Steven Spielberg

How did Steven Spielberg make the money to secure the number three spot on Vanity Fair's highest paid in Hollywood?

Theme parks, Fifty Million in “Universal-theme-park royalties and consulting fees.”

Maybe he needs more than money to motivate him into directing another Indiana Jones film.

Look forward to more films like Super 8 pimping his name and in turn pimping Indiana Jones to push other projects.
 

michael

Well-known member
T.S. Quint: I was going to propose to her.

Brodie: Where?

T.S. Quint: The Universal Tour.

Brodie: You're kidding. What part?

T.S. Quint: When Jaws popped out of the water.

Brodie: That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard.

T.S. Quint: Too bad I'm not trying to marry you
 
Maybe you know this, maybe you don't...

Outtakes from my 1982 Rolling Stone talk with Spielberg

Q: It's fascinating that you say you've been "digging holes." A lot of people would say you've been building monuments because your way of escape has been into extremely extroverted things.

A: It seemed to me that with the making of E.T., I wasn't interested in showing off. I wasn't interested in spinning out entertaining things you've never seen before, although that does happen in E.T. I was more interested in collecting myself through some of the feelings I had developed via Close Encounters and via my personal relationships and my family life, my social life, and me being a person who is looking for self-fulfillment - and not just fulfillment from Hollywood or New York but fulfillment for my own personal needs. When 1941 came along, there was no place to put all these feelings - there was not one character in the movies, not one situation, not one scene where I was able to give off what I had learned about feelings from Close Encounters.

So I thought, well, I'm going to make my little personal film with kids. And I began writing a little script and it eventually didn't pan out and wasn't produced. And then Raiders came along. And I was able to give a little more of myself to Raiders because there's lots of humanity in Harrison Ford and there's a lot of comedy with him throughout the movie, and that was partially my contribution. Yet I couldn't give it wholesale because the genre and the tempo contradicted what I was feeling. So I was this kid with tears in my eyes, making this matinee adventure film.

Between shots on Raiders, I would hang out with Melissa Mathison [the co-screenwriter of The Black Stallion, she marred Harrison Ford in 1983, and separated from him in 2001]; we were turning over rocks, looking for scorpions. Every fifth rock a scorpion would charge and we would jump back and scream. It was terribly frightening. The darn thing's tail would be in the air, he'd be brandishing his stinger and his claws like a little Maine lobster having at you. And I remember between thrills and screams and yelling through my bullhorn 100 yards away - you know, "Are we rigged for shooting?" and getting the bullhorn back, "10 more minutes," which always means 20 - I had time to tell Melissa most of the story.
 
Steven Spielberg to Forrest Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland

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Dear Forry,

Thank you for your kind and very amusing note the other day.

Things are going very well over here in Burbank ? the next RAIDERS movie is in full prep. and casting is insane ? I need a monkey, a great kid and hundreds of fruit bats!!

And they said filmmaking was easy in college!!

Please start another movie mag. I grew up with you ? now I want to grow old with you!

