What does steven spielberg do

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I loved The Flim-Flam Man I loved Scarecrow with Gene Hackman. I loved Elmer Gantry - which I think is a bit of a scam movie. You know, some of those villains, you have to sympathize with them. I've had darkness in all the films, in E. I just don't think people have stopped to study. They may not have stopped to think when they assume that I suddenly developed a dark side because of Schindler's List When critics carp about my dark side, I always wonder, "Well, did they really look in the shadows?

I'm very relaxed about Oscars. I'll admit to you that I wasn't relaxed before I won for Schindler's List I was pretty much worried about it and almost wanted to get one behind me to get the anxiety out of my gut every time December reared its ugly head.

Whatever happens, happens. I had a lot to prove when I made Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark because I had done three movies in a row that had gone wildly over budget and schedule, , Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws I was ready to turn over a new leaf and Raiders was my chance to make a movie responsibly - under schedule and under budget. Fortunately George Lucas gave me a lot of support and help with preparation.

I wasn't dreaming of big box office or making a classic; all I was focused on was making a film the audience would like and doing it in a way that was fiscally responsible. I think we were all surprised by the worldwide success of Raiders.

I remember hearing people quote lines from the film or seeing kids pretend to be the characters, and realizing that the film had gone beyond box office success and had entered popular culture. That was one of the happy aftershocks of making that movie. More than anything, we want our films to be watchable and Raiders is a movie I can watch with my kids and completely detach myself from the fact that I directed it.

I sit back and enjoy it. For a kid who grew up dreaming of making memorable images, it's a thrill to know Raiders is one of those films where people just have to see the silhouette of the main character, and they immediately think, "Indiana Jones! My first assignment was to show Michael Crichton around the Universal lot. Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place.

In no way, shape or form am I doing that. I'm simply asking why the world feels that the only acceptable response to violence is counter-violence. I'm not answering that question. Just asking it. When I did War Horse , I was struck by the reality of being out in the fresh air, seeing the sky changing and light moving, and seeing the performances in real time. But being corralled in a digital world with no way out on Tintin became so thrilling to me, I was completely enveloped and enraptured.

Daniel Day-Lewis would have always been counted as one of the greatest of actors, were he from the silent era, the golden age of film or even some time in cinema's distant future. When you listen, you learn, You absorb like a sponge - and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time. I tried twice to get Cubby Broccoli to hire me to direct a Bond film.

The first time I met him in person was after I'd done Duel I told him I wanted to do a Bond picture more than anything else in the world and he said, "We only hire British, experienced directors. And I'd tell him what scenes we'd shot. Carlo Rambaldi was E. John has given movies a musical language that can be spoken and understood in every country on this planet. John Williams is the most common language through which people of all ages communicate and remember to each other why they love movies.

I am the only person who can say that I've collaborated with John for exactly half of his life. Without question, he has been the single most significant contributor to my success as a filmmaker. This nation's greatest composer and our national treasure is also one of the greatest friends I have ever had in my entire life. There are parts of Hook I love. I'm really proud of my work right up through Peter being hauled off in the parachute out the window, heading for Neverland.

I'm a little less proud of the Neverland sequences, because I'm uncomfortable with that highly stylized world that today, of course, I would probably have done with live-action character work inside a completely digital set. But we didn't have the technology to do it then, and my imagination only went as far as building physical sets and trying to paint trees blue and red. That was the main criticism. The other criticism was that I had softened the book.

I have always copped to that. I made the movie I wanted to make from Alice Walker's book. Alice was on the set a lot of the time and could have always stepped forward to say, "You know, this is too Disney.

This is not the way I envisioned the scene going down. There were certain things in the [lesbian] relationship between Shug Avery and Celie that were finely detailed in Alice's book, that I didn't feel could get a [PG] rating. And I was shy about it. In that sense, perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Shug and Celie, because I did soften those.

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that. It has a scent and it is imperfect. If you get too close to the moving image, it's like impressionist art. And if you stand back, it can be utterly photo-realistic.

