Steven Spielberg: Living Through the Lens
The term ‘daydreaming’ is closely tied to being unproductive, unfocused, and distracted. So why is prolific director Steven Spielberg often quoted saying, “I dream for a living” (Amblin) and how has it reached him icon status? The term ‘icon’ sounds inherently prestigious and flashy, but if you ask him personally, Spielberg might say his upbringing was anything but. His ‘dreaming for a living’ thought process is possibly not only based on his work, but has roots much more personal. A deeper dive into Spielberg answers all the questions as to why he is the most inventive, intimate, and successful director of all time.
Reflecting on Spielberg's career, with all the milestones and accolades it can be hard to deny his greatness. He has earned nineteen academy nominations and won three Oscars, obtaining hundreds more across all other award shows (IMDB). But it does not stop at the hardware. Spielberg will forever be the first billion dollar earning director. Setting the all time box office record three different times can make that sound pretty easy (Lacy). In a field where the work is completely subjective, the hardware and statistics can certainly solidify a quality job well done.
Despite all these achievements, are his movies really worth their weight in money and gold? Throughout his career Spielberg has never had a shortage of critics. It took a long time to get to the status he holds today, but along his journey he has been labeled as a director who struggles to be serious. Film critic Janet Maslin references those who looked down on Spielberg, “There were people that hated him...William Goldman had written specifically that the blockbuster and Steven had ruined Hollywood” (Lacy). But with Spielberg, silencing the doubters was just a matter of time. He has managed to differentiate himself with how timeless his movies have become, and the skill to repeatedly make films that have altered cinema forever. Blocking out all the noise, he managed to prove everyone wrong...eventually. With nothing yet explained on the content of his movies, what really makes Steven Spielberg a good director?
Growing up, Spielberg was everything one could expect from a child prodigy. Upon finishing high school he made over twenty unofficial short films. In that time, he was very experimental making things look as real as he could. Shooting a gun fight, he used a pin to poke holes in the film to make the guns appear to flash with every trigger pull. He played with transitions in the sun filming seagulls at the beach while also flicking ice cream in people’s mouths to imitate a rather gross result (Fabelmans). For a young kid with no money, he had no choice but to get creative. Especially when little Steven had no satisfaction for things that failed to look real.
He continued that creativity throughout his career and went the furthest extent to get a genuine outcome. What was impractical and indifferent during production was the exact opposite in his storytelling. Prime examples of these exact strategies are sprinkled throughout his life’s work. Three prime examples are movies where his motives were questioned or hated on, all have been movies that defined and elevated his career. And it all started with a Cinderella story involving a shark.
The movie that almost erased Steven Spielberg off the earth before we had a real chance to appreciate him, 1975’s Jaws. This would be his second feature film as director, and his first movie where he really took control. From start to near finish, Spielberg made more enemies than friends simply because nothing was going easily or as expected. “Jaws went triple its budget and about two and a half times its schedule” explains Spielberg (Lacy). The tension had gotten so bad, near the end of production there was a rumor saying the crew would throw him overboard and leave him in the ocean, the word eventually reached Spielberg in time for him to film the last shots alone on a small boat (Haskell p.118). Upon theater release, Jaws had taken one of the biggest turns in cinematic history.
Jaws was officially the first movie to send the young director into the stratosphere. It invented the term ‘summer blockbuster,’ which in origin means a film doing unusually well on an extreme level. The film had set the box office record and would be the first time for Spielberg to do it. But why did it do so well; why was it a smash hit? Through what was originally an idea to stop burning money on the project had become a horror movie strategy that is still used to this day. Due to the mechanical sharks breaking all the time, Spielberg had no choice but to find another way to show the shark’s presence, without actually filming it. This is called the art of suggestion. With that he had successfully made a movie that was truly frightening for audiences of the 70’s. Jaws saved the director’s career, granting him many more opportunities to do great things just like this.
Spielberg was now making a reputation for himself furthering his career, his cooperation directing children had become one of his best qualities as a filmmaker. As a former child actor for Spielberg, Leonardo Dic aprio speaks on the ways the director works with youth, “Steven knew how to take them as a director into some of these darker places while handling them with kid gloves” (Lacy). In the years following, Steven Spielberg would set the box office record yet again in 1982 releasing E.T The Extra Terrestrial. Typically for the sake of preserving budget costs rarely is a movie filmed in chronological order. What most studios will do is film every scene that takes place in one setting to terminate the need to go back and forth. Another reason is the demand for so many people to be doing the same thing at the same time. But Spielberg saw the opportunities ahead of him filming a movie that was mostly child actors.
Spielberg had an idea with intentions every director should have; make someone feel something genuine. He thought that the child actors in E.T. would really feel like they were experiencing the story if he filmed the movie in order from start to finish. At the end of E.T. where the kids are saying goodbye to their alien friend, they actually did have to say goodbye as it was their last day of filming (Zabloski). Real tears, real love, and real memories for an alien Spielberg brought completely to life. If it wasn’t for the mind of Spielberg the movie would have never been so emotionally touching. Something that became a defining feature dissecting his work.
