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Steven Spielberg

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Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE (born December 18 1946) is a three time Academy Award winning American film director, and among the most successful filmmakers in history. His German last name comes from the name of the Austrian city where his Hungarian ancestors lived in 17th century: Spielberg. He is noted in recent years for his willingness to tackle emotionally powerful issues, such as the horrors of the Holocaust in Schindler's List, slavery in Amistad, hardships of war in Saving Private Ryan, and terrorism in Munich. One consistent theme in his family friendly work is a childlike, even naïve, sense of wonderment and faith, as attested by works such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook and A.I., and the challenging role of a father-figure.

The director

Spielberg is the most financially successful motion picture director of all time. He has directed and/or produced an astounding number of major box-office hits, giving him enormous influence in Hollywood. As of 2004, he has been listed in Premiere and other magazines as the most "powerful" and influential figure in the motion picture industry.

In 2005, Empire magazine created a list of the 50 greatest film directors of all time. Spielberg was number one on the list.

He has been nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Director, winning two of them (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan), and four of the films he directed were up for the Best Picture Oscar (Schindler's List won). He is seen as a figure who has the influence, financial resources, and acceptance of Hollywood studio authorities to make any movie he wants to make, be it a mainstream action-adventure movie, Jurassic Park or a three-hour-long black and white drama about the Holocaust, Schindler's List.

In 2001 he was given the honor of Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.

His beginnings

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio but raised in the suburbs of Haddonfield, New Jersey and Scottsdale, Arizona. He is known by film historians as one of the famous "film-school generation" (also known as "the movie brats" or "the New Hollywood") of the 1970s: along with fellow filmmakers (and personal friends) George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, and Brian De Palma, Spielberg grew up making movies. He was making amateur 8mm "adventure" movies with his friends as a teenager (scenes from these amateur films have been included on the DVD edition of Saving Private Ryan), and he made his first short film for theatrical release, Amblin', in 1968 at the age of twenty one. (Spielberg's own production company, Amblin Entertainment, was named after this short film.) His maiden directorial work was a segment of the pilot film to Rod Serling's Night Gallery. While working on this segment its star Joan Crawford collared a production executive and said, "Keep an eye on this kid, he's going places." After directing episodes of various TV shows, including an early Columbo TV movie and a feature-length science fiction episode of The Name of the Game (TV series) written by Philip Wylie and called "L.A. 2017", Spielberg directed his first well-known feature with a 1971 TV "movie-of-the-week" entitled Duel (later released to theatres overseas and eventually in the U.S.). This film, about a truck mysteriously terrorizing an average citizen, has become a cult classic, having been released on video several times over the years. Much of his early success was due to Sidney Sheinberg who is credited with discovering him; Spielberg also received an honorary degree from Brown University in 1999.

1970's: Spielberg's Move to Theatrical Films

Spielberg's debut theatrical feature film, The Sugarland Express (takes place and filmed on location in Sugar Land, Texas and is about a husband and wife attempting to escape the law), won him critical praise and enough studio backing to be chosen as the director of a summer movie that would secure him a place in the history of motion pictures. Jaws, a horror film based on the Peter Benchley novel about a killer shark that attacks people off the coast of a small island. Jaws won three Academy Awards (for editing, original score and sound), and grossed over USD$100 million at the box office, setting the domestic record for box office gross.

In 1976, Spielberg was asked by Alexander Salkind to direct Superman, but decided instead to expand on a pet project he had had in mind since his youth: a film about UFOs, which became Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The film remains a cult sci-fi classic among its fans.

The success Spielberg was beginning to enjoy, as well as his eventual tendency to make films with wide mainstream and commercial appeal, also subjected him to disdain in critical circles by film reviewers. For example, Spielberg's next film was 1941, a big-budgeted World War II comedy farce set in L.A. days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the two top stars from Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, along with other all-stars. Although the film did make a small profit, it is considered by some to be Spielberg's first flop, although today it is also considered a cult classic. An expanded version has been shown on network television and later on Laserdisc and DVD.

1980's: Spielberg Conquers Hollywood

Raiders of the Lost Ark

But what some would consider Spielberg's greatest film work was still to come, beginning in the 1980s. In 1981, Spielberg teamed up for the first time with his friend George Lucas to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, his homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Golden Age of Hollywood, with Harrison Ford (whom Lucas had previously cast in his Star Wars films) as the dashing hero Indiana Jones. The biggest film at the box-office in 1981, and recipient of numerous Oscar nominations including Best Director (Spielberg's 2nd nom) and Best Picture (2nd Spielberg film to do so), Raiders is still hailed as a landmark in action cinema.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

One year later, Spielberg returned to his alien visitors motif with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, this is the story of a boy and the alien whom he befriends (and is trying to get back "home" to outer space). E.T. went on to become the top-grossing film of all time for many years. It was also nominated for many academy awards including Best Picture and Best Director. It is considered by Spielberg to be his own personal favorite film from his works.

