic Cemetery on Mt. Zion in
Jerusalem, and that is where he is. Before the epilogue, the last scenes in
the movie show the survivors using a man’s gold fi lling to make Schindler
a ring with the inscription, “You save one life, you save the world.” 41 (In
real life, the survivors also supported Schindler fi nancially because his
business ventures failed.) At the end of fi lming the movie, the remaining
survivors made Steven Spielberg an exact replica of the ring with
the same inscription. He later made replicas for Sid Sheinberg and Lew
Wasserman at Universal.
Mondays through Fridays Spielberg worked on Schindler, and on weekends
he continued editing Jurassic Park. Eventually, the race to get Jurassic
Park to the theaters forced him to give it even more time, so he had
it “fed” to a theater in Krakow. He now fi lmed Schindler in the daytime,
spent evenings with his family, and then edited Jurassic Park at night.
Spielberg rarely misses having dinner with his family and reading bedtime
stories to his children, and he had brought his entire family with
him—from his wife and children to his parents, his ill stepfather’s entire
medical team, and the family rabbi. He and Capshaw wanted the
children to witness the history. He arranged a private screening for his
mother and stepfather but could not watch the movie with them. His
mother cried throughout the viewing and says she knew her son wanted
her impression but she couldn’t speak. “I was totally mute,” she says.
“I thought I would never speak again.” 42 She was especially affected by
the scene when the mothers are crying and running after their children
as the children sing, “Oyfn Pripetchik,” a Jewish alphabet song that
Spielberg’s grandmother used to sing to him. The irony is that the title
actually means, “On the Wooden Stove.” 43 His sister, Anne, saw the movie
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles
and says that people were not just crying, they were sobbing and walking
to their cars in silence. Sister Nancy says that seeing the movie was one of
her proudest moments. In March 1994, Schindler ’ s List was recognized at
the Academy Awards with seven awards, including Best Picture and Best
Director. In his thank-you address, Spielberg remembered the six million
people who died in the Holocaust. The movie grossed $96 million in the
United States and $321 million worldwide, the highest grossing blackand-
white movie in history. Spielberg’s salary had been only the mandatory
minimum stipulated by the Directors Guild Union.

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 57
“Everybody was extremely edgy the couple of days we shot there.” 36
He and a technician had a particularly hard time fi lming the scene in which
German guards are choosing which female prisoners—stripped naked and
obviously embarrassed and frightened—will live and which will die. The
scene took three days to fi lm. “There was no break in the tension,” says
Spielberg. “Nobody felt there was any room for levity. I didn’t expect so
much sadness every day.” Ben Kingsley says, “The ghosts were on the set
every day in their millions.” 37 The extras reported to wardrobe at fi ve o’clock
every morning, and the costumers made sure that the same people wore the
same costume every day. Translators were needed to give directions to the
non-English speakers, of which there were many, yet there were not enough
Polish Jews to fi ll the parts because there were not enough left due to the
Holocaust. As usual, Spielberg chose actors who were not widely known at
the time. For the main character, Spielberg wanted someone very close in
demeanor to the real man. “Oskar Schindler is the most romantic character
I’ve ever worked with,” said Spielberg. “He romances the entire city of Krakow,
he romances the Nazis, he romances the politicians, the police chiefs,
the women. He was a grand seducer.” 38 He chose Liam Neeson. Schindler
hires Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to keep his business records. The antagonist
is the camp’s commandant, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a charming
but deranged killer. Spielberg sees the movie as being a fi ght between Stern
and Goeth—good and evil—to win Schindler’s soul.
Israeli actress Adi Nitzan tells of the day she went to eat lunch in
the commissary and started to sit with men in Nazi uniforms, but the
contrast of her rags to their dignifi ed uniforms made her want to cry.
Spielberg says that he had the same reaction when he was directing
the uniform-clad actors. “Just think,” Spielberg said, “I’m standing right
here where 50 years ago people were loaded on trucks. If it were not for
a different time. . . ” 39 When Liam Neeson complained about the freezing
weather, Lustig showed him the tattoo on his arm and reminded
him that he and millions of others had lived through such weather with
barely enough food, clothes, and shelter. But no matter the costume, all
cast and crew were on the same side and participated in a seder. All the
men wore yarmulkes and read from the seder text as Israelis helped the
gentiles understand the service. Says Spielberg, “Race and culture were
just left behind.” 40 He did, however, worry about making a hero out of
a Nazi (Schindler) and recalled when the movie Das Boot was released
and the resulting uproar over making German sailors (even non-Nazis)
heroes. Spielberg decided that if such a furor arose with Schindler ’ s List
he would hold a press conference with some of the survivors. As it happened,
the end of the movie did the trick. Joyous color fi lls the screen

56 STEVEN SPIELBERG
War II, it looks too glamorized, too antiseptic. I think black and white is
almost the synonymous form for World War II and the Holocaust.” 28 Black
and white, he says, is “completely unforgiving. Black and white is about
texture; it’s not about tone. . . . black-and-white details every single wall,
all the bricks, all the chipped plaster on the facades of these ghetto dwellings.”
29 Universal Studios Chairman Tom Pollock saw video sales as the
only way the movie would make a profi t, so he begged Spielberg to fi lm the
movie in color. Spielberg agreed with Pollack that the movie would likely
fail at the box offi ce. How could a movie about the Holocaust be entertaining?
Even worse to Spielberg—if the movie were entertaining, he would feel
that he had failed. “It was important to me not to set out to please. Because
I always had.” 30 But both men were wrong in their expectations. In the
March 21, 1994, issue of the New Yorker, Stephen Schiff writes, “Of course,
the almost unmentionable secret of Schindler ’ s List is that it does entertain;
that part of its greatness comes from the fact that it moves swiftly and energetically,
that it has storytelling confi dence and fl air. . . .” 31 Schiff also notes
that the movie is really not so different from Spielberg’s other work, because
Schindler is the “everyman” character that Spielberg likes to use. Although
Schindler is now seen as a hero, he was a very common and sometimes immoral
man. Because of characters such as Schindler, writes Schiff, Spielberg
“made it O.K. not to be remarkable by telling us that we already were.” 32
Spielberg instructed his director of photography, Janusz Kaminski, to use
a handheld camera for most of the movie. He wanted no modern equipment
used—no cranes, dollies, or zoom lenses. He wanted the movie to
be timeless so future audiences would see a World War II movie, not a
World War II movie made in 1993. They shot the fi lm in actual locations
in Krakow, Poland: the Jewish Ghetto, Auschwitz, and even Schindler’s
real factory and apartment. Because the World Jewish Congress refuses
fi lming inside Auschwitz, Spielberg built an exact replica right outside
the real thing. During preproduction, the director met Branko Lustig,
a Croatian fi lmmaker and Holocaust survivor, and made him one of the
movie’s co-producers. When fi lming began on March 1, 1993, producer
Jerry Molen said he believed that a “divine hand” 33 had been placed on
Spielberg’s shoulder, because when Spielberg needed snow, it snowed, and
when he wanted it to stop, it stopped. The movie, budgeted at $22 million,
had 126 speaking parts, approximately 30,000 extras, more than 210
crewmembers, and 148 sets in 35 locations. “Like running an army,” 34 says
Spielberg’s spokesperson, Martin Levy. Before shooting began, everyone
met at Auschwitz for a memorial service. “There is an almost consecrated
gravity to this set,” 35 writes John H. Richardson in his January 1994 Premier
article. “It is a haunted killing fi eld, and you feel it,” says Spielberg.