Best of everything,

Steven
 
Los Angeles Times June 10, 1981

THE GRAYING OF A CRAPSHOOTER
By DALE POLLOCK, Times Staff Writer

Steven Spielberg is growing up. The Wunderkind director of "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and now "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is 33 now, his face minus its boyish fat, his view of the world a little less wide-eyed. "We're more a mouse pack than a rat pack," he says of his closeknit contemporaries, producer' and "Raiders" collaborator George Lucas, directors Francis Ford Coppola, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese and John Milius. "All of us are going through our Peter Pan stage of trying to hold on to whatever vestiges of our childhood are left," Spielberg said, relaxing in his new offices at MGM the other day. Dressed in his usual blue jeans and sports shirt, with a space shuttle cap perched on his head, Spielberg sat in the shadow of a giant "Raiders of the Lost Ark" poster. "We're like a wave on its way to the shore?we're heading for the rocks." The childhood evoked for "Raiders" is the Saturday afternoon matinee. Spielberg recalls going to the Kiva Theater in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he grew up. The afternoon would include a newsreel, coming attractions, 10 cartoons, a Republic serial and then two feature films. But it was serials like "Tailspin Tommy" and "Spy Smasher" that drew Spielberg back week after week. "I wanted to create that same kind of entertainment in 'Raiders,' " he explained. "A film that took itself seriously when we had to be logical, but could be humorous without sending up anything. All the humor in the movie had to come from the characters, not the situations." The characters in "Raiders" have no trouble being bigger than life: Indiana Jones, the bullwhip cracking archeologist turned adventurer; Marion Ravenwood, the booze guzzling and brawling heroine, and a cast of evil Nazis that could have given Peter Lone bad dreams. All this is a far cry from '1941," Spielberg's last film, bombed by the critics. He is quick to point out that the World War II comedy returned its $31 million negative cost and $11-million worldwide advertising budget, but acknowledges the film had its defects too. It was the most expensive situation comedy ever conceived," Spielberg said. 'The film essentially missed because it was overdone. It went from a small pepper steak to burned Chateaubriand. I tried hard to season it, and wound up killing the taste." But Spielberg insists there are moments in "1941" that "I'll be proud of for the rest of my life." And he's irritated only at the fact people seem to want him and other directors to be punished for their cinematic and financial excesses. "If we don't take chances, who will? If Francis (Coppola) doesn't take his Machiavellian risks, and John Landis doesn't exploit the success of 'Animal House' with 'The Blues Brothers' and if I can't try to make the noisiest movie of all time ?without some degree of failure, you can't move ahead." Spielberg fervently believes audiences no longer wait to watch "safe" movies, the kind of films that predominated in the 19508 and '60s. "You've got to keep trying and taking risks. Making films is a real crapshoot and you just have to hire the people who have a sense of the audience when they roll the dice. That's what my contemporaries have, that sense of audience to back up the conceptual risks of their motives." Not since the German migration to Hollywood in the 1930s has there been such a unified by age, upbringing and taste, group of film makers. Lucas, Coppola and Spielberg see each other's films in rough cut form, ex-change points (profit participations) in their movies and trade ideas back and forth freely. The San Francisco area serves as a nexus for this group, which also includes editor Walter Murch ("Apocalypse Now"), producer-directors Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood (the upcoming "Dragonslayer"), director-cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("Black Stallion") and screen writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz ("American Graffiti"). Spielberg says he?s still waiting for the next generation of film makers to arrive, and he's surprised it's been so long in coming. "It's been almost a decade since we came on the scene in a big surge. But I suppose the stakes are higher now. It's hard to break in on a $10 or $20 million picture." There's one area in which Spielberg separates himself from Lucas and Coppola. He has no inclination to either own a movie studio, like Coppola's Zoetrope complex, or retreat from Hollywood and set up a safe haven else where as Lucas has done with his Marin County based Skywalker Ranch, which Spielberg dubs "Lucas Land." "I have enough trouble directing movies," says the man who seems to have no trouble directing movies . "I don't want to be an emperor of high finance. I enjoy going out to the middle of nowhere and getting 400 extras to hit their marks. I'll always be the worker bee, never essentially working for myself." Spielberg looked out the, window at the vast MGM studio complex. "What we're really talking about is real estate. I'd rather rent than buy." Soon he'll begin work on "A Boy's Life," a look at a contemporary 15-year-old that may finally be the "little" movie Spielberg has wanted to make ever since "Jaws." As usual, he won't discuss the film in any detail?Spielberg is a great believer in movie secrecy. "It pre-vents the audience from imagining what the movie will be like." But "A Boy's Life" will be, Spielberg hopes, a more personal, incisive movie than some of his previous films. As a director he's often been criticized for being strong on special effects and weak on characters and their relationships. It's a criticism he doesn't take lightly. 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters' and 'Raiders' would not have involved the audience as entertainment were it not for the characters," he shoots back. "Otherwise people would have rooted for the shark. It's hard to see a caress in a mural. Sometimes people miss the gentleness in my films." Then, in a reflective moment, he says, "I may never have the instinct and angst to make a movie like 'Raging Bull.' I would have turned it more into 'Rocky' and less of a trauma drama. As much as I'd like to be, I'm not Marty Scorsese." Then the boyish grin reappears. "But I'm working on my dark side, really l am. I'm working on it every day."
 

Montana Smith

Active member
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/49921

Steven Spielberg and Quint have an epic chat all about JAWS as it approaches its 36th Anniversary!

Published at: Jun 06, 2011 6:22:42 AM CDT


Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Let me set the stage for this. I put out my feelers out a couple months back with some people at Dreamworks (with much help from mega publicist Deb Wuliger) about getting Steven Spielberg on the phone to talk Jaws, the idea being we could time it to its pending anniversary.

That was the pitch, but that was all cover. I really just wanted to talk to the director of my favorite movie of all time ABOUT my favorite movie of all time. I?m sure my ruse was as transparent as clean plate glass window (I don?t hide my geekiness very well), but the kind souls around Spielberg allowed my request to make it to him and I heard back an enthusiastic yes right before Memorial Day weekend.

We were going to schedule a time between then and June 20th, which was the latest the interview could go up as that was the anniversary of the release of Jaws in 1975, but as of Thursday afternoon I hadn?t heard anything back.

I went to the Alamo?s Super 8 marathon, which included a surprise screening of Super 8, followed by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Scanners and John Carpenter?s The Thing and when I got home at nearly 4am I checked my email to find out Spielberg had an opening in his schedule for 12:30pm my time the next morning.

Of course I had to watch Jaws while compiling a list of questions, so that gave me a little more than 4 hours of sleep before the interview.

I went in not knowing how much time I had with Spielberg? it could have been 5 minutes or 50, I had no idea? but I was bound and determined to milk my time for as much as humanly possible.

When the words, ?Eric, I?m transferring you to Steven Spielberg?s office. Please hold a moment? hit my ears I won?t lie? my nerves were on end. Could I somehow not be Chris Farley in this scenario? Was that even possible?

But, like my brief encounter with the man on the set of War of the Worlds, once the conversation began the nerves went away and I was just excited to have the opportunity to talk with Steven Spielberg about Jaws.

Now, we cover a few other things as well. The conversation occasionally splinters off to his other films, including Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, E.T. and Close Encounters, but Jaws is the focus.

Let?s dive into this thing, shall we? Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!


Quint: How?s it going, sir?

Steven Spielberg: Hey, Eric. How ya? doing?

Quint: It?s going well. How?re you?

Steven Spielberg: Good! So, what?s up? Well, I know what?s up with you. I read all your stuff.

Quint: Well, I watch all your movies, so we?re even.

Steven Spielberg: Last time we talked was a long time ago, it was on the (War of the Worlds) set (You can read about that visit here and here). You did the Indy thing, too. I remember that. (Referring to this not-quite set visit gathering of geeks during the filming of Indiana Jones 4).