E.T. originated as a sci-fi suspense thriller called Night Skies. Night Skies also gave birth to Poltergeist, a film that Spielberg co-wrote , co-produced (and some people who worked on the film claim directed) and was released only a week before E.T..

Spielberg also negotiated an unusually lucrative video game licensing deal with Atari for an E.T. video game. This was a famously expensive failure which contributed to the video game crash of 1983.

The Color Purple

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Spielberg on the cover of the July 15, 1985 issue of TIME.

In 1985, Spielberg made The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Many critics were unsure of whether or not Spielberg could handle such serious material, as his output to that point had been viewed as "lighter" entertainment. Indeed, this proved to be Spielberg's trial by fire in presenting the story of a generation of oppressed African-American women (Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey) during depression-era America. Danny Glover played the abusive patriarch.

The film was another box-office smash and hailed by critics as Spielberg's successful foray into the dramatic genre. Roger Ebert entered it into his Great Films archive. It recieved 11 Academy Award nominations including two for Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. However in one of the most controversial instances in the History of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Spielberg himself went without a Best Director nomination despite the multitude of nominations the picture received.

Empire of the Sun

1987 was a time when the Chinese economy was beginning to boom, and as the Chinese gates began to open to the world, Spielberg took advantage by shooting the first American movie in Shanghai since the 1930s. The result was an adaptation of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun, which told the story of a young boy named Jim (Christian Bale) who is separated from his parents during the sacking of Shanghai in 1938, and is forced to survive through the rest of the war. Spielberg wanted to convey a heartfelt message of innocence being shattered as a result of war, as audiences saw the transformation of Jim from sheltered taipan to a struggling and resourceful war refugee. The film garnered numerous praise form critics, was nominated for several Oscars, but did not attract the kind of box-office power that Spielberg's films usually get.

Always

1989 would mark the first year in which Spielberg would direct two movies. Following on the heels of his last Indiana Jones movie, he would re-unite with actor Richard Dreyfuss with Always. Inspired by the film A Guy Named Joe, Always is the story of Pete, a daredevil pilot who extinguishes forest fires. When killed on his last mission, he becomes something of a guardian angel for a young man named Ted. But when Ted falls in love with the girlfriend Pete left behind, Pete must learn to let go of her and do what's best to influence these characters as they themselves approach another potential tragedy.

Always marked Spielberg's first foray into the romantic genre. A box-office flop and the victem of mixed reviews, Always stands-out (or more precisely doesn't) as arguably Spielberg's most overlooked and forgotten film.

Hook

After the failure of Always, Spielberg headed back to safer waters. In many ways a Peter Pan story directed by Steven Spielberg seemed like a forgone conclusion. He had tried numerous times to film a live-action version of Peter Pan without success. When writer JV Hart pitched an alternate idea about Peter Pan returning to Neverland as an adult, Spielberg switched gears. Hook focused on a middle-aged Pan (played by Robin Williams), who returns to Neverland to face the title character (Captain Hook, played by Dustin Hoffman). However, by the time the film began shooting, innumerable rewrites and creative changes made by the numerous major Hollywood players attached to project resulted in a film regarded by most critics as hit-or-miss at best. The film was made for $70 million (at that time a huge amount) and made $119 million domestically, but it was not as successful as some had hoped. Though Peter Pan had grown up, some were wondering if Spielberg himself ever would.

Jurassic Park

In 1993, Spielberg decided to once again tackle the adventure genre, as he directed the movie version of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, about killer dinosaurs rampaging through a tropical island resort. The adaptation muted somewhat the novel's message about the consequences of mankind tampering with nature, instead focusing on the adventure aspects of the story. With the aid of revolutionary special effects provided by friend George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, the film became an instant classic. It would eventually overtake E.T. as the all-time top grossing film - a position it held for several years (until James Cameron's Titanic).

