Hey, guys, it's another Smartless episode. Where are you going? Here's another one. I'm in such a rush.
I want to get to it. I want to get this in. I want to be quick to say this is Smartless. Smart.
Smart. Smart. Smart. He got me.
Jay was a little late today, but it's no big deal. I've got to get one of those cars to go up. That would be nice. That would go above the traffic.
It's the worst. It's the worst feeling. I actually had to go to a thing this morning out here. I was like, there's never traffic here in the morning.
It's a little time. There was like, I couldn't. And it turned out there was a road closed. I'm Long Island.
I couldn't make this left turn. And I'm like, well, this is a joke. How am I ever going to make this turn? Did you have a daughter that got a flat tire on the way to school and you had to double back and pick her up?
No. Is that what happened? Yeah. I had to do two separate trips to two different schools.
Just breathe. Just breathe. And I'm all hopped up on coffee, so I already want to kill somebody. No, no, no.
Just breathe. We're all together. We're all together. Do they make a non-violent caffeine?
You mean violent to make you violent or violent for your bowels? Yeah, both. You know, I actually have cut down on my amount of coffee before I play golf because I get too angry at bad shots, which I make a lot of. No.
Caffeine's supposed to make you, like, not angry. It doesn't make you, like, energetic. No, it's not supposed to make you angry, but it gives you energy. And if you start to feel it.
I've had some. Yeah. We had a tea with sugar. So he just, it was a vessel for the sugar that he wanted.
So do you have, what's the latest you'll have a cup of coffee now, Jay, in the day? Right now. I've tried to go to a green tea caffeine stimulant in the afternoon because I feel like it's less intense. Yeah.
What about a nice sleepy time tea at night? Sure. All right. Sure.
I mean, do they make it in a gummy? They do. They do. They make a camoil gummy.
Well, from what I've heard, yeah, it's out there. Yeah. Oh, my God. Wait, I'm going to take one minute to show you a picture that my sister got me.
Wait, one second. He's going to take off his headphones, stand up, leave the microphone. We're already 15 minutes late. This would be amazing.
And he knows we're doing an audio show, right? Are we stopping everything for a picture? No, no. My sister just sent me this picture of my family that was drawn when we were kids.
And I remember sitting for it. She's like, I'm going to throw this out. Do you want to make me send it? It's a hand drawing of the whole family.
And they drew my mom's eye. Like, it was the one opportunity he had to draw regular eyes. Yeah, yeah. But he didn't.
I wish you could see it. We'll start to see you next time. Oh, where is it? It's in the closet here.
Okay. Anyway, who cares? It was really funny because it's like... No, we're definitely going to talk after this.
But you think it's like the one opportunity somebody has to draw her to normal eyes. And he went ahead and made an effort to make sure that that eye... Well, maybe for him, as an artist, maybe it was important for him to... To be authentic.
Yeah, to be really representative. You know what I mean, Sean? For the 25th of us. Did you ever think about the artist?
How dare you? And maybe he has some baggage. Maybe he has some baggage with the mom. Maybe.
Are they having a good thing as her chance? He's at the top of his game in his field. But more importantly, I've heard that good old Coca-Cola is a drink of choice, which is something we have in common. That's all I drink is Coca-Cola.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Raised in Arizona. He fell in love with filmmaking at a very young age. He was the youngest director to be signed to a major Hollywood studio long-term.
Is this Steven Spielberg? We've had many successful folks in this podcast. But I don't think anyone that's had an Oscar nomination in six different decades. Scott and I just saw a new film.
We're obsessed. Guys, it's the GOAT, Mr. Steven Spielberg. Are you kidding me?
I made Steven Spielberg wait 15 minutes? Yeah. Good Lord. Look at this guy.
Wait, look at this. Well, why did you know that? Because I could see how nervous you were. I mean, I just thought, of course, the only person who's going to make you nervous like this is Steven Spielberg.
Yeah, absolutely. Wow, Steven, how unbelievable. God, I hope this was worth waiting for. I am so sorry.
These kids, these kids, I recommend having them. They'll make it later. Thanks to school. No, don't worry about it, please.
I'm just happy to be with all of you, all three of you. Likewise. Thank you for doing this. It's such an honor that you're here, so thank you.
What an honor. I meant that Scotty and I saw The Fablemans, the day it came out, and the only other time in recent memory I've enjoyed sitting in the theater that much was watching West Side Story last year. You did speak highly of that. Which I wrote you about.
Which I love. As a matter of fact, I reread the letter this morning. Oh, thank you again. Oh, thanks, guys.
That was mine. I can't wait to see The Fablemans. It's so good. It's so good.
Which makes me think, just right out of the gate, are you an avid movie? Do you go to the movies still? Is there anything you like recently? I do go to the movies.
You know, sometimes not a movie theater, per se, during the pandemic, so I was starved from the movie theater experience that all of us were for over two years. But once it broke, yeah, once it broke, the first movie I saw, the first movie I went to a theater to see, was Nope. That was the first, that's where it broke my fast. And I went to see it in New York, so that was the first movie.