Quint: Yeah, the War of the Worlds set visit was the big one for me. That?s where I had my big geek out.

Steven Spielberg: (laughs) Well, I geek out, too. So don?t think it?s just you!

Quint: Of course you do. I loved that when we met on the set the first things we talked about were Ray Harryhausen and Willis O?Brien. Their influence can be felt in your films and your movies were almost gateway drugs to discovering more about their work for me.

Steven Spielberg: Well, I?m glad you?re amongst us, making us remember that every decade there?s a new trend and one trend owes legions to its predecessors.

Quint: Especially now it must be hitting you dead center seeing how your very specific visual style is being replicated by the next generation of filmmakers. I mean, JJ Abrams? Super 8 is obviously a loving tribute to your films, down to a very specific look.

Steven Spielberg: JJ was raised in those decades of movies that all of my colleagues made and continue to make. So, JJ (was brought up in) the same way I was raised, by a decade of filmmakers who I am beholden to. So, it all comes out in the laundry.

Quint: I really appreciate you taking the time to look back at Jaws with me?.

Steven Spielberg: Sure, sure.

Quint: Obviously the movie means a lot to me and going through that new making of book, Jaws: Memories From Martha?s Vineyard, it really did strike me just how important it was that you made the personality Amity that of Martha?s Vineyard. It makes Amity feel like a real town. So, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about how you pulled so many locals into the movie and how much of that was a creative choice and how much of that was political to help you ease the troubled waters of filming on location.

Steven Spielberg: Well, I didn?t know anything about politics in those days. I was just trying to find as much naturalism to play against the basic size of the shark. I didn?t want this film to be a mythological tale and if everybody played as big as the shark weighed and measured nobody would have believed the shark was real if the people hadn?t been as real.

So, I looked to the community of Martha?s Vineyard, and also off into the Boston area, to find local people that would make the audience feel that the story was truly happening not in Hollywood, but on a fictitious island called Amity.

Quint: That was also your reasoning for wanting to actually shoot on the ocean as well, right?

Steven Spielberg: Right, exactly, because if I made the movie in a tank it would have had that same mythological feel that the Spencer Tracy film, The Old Man and the Sea, has.

Quint: Or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. When you see Kirk Douglas fighting a giant squid, as awesome as that is, you know they shot that on a backlot somewhere.

Steven Spielberg: Yeah, exactly. I was naïve about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naïve about mother nature and the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank.

But had I to do it all over again I would have gone back to the sea because it was the only way for the audience to feel that these three men were cast adrift with a great white shark hunting them.

Quint: I think the real key to the fear that you put into the world populace, the fear of swimming, is the fact that it?s so obviously not just in a pool somewhere. Those creatures actually live and hunt in those waters and almost everybody has been swimming in the ocean, so there?s an easy access to that base fear.

Steven Spielberg: Right, right.

Quint: Even if the average filmgoer doesn?t know how movies are made, there?s something in their brain that clicks, that registers when something is real and sees the difference.

Steven Spielberg: That?s so true.

Quint: I know it was a headache, but I would hope looking back on it now you could say all the aggravation and stress was worth it.

Steven Spielberg: It was worth it because, for number one, Close Encounters, which was a film I had written and a film nobody seemed to want to make, everybody seemed to want it right after Jaws was a hit. So, the first thing Jaws did for me was it allowed a studio, namely Columbia, to greenlight Close Encounters. For number two, it gave me final cut for the rest of my career. But what I really owe to Jaws was creating in me a great deal of humility, about tempering my imagination with just sort of the facts of life.

That movie was more than just a filmmaking and eventually a filmgoers experience, that movie was all about human relationships both in front of and behind the scenes because people started to lose their noodles as we spent weeks and then many months on Martha?s Vineyard and then, later, in the Pacific Ocean around Catalina. It took its toll. It feels like half my work was talking people off the ledge, when cast and crew had no idea when we?d ever leave Martha?s Vineyard, when people could return to their wives and families and real lives. They kept turning to me saying, ?When are you going to finish the movie?? I kept saying, ?Ask Mother Nature! I don?t know! Ask the tides!?

What was going down was not human error, it was just the conditions at sea that made it untenable to really be doing what we were somehow doing. Everything on land went normal! Everything I shot on any form of land went like a normal movie. I actually was on schedule for the first part of the picture. I mistakenly blew all my cover; the scenes I could have held back in case there was a mechanical problem with the shark, in case there was a bad day at sea and we couldn?t shoot because of the height of the waves or the strength of the wind. I foolishly didn?t have enough cover to be able to go back to the shore to keep shooting the shore portions of Jaws and that was completely my fault and no one else?s.

So, when we were shut out many days because of mechanical problems and weather problems, all we could do was wait and bounce up and down on the waves and watch each other vomiting over the side.

Quint: Correct me if I?m wrong here, but you also used that time to come up with some creative workarounds and to flesh out the script, right.

Steven Spielberg: Yeah, it?s true. The shark not working was a godsend. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock than like Ray Harryhausen in the sense that Ray Harryhausen in his day could do anything he wanted because he had control of his art. When I didn?t have control of my shark it made me kind of rewrite the whole script without the shark. Therefore, in many people?s opinions the film was more effective than the way the script actually offered up the shark in at least a dozen more scenes that today is history.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Quint: Losing that creative thinking is something that worries me today when I see so many filmmakers using CG as a crutch. I worry that we lose some of give and take that often times forces creativity. I don?t know if you think about that at all now?