Schindler's List

It was in that same year that Jurassic Park was released that Spielberg finally received the critical acclaim he had long sought for making Schindler's List (based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a man who sacrificed himself to save 1,100 people from the wrath of the Holocaust). The screenplay, adapted from Thomas Keneally's novel, was originally in the hands of fellow director Martin Scorsese, but Spielberg negotiated with Scorsese to trade scripts (at the time, Spielberg held the script for a remake of Cape Fear). Schindler's List earned Spielberg his first Academy Award for Best Director (it also won Best Picture). While the film made a killing in the box-office, Spielberg claimed not to have partaken in the profits, and instead used the money to set up the Shoah Foundation. Critics maintain that Schindler's List is the most accurate portrayal of the Holocaust, and in 1999 the American Film Institute listed it among the 10 Greatest Films ever Made (#9).

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

1993 was Spielberg's biggest year with the success of Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. Taking a 4 year hiatus from directing to spend more time with his family and build his new studio Dreamworks SKG, Spielberg found himself back in the director's chair in 1997. This time, he was helming the sequel to 1993's gigantic Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton's The Lost World. The film was critically panned, but did manage to generate nearly $230 million in domestic box-office, giving it the third-highest total for 1997 behind Titanic and Men in Black.

Amistad

Spielberg, together with former Disney animation exec Jeffrey Katzenberg and media mogul David Geffen, decided to form a new studio company called Dreamworks SKG. Its first feature release was The Peacemaker and Antz, both of which did moderately well at the box-office. Spielberg's first project with his new studio, Amistad, was based on a true story about African slaves who rebelled against their captors. The film received lavish praises from the critics, but was noted for its violent massacre scenes. It did not do well at the box-office however, and is considered one of Spielberg's flops.

Saving Private Ryan

Another of Spielberg's critically acclaimed films, the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, was released in 1998. The film follows a platoon of soldiers led by Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks), from the landing at Omaha Beach in Normandy to the heart of French resistance, in order to retrieve a missing private (Matt Damon), whose brothers were lost to the war. Spielberg considered it one of his finest works, yet in a highly publicized "showdown", it lost the Best Picture Oscar at the 1999 Academy Awards to Shakespeare in Love. However, Spielberg would win his second Academy Award for his direction in the war epic.

Later on, Spielberg and Hanks, overwhelmed with the success of the film's subject, decided to team together to produce a TV mini-series based on Stephen Ambrose's historical novel, Band of Brothers. The ten-part HBO mini-series follows the trials and accomplishments of the 101st Airborne, or Easy Company, also starting from the landing in Normandy, to the Battle of the Bulge, to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Germany itself. The series was hailed as the greatest TV event of all time, winning a slew of awards both at the Golden Globes and the Emmys.

Into a new century (2000-2005)

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

In 2001, Spielberg filmed fellow director and friend Stanley Kubrick's final project, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, a project planned by the two directors for many years but which Kubrick was unable to begin during his lifetime. The futuristic story of a humanoid android longing for love, A.I. featured groundbreaking visual effects and a multi-layered, allegorical storyline in keeping with Kubrick's original vision. It starred William Hurt, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, and child actor Haley Joel Osment as the android boy David. The film polarized both critics and audiences, some stating that the film was overly long and a pretentious impression of Kubrick, while others believing it to be a masterpiece. The legendary director Billy Wilder called A.I. "the most underrated film of the past few years". The film failed to recoup its budget at the US box-office.

Minority Report

Following A.I., Spielberg came upon the sci-fi short story written by Philip K. Dick about the future of crime-fighting using precognitive vision. In 2002, Spielberg and actor Tom Cruise collaborated for the first time in the futuristic neo-noir Minority Report, which features Cruise as a D.C. police captain who has been foreseen to murder a man he has not even met. The film was a futuristic homage to film noir, with its intelligent premise, thrilling chase scenes, and whodunnit structure. In typical Spielberg fashion the film earned over $300 million dollars worldwide while earning signficant critical acclaim. Roger Ebert, who named it the best film of 2002, praised the film for its breathtaking vision of the future as well as for the way Spielberg blended CGI with live-action. [1] It is regarded as one of Spielberg's better sci-fi films.

Catch Me If You Can

Shortly after the release of Minority Report, Spielberg and Co. immediately went to work on Catch Me If You Can, a story of the daring adventures of a youthful con artist. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, with Saving Private Ryan star Tom Hanks as the FBI agent out to catch him. The movie marked a turn of genre for Spielberg, who was at this point seen to be branching out to different kinds of film genres aside from the usual sci-fi fare he was known for. It earned significant critical acclaim and box-office success. It also earned Christopher Walken a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The Terminal

Spielberg collaborated once again with Tom Hanks along with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci in The Terminal, a warm-hearted comedy about a man of Eastern European descent who is stranded in an airport after his home country suffers a coup d'etat during his flight esentially invalidating his passport. It recieved mixed reviews and performed moderately at the box-office although some critics praised the generally sensitive film while others criticized it for being overly sentimental.