He's an exciting film. No, but not of Planet Earth, as we found out, is what it stands for. True story. Yeah.
Did you know that, Stephen? I did not know that. I should know that, because I am not of Planet Earth either, and I should know my brother. Now, Stephen, can I ask you, you hear that directors have to manage not only the process of making a film and the whole team that's assembled, but also their expectations as far as what they imagine versus what is happening, and then what is ultimately you're left with as far as the finished product.
Something as close to your life as this particular film is, I would imagine those stakes were even higher. So, did The Fablemans turn out exactly the way that you wanted? Well, you know something, none of my films turn out exactly the way they wanted. I don't think that's possible for anybody to achieve, no matter how much time and heart, right, and budget, and, you know, it's a process.
Because it's a process that, the vision is, by the way, I really think it's not distilled by having so many collaborators, it's enhanced through collaboration. So, the talented people who help you tell your story, the better the story is going to be told. So, I'm a big believer in that. But at the same time, I have a kind of high bar that is real hard for me to really reach at, especially with The Fablemans, because one of the high bars of this movie were my three sisters.
And I figured if I pass muster with them, because my mom and dad are no longer with us, but if they liked the movie, I was going to be okay, right? And if my wife liked the movie, I was going to be doubly okay. But this wasn't the kind of movie that I thought I was making for the masses. This was something, as I said, this was $40 million of therapy.
Which is about how much it cost it anyway. Yeah, maybe that's how much it cost it. Having never been in therapy, except one time, to try to get out of the army, I was 18 years old, and my dad said, we can go see my psychiatrist, and maybe he'll write you a letter. And I saw him about five times, and then he was actually pro the Vietnam War and wouldn't write me a letter.
No way. But no, this was, I didn't have big expectations in terms of people understanding this, thinking that I was making a movie, obviously making an autobiographical movie about key moments of my formative years, of growing up inside a very unusual family, until people started seeing the movie, and telling me how they felt about the film, and then immediately telling me about the similarities about their childhoods, and the divorces, and the bullying, and the anti-Semitism. And suddenly, all these notes and letters and emails and texts came pouring in, and I actually felt like I wasn't alone anymore. I felt like I was in great company.
My story wasn't so unique after all. Which, by the way, is a great lesson I think that all of us go through as we get older, we start to recognize, if we can look for the similarities in other people, then we can start to recognize how not unique we are as people, and certainly that's been part of my journey, but did you ever have, or do you continue to have moments when you make a film that is semi-autobiographical, that does incorporate these key moments from your life, did you remember moments where you wake up and you have almost like a panic of like, oh gosh, that was so revealing, or does it catch up with you in moments that you don't expect ever? I told the cast before we started shooting that I'd gotten all my emotion out, writing the script with Tony Kushner, because Tony was like my therapist on this, and there were so many times that we were writing this, and it would just be too hard, and then we'd step away, and I had to step away and come back, and Tony was brilliant with me, and so was Katie, my wife, and so I thought I got over the hardest part of telling the story, and the telling of the story on paper, and then I said to the cast, that I'm going to be fine, don't worry about me, you know, just get to know the characters you're playing, and let's all do this together as a family, and then on the first day of shooting, literally the first day, and I'd seen all the actors individually in hair and makeup, of course, but Mark Bridges did great costumes on it, and so Mark said the cast is coming out, and so Michelle Williams and Paul Dano playing Bert and Mitzi, or Arnold and Leah, my parents, they came out, and I was talking to somebody else, and I guess they were standing behind me until I finished my conversation, and I turned around, and I looked at them together, as certainly as Bert and Mitzi, but really I turned around, and there was my mom and my dad, and I completely lost it, after that whole preamble to the cast, I'm going to be fine, I'm strong, I got all my emotion out of writing the script, I just totally lost it, and they immediately, Michelle ran to me, and she hugged me here, and Paul came behind me, and he hugged me there, and it was the beginning of a beautiful three months of, of, did you, did you really, in the movie, still Sammy, is filming his parents' divorce? Yes.
Like, when I get, did you, did that really happen, did you have a camera filming your parents' divorcing? Well, I wasn't, no, I wasn't, you talked about the scene with the divorce. Yeah. The announcement, no, no, no, that was in Sammy's mind, that's happening in Sammy's mind.
Okay, okay. Sammy is going through something, which we all went through, my sisters and I, that actually happened, my parents, they made an announcement, they announced that they were separating and getting a divorce. Wow. So, in my imagination, years later, telling the story, I imagined, wouldn't, I need to get away from the trauma by putting a camera between myself and the events, so Sammy looks up, and it reflected in the mirror, Sammy imagines himself, with the camera up to his eyes, filming the divorce.
Right, right, right. And that was Sammy's way of disassociation. Sean, Sean, when you saw that, sorry, just that you picked up on that, did it, what kind of effect did it have on you, because your parents got there, did it resonate with you? Oh, my God, I'm the only one in the theater that clapped, no, I'm kidding.