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 55
really been in preparation for Schindler. I had to grow into that.” 23 Of course,
there were detractors who said he was making the movie only to win an
Oscar, but it is unlikely that he would have put himself through such an
emotional roller coaster for an award. “Every day,” says Spielberg, “shooting
Schindler ’ s List was like waking up and going to hell.” Yet, at the time, he also
said, “I feel more connected with the material than I’ve ever felt before.” 24
Oskar Schindler was an industrialist and member of the Czechoslovakian
Nazi Party during World War II who became wealthy during the war.
He is celebrated because he used that wealth to rescue Jews from concentration
camps by giving them jobs in his factory. By war’s end, he had saved
more than a thousand people. In later years he earned the title of Righteous
Gentile from the Yad Vashem in Israel. (Yad Vashem is a worldwide
organization that researches the Holocaust to keep alive the memories of
the six million who died.) Thomas Keneally wrote the book, Schindler ’ s
List, after a chance meeting with one of Schindler’s survivors, Poldek Pfefferberg
(who changed his name to Leopold Page), who told Keneally his
story. When Keneally’s book came out in 1982, Spielberg was drawn to it
immediately, but did not feel “emotionally ready to take a chance with the
Holocaust.” 25 But he certainly received encouragement to make it. Producer
Sid Sheinberg bought the rights in 1982 and told Spielberg that
this was a movie that he must make. When Leopold Page met Spielberg
in 1983, he asked him when he was going to make the movie. Even Spielberg’s
mother asked him the same question, and between 1982 and 1993
the fi lm was never far from his thoughts. As he mulled over ways to make
the best possible movie, he remembered the taunts and cruel treatment he
had received in high school just because of his faith. One sign that the time
was right to make the movie was when he learned that 60 percent of recent
high school graduates had never heard of the Holocaust. Another sign was
when his wife converted to Judaism and made the religion a regular part of
the family’s practices. Everything was coming together to make Spielberg
not only ready to make the fi lm, but eager to embrace his heritage. “I was
so ashamed of being a Jew,” he says, “and now I’m fi lled with pride. I don’t
even know when that transition happened.” 26
The decision made, Spielberg set out to use his talents to make the
movie he knew Schindler ’ s List should be. His partnership with composer
John Williams, which started with Sugarland Express, continued. When
Williams saw the fi rst cuts of the movie he told Spielberg that he needed
a better composer. Spielberg’s reaction? “I know,” he told Williams, “but
they’re all dead.” 27 Spielberg wanted a documentary feel but had a hard
time convincing the producers that he should fi lm in black and white with
small snippets of color. “Every time I see anything in color about World

54 STEVEN SPIELBERG
began in Kauai, Hawaii, on August 24, 1992, and ended with a hurricane.
Producer Kathleen Kennedy says, “If you’re going to be stranded
with anyone, be stranded with a movie crew. We had generators for
lights and plenty of food and water.” 17 Spielberg was so good at entertaining
the children that they barely realized what was going on. Even
with the hurricane, the movie came in under budget and a few days
early. Jurassic Park was released on June 10, 1993, and soon became the
biggest box-offi ce draw up to that time, and the winner of three Oscars.
SPEAKING OF MONEY
Jurassic Park’s total earnings eventually went up to more than $900 million
and Spielberg’s fi nal receipts were $294 million. According to Forbes
magazine, this was “the most ever made by ‘a single individual from a movie
or other form of entertainment.’” 18 Along with Oprah Winfrey, Spielberg
topped Forbes list of billionaire entertainers in 2005. In 1994, Forbes magazine
called him “the fi rst billionaire director.” 19 In 2006, the magazine listed
his worth at $2.8 billion. In his 1999 interview with Spielberg, Stephen J.
Dubner writes that Spielberg is “very good at making money. While he is
considered to be courtly in creative matters, his reputation as a negotiator
is far less benign.” 20 Spielberg knows that his clout in Hollywood prevents
people from telling him “no,” so he knows that he has to be responsible in
his business dealings. And while he has not taken a salary in many years, he
has “the sweetest of sweetheart deals.” 21 For Jurassic Park, Universal received
50 percent of gross earnings. Spielberg received 17.5 percent of that, and 50
percent of Universal’s profi ts plus reimbursement for production, advertising,
and distribution costs. He then gets 100 percent of Amblin's profi ts,
since he is the sole owner, then gets 50 percent of video sales, 50 percent
of TV/cable fees, and 50 percent of royalties on the movie’s merchandise
sales. And, writes Dubner, “The movies are only the engine of Spielberg’s
entertainment machine. There are the television shows and cartoons he has
produced, a joint venture to build futuristic video arcades and . . . a Universal
Studios theme park in Orlando for which he is a creative consulant. All
told, he is worth an estimated $2 billion, which has led to many whispers
that his taste for money exceeds his taste for art.”22 And he constantly fi nds
new venues in which to get involved. His curiosity seems insatiable.
SCHINDLER’S LIST
After his next movie, no one could ever accuse Steven Spielberg of making
only action-adventure fi lms. “Everything I have done up ‘till now has