Steven Spielberg: I think that CG is a tool that often becomes a weapon of self-destruction. I certainly have done my share of CG since I was at the forefront of the revolution as a producer of YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, that had the first CG shot ever, and then JURASSIC PARK that the first CG characters ever. Jim Cameron in-between did brilliant CG work on THE ABYSS and then T2?

I?ve actually suffered from the wealth of riches that CG can give a filmmaker to almost over use the technology to get everything out of our brains and on to the screen when sometimes what?s fun is being denied your best ideas and then you?ve got to fall back on a compromise, which often turns out to be an even better idea. I fall victim to that, too.

Quint: I have to say that to this day, for whatever reason? perhaps the combination of the digital effects and Stan Winston?s dinosaurs, but when I watch Jurassic Park I don?t see the CG.

Steven Spielberg: That?s a testament to Dennis Muren, to Phil Tippett and to Stan Winston because the blend between? I mean, 65% of the first Jurassic Park is Stan Winston. I believe there?s only between 58 and 60 digital shots in the whole movie. That?s it. The sequel, that I directed, there were four times more digital shots than that.

In the first film it was actually Stan Winston actually working together with Dennis Muren putting their heads together to try to figure out how to make these blends from mechanical full-sized puppeteering to the digital wider shots.

Quint: Not to diverge too much into Jurassic Park, but there?s something to the personality of the dinosaurs as well. Look at the Raptor scene in the kitchen, for instance. The Raptors have a very stop motion quality, they remind me a lot of Ray Harryhausen?s creatures.

Steven Spielberg: What Ray Harryhausen did, and Ray?s always been a humongous influence on my work and I was so honored to be able to show Ray Harryhausen the very first digital shot that Dennis Muren cranked out as a test. Ray happened to be visiting me that day and I said, ?Ray, do you want to see a CG dinosaur?? He said, ?Sure,? so he went over to the art department where I was prepping Jurassic Park and I put on the three-quarter inch cassette into the big machine and Ray and I watched the Gallimimus (scene). They were all just rendered as skeletons, they had not been fleshed, but the movement was so smooth that I just got to watch Ray Harryhausen?s face watching the natural evolution from his art to the new era of digital characters.

Harryhausen embraced it immediately as a positive. He wasn?t sad to see the paradigm shift; he was a jubilant as you can imagine a young boy would be. I saw the child in him at that moment, which was for me one of the greatest moments of my life; looking into his eyes as he was watching what Dennis Muren had created.

Quint: I can imagine, man.

Steven Spielberg: What was I talking about before I went into my Ray Harryhausen fugue state? What I was saying was I was inspired by Ray Harryhausen because a lot of Ray Harryhausen?s characters stalked the humans. They just kind of like stalked them and they got into these frozen poses of real frightening imagery. I remembered that and so did Dennis Muren and so did Phil Tippett who really helped Dennis create dinosaurs that were natural and not cinematic.

I always brought the guys back to Ray Harryhausen because he was the one whose characters did such a scary job stalking all the humans in those big tableaus.

Quint: If you?re able to give a personality to your creatures that gets you 9/10ths of the way there. Once there?s a personality there it doesn?t feel like an effect.

Steven Spielberg: Right.

Quint: But let?s go back to Jaws. We have to talk about the casting of your leads. You must have sweated that a little bit because if the chemistry between your Quint, Brody and Hooper was flat then the whole second half of your movie doesn?t work.

Steven Spielberg: That?s true. Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director?s point of view. First I went to Lee Marvin and he said no. Then I went to Sterling Hayden and he said no. Then finally David Brown, who had just worked with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and said ?What about Robert Shaw?? I said, ?David, you?re a genius!? And Robert said yes. That was a simple story, although it took six months to cast Quint.

And I went to several actors before Roy Scheider. They didn?t turn me down, I just had decided they were not right for the part. I tested dozens of possible Brodys. I don?t want to mention any names because many of them are still with us.

But I was at a party at Andre Eastman?s house and I met Roy Scheider for the first time. He walked over to me and I was literally sitting on a couch with a Coca-Cola in my hand fretting over Jaws, that I wasn?t able to get this shark movie cast, and Roy sat down and introduced himself. Of course, I had loved him so much in The French Connection and then in The Seven Ups. Roy actually said to me, ?You have such a glum look on your face. What?s the matter?? I said, ?Aw, I?m having trouble casting my picture.? He actually said, ?Who have you gone out to?? I named a few names and looked at me and said, ?What about me?!?? He actually said, ?What about ME?!?? in only the way Roy could do that, with his voice kind of cracking the way it does when he hits that high note.

I looked at him and said, ?You?re right! What about you? Will you make my movie?? Without even asking for a script he said, ?Of course! If you want me, I?ll do it!? And we actually agreed at a party that he would play Brody? that night? at Andre Eastman?s house. And then he read the script and loved it, which was good because he could have read the script and thrown it back in my face. But he loved it.

And Richard Dreyfuss was my first choice. Richard Dreyfuss and Lorraine Gary were both my first choices and they said yes when I asked, so that was all good.

Quint: What?s great about the three leads of Jaws? it?s such a perfect product of its time. Those were guys who were both leading men and character actors. They still exist today, but it?s much rarer to find that combination. It was much more common to see character actors getting to top the bill in the ?70s and, again, with those guys in the lead the movie automatically has kind of reality, so you buy the shark. That?s something I?ve noticed you?ve done on a lot of your movies, you cast really interesting people in your lead roles.

