Spielberg

To talk about Steven Spielberg is to talk about movies in their most idyllic, magical form. Since the wild success of Jaws in 1975, no other director has taken America out of their seats and into an exciting new world, wholly captivated and detached from their lives for a while, more than Spielberg. He has the unbelievable ability to simultaneously create the unimaginably large and understand the seemingly small.

With his fictional work, from E.T. to Jurassic Park to Indiana Jones, he has led us on unforgettable adventures and introduced us to characters that become a part of the family. With his more recent historical films, he is somewhat of an educator, telling a story and teaching a lesson with adept skill and unquestionable beauty. After all these years, to me and many others that love a trip to the movies, Spielberg feels like a friend.

I had the opportunity to speak with Spielberg last week when the famed director went on a conference call with some college outlets in promotion of his latest film, Bridge of Spies (read our review here). Read my questions and his answers below. 

DBK: Much of your fiction-based work features a hero figure, whether it be Indiana Jones or even someone like Ray Ferrier in War of the Worlds. Do you see Bridge of Spies, as well as films such as Lincoln and Schindler’s List that are about real people, as hero movies, too?

Spielberg: ”Well a hero is, a hero is a person who doesn’t know they’re heroes. The last person to find out they are heroes, you know, in another words what I’m trying to say is that, you know, I don’t set out to, you know, to glorify a character. You know, if an audience wants to lift a character higher than my point of view as a director that’s absolutely fine and there’s certain characters like Indiana Jones that I hoped audiences will lift way above, way out of my reach and turn them into their heroes but it’s not something I set out to do because it’s okay to do it I think with, you know, a piece of comic art or real, you know, Saturday matinee popcorn adventure movie.

“But when I’m dealing with history it’s not my job to forge heroes. It’s my job to be accurate to the event even when we sometimes fictionalize some of the drama but to be accurate with the events and when that happens I don’t really think about Donovan or Schindler or, or Lincoln as my hero. I think of them as people I can learn something from but I’m really happy to hear if any of those characters become, you know, the heroes of others.”

DBK: You had the Coen brothers involved in this script which some may say is surprising. What is it about their work that you think makes them a fit to have a hand in this film?

Spielberg:  “Well, you know, the film started with Matt Sherman, a wonderful playwright from the United Kingdom, from England and, you know, he’s the one who found the story. I never heard of Donovan or Abel. I knew about Gary Powers. I knew nothing about the spy swap or about all of this or what was happening during this, this almost secret history of, you know, the KGB versus the CIA in those days. So you know, this writer from England brought me the story and it took an English writer to wake this American up about a purely American story and really marvel at everything he construed.

“But I wanted to go really deep into the characters and I wanted to also find irony because I think there’s great irony in history and the people who do the best irony that I know are Joel and Ethan Coen. So I asked them if they wanted to work on the script and they did about four or five versions, not different versions but four or five passes on their rewrite and really, really deepened the characters and found a lot of irony and of course along with irony comes humor and every movie needs humor.”

Here are some other highlights from the call.

On working with Tom Hanks:

SS: ”When I first made my first movie with Tom as a director, Saving Private Ryan, we were both a little bit nervous but, but we worked together almost like we, we were sharing a brain and it’s been that way on the next three films following Saving Private Ryan and one of the happiest experiences I’ve ever had was with Tom was on this last film, Bridge of Spies and it’s simply because, you know, Tom is an honest actor which means that he doesn’t have to act. If he understands the character he exists in clothing and in the persona of that character without having to, without having to work very hard.”

On a shift to historical movies:

SS: ”Well to begin with my imagination has always been my best friend especially when I was younger and making all those early movies. … But when I became a dad for the first time life took a very sort of serious turn and I just became concerned about something I was never concerned about which was the future of my children.

“When I started having kids it, it made me look ahead and then that forced me to look back ‘cause I’ve always loved history. I excelled in history at school probably not much else. I was a good history student and history I’ve always said to my kids you, you can’t go forward unless you know where all of us collectively have been and so I’ve always had this interest in historical subjects, in biographies but I never really turned to that until I got serious about being a parent.”

Upon receiving a barrage of gratitude from a handful of college journalists before hanging up:

SS: “Thank you. You’re all beautiful. Thank you so much.”