FROM PETER PAN TO COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994 53
JURASSIC PARK
Steven Spielberg once asked a Harvard psychologist why so many children
are fascinated with dinosaurs. The psychologist said it is because dinosaurs
are “big, they’re fi erce . . . and they’re dead.” 12 The rights to Michael Crichton’s
book about dinosaurs, Jurassic Park, were on the bidding block, and
Crichton chose Steven Spielberg, whom Crichton calls, “the most experienced
and most successful director of these kinds of movies.” 13 Spielberg
saw the plot as a sequel to Jaws but on dry land. The movie can also be seen
as a cross between a zoo and a theme park but with inhabitants that are
dinosaurs that have been cloned from a fossil. Preproduction began in 1990
and took two years. Spielberg storyboarded and had artists make sketches
for the more complicated scenes. Special effects genius Stan Winston was
in charge of building the life-size creatures, some of which had “stand-ins”
for various scenes. The 20-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex weighed 13,000 pounds
and was operated by remote control. The full-sized velociraptors were either
a full-sized puppet or a suit worn by an actor. In addition, Spielberg went to
George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), where computer-generated
images (CGI) were so realistic that some of the models were not used
at all. According to Lucas biographer Marcus Hearn, Lucas said, “when we
put [the dinosaurs] [sic] on the screen everyone had tears in their eyes. It was
like one of those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or
the fi rst telephone call.” 14 The unoffi cial word is that using CGI saved the
studio $10 million. To obtain such realism, Spielberg had sent the computer
masters to mime classes to become more aware of their body movements.
They were fi lmed as each one ran the way a specifi c dinosaur would have
done and then watched the fi lm to see how their weight shifted, etc. As
Spielberg once said, an audience will believe fantasies if they are made convincingly
and seriously. The robots with CGI “mates” were electronically
encoded so that each moved together. Real sounds were collected and then
combined and changed to give each creature its proper voice. The fi nal
products, says Spielberg, “exceeded my expectations. . . . It was everything I
wanted it to be—no less and a lot more.” 15
Using computer graphics means that the actors have to act “to” a blue
screen and cannot see the results until the movie is put together. When
actress Ariana Richards (Lex Murphy) saw the movie, she says that the
stampede scene was “breathtaking” 16 and that some scenes scared her
even though she had been part of them. The actors who co-starred with
the dinosaurs were Sir Richard Attenborough, Sam Neill, Laura Dern,
and Jeff Goldblum. All are highly respected but without the superstar
status and accompanying egos that Spielberg tries to avoid. Filming

52 STEVEN SPIELBERG
the other director was paid not to make the movie. Although it was
rumored that Spielberg had talked of starring Michael Jackson in the
leading role, it is Robin Williams who portrays the adult Peter Pan
(aka greedy lawyer Peter Banning), who must return to Neverland to
rescue his children from Captain Hook’s clutches. Julia Roberts plays
Tinkerbell and Dustin Hoffman plays Captain Hook. Such big names
went against Spielberg’s love of the “everyman” cast of unknowns. In
fact, he is supposed to have said that he never wanted anyone who
had been on the cover of Rolling Stone, and all three of these stars had
been. Spielberg found himself with an entire group of egos to pacify.
The major stars began clashing right away. Hoffman brought a script
doctor to punch up his lines, while Williams was grossly insecure about
playing to Hoffman. (Eventually, Spielberg, Hoffman, and Williams
became good friends.) Julia Roberts was going through personal problems,
some of which caused production to shut down for a week. Then
there was her highly publicized cancelled wedding to Kiefer Sutherland
followed by a weeklong trip to Ireland with her new boyfriend,
Jason Patric. And then there was being late on the set; one time when
Julia kept the cast and crew waiting she showed up saying, “I’m ready
now.” Spielberg’s reply? “We’re ready when I say we’re ready, Julia.” 8
When rumors fl ew that Spielberg was going to replace Roberts, the
two held a joint press conference to squelch them. After the movie
was completed, Spielberg told 60 Minutes that he would never work
with Roberts again. The actress was hurt and said that she had considered
him a good friend and thought they had fi nished the production
on good terms. There were other problems—such as making adults fl y
convincingly, controlling the large number of children in the cast, and
controlling expenses—but Spielberg had learned that if he worried
about costs while directing, he might compromise his creativity.
Most of the $60 million budget went to the elaborate sets. Studio executives
were very pleased with the movie, and preview audiences gave it
a 95 percent approval rating. The head of Tri-Star, Mike Medavoy, said
the movie was “the pinnacle of his achievement. This is his real shot at
the Oscar!” 9 Most critics, however, did not agree and called it “bloated”
and “overproduced.” 10 One critic, George Perry, wrote that it was “quite
simply the best kids’ fi lm in many years.” 11 The movie opened in the
United States in December 1991. At a cost of approximately $70 million
to produce, it recouped its cost and received fi ve Academy Award nominations.
CAA had worked out a very rich deal for Spielberg, Hoffman,
and Williams: 40 percent of gross profi ts, with Hoffman and Williams
taking nothing up front.

Chapter 5
FROM PETER PAN TO
COMPANY MAN, 1991–1994
In 1990, Steven Spielberg felt “artistically stalled.” 1 When he tried to
make more mature fi lms, the critics fl ailed him and the audiences stayed
away. When he signed with “the most powerful agent in Hollywood, Mike
Ovitz,” 2 a studio executive said, “If anybody can fi nally get Spielberg off
producing his umpteenth knockoff of Jaws and E.T. and directing grownup
movies, it’s Ovitz at CAA [Creative Artists Agency].” 3 Spielberg had
been upset that his people were passing on very good scripts such as Dead
Poets Society and Silence of the Lambs. CAA was to assure him “fi rst crack
at the agency’s 300-plus client list of writers and access to the agency’s
roster of A-list actors.” 4
HOOK
Their fi rst collaboration was Hook, about a grown-up Peter Pan.
Spielberg had wanted to make the movie in 1985, but the birth of his
son convinced him that he “couldn’t be Peter Pan anymore. I had to
be his father.” 5 But as his family increased, so did his interest in the
fabled character, and when he read the Jim Hart script, he saw how
much it related to today’s busy lifestyle and lack of family time. He
also liked the childlike wonderment mixed with “witty adult satire.” 6
And what better movie to show Spielberg’s love of fl ying? “To me,
fl ying is synonymous with freedom and unlimited imagination,” 7 he
says. Mike Ovitz likes to package movie deals, consolidating the agency’s
actors, directors, and writers, and Hook had been packaged with
another director, but when Spielberg showed interest in the project,