In a career where there are countless examples of Spielberg’s creative work as a director, a significant one to note is the time he took the entire world and put them on a journey almost too real, 1993’s Schindler’s List. In short, Schindler’s List is about a businessman originally with the Nazi party but soon finds out the awfulness that was the Holocaust and saved the lives of many. The film is one of the most visually effective stories in his career. To add a sense of presence, Spielberg used only handheld cameras during the shooting. It gave a very real feel to what people were watching because it added that unsteady motion of human movement, but he did not stop there. He knew that—for most of us—visuals provided depicting the holocaust and WW11 are typically in black and white, so of course the movie had to be colorless. All but one red coat on a young Jewish girl, casually walking the streets of the ghetto while many others are exterminated around her (Schindler’s List). Spielberg himself explains the symbolism behind it, “Somehow the most obvious target was not being apprehended...it was more that the world turned a blind eye on the Holocaust” (Lacy) Which begs the question of how deep does his stories cut? In a world full of good directors, what makes Steven Spielberg great?
In the world that he had created out of his movies, Schindler’s List was the turn in a vastly different direction for him and his viewers. This was his first Oscar-winning movie and set off a bomb for the social norm. The film was one of the first of its kind, in a time where the Holocaust was simply not talked about. Of course that led to people hating the film, so much so a book had been titled Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List. But upon reviewing the book, David Desser from the Purdue University Press comes to appreciate the light being shed on antisemitism. “The issues it raises and the significance derived from its success are taken seriously and with great intellectual depth and rigor” (Desser). Spielberg used this film to change the social atmosphere of how we approach Judaism and the prejudice behind it. But of course, Schindler’s List has just one more layer behind it.
What had been used in Schindler’s list was a sample of possibly the most important part of storytelling. At the age of 16 Steven will never forget the time he saw Lawrence of Arabia, a movie that almost pushed him to quit because it influenced him to think the bar was too high. But instead, he embraced the movie and came back to the theater every week to study and appreciate it (Lacy). Lawrence of Arabia had taught him that not only is there a direct story being told, but an underlying story holding a message that is never blatantly exposed. That quality is found in all of Spielberg’s works that solidly proves his movies are timeless because of the forever relatable human messages behind them.
Countless examples can be explored regarding his poetic way of implementing real world situations in the most outlandish movie plots. Jurassic Park has dinosaurs, but is it really about responsibility over life? Scenes in Jurassic Park can be depicted orchestrating how two adults have the realization of the importance of family, caretaking over children throughout the movie (Jurassic Park). E.T. is about an alien, but is it really about losing touch with your inner child? Moments like the mother failing to tell the difference between stuffed animals and a real life alien indirectly display that claim (E.T.). As said on the Illiterate podcast they explain what a director should be. “This is a person that’s got to be incredibly intimate with human beings, this is an emotional job” (Zabloski). With movies trying to express a momentous experience or event, a director cannot afford to be out of touch with life. Considering that Spielberg excelled at mashing creativity with real world situations, where does he get it all? How much ‘Steven Spielberg’ is in his own movies?
If Spielberg was to express relatable messages in his movies, what better source than his own hardships? Looking close enough, there is a heavy toll in the realization that Spielberg has been telling his own story his entire career. In a ten year passion project, he finally could express his acceptance of being a Jew, that is what Schindler’s List had become. What better way to do it than make a film globally forcing those to be less ignorant? He has also made movies like A.I. and Empire of The Sun telling the perspective of children finding where they belong in the world. Those reflect on Spielberg’s panic explaining how “It was not fun to be me in between ideas or projects” (Lacy). Insinuating that filmmaking is where he has always belonged. But the largest arc of his life, found in his movies, is something that has evolved for decades.
Like any artist, Spielberg portrayed a lot of pain in his work, but in this case the hurt turned into truth, and truth turned into acceptance. Spielberg evidently never had an easy relationship with his parents. But it really hit rock bottom when his parents divorced. Most of his films being so heavily concerned with family, it all makes sense when observing the change in family dynamic correlating with his feelings behind his parents' separation (Lacy). The transitions are never exact, but considering his parent’s relationship, Spielberg’s career is almost divided into parts of, hatred toward his father, figuring out the truth, accepting the truth, and ultimately honoring both of his parents.
Early in his career, the points were obvious when observing the hatred of his father. Upon the divorce, Spielberg’s father had been up front in taking the blame. So naturally that made a young Steven blame him for the failure of their family. Two prime examples of this came to film. In 1977 he had made Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a movie circling the idea of communicating with aliens shows an awful lot of time with a family. Slowly the movie is about the disillusion of said family. Spielberg explains a real moment in his life growing up is in the movie, the part where the son is yelling at his father, calling him a cry baby, is a direct window to the many tough fights his family had gone through (Lacy). Another example of fathers looking negligent is in E.T.. Early in the movie, the storyline makes it obvious that the mother in this film is married but alone. The father is said to be on a working vacation with another woman, and upon hearing that the mother walks to the kitchen so her children do not see her tears (E.T.). His father being so caught up in his job, obviously these men, among other films, are so heavily portrayed as working men who pass family as a second priority.