War of the Worlds

A modernized adaptation of War of the Worlds, featuring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, was released in the U.S. on June 29, 2005. As with past Spielberg films, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) provided the special effects.

In his films E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg portrayed alien visitors as potentially friendly for human beings willing to connect with them. War of the Worlds marked a departure from those optimistic themes; more violent alien invaders wreak havoc upon Earth. The film was a major box-office success though critical opinions were mixed. This may have been due to the negative publicity surrounding star Tom Cruise at the time of the release.

Munich

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Spielberg on the cover of the December 12, 2005 issue of TIME.

On the same day as the release of War of the Worlds, Spielberg began shooting Munich, a film allegedly about the events following the 1972 Munich Massacre. The film is based on Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas. The book, although promoted as non-fiction, has been largely discredited by journalists. It was previously adapted into the 1986 made-for-TV movie Sword of Gideon. [2] [3]

The screenplay for Munich was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. The movie is said to be an examination of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Black September organization, followed by the event's aftermath in which Israel's intelligence agency hunted down and killed the perpetrators. The protagonist, Avner, is believed to be the invention of Jonas' source, Yuval Aviv.

According to Jonas and Aviv, the Israeli team suffered misgivings about their assignment, two were killed, and the others were abandoned or treated badly by Mossad. None of these claims have been verified by other sources.

Upcoming projects

Also in the works are an Abraham Lincoln bio-pic starring Liam Neeson as the 16th President of the United States, and a 4th Indiana Jones film. Both are scheduled for release in 2007.

He also served as the executive producer of Memoirs of a Geisha, an adaptation of the best-selling novel by Arthur Golden, a film he was previously attached to as director. Spielberg is also an executive producer on the critically acclaimed 2005 TV miniseries Into the West. He is also co-executive producing the new Transformers live action film with Brian Goldmer, an employee of Hasbro. A 4th Jurassic Park film is in development for him to produce as well as a CGI kids-movie called Monster House. Monster House will be co-executive produced with famed filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, marking their first collaboration together since 1990's Back to the Future, Part III.

In October 2005, Spielberg announced that he had been signed by Electronic Arts to direct three video game projects.

Films by Steven Spielberg

See also: List of Steven Spielberg films

Salaries

Side projects

Spielberg has produced (without directing) a considerable number of films, and can be credited with launching the career of Robert Zemeckis. He is also a lover of animated cartoons, and has produced several hit cartoons (and a few flops), including Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and Freakazoid.

He was also, for a short time, the executive producer of the long-running medical drama ER which currently airs on NBC.

In 1989 he brought the concept of The Dig to LucasArts. He contributed with the project from that time to 1995 when the game was released.

He is one of the co-founders of DreamWorks Pictures (DreamWorks SKG, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen providing the other letters in the company name), which has released all of his movies since Amistad in 1997.

Following the critical and box office success of Schindler's List in 1993, Spielberg founded and continues to finance the Shoah Project, a non-profit organization with the goal of providing an archive for the filmed testimony of as many survivors of the Holocaust as possible, so that their stories will not be lost in the future.

When one of his projects fell through, George Lucas let him design a few animatics for several sequences in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Personal life

Spielberg has been married to actress Kate Capshaw, whom he met when he cast her in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom since 12 October, 1991. He has seven children—four biological: Max Spielberg (by actress Amy Irving, whom he married on 27 November, 1985), Sasha, Sawyer, and Destry (by Capshaw); two adopted (Theo and Mikaela); and one stepdaughter (Jessica Capshaw). Both Max and Sasha were born out of wedlock, but Spielberg legitimated each child by marrying Irving and Capshaw. Irving received US $100 million settlement from Spielberg in their 1989 divorce.

Criticism

Perhaps the most prominent critic of Steven Spielberg is American artist and actor Crispin Glover. In a 2005 essay titled What Is It? Glover says that Spielberg has “wafted his putrid stench upon our culture, a culture he helped homogenize and propagandize.” Among Glover’s accusations are that Spielberg purchased the Rosebud sled used in Orson Welles’ 1941 film Citizen Kane for $50,000 but refused to hire Welles to write a screenplay in the later years of his life, that he received money from the United States government to promote his personal religious and cultural beliefs, that his films do not take risks, that he exploited tragedy for personal gain in the films Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, and that he, as a co-owner of DreamWorks, considered building a studio on the last remaining wetland in Southern California.