Steven Spielberg: Well, people who are at least touchstones to the human race, that anybody can identify with and say, ?That could be me.? That?s all I look for in a movie that I go to see as an audience. Is there any character in the film that I can identify with; that I can experience these events through their eyes. That?s all I?m looking (for), somebody I can believe in.

Harrison Ford, who is iconic now, was so full of vulnerabilities in both Star Wars as Han Solo as well as then casting him as Indiana Jones, even though he was a big hero with a whip and a resolve to achieve all of us could identify with him. He wasn?t so out of reach that nobody could believe they never could become him.

Quint: You also beat the **** out of him in that first movie! (laughs)

Steven Spielberg: Yeah, exactly! That also helps the audience say that within some of the campiness of some of these set pieces there?s a great deal of character reality going on in the way he?s being batted around by the bad guys!

Quint: I?ve read that this is one of your favorite scenes in Jaws? The Indianapolis Speech in Jaws floors me every single time I watch the movie. If I even hear Robert Shaw start that speech I?m zoned in and nothing else exists in the universe, you know? So, do you remember shooting that scene? What was the vibe on the set? Was it weighty?

Steven Spielberg: We shot it twice. The first time we attempted to shoot it Robert came over to me and said, ?You know, Steven, all three of these characters have been drinking and I think I could do a much better job in this speech if you let me actually have a few drinks before I do the speech.? And I unwisely gave him permission.

He went into the Whitefoot, which was a big sort of support boat that we always took our lunch breaks on and all the bathrooms were on that boat, it was a big tug boat, and he went into the hold with my script girl Charlsie Bryant and I guess he had more than a few drinks because two crew members actually had to carry him onto the Orca and help him into his chair. I had two cameras on the scene and we never got through the scene, he was just too far gone. So, I wrapped the company at about 11 o?clock in the morning and Robert was taken back to his house on Martha?s Vineyard.

At about 2 o?clock in the morning my phone rings and it?s Robert. He had a complete blackout and had no memory of what had gone down that day. He said, ?Steven, tell me I didn?t embarrass you.? He was very sweet, but he was panic-stricken. He said, ?Steven, please tell me I didn?t embarrass you. What happened? Are you going to give me a chance to do it again?? I said, ?Yes, the second you?re ready we?ll do it again.?

The next morning he came to the set, he was ready at 7:30 out of make-up and it was like watching Olivier on stage. We did it in probably four takes.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Quint: It?s an electrifying moment. And one thing that I notice, if I?m ever able to break my attention away from Shaw himself, is just how spellbound Dreyfuss looks in that scene. That?s not acting. I can clearly tell that he?s enraptured by the performance he?s watching, just as much as I am.

Steven Spielberg: I think we were all watching a great performance and the actors on camera were watching a great performance; Roy and Richard. Richard was in all the shots because Roy was in a cutaway in a separate part of the cabin of the boat, but obviously on Richard?s face? you can see Matt Hooper in character, but you can also see Richard Dreyfuss in complete awe and admiration of this great actor.

Quint: It?s one of my favorite scenes in the history of cinema.

Steven Spielberg: I owe three people a lot for this speech. You?ve heard all this, but you?ve probably never heard it from me. There?s a lot of apocryphal reporting about who did what on Jaws and I?ve heard it for the last three decades, but the fact is the speech was conceived by Howard Sackler, who was an uncredited writer, didn?t want a credit and didn?t arbitrate for one, but he?s the guy that broke the back of the script before we ever got to Martha?s Vineyard to shoot the movie.

I hired later Carl Gottlieb to come onto the island, who was a friend of mine, to punch up the script, but Howard conceived of the Indianapolis speech. I had never heard of the Indianapolis before Howard, who wrote the script at the Bel Air Hotel and I was with him a couple times a week reading pages and discussing them.

Howard one day said, ?Quint needs some motivation to show all of us what made him the way he is and I think it?s this Indianapolis incident.? I said, ?Howard, what?s that?? And he explained the whole incident of the Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb being delivered and on its way back it was sunk by a submarine and sharks surrounded the helpless sailors who had been cast adrift and it was just a horrendous piece of World War II history. Howard didn?t write a long speech, he probably wrote about three-quarters of a page.

But then, when I showed the script to my friend John Milius, John said ?Can I take a crack at this speech?? and John wrote a 10 page monologue, that was absolutely brilliant, but out-sized for the Jaws I was making! (laughs) But it was brilliant and then Robert Shaw took the speech and Robert did the cut down. Robert himself was a fine writer, who had written the play The Man in the Glass Booth. Robert took a crack at the speech and he brought it down to five pages. So, that was sort of the evolution just of that speech.

Quint: I?d love to read the 10 page Milius version.

Steven Spielberg: I don?t think it exists. I know I don?t have it. I?ve been asked for it, everybody has been wanting to see it and John doesn?t have it because in those days we didn?t have computers, we didn?t have hard drives, it was just on pieces of paper!

I remember just saying, ?Hey, this is a movie! Somebody someday should do a movie just about the Indianapolis.?

But the other lucky thing about the shark not working was that we all did have a chance to hone the script and do improvisations and then Carl Gottlieb took the improvisations that I tape recorded and transcribed them, then he structured scenes and then we?d all collaborate with Carl on cutting the scenes down, making them short enough to still put into the movie and let the movie have its own narrative pace.