Eventually, Spielberg learned that it was not his father’s fault, in fact it was quite the opposite. The truth had become a blatant adaptation in his work. What had really been cause for the divorce was his mother having an affair with his father’s friend. A notable work is Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade where Jones, the franchise hero of Spielberg and his career, has a strong arc. Completing a trilogy with Indiana Jones on an adventure with his father. Perhaps a way to come to terms with his real dad after expressing such negative energy the father figures told in his past. But one film that hits the nail on the head is Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo Dicaprio. In the first act, the ordeal of the main character’s parents getting divorced for suspiciously similar reasons is obvious (Catch Me If You Can). Despite everything, Steven Spielberg’s growth in accepting and honoring his parents is undeniable. One could advocate that films such as Catch Me If You Can did not come until after he first understood his parents’ falling out. Especially making note that The Last Crusade had come out just months before Steven’s own divorce in the same year.
Making examples of the later works of Steven Spielberg, parental figures have somehow gotten stronger, giving respect to who his parents were. In 2012’s Lincoln, although there is the obvious story of his presidency, Spielberg makes it clear how heavy of a life Lincoln and Mary Todd had personally. Taking away the titles of president and first lady but still portraying strong characters with real feelings (Lincoln). But to put a bow on the arc of his parents, Spielberg comes out with The Fabelmans. In a fantastical retelling of his coming to be, he strongly deepens the true characters that were his parents. Giving them both transparent attributes while also honoring them both in the end. The film takes all his symbolism from the past and makes a concrete story. With very little being suggestive in this film, the only part that is put up for interpretation is possibly the best thing this movie offered. In the scene where his parents are telling the family about the divorce, amid all the crying, a young Sammy [Spielberg’s character] sees himself in the mirror, filming the moment. Over 40 years worth of reference is thrown into three seconds of footage. Moments like that is why movies are real (The Fabelmans). But how long can one director keep stories like this going? Steven Spielberg is only a man, but how much more is he really?
With the business acquisitions Spielberg made, he has solidified his legacy forever. Upon the many movies and stories he directed, he is responsible for much more. With investments from Universal, Alibaba, Entertainment One, and Reliance, Spielberg debuted his own studio in 1980, Amblin Productions. The studio is legally allowed to use the banners of Amblin Television, Amblin Entertainment, and since co-founding the brand in 1994 Dreamworks Pictures (Amblin). Everything these brands touch, Steven Spielberg is directly tied to. If there is any chance where somebody has not liked the movies he directed himself, Spielberg is either responsible for, or a few degrees off from anything the average person has loved on screen growing up
Dreamworks being such a prolific source of kids movies, everyone can thank Spielberg for giving their favorite movies a studio to be born into. Movies like Shrek, Trolls, How to Train Your Dragon, Transformers and many more memories were the result of Dreamworks. Amblin Entertainment being the lesser known brand needs the recognition behind making more cult classics such as the Back to the Future franchise, Men in Black, Gremlins, and A Dog’s Purpose. These studios have become so prolific in their years, they will live well past the great director’s time.
Steven Spielberg is nothing short of an accomplished man. After everything he still refuses to slow down, having multiple movies in production for 2023. Looking on his career, he made leaps and bounds despite the hardest obstacles. He proved resilient despite having a hard upbringing. Possibly this paper tells more about Steven’s character than the exclamations of his work. But just as Spielberg learned, stories tell more than just one. His career is about movies but it is really about not giving up. Perhaps this paper is not actually about Spielberg at all, and more about the stories we try to tell compared to the ones we tell indirectly. Nobody should be forced to stay linear in telling the stories that represent themselves. Steven Spielberg introduced life in layers, and will continue to inspire millions.
-Isaac William Joesph
Works Cited:
“Amblin: Movies & Television: Official Site.” Amblin Official Site, https://amblin.com/#visited.
Desser, David. Review of Schindler's List (1993) Spielberg's Holocaust (Book Review), vol. 18, no. 3, 2000, pp. 164–166.
Haskell, Molly. Steven Spielberg: A Life in Film. Yale UP, 2017.
IMDb.com. (n.d.). Steven Spielberg. IMDb. Retrieved November 12, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/awards
Lacy, Susan, et al., directors. Spielberg. Home Box Office, 2017. Accessed 20 Nov. 2022.
Spielberg, Steven, director. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Amblin Entertainment, 1982.
Spielberg, Steven, director. Schindler’s List. Amblin Entertainment, 1993
Spielberg, Steven, director. Jurassic Park. Amblin Entertainment, 1993
Spielberg, Steven, director. Catch Me If You Can. Amblin Entertainment, 2002
Spielberg, Steven, director. The Fabelmans. Amblin Entertainment, 2022
Zabloski, Taylor, host. "Steven Spielberg (pt 1) | the life of a director." Illiterate, 4 Dec. 2020. Illiterate, .spotify.com/episode/4tVVqWCeoQBTVrrJ5SO5TP?si=fwBpE1yrQSyEJAJeH33CUQ. Accessed 10 Nov. 2022.