50 STEVEN SPIELBERG
4 . Quoted in John Baxter, Mythmaker: Life & Work of George Lucas (New
York: Avon, 1999), 343.
5 . Quoted in Frank Sanello, Spielberg: The Man, The Movies, The Mythology
(Dallas: Taylor, 1996), 151.
6 . Quoted in Sanello, 190.
7 . Quoted in Sanello, 192.
8 . Quoted in Glenn Collins, “Spielberg fi lms— The Color Purple .” The New
York Times , December 15, 1985, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews , Lester
D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm, eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2000), 122–123.
9 . Quoted in “Steven Spielberg,” Authors and Artists for Young Adults,
vol. 24.
10 . Quoted in Collins, 120.
11 . Quoted in Sanello, 172.
12 . Quoted in Myra Forsberg, “Spielberg at 40: The Man and the Child.” The
New York Times , January 10, 1988, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews , Lester
D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm, eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2000), 127.
13 . Ibid.
14 . Quoted in Sanello, 180.
15 . Quoted in Forsberg, 128.
16 . Quoted in Marcus Hearn, The Cinema of George Lucas (New York: Harry
N. Abrams, 2005), 159.
17 . Baxter, 376.
18 . Ibid.
19 . Quoted in Sanello, 185.
20 . Baxter, 377.
21 . Quoted in Sanello, 142.
22 . Baxter, 338–339.
23 . Sanello, 195.
24 . Quoted in Sanello, 196.

REAL LIFE AND REEL LIFE, 1984–1991 49
was Spielberg’s dog’s name.) Capshaw had taught educationally handicapped
children for two years before going to New York City to look for
modeling and acting jobs. Not a fan of Spielberg’s movies, she almost
decided not to audition for him, but the former soap-opera actress had just
moved to the area with her young daughter and needed the work. Spielberg
says that Capshaw is a “natural” comedic actress—a “cross between
Lucille Ball and Ann Southern.” 21 In his book, Steven Spielberg: The Unauthorized
Biography , John Baxter writes that Capshaw fell in love with
Spielberg right away, and that Spielberg “was a pushover for the Texan
forthrightness of Capshaw.” 22 Rumors abound about their relationship’s
beginnings, but a year after Spielberg and Irving divorced, Spielberg and
Capshaw renewed their relationship. After a prenuptial agreement was
signed—a lesson learned from the Lucas divorce—the couple married on
October 12, 1991, in Spielberg’s Long Island home then repeated their
vows at a civil service the next morning at Guild Hall. A third ceremony
was formal and traditional Jewish Orthodox and was followed by a reception
fi lled with celebrities. A baby girl, Sasha, was born before their marriage
and a son, Sawyer, followed soon after. Later they adopted a foster
child, Theo. (They later had Destry and adopted Mikaela.) Friends say
that Capshaw is “a nurturing, mothering type” 23 and that she and her
husband would rather spend time with friends and family than attend
Hollywood parties. Capshaw once asked her husband what had happened
to her career to which he replied, “You weren’t supposed to have a career.
You were supposed to be with me.” 24 And though Capshaw still makes the
occasional fi lm, she says that she would rather be Spielberg’s wife than
make a movie. Raised a Methodist, Capshaw converted to Judaism before
their marriage so their son would be born a Jew. She likes the religion
because of its emphasis on family. Spielberg had never been strong in his
faith until Capshaw made it a part of the family, but he has grown in it
ever since, and he is grateful to his wife for providing a warm and nurturing
homelife.
NOTES
1 . Quoted in “Steven Spielberg.” Authors and Artists for Young Adults, vol.
24, Gale Research, 1998, reproduced in Biography Resource Center (Farmington
Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005). www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC.
2 . Ibid.
3 . Quoted in Stephen Schiff, “Seriously Spielberg.” New Yorker , March 21,
1994, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews , Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 184.

48 STEVEN SPIELBERG
last of the Indiana Jones movies, Spielberg said, “I was going to make
every effort to end the saga with a very unique and very thrilling fi nale.” 19
But making this episode was so much fun that Spielberg fi nished fi lming
with a “yes” to a fourth episode if the script is right. Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade opened May 24, 1989, and grossed $100 million before June
13. Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford had taken gross points instead of salaries,
so their investment yielded very high returns. And while some critics
enjoyed saying that Spielberg had returned to his old formula, Spielberg
enjoyed knowing that there were theaters full of happy people. Author
Baxter agrees. “After the violence and sadism of Temple of Doom, the
tone was light, the humor effective, the characters likeable. . . . The old
formula still worked.” 20
ALWAYS
With his love of old movies, it was only natural that Spielberg would
want to recreate one of his favorites, A Guy Named Joe (1943) with Spencer
Tracy. Actually, he did not want to remake the movie, but he could
not fi nd a story and script as good as the original. A project Spielberg
had wanted to do for nine years, Always never quite came together even
though it had a superb cast, another “real” people ensemble: Richard
Dreyfuss, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Brad Johnson. Spielberg so
enjoyed this cast that he gifted each with a Mazda Miata. While Spielberg
may have been taking a chance with a love story, he was making a supernatural
love story, which was right up his alley. Eight drafts of the script
were written between 1980 and 1985, with four more written in 1985.
The original story took place during World War II, and its main character
was a pilot. Spielberg updated the movie to current times and made
his main character a fl ying fi refi ghter. He had discussed the movie with
Dreyfuss during the fi lming of Jaws, and Dreyfuss desperately wanted the
Tracy/leading role of Pete, the forest-fi re pilot. Paul Newman and Robert
Redford also wanted the role, but Dreyfuss was chosen for the usual reasons:
He is the everyman with whom audiences can relate. Holly Hunter
plays his girlfriend, Dorinda. The critics hated the movie, but it did fairly
well at the box offi ce when it opened in 1989. Costs came to $30 million
and it grossed $77 million.
A SECOND CHANCE AT MARRIAGE
Spielberg met current wife, Kate Capshaw, when she auditioned for the
part of nightclub singer Willie Scott in Temple of Doom . (Trivia: “Willie”