But Carl made great contributions to the movie. I brought him to Martha?s Vineyard to do comedy punch-up work because he?s a very funny guy, a very funny writer, and he wound up really staying there a long, long time helping all of us with all of the scenes, so Carl did deserve his credit and did great work on Jaws. I?m very beholden to Carl for sticking it out as long as he did with us because that was a lonely island for everybody making that movie over many months.

Quint: Your filmmaking style at that time is very recognizable. It seemed with both Duel and Jaws you?re developing a very iconic style that we started talking about at the beginning of the interview. You used a lot of split-diopter shots, had a lot of overlapping dialogue? it was a very naturalistic style. What is it that drew you to that kind of technique?

Steven Spielberg: That technique for me was always just the way I always observed people having conversations in daily life. I always wondered why movies couldn?t have more naturalism in them; why scenes couldn?t be hybrid scenes between the documentary and the drama.

Robert Altman, of course, made it a fine art: background conversations and foreground conversations and even some midground conversations. Altman probably reached his nexus with that with Nashville, which I think is the best movie Altman made. And I was very influenced, I think, by Altman?s MASH. There?s naturalism in that and yet it?s such a bizarre comedy at the same time. It was realistic because it was about the Korean War, but then it was zany and madcap and he was able to temper all that in a kind of pseudo-documentary style.

I did not want to do a pseudo-documentary style for Jaws ?cause I wanted Jaws to be a big, slick commercial looking movie, but I needed something to offset the surreality of the shark. The more natural I could make the performances in the foreground I thought the more people would swallow the weight and size of that great white.

Quint: Here?s another thing, though. When you?

Steven Spielberg: Oh, and by the way? Let me say one more thing, Quint.

Quint: Sure, sure.

Steven Spielberg: The more fake the shark looked in the water, at least to the crew watching it being hauled behind a speedboat, the more my anxiety told me to heighten the naturalism of the performances.

Quint: Here?s the thing? what makes horror movies scary? Jaws is always described as a horror movie, but I see it as more of a men on a mission/adventure story?

Steven Spielberg: I agree with you.

Quint: Good, I?m not the only one! But what makes tension work, be it in a thriller or horror film, is when you care for the people in jeopardy. If you?re scared of losing somebody you like then the filmmaker has you. I mean, Quint?s death is so inevitable from the very beginning, the whole Ahab parallel of one?s obsession getting the best of him, but you don?t want him to go. You?re scared when Hooper goes in the water. Hell, you?re scared when Alex Kintner goes into the water and we?ve spent all of 30 seconds with him.

Steven Spielberg: Right, right.

Quint: That naturalistic approach and your casting absolutely worked. You relate to the people in danger. It?s not just sexy supermodels in bikinis wading into the surf, it?s a kid that could be your nephew.

Steven Spielberg: And yet Quint, who is a bigger than life character required a bigger than life death scene, so I was able to mythologize a character like Quint where that death would have been an earned one, you know what I?m saying?

Quint: Absolutely. I never doubted it once and it really freaked me out as a kid. It was two things: when he spits up that bright red blood and when we next see the shark he has bits of Quint hanging off his teeth.

Steven Spielberg: Exactly! Exactly because sharks don?t have toothpicks! There was a lot of raw chicken that contributed to that sequence.

Quint: Now, they must have asked you to come back for Jaws 2?

Steven Spielberg: Yeah, of course. Of course. And Jaws 3. I was done, I was done with the ocean. I would have done the sequel if I hadn?t had such a horrible time at sea on the first film. I would have absolutely jumped at the chance to own the sequel because I knew that when I was walking away from the sequel I was walking away from a huge piece of my life that I had helped to create, but it wasn?t a hard decision to walk way from it. I just could not imagine going back out to the ocean and sitting in a boat for 9 months. I just couldn?t imagine it.

So, I was happy and relieved not to have made the movie, but also I wasn?t happy with the sequel and I realized I had let a franchise go that I could have made a good contribution to.

Quint: Do you have any idea what you would have done with a sequel?

Steven Spielberg: No, no idea at all, but I have a very, very good scene which I thought would have been good for a sequel someday, which I will tell you someday because I don?t want it in print.

Quint: Okay.

Steven Spielberg: But I?ll tell you my scene some day. Every time I think of this scene I think, ?Hmmm, could this be another Jaws movie?? and I have to immediately stop myself and immediately pull myself back down to Earth.

Quint: I will turn this digital recorder off right now.

Steven Spielberg: I?ll tell you some day. We don?t talk enough, we?re going to have to talk more. I?ll tell you some day.

Quint: Alright, just remember that!

Steven Spielberg: I will! I won?t forget it! I promise, I promise!

Quint: Is there a Jaws Blu-Ray in the works?

Steven Spielberg: Yes, there is. Yes, there is. I?ve already seen some of it. I don?t have a date yet, but there?s a Blu-Ray absolutely in the works.

Quint: I can?t wait, man. I love that the last DVD release actually had the original mono soundtrack on it as well. I wasn?t a fan of the remixed 5.1 sound? the splashing sounded canned and the gunshots were changed?
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Steven Spielberg: Oh, I know. I totally understand that. (In the future) there’s going to be no more digital enhancements or digital additions to anything based on any film I direct. I’m not going to do any corrections digitally to even wires that show.