Another prominent criticism by several movie-goers (both professional and public) is that Spielberg's films lean towards sentimentalism at the expense of the theme of the film. An instance often cited by science fiction fans is the ending of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence which they believed was too 'happy'. This being a collaboration with Stanley Kubrick whose films such as Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange are often tinged with pessimism drew a heated debate as to whether or not Kubrick would have liked it or not. However, both Kubrick's long-time assistant Jan Harlan and the film's original story writer Ian Watson have said that the ending is exactly what Kubrick intended. A related criticism is that Spielberg's films lack depth and do not take risks, the most prominent person with this viewpoint is anti-mainstream film theorist Ray Carney.

French New Wave giant Jean-Luc Godard famously and publicly slammed Spielberg at the premier of his film In Praise of Love. Godard, who has continuously complained about the commercial nature of modern cinema held Spielberg responsible for the lack of artistic merit in mainstream cinema. Through his film, Godard accused Spielberg of making a profit of tragedy while Schindler's wife lived in poverty in Argentina.

However such criticisms are rejected by several knowledgable film-makers and film critics who attribute it to either jealousy of Spielberg's success or inability to look past his name. Reknowned critic Roger Ebert once stated that 'If only people could look past his popularity they would see how talented he really is.' Some of Spielberg's most famous fans include film legends Ingmar Bergman and Francois Truffaut.

Spielberg's unabashed support for Israel has also put him in the hot seat. In 2002, a rumor circulated that Spielberg was planning a film about Palestinian suffering during the Israeli/Palestinian feud. The director's spokesman, Marvin Levy, called the report "an obvious, vicious hoax." Spielberg did release Munich, however, a highly controversial project which deals with the Israeli retaliation to the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes during the 1972 Munich Games. In order to deflect claims of bias, the filmmaker consulted various sources in creating the film.

Trivia

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Spielberg in Tiny Toon Adventures with Babs and Buster Bunny.
  • In the Warner Bros. animated series Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs (both of which were executive-produced by Spielberg), Spielberg was a semi-recuring character. In some episodes, Spielberg voiced himself, and in others, veteran voice-over artist Frank Welker did Spielberg's voice. In the Japanese dub of Animaniacs, Spielberg was voiced by Hiroyuki Shibamoto.
  • On attending Saratoga High School, he said that it was the "worst experience" of his life and "hell on Earth". [4]
  • He first enrolled at California State University in Long Beach in 1965, quit in 1969 to take a television director contract at Universal Studios, and much later, as a returning student, was awarded a B.A. in Film Production and Electronic Arts with an option in Film/Video Production in 2002.
  • Attempted at admission to the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television three separate times, and the prominent school later awarded Spielberg an honorary degree in 1994. Two years later, Spielberg became a Trustee of the University and has since tirelessly devoted himself to supporting USC.
  • The A&E Network is expected to announce that it will produce a two-hour drama about the relationship between filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. According to Daily Variety, the biopic, tentatively titled Celluloid Titans, is being executive produced by Jody Brockway.
  • For his work on the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation since 1994, he was awarded with the Great Cross of Merit with Star, the German version of the Great Officer's Cross, in September 1998 for "a very noticeable contribution to the issue of the Holocaust".
  • Spielberg is expected to make a cameo appearance in an episode of the second season of Extras, the BBC comedy TV series written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (previously responsible for The Office).[5]
  • Steven Spielberg is recreated as a LEGO minifigure in the LEGO Studios series of sets.
  • His mother, the former Leah Adler, owns a Kosher restaurant in Los Angeles, California.
  • In the 2005 edition of Forbes' "400 Richest People in America", his net worth is estimated at $2.7 billion, a $100 million improvement over 2004 (due mostly to his share of the DreamWorks Animation public stock offering). He, and good friend George Lucas (net worth: $3.5 billion) are the only filmmakers on the list.
  • Every Spielberg-directed film since and including The Sugarland Express, with the exception of The Color Purple and his segment of "The Twilight Zone the Movie," has been scored by John Williams. See also List of noted film producer and composer collaborations.

Urban legends

Spielberg started a fanciful story of how he broke into Hollywood by sneakily squatting in an unoccupied office on the Universal Studios lot. In fact, he had an unpaid summer job on the lot.

Bibliographies

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