46 STEVEN SPIELBERG
to do very well, but the ratings proved disappointing, constantly sliding
downward. Writer Pauline Kael said that Spielberg was now ripping off his
own movies and that he was awfully young to be “paying homage to himself.”
11 But Spielberg continued to produce successful movies and, in 1994,
a successful television program, ER, which was still on the air as of 2006.
EMPIRE OF THE SUN
Steven Spielberg’s fortieth birthday coincided with his next venture,
Empire of the Sun, which he says is the “opposite of Peter Pan.” 12 Empire is
about “the death of innocence. . . . This was a boy who had grown up too
quickly, who was becoming a fl ower long before the bud had ever come
out of the topsoil.” 13 Spielberg knew that many people had compared his
life to a very long childhood, and he admitted it himself. Turning 40 and
making more serious movies was, for him, a fi nal step into adulthood. The
Los Angeles Times even called Empire of the Sun Spielberg’s “most mature
and searing work to date.” 14 Based on a fi ctionalized autobiography by
J. G. Ballard, signs of Steven Spielberg run through the movie: his love
of the World War II time period, his love of airplanes (even though he is
afraid to fl y), and a child’s separation from his parents. The main character,
Jim, lives in a wealthy colonial neighborhood in Shanghai where he
is accustomed to servants. When the Japanese march into Shanghai on
December 7, 1941, these families are forced into camps but Jim gets separated
from his parents and spends the entire war in a different camp from
them. Although a horrifi c idea, Ballard says that it was probably the best
time in his life. He had no parental control and had to depend on his wits
and personality to survive. And though he saw examples of Japanese brutality,
he also got to know the Japanese as people and witness their dignity.
His biggest adjustment was to life after the war. A person gets used to their
security, whatever it is, says Ballard, and his security was the camp.
Spielberg had long wanted another movie such as Duel so he could tell
a story almost exclusively through “visual metaphors and nonpretentious
symbolism.” 15 One of these is Jim witnessing the explosion over Hiroshima:
the death of innocence—Jim’s and the world’s. Empire of the Sun
was fi lmed in London and Shanghai—the fi rst time that a U. S. fi lm company
was allowed to make a movie in the People’s Republic of China.
Allen Daviau was director of photography and Tom Stoppard wrote the
screenplay albeit with Spielberg trademarks such as his love for Norman
Rockwell, whose “Freedom from Fear” 1943 magazine cover goes with
Jim wherever he goes. The actor who plays Jim, Christian Bale, was recommended
to Spielberg by then-wife Amy Irving, who had worked with

REAL LIFE AND REEL LIFE, 1984–1991 45
New York writer David Blum compared E.T. and Celie: “Both are outsiders
in a strange, cruel world, struggling for freedom.” 9
Spielberg was still nervous about the project when production began
in June 1985. For the fi rst time he was making a fi lm about adults—not
aliens, children, or adventurers—and he was afraid he would not be able
to reach the audience. “It’s the risk of being judged—and accused of not
having the sensibility to do character studies,” 10 he said in a 1985 interview.
Spielberg did not use storyboards for the movie because he wanted
each day to be new and an adventure. The movie’s story was controversial,
but its style was simple, one that used times of day and weather scenes to
show the passing of time—portrayed exquisitely with Allen Daviau’s cinematography.
The genius of Quincy Jones and others created an equally
superlative soundtrack. Spielberg took only the required Directors Guild
minimum salary of $40,000, which he used to fund the movie’s overages.
At a cost of $15 million to produce, The Color Purple earned $142 million
in just the United States and Canada, and it was nominated for 11 Academy
Awards. The movie won no Oscars but it did win the Best Actress-
Drama Award from the Golden Globes (for Goldberg) and Best Director’s
Award from the Directors’ Guild of America (for Spielberg). Reviewers
and other Hollywood moguls who had long enjoyed criticizing Spielberg
for being good at making only action-adventure fi lms were not about to
quit criticizing and gave more attention to the fact that Spielberg was
making a “serious” movie than to the quality of the movie itself.
AMAZING STORIES
Spielberg even tried television again when the medium lured him
with an unbeatable deal: $1 million per half-hour episode, a guaranteed
two-year run, full creative control, and no monitoring of his dallies. The
series was Amazing Stories, and it ran from 1985 to 1987. NBC’s head
of programming, Brandon Tartikoff, expected something similar to
Alfred Hitchcock Presents or Twilight Zone, eerie and a bit frightening, but
Spielberg wanted a format that gave other fi lmmakers a chance to try
television—and several big directors showed up: Martin Scorsese,
Clint Eastwood, Paul Bartel, and Burt Reynolds. Spielberg directed two
episodes—one about a World War II bombing mission, obviously made
with his father in mind. In another episode, “Ghost Train,” he directed
Amy Irving, after their divorce and the only time he did so. Several
other well-known actors appeared in the series: Drew Barrymore, Kevin
Costner, Sid Caesar, Mark Hamill, Sam Waterston, Milton Berle, David
Carradine, Stan Freberg, and Charlie Sheen. Spielberg expected the show

44 STEVEN SPIELBERG
settlements in history. She and Spielberg agreed on joint custody of Max,
and Spielberg stayed home with the child during his custodial periods.
“By the time Max was one, I no longer had any choice. He took fi rst place
and nothing else would do.” 7
THE COLOR PURPLE
Happily settled down and glad to be fi nished with Temple of Doom,
Spielberg wanted something different, and good friend and producer
Kathleen Kennedy gave him a copy of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–
winning book, The Color Purple. Spielberg really wanted to direct it, but
the story is about a black woman in rural Georgia in the fi rst part of the
twentieth century, and Spielberg was concerned that Walker might not
have confi dence in a white director bringing her characters to life. When
Spielberg voiced his concern to Quincy Jones, the movie’s producer, Jones
responded, “You didn’t have to go to outer space to make E.T., did you?” 8
then added that the movie should be made by the director who loves it
the most, and that was obviously Spielberg. Alice Walker agreed. She
believed that any director who could make E.T. come so vividly to life
was the right director for her book. At Spielberg’s invitation and encouragement,
Walker was always on the set to help with revisions. The Color
Purple covers four decades in the life of Celie, who is raped and then has
her baby taken from her. (Trivia: When fi lming the scene of Celie giving
birth, Spielberg got the call that Max was being born, so he left the set.
The voice of Celie’s crying baby is actually Max Spielberg’s voice.) She is
separated from her only friend and confi dant, her sister, and given in marriage
to an older man who beats her. From a downtrodden girl who hides
her smile, Celie grows into a strong independent woman who speaks her
mind. As usual, Spielberg chose new or lesser-known actors for most of
the parts. For the part of Celie, he chose stand-up comedienne, Whoopi
Goldberg, who had not previously made a movie but has such an expressive
face that the director cut 25 percent of her dialogue. He especially
enjoyed directing her because she is a fellow movie buff who knew what
he meant when he gave her a scene from another movie as his acting
direction. Likewise, Oprah Winfrey was well known from her television
talk show, but had never made a fi lm. Spielberg hired her for her enthusiasm,
her love of Walker’s book, and her willingness to do anything to get
the part. He and Quincy Jones had seen courage in her on TV. While it
may not seem like it on fi rst glance, Celie is Spielberg’s “everyman.” She is
someone who wants to fulfi ll dreams, someone who seems ordinary yet accomplishes
the extraordinary, and someone who overcomes victimization.