You can watch the grain, which I like to think of as the visible, erratic molecules of a new creative language. After all, this "stuff" of dreams is mankind's most original medium, and dates back to Today, its years are numbered, but I will remain loyal to this analogue art-form until the last lab closes.

He wanted to wait a year. And it was a masterstroke because he had a year to do research. He had a year to find the character in his own private process. He had a year to discover how Lincoln sounded, and he found the voice. He had Lincoln so embedded in his psyche, in his soul, in his mind, that I would come to work in the morning and Lincoln would sit behind his desk, and we could begin. President, but that was my idea.

I also wore a suit every day which I don't usually do when I'm directing. Everybody was dressed up in their period wardrobe. I did not wear 19th century wardrobe. I wore pretty good clothes from this era.

I just wanted to blend in. We knew we were in the 21st century at all times. But once you stepped onto the stages of the White House, everybody really felt that they were making a contribution to remembering this critical moment in our shared history. I don't plan my career. I don't think I'll go dark, dark, dark, then light, then dark.

I react spontaneously to what falls into my arms, to what is right at the time. They're the only times I've said, "Okay, I need to make these pictures for the public because they're craving it. I didn't want to make a serious picture like Schindler's List It boggles my mind how much I feel is left on my plate. There are things on the other side of the supper table stewing in pots that I'm not really even aware of.

I would retire if I didn't feel that way. Artificial Intelligence ] A. That's kind of the way Hollywood works today. Small margins. Close Encounters of the Third Kind made so much money and rescued Columbia from bankruptcy. It was the most money I ever made, but it was a meagre success story. The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who I think that science fiction is the child of every soul with an imagination. There's no predicting what the next generation of imaginative writers and directors be giving all of us.

Sci-fi, in a way, is the greatest exercise. It's like turning your brain into a muscle. It just exercises every single aspect of your brain. It sometimes forces filmmakers to think, on the one hand, as a quantum physicist and, on the other hand, as a capricious idealist.

It's fun. It's like when actors say they would rather play the villain than the hero because the villain has more character. Science fiction is the character of every genre. I actually have a dream sci-fi project that I'm not ready to talk about yet. But it's in the early, early, early planning stages and I'm very excited about it. It will be an original screenplay. I'm not going to write it. I wrote the story and somebody else will write the screenplay. It was required reading.

How do you require a child of let's say twelve years-old to read 'A Tale of Two Cities'? What I did was just make little stick figures in the dog-eared sections of the book, one frame at a time, in different positions. And it was like a flip-book. I just did flip-books and saw these images come to life. That was the first time I was able to create an image that moved. I've often wondered what gets me to direct and what gets me to produce.

I've never been able to answer the question adequately even for myself. When something gets a stranglehold on me and compels me to direct it, I don't question why. I don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I just know what it feels like to be overwhelmed with a desire to make a movie. And I also know as a businessman what it means to be overwhelmed with a desire to produce a good story. But there's a great difference between production and direction for me.

Once I'm producing something, I never think, "Gee, I wonder what it would have been like if I had directed it. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.

Whether in success or in failure, I'm proud of every single movie I've ever directed. I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That's never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad's 8-millimeter movie camera.

The thrill hasn't changed at all. In fact, as I've gotten older, it's actually increased, because now I appreciate the collaboration. When I was a kid, there was no collaboration, it's you with a camera bossing your friends around.

But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself. My job was constantly to keep a movie family going. I'm blessed with the same thing that John Ford and Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were blessed with, a mini-industry very similar to the one from the golden era of Hollywood, where it was the same people making movies with you each and every time.

And it makes life so much more enjoyable when you get to go home to your family and go to work with your other family. We were absolutely spellbound by the brilliance of the performances and especially the way the director observed his players - the way he just let the characters breathe. The spaces were as important as what they said - what they weren't saying - and we just felt that it was a profound love story and whether or not it plays in the United States was not a criterion for any of our choices.