If 1941 comes on Blu-Ray I’m not going to go back and take the wires out because the Blu-Ray will bring the wires out, that are guiding the airplanes down Hollywood Blvd. At this point right now I think letting movies exist in the era, with all the flaws and with all of the flourishes, is a wonderful way to mark time and mark history.

Quint: I’m in total agreement with you. I wish you could talk George (Lucas) into doing the same thing!

Steven Spielberg: Well, I can’t!

Quint: (laughs) Yeah, I don’t think anybody can!

Steven Spielberg: George goes his own way and I respect him for it, but my new philosophy about this is to let sleeping dogs lie.

Quint: That’s great news for film geeks. Anybody who appreciates film, that's like music to their ears.

Steven Spielberg: When people ask me which E.T. they should look at, I always tell them to look at the original 1982 E.T. If you notice, when we did put out E.T. we put out two E.T.s. We put out the digitally enhanced version with the additional scenes and for no extra money, in the same package, we put out the original ‘82 version. I always tell people to go back to the ’82 version.

Quint: Having the option is the big deal for me. Using the Star Wars example, I don’t think there’d be an outcry if we could watch a nice transfer of the original versions. We’d be like, “George can do what he wants and I’ll watch it… but you know maybe the fans would like the option of watching the movie they fell in love with, too.”

Steven Spielberg: Yeah. And I think the other good thing is that they understand when they see a movie and they suddenly see something that could have been done much better today and could have been corrected in the DVD/Blu-Ray transfer, they really appreciate seeing the strings attached.

If somebody put out George Pal’s War of the Worlds and took the strings off the machines I’d be very upset. When that machine crashes in downtown Hollywood, and you see the strings going from taut to slack, that’s the thing that allows me to both understand this movie is scaring the hell out of me and at the same time this movie is a creation of the human race.

That little taut-to-slack moment of those wires on that wingtip makes the original George Pal War of the Worlds work for me. It embraces my fears and it also alleviates them in the same breath.

Quint: I notice you don’t do commentaries on your films. Is there a reason for that?

Steven Spielberg: Well, because if I do commentaries it takes you out of the movie. It just takes you totally out of the movie because you’re not really watching a movie, you’re listening to a radio show. So, I’ve just never believed in doing commentaries because once people start one of my movies I want them to get into the film. I don’t want to knock down the fourth wall for them and take them into the handbook of how I did it because I just think it breaks the illusion.

Quint: Now, I’ve heard a story that I wanted to run by you. I have no idea if it’s true, but an effects friend of mine told me about a special screening of E.T. for Ronald Reagan. Have you heard this story?

Steven Spielberg: I was there!

Quint: The story I heard is that when Reagan saw it he started talking about how close to reality it was and he was quickly ushered out of the room. Is that true?

Steven Spielberg: No, he wasn’t ushered out of the room. He was the President of the United States! Nobody could usher Ronald Reagan out of the room! It was in the White House screening room and Reagan got up to thank me for bringing the film to show the President, the First Lady and all of their guests, which included Sandra Day O’Connor in her first week of as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and it included some astronauts… I think Neil Armstrong was there, I’m not 100% certain, but it was an amazing, amazing evening.

He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, “I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,” and then he looked around the room and said, “And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.”

And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling as he said it.

The room did laugh and then later on I’ll never forget my conversation with the President. He pulled me aside, he said… and I can’t do Reagan. I wish I could do that breathy, wonderful voice of his… And Nancy Reagan was standing right next to him and the President said to me, “I only have one criticism about your movie,” and I said “What’s that?” He said, “How long were the end credits?” I said, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe three, three and a half minutes?” He said, “In my day, when I was an actor, our end credits were maybe 15 seconds long.”

He said, “Why don’t you let everybody get a credit… three and a half, four minutes, that’s fine, but only show that inside the industry, but throughout the rest of the country reduce your credits to 15 seconds at the end?” Nancy Reagan turned to him and said, “Oh, Ronny, they can’t do that. You know that.” And he went, “Oh, yes, yes. I suppose.” (laughs) That was the extent of my conversation about that . That was his only criticism, he felt the end credits were too long!

Quint: So, do you think he actually let something slip there?

Steven Spielberg: I don’t think he let something slip there, no. I think he delivered a joke without smiling, without a little bit of a twinkle behind the joke. I think the joke landed because everybody laughed, but because I’m a little bit of a Ufologist I was hoping that there was something more to the joke than met my eye. I’m sorry to say I think he was simply trying to tell a joke.

Quint: Cool, man. I think that’s about all I got.

Steven Spielberg: Okay! When can I read this?

Quint: It’ll be posted as soon as I can possibly get it ready.

Steven Spielberg: I can’t wait, I can’t wait!

Quint: Before I let you go, I do want to say that you need to quit beating up so much on Temple of Doom. I love that movie.

Steven Spielberg: You know, sometimes I can’t help myself. But the greatest thing about Temple of Doom was I met Kate Capshaw and I have seven children. We’ve been married for almost 20 years and that was my win on that movie.

Quint: I met Kate very briefly at the War of the Worlds premiere in New York and I made sure to tell her “I know you probably don’t get it enough, but you’re great in Temple of Doom.”

Steven Spielberg: You’re sweet. By the way, she is great in Temple of Doom and I’m very, very lucky to have found my life partner.