REAL LIFE AND REEL LIFE, 1984–1991 43
supposed to hold a 14-foot boa constrictor but Spielberg removed the scene
for her. Spielberg was not happy at all with Temple of Doom and says that it
lacks the personal touches and love that he normally puts into his movies.
It was a dark movie with some horrifi c scenes—children working in mines
and sacrifi cial pits, for examples. Younger audience members liked it but
their parents were disappointed that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
would make such a fi lm. Spielberg even had to fi ght to keep the movie from
getting an “R” rating. The movie opened in the United States on Mary 23,
1984. It was nominated for two Academy Awards and won the Oscar for
Best Visual Effects.
AMY IRVING
Spielberg may not have been pleased with Temple of Doom, but his
relationship with Amy Irving was at a good place. The two fi rst met when
Irving auditioned for the role of Richard Dreyfuss’s wife in Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, but at 22 she was too young for the part. They met
again at a dinner party, started dating, and soon began living together.
They purposely made no movies together because Irving feared that she
would be labeled as Steven Spielberg’s girlfriend, and she wanted success
on her own terms. They broke up in 1979. But in 1983, Spielberg traveled
to India and ran into Irving at a movie site. They both seemed to have
changed—she seemed less competitive and he seemed more open. They
moved in together again. In September 1984, Spielberg told Cosmopolitan
magazine, “I’m intolerably happy! I’ve been dedicated to fi lms before.
Now for the fi rst time in my life, I’m committed to another person.” 5
Their son, Max, was born on June 13, 1985, and the couple married on
November 27, 1985. Spielberg was 37 and very ready to be a father. All
the movies he had made with children had made him aware of how much
he enjoyed them, but once Max was born, he no longer had the urge to
have children in his movies. The couple built a home in the Hamptons,
bought another in Trump Tower, and built Amblin Studios. In 1986,
Irving went to Israel to make Rumpelstiltskin, and Spielberg went with her.
(Trivia: She did the singing for Jessica Rabbit in the Spielberg-produced
Who Framed Roger Rabbit. ) Richard Dreyfuss says of Irving, “She’s protective
of her family and friends. I don’t think she lets a lot of people get to
know her. But if people perceive her as cold, it’s not true. She’s got a real
soft heart. And she can hurt. She’s very vulnerable. There’s a side to Amy
that is so giving and caring.” 6 But the relationship just could not make
it, and they divorced in 1989. Of Spielberg’s estimated $1 billion, Irving
received $100 million, a fi gure that still ranks among the highest marriage

42 STEVEN SPIELBERG
as a way to free it up.” 2 And with all of his success, he says that his children
are most impressed with his cartoon productions, Tiny Toons and Animaniacs.
In 1988, he and Lucas developed one of the most successful animation
hits, The Land Before Time, and its nine straight-to-video sequels.
Now that he has directed children in movies and become a father several
times over—Max (Spielberg’s), Jessica (Capshaw’s), Sasha, Sawyer, Destry,
Theo (adopted), and Mikaela (adopted)—Spielberg knows that even
children’s movies must be logical. “When my kids see movies, they’ll buy
anything if it sort of makes sense. But if they’re confused, they get pulled
out of the movie.” 3 From Continental Divide to the hugely popular movie
series, Back to the Future, Amblin Entertainment has produced some very
successful and important movies, and there are more to come including
Indiana Jones 4 and Jurassic Park IV, both due out around 2008.
INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM
When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas decided to make the fi rst
Indiana Jones movie in 1977, they also agreed to make two sequels if
not three. Even so, Spielberg would later say that he made Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade (1989) to make up for Indiana Jones and the Temple
of Doom (1984). Similarly, Lucas’s second Star Wars movie, The Empire
Strikes Back, is much darker than the original, and it was made around
the same time, 1980–1983, as the second Indy movie. Both movies were
darker because they refl ected the lives of their creators at the time. George
Lucas had been hit very hard by divorce and the ensuing huge fi nancial
settlement, and Spielberg—still shaken by the deaths on the Twilight Zone
set—was also affected by the Lucas divorce because he had seen their marriage
as a rare good one. When it failed, Spielberg said, “I lost my faith in
marriage for a long time.” 4
In Temple of Doom , Indiana Jones winds up in a village in India where
everyone is starving, crops will not grow, and all of the children have gone
missing. The people think their travails are because of the theft of a sacred
stone, so Indy sets out to retrieve the stone. He is accompanied by nightclub
singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and Short Round (Ke Huy Quan). With
a budget of $28 million, the cast and crew covered thousands of miles from
California and Washington State to Sri Lanka and China. And Capshaw,
after beating out 120 other actresses for the role, found herself spending
fi ve months on three continents in not-very- pleasant conditions. In one
scene, she, Ford, and Ke Huy Quan had to walk through 20,000 insects.
(Trivia: Insects are another Spielberg phobia.) They also had to endure
12-hour days in temperatures up to 130 degrees. In one scene, Capshaw was

Chapter 4
REAL LIFE AND REEL LIFE,
1984–1991
HIS FIRST COMPANY: AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT
In March 1982, Steven Spielberg almost bought a major studio with
Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Michael Powell,
and George Lucas. They bid up to $20 million for Pinewood Studios outside
of London, but pulled out when the demanded price was raised to $30
million. One wonders what might have happened had these men formed a
partnership. In 1984, Spielberg did form a production company with longtime
friends, co-producers, and husband and wife team Frank Marshall
and Kathleen Kennedy: Amblin Entertainment. With a logo showing
Elliott and E.T. silhouetted against the moon, Amblin is located on the
Universal Studio lot. It is in the southwestern style of architecture and
features its own video arcade, full refreshment stand, kitchen with professional
chef, screening and cutting rooms, a gym, and a wishing well with
its own miniature shark. The walls of Spielberg’s offi ce are covered with
movie posters and Norman Rockwell paintings. He discovered Rockwell
when he was a Boy Scout and his troop kept a copy of the painter’s “Spirit
of America.” He began collecting with the original of that painting and
now owns at least 25. The Amblin headquarters is only two stories high
because of Spielberg’s fear of heights and elevators. The company has a
television department, a merchandising division, an animation department,
and a motion picture department. For the New Yorker, Stephen
Schiff writes that Spielberg pretty much leaves the fi rst two to others and
enjoys the other two—as both a director and producer.
Spielberg says that he enjoys working with animation since “my imagination
is becoming less and less affordable” 1 so he has “turned to animation