We didn't think about how it was going to play; we just were really happy that somebody had the courage to tell the story the way they told it. He made a gift to the world with his emotional epic Gandhi and he was the perfect ringmaster to bring the dinosaurs back to life as John Hammond in Jurassic Park He was a dear friend and I am standing in an endless line of those who completely adored him.

I could never have been an accountant. I got a D in math. And it was all in the script too. However, I don't want that in my movies. I want our century-plus medium to keep its filmic look and I like seeing very fine, swimming grain up there on the screen.

To me, it's just more alive and it imbues an image with mystery, so it's never literal. I love movies that aren't literally up in my face with images so clear there is nothing left to our imaginations. Had I shot it on a digital camera, the Omaha Beach landings in Saving Private Ryan would have crossed the line for those that found them almost unbearable.

Paintings done on a computer and paintings done on canvas require an artist to make us feel something. To be the curser or the brush, that is the question and certainly both can produce remarkable results. But doesn't the same hold true for the cinematic arts? Digital or celluloid? Vive la difference! Shouldn't both be made available for an artist to choose? When I think of 8mm, I think of the movies.

This is something that I'll be doing for the rest of my life. He celebrates the frame, not just what happens inside of it.

He's like a classic painter. So I have to watch The Searchers I have to. Almost every time. I never tire of it. It has so many superlatives. I think one of the reasons it came out so chaotic is I really didn't have a vision for If Bob Zemeckis was the director, I'm convinced he would have done a much better job because that was really the kind of film the author should have stepped forward and directed.

I think what killed the comedy was the amount of destruction, and the sheer noise level. I often describe as having your head stuck in a pinball machine while somebody is hitting tilt over and over again. So I found this theatre in Texas called the Medallion that was my good luck theatre, so naturally I wanted to do the preview there. But that preview was not like the first three previews.

I actually looked over the entire audience midway through the film and at least 20 per cent of the audience had their hands over their ears. I knew we were in big trouble at that point. At the end of the preview, Sid Sheinberg came over to me and said, "There is a movie somewhere in this mess. We should go off and find it. It was a very unhappy experience. But, at the time, I wanted it - the bigness, the power, hundreds of people at my beck and call, millions of dollars at my disposal, and everybody saying "Yes Zanuck Documentary Self - Interviewee.

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TV Series documentary Self - TV Movie documentary Self - Director. George Lucas Documentary Self. Amity Point Lifestation Worker. Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters Documentary Self. Star Trek Related Videos. See more ». Spouse: Kate Capshaw 5 children See more ». Children: Sasha Spielberg See more ». Relatives: Anne Spielberg sibling See more ». Edit Did You Know? Personal Quote: I turned down Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Spider-Man , two movies that I knew would be phenomenally successful, because I had already made movies like that before and they offered no challenge to me.

I don't need my ego to be reminded. Trademark: He frequently uses music by John Williams. Star Sign: Sagittarius. Getting Started Contributor Zone ». Edit page. I dumped all my ideas on him.

It can also trip him up — sometimes literally. On the set of The BFG, a film about the friendship between a kindly giant and a little girl that mixes live action and motion-capture animation, and frequently required directing on three different scales at once, the floor was festooned with snaking camera cables. We would laugh at him and he would laugh, too. His mind is so full of ideas, full of thoughts. I asked him once what element he is: earth, water, air or fire. Would you believe he said air?

If during the noughties, when the director was juggling expensive candy like The Adventures Of Tintin with works such as Minority Report and Munich , the question for audiences was, which Spielberg is going to show up? The answer, at least over the past few years, would seem to be: both. I started to look into his life and realised that he was the kind of person that, in a very unacceptable way, based on all my values and standards, would sometimes purposely say things to get a rise out of people, just to watch their reactions.

I think a person who is truly antisemitic, that comes out in the work. It comes out in the laundry. There, it was Spielberg the showman and business altruist. Here, it is Spielberg the dream-maker and corporate entertainment giant. Mathison had been complaining of lack of sleep.

I thought it was related to the fact that we were only a couple of weeks away from wrapping.