Quint: I love that movie because it’s so dramatically different from Raiders. The tone is different, you go from a suave villain in Belloq to a flashy villain in Mola Ram…

Steven Spielberg: Right. Here’s the thing… for all the fans of Temple of Doom who think I beat up too much on it, those fans who beat up on George Lucas 24/7 at the drop of any fedora, I would just say please give George credit. He’s the one that made it dark, he’s the one that decided on the story and on the concept. For all those who love Temple of Doom, you’ve gotta give George credit.

Quint: I’ll absolutely give George credit for that.

Steven Spielberg: Okay, good!

Quint: Thank you so much, sir.

Steven Spielberg: Thanks. It was good talking to you again. Don’t be such a stranger!

Quint: Whenever, man. I could talk your ear off 24/7.

Steven Spielberg: I could talk to you the same way. I really appreciate this.

Quint: No worries.

I’m not going to lie, there was a little dead space and some fumbling that I edited out when he started off the conversation with “I read all your stuff.” I’m sure he was just being nice, but **** me if that didn’t throw me for a loop for a few seconds.

I had the time of my life conducting this chat and I hope you guys enjoyed it, too. I loved that E.T. Reagan screening story, I loved hearing the definitive word on the Indianapolis Speech and I loved his newfound philosophy on tinkering with his older films.

A massive thanks to Deb Wuliger, Kristin Stark and everyone in Spielberg’s office for making this happen. And, of course, to Mr. Spielberg himself for setting aside nearly an hour of his surely hectic schedule to look back at Jaws with a nerd like me. Happy 36th Birthday, Jaws!

Now I pack for a trip to LA where I’ll be bringing you some coverage of the Hero Complex Film Festival, including a Warren Beatty Q&A for Dick Tracy, Richard Donner for Superman 1 and 2 and some other goodies.

Next interview you’ll see from me is an AICN Legends interview with another one of my favorite directors, Mr. John Carpenter. Stay tuned!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com


SpielbergToDLucas.jpg



__________

When I began, I didn't realize just how long that interview was!
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
I'd read this interview awhile ago, and it's well worth having it up here, if only for fear that AICN disappears or something. I'd love to see Quint snag this scale and level of conversation with Spielberg about Indy sometime; he's good at it, and he's got some level of access, it would seem.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
I'd read this interview awhile ago, and it's well worth having it up here, if only for fear that AICN disappears or something.

That's always my intention when I find something like this. Better to have the text rather than just a potentially dead link.

However, as I was copying and pasting I was thinking, "this is getting out of hand!" :D

Attila the Professor said:
I'd love to see Quint snag this scale and level of conversation with Spielberg about Indy sometime; he's good at it, and he's got some level of access, it would seem.

Now that would be something special. Unfortunately Indy only gets a few short mentions in this one.
 
Attila the Professor said:
...it's well worth having it up here, if only for fear that AICN disappears or something.
Montana Smith said:
That's always my intention when I find something like this. Better to have the text rather than just a potentially dead link.
Nothing worse than clicking a dead link, well...


Attila the Professor said:
I'd love to see Quint snag this scale and level of conversation with Spielberg about Indy sometime; he's good at it, and he's got some level of access, it would seem.
Montana Smith said:
Now that would be something special. Unfortunately Indy only gets a few short mentions in this one.

It would be great to have someone who has more than a popular level of knowlege about the film asking the questions!

Though the LA Times guy was personable, what the hell was he asking stupid crap like "what excites you" when he has Ford and Spielberg in the spotlight and FOR Raiders?
(n)
 

Indy's brother

New member
Rocket Surgeon said:
Though the LA Times guy was personable, what the hell was he asking stupid crap like "what excites you" when he has Ford and Spielberg in the spotlight and FOR Raiders?
(n)

Boucher has interviewed Ford and Spielberg many times in the past. I'm of the opinion that most if not all the questions were scripted, and had to be approved by SS and HF long beforehand. Basically it's a press conference made to look like an interview, that way it looks like they are answering questions, but without having to handle any curve balls, and/or answer any questions from the audience. It's a fine method of crowd control, but it smacks of a little insincerity imho.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Indy's brother said:
Boucher has interviewed Ford and Spielberg many times in the past. I'm of the opinion that most if not all the questions were scripted, and had to be approved by SS and HF long beforehand. Basically it's a press conference made to look like an interview, that way it looks like they are answering questions, but without having to handle any curve balls, and/or answer any questions from the audience. It's a fine method of crowd control, but it smacks of a little insincerity imho.

And makes for an easy avoidance of the Indy V issue with some familiar stock answers, and a little self-deprecating humour at Lucas' expense (which wouldn't bother George as he is himself frequently self-deprecating).
 
Indy's brother said:
I'm of the opinion that most if not all the questions were scripted...
A fact of life which I understand and don't mind. On the positive side, potentially, we get the most out of the pair. However obsessive I am I don't remember them saying we could tweet them questions, and how many tweets did they ask? In a controlled environment, what's the purpose of that question? Sounds like an MTV production.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Forbidden Eye said:

Most of today's better blockbusters lack the lightness that characterised Raiders and its contemporaries; the very best big movies of 2010 and 2011 were, by common consensus, Inception and Rise of the Planet of the Apes ? both of them dark, pessimistic and adult.

The thought crossed my mind that Raiders ended with a Kafkaesque pessimism about bureaucracy, whereas the dark journey of Temple of Doom ended with a typically Hollywood happy-clappy family finale, as though it was a tacked-on apology for the preceding horrors.

The following two films were a continued apology for the darkness of TOD, where in fact Raiders had already set a benchmark for avoiding excessive the 'lightness' that might be associated with family movies.
 
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