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER, 1978–1983 39
7. Sanello, 90.
8. Quoted in Sanello, 97.
9. Quoted in Sanello, 98.
10. Quoted in Sanello, 94.
11. Quoted in Sanello, 96.
12. Roger Ebert, The Great Movies II (New York: Broadway Books,
2005), 344.
13. Quoted in Sanello, 92.
14. Sanello, 92.
15. Sanello, 99.
16. Richard Schickel, “Slam! Bang! A Movie Movie,” Time, June 15, 1981,
reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000).
17. Ibid.
18. Quoted in Sanello, 91.
19. Quoted in Sanello, 117–118.
20. Sanello, 118.
21. Quoted in Sanello, 118.
22. Quoted in Sanello, 119.
23. Sanello, 119.
24. Quoted in Sanello, 119–120.
25. Sanello, 120.
26. Linda Sunshine, ed., E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: From Concept to Classic. The
Illustrated Story of the Film and the Filmmakers Series (New York: Newmarket
Press, 2002), 37.
27. Quoted in Sunshine, 40.
28. Quoted in Rubin, 53.
29. Ibid.
30. Quoted in Sanello, 103.
31. Quoted in Rubin, 53.
32. Quoted in Sunshine, 8.
33. Quoted in Sunshine, 168.
34. Quoted in Michael Sragow, “A Conversation with Steven Spielberg.” Rolling
Stone, July 22, 1982, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman
and Brent Notbohm, eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000),
108, 109–110.
35. Quoted in Stephen Farber and Marc Green, Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego,
and the Twilight Zone Case (New York: Ivy, 1989), 322.
36. Quoted in Farber and Green, 133–134.

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER, 1978–1983 39
7. Sanello, 90.
8. Quoted in Sanello, 97.
9. Quoted in Sanello, 98.
10. Quoted in Sanello, 94.
11. Quoted in Sanello, 96.
12. Roger Ebert, The Great Movies II (New York: Broadway Books,
2005), 344.
13. Quoted in Sanello, 92.
14. Sanello, 92.
15. Sanello, 99.
16. Richard Schickel, “Slam! Bang! A Movie Movie,” Time, June 15, 1981,
reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000).
17. Ibid.
18. Quoted in Sanello, 91.
19. Quoted in Sanello, 117–118.
20. Sanello, 118.
21. Quoted in Sanello, 118.
22. Quoted in Sanello, 119.
23. Sanello, 119.
24. Quoted in Sanello, 119–120.
25. Sanello, 120.
26. Linda Sunshine, ed., E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: From Concept to Classic. The
Illustrated Story of the Film and the Filmmakers Series (New York: Newmarket
Press, 2002), 37.
27. Quoted in Sunshine, 40.
28. Quoted in Rubin, 53.
29. Ibid.
30. Quoted in Sanello, 103.
31. Quoted in Rubin, 53.
32. Quoted in Sunshine, 8.
33. Quoted in Sunshine, 168.
34. Quoted in Michael Sragow, “A Conversation with Steven Spielberg.” Rolling
Stone, July 22, 1982, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman
and Brent Notbohm, eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000),
108, 109–110.
35. Quoted in Stephen Farber and Marc Green, Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego,
and the Twilight Zone Case (New York: Ivy, 1989), 322.
36. Quoted in Farber and Green, 133–134.

38 STEVEN SPIELBERG
into star Vic Morrow and two Asian child-actors, Renee Chen and My-ca
Dinh Le, killing all three instantly. Morrow’s daughters fi led a lawsuit in
1982, alleging that drugs and alcohol were used on the set. Authors Stephen
Farber and Marc Green write that in November 1983, the Morrow daughters
received a settlement between $800,000 and $900,000. Other lawsuits
were fi led, including one by each set of the parents of the children who
were killed. (Information about these settlements is unavailable.) On
December 1, 1982, Spielberg signed a sworn statement to the National
Transportation and Safety Board that he had never been on that set. The
set’s chauffeur, Carl Pittman, swore that Spielberg was not only on the set
but had asked him for use of the car after the accident. He later recanted
when he could not identify the director. Everyone else swore that Spielberg
was never on the set, and he was cleared of any wrongdoing. John Landis
was tried and acquitted for involuntary manslaughter. One of the jurors,
Crispin Bernardo, said, “The fact that Landis was acquitted doesn’t mean
he’s not guilty of anything. His acquittal does not mean lack of guilt,
but insuffi ciency of proof.”35 Other jurors added that had the charge been
violating child labor laws, the verdict would have been guilty. The movie
was budgeted around $10 million, and it made approximately $6,614,000
its opening weekend. Eventually, it grossed around $29,500,000 in the
United States. It was nominated for four different awards but no Oscars.
The only time that Spielberg spoke publicly about the incident was in an
interview with Dale Pollock of the Los Angeles Times on April 13, 1983.
“This has been,” he says, “the most interesting year of my fi lm career. It
has mixed the best, the success of E.T., with the worst, the Twilight Zone
tragedy. A mixture of ecstasy and grief. It has made me grow up a little
more. The accident cast a pall on all 150 people who worked on this production.
We are still just sick to the center of our souls.”36
NOTES
1. Quoted in Chris Hodenfi eld, “1941: Bombs Away.” Rolling Stone, January 24,
1980, reprinted in Steven Spielberg Interviews, Lester D. Friedman and Brent Notbohm,
eds. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 70.
2. Quoted in Frank Sanello, Spielberg: The Man, The Movies, The Mythology
(Dallas: Taylor, 1996), 76.
3. Quoted in Hodenfi eld, 72.
4. Quoted in Sanello, 79.
5. Quoted in Sanello, 83.
6. Quoted in Susan Goldman Rubin, Steven Spielberg: Crazy for Movies
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 46.

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER, 1978–1983 37
before they were put on the market. In 1985, Spielberg spoke out against
videos, but when fans clamored for E.T., he realized their profi tability and
relented in 1988. He received 50 percent of the video’s profi ts, eventually
making $70 million from video sales alone. The video was released
again during the fi lm’s twentieth anniversary, this time with “Behind the
Scenes” among the bonus features. The Rolling Stone wrote, “At 34, Steven
Spielberg is in any conventional sense the most successful movie director
in Hollywood, America, the Occident, the planet Earth, the solar system
and the galaxy.”30 Nominated for nine Oscars, the movie won best music,
best sound effects, and best special effects. Spielberg was again nominated
for best director but lost to Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), who
said that he believed E.T. to be the more “exciting, wonderful, innovative
piece of fi lm.”31 The movie was extraordinary in other ways as well.
One report is that an autistic child spoke his fi rst words after seeing the
movie. (True or not, it’s a great tale.) Spielberg saw it as “a celebration of
friendship and love and promoting understanding between races and cultures.”
32 Time reporter Richard Corliss wrote, “A miracle movie and one
that confi rms Spielberg as a master storyteller of his medium . . . . A perfectly
poised mixture of sweet comedy and ten-speed melodrama, of death
and resurrection, of a friendship so pure and powerful it seems like an idealized
love.”33 Spielberg was quite happy with the results of the movie and
with the cleansing effect it had on his childhood memories. “I’m not into
psychoanalysis, but E.T. is a fi lm that was inside me for many years and
could only come out after a lot of suburban psychodrama. . . . With the
exception of Close Encounters, in all my movies before E.T., I was giving
out, giving off, things before I would bring them in. There were feelings
I developed in my personal life . . . that I had no place to put.”34 Spielberg
also discovered how much he loved working with children and realized
that he wanted to be a father. From the very beginning, everything about
the movie fell into place, which he saw as a sign that it was the right
movie at the right time.
TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE
Sadly, the huge success of E.T. was followed by tragedy during the fi lming
of Twilight Zone The Movie, released in 1983. Four directors fi lmed four
episodes, all but one being remakes of episodes from the original television
series, Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959–1987). Spielberg directed the second
segment, “Kick the Can,” which tells the story of an old man who visits a
retirement home and gives the residents back their youthful bodies. But it
was while John Landis was directing his segment that a helicopter crashed

36 STEVEN SPIELBERG
the director’s methods. Thomas remembered pep talks before each scene
and playing video games during breaks. Barrymore remembered Spielberg’s
gentle way of talking to her when she needed to cry in a scene. Although
Dee Wallace Stone seemed to have only good memories at the reunion,
several years before she had had some critical things to say about the making
of the movie. Spielberg, she says, was obsessed with secrecy before the
movie’s release and even made everyone sign a promise not to divulge
anything about it. She was also disappointed that she was not only refused
star billing but was left out of the movie’s advertisements. When Stone’s
career did not fare well after E.T., she was asked if she had been blacklisted
by Spielberg. She declined to comment.
The character of E.T. was, like Bruce in Jaws—three different E.T.s.
Unlike Bruce, however, all three of the E.T.s worked. They were made
by Carlo Rambaldi, the same man who made the alien puppet for Close
Encounters. One E.T. could walk by itself; one could show facial expressions;
and one was a suit worn by short actors. To allow for E.T.’s cables,
interior sets were built on 10-foot elevated fl oors. Spielberg credits his
director of photography, Allen Daviau, not only with making E.T. come
alive but with making E.T. loveable and believable. Daviau accomplished
this by making sure that E.T. was never shown in harsh lighting. And
fi nally, John Williams added his magic with his now-recognizable score.
M&Ms were the candy of choice in the movie when Elliott entices E.T.,
but the Mars company turned down the offer. The Hershey Food Company
had just introduced Reese’s Pieces and gladly lent their product to
the movie. The result? Sales for the new candy increased by 65 percent
when the movie came out. (Trivia: In the original version, police carried
guns. Spielberg so disliked the image that he used computer graphics to
delete the weapons for the movie’s re-release.)
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in
France in May 1982. Kathleen Kennedy said, “You couldn’t even hear the
end of the movie because people were on their feet stomping and yelling.
And this huge searchlight started to sweep the top balcony to fi nd us, and
Steven stood up. It was one of the most amazing experiences.”28 Spielberg
was presented to Queen Elizabeth when E.T. premiered in London; when
he gave a special screening to President and Mrs. Reagan, he says that
Nancy was crying toward the end of the fi lm while the president “looked
like a 10-year-old kid.”29 Once again, a Steven Spielberg movie had broken
all box-offi ce records, grossing $700 million before merchandising—
another fi nancial market into which Spielberg had recently entered. E.T.
earned at least $1 billion in movie-related items, with Spielberg getting
10 percent of each item sold. He also had full approval of the products

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER, 1978–1983 35
he had enjoyed. Before she began writing the script in October 1980, she
asked a group of children what powers they think an alien should have.
She was surprised at two of their answers—the powers of telekinesis and
healing—so she gave those powers to Elliott and E.T. Their psychic connection
is exemplifi ed in the movie when E.T. gets drunk while alone at
home and Elliott acts as if he is drunk when he is away at school and has
not been drinking. Spielberg sold the idea to Universal even while he was
editing Raiders, and by the time he lost his second Best Director Oscar,
he was fi lming it. Although he believes that storyboards and rehearsals
are necessities for action movies, he also believes that they can stifl e intimate
movies and the spontaneity of children. He even shot the movie in
sequence to make it seem real—as if the events really were unfolding to
everyone. This made the actors bond more tightly to their fellow actors
and to the story, so much so that when E.T. is dying and when he leaves,
the cast and crew were really heartbroken.
But a month before shooting there was still no Elliott. Spielberg just
could not fi nd the right child. Producer Kathleen Kennedy says that you
can almost tell if a child is right for a part when the child enters the room.
There is something in their carriage and character that does or does not
fi t the role. They heard about 11-year-old Henry Thomas from Jack Fisk,
who had directed Thomas in Raggedy Man. When Thomas’s fi rst reading
with Spielberg did not go well, the director told him to think about his
dog dying. Thomas was superb and even cried in the scene. According to
legend, Spielberg said, “Okay, kid, you got the part!”26 (Trivia: Thomas
ad-libbed the scene with his toys and E.T. after he was given the direction
to “introduce” the toys to the alien.) Drew Barrymore, Spielberg’s
goddaughter, had auditioned for Poltergeist, which Spielberg produced in
1982. While she was not right for that movie, Spielberg kept her in mind
for something else, which turned out to be E.T. Evidently, Barrymore wove
intricate and expressive stories to the director, which fi t the personality of
Gertie. As for the older brother, Michael, Spielberg says that Robert Mac-
Naughton, who had previous stage experience, was the anchor to the family.
Peter Coyote’s clumsiness had lost him the role of Indiana Jones, but
Spielberg wanted the trait for the role of “Keys” in E.T. Lastly, Dee Wallace
Stone was chosen as the children’s mother. The roles of adults were to
be very low-key, but Stone was so much like a kid herself that her presence
helped, rather than hurt, that feeling. According to Stone, “Steven is a
master at casting. He watches people and has a real talent for taking their
quality and putting them in the role that’s right for them.”27 Eighteen years
later the entire cast reunited to celebrate the release of the newly edited
DVD, and Henry Thomas (Elliott) and Drew Barrymore (Gertie) recalled