No, when my dad laughed, we were like, hallelujah, but no, no, it was very touching, for all the reasons you said, it really resonated with me on so many levels, the bullying, the divorce, the family interaction, all of it, I was like, oh, my God, it's me, it's me, it's me, but there's this beat at the very end of the movie, which I think is so clever, and everybody in the theater erupted with, with, like, knowing laughter, the very, very, very last shot, the thing that you do at the end, which I don't want to give away, is so clever, I loved it, but it's also one of those moments that you are known for, where you trust that comedy or levity that you're bringing to a moment that's going to work and not be cheesy or undercut the importance of the scene, it's such a fine line, and every movie, there's, even in Schindler's list, there was, like, one line that was just a little comical from, I think, Ben Kingsley or somebody, and it was, you always write that line, and how do you trust that that's going to work? Well, what I trust is that the audience remembers the movie I made, you know, that the audience remembers it well enough that if I recall something, it will be recallable, you know, if the audience didn't understand the gist of that last big scene between Sammy and his hero, and if they didn't listen to the content of the lesson, that would have fallen on deaf ears of an audience, but when an audience pays attention, I just trust the audience follows everything, and that they're going to understand that that little coda was the point that I was trying to make, that I listened to, the character of Sammy, and that scene actually happened to me in real life, I met the master when I was, like, 16, 17 years old, and word for word, to the best of my recollection, that word for word would happen. When he says, now get the fuck out of my office, I love that, to little Steven Spielberg. So, Steven, this is, obviously, this story has been in your mind with you since you were a kid, and I would imagine you've been revisiting the idea of doing this for a long, long time.
What was it about, what, last year, I guess, when you finally decided to do it? Was it just timing of other projects kind of not yet fully ready, and what was it? No, it was interesting, it was a COVID pandemic, it was sitting idle for a couple of years, it was not going to the office and, you know, directing is a social disease, you know, and writing is something that's kind of like when writers write or artists paint, you know, it's something that you can do from home, you can, you know, so all my writer friends kept working throughout the entire pandemic, I'm essentially a director, I'm also a writer director, but I identify as a director, and it was social starvation, not being able to go into the office, not being able to sit around in a writer's room with all the writers in person, Zoom wasn't quite working for me, and I kind of also was terrified that this was an end of days, an epic level event, I mean, an extinction level event that was happening to the world. By the time Tony and I sat down to seriously start engaging in discussions about writing this, we'd already lost 250,000 Americans to COVID, and I didn't know, and I actually was saying to Katie and my family, if there was one thing I wanted to leave behind, if I got a chance to make one more movie, what would that movie be?
And without even blinking, it was going to be the story. That's what, you know, James Gray, who directed Armageddon Times, said something like, and I'm paraphrasing, during the pandemic, we were locked away for two years, and everybody got very introspective, and that's why all these movies now are coming out of personal, and he said, but I think it's because we think it's all over, we think this is always our last movie we're ever going to make, and that's why they're making these. What are your thoughts about that? You know, I've never had that feeling until now, until the pandemic, because I was sitting there, like all of us, I was riveted to the Fauci reports, I was riveted at the time to what all the anchors were saying on the different news outlets, and all the experts that were coming out, and the denial from that White House that this wasn't so bad, it was just like a passing flu epidemic, and I really thought that between the denial, and between the battle between politics and science, that we were not heading in a good direction, and this was not going to end well for many of us, and that just got me thinking about, you know, telling a story that has been on my mind, you know, Jason's been on my mind all my life, I've thought about this, and I thought about someday, I've got to tell the story, and I would tell episodes, you know, with your friends, you're always talking about your childhood, right, you're sitting around some of the events that appear in the Favelmans, and I had a lot of friends of mine saying, why don't you tell that story on film someday, that'd be a pretty good movie, and my mom even said, Steve, when are you going to tell the story, when the HBO, Steve's and Lacey HBO documentary came out a number of years ago, my mom saw it and called me up, and she said, okay, now you've got to make that a movie, that's got to make a movie, that we can go out and see, and then Kate was always supportive, and Tony was the one, Tony Kushner was the one who really wouldn't let it alone, all through West Side Story, he kept saying, and then for our next number, right, and so Tony was really the one that put the hottest fire to get me to think about, getting serious about it.
And now I read, you're going to get to see one of your kids, your daughter, direct a movie I just read, yeah, are you excited about that? Yeah, I'm so excited about that, she was hired based on a short film she made, a wonderful short film, which I adored, and the producers behind the John Wick series saw it and gave her a movie with a respectable budget, too, so it's exciting for the whole family. Was she a bit of a set rat? Has she been shadowing you for a long time?
She has been, but for most of her life, she was in love with the equestrian arts, she was a fantastic hunter jumper, and she had horses ever since she was three years old, and we all thought that she was going for the Junior Olympics, that she was going to Jesse Springsteen, Bruce's daughter, she was really going to make this career, and then what happens is, and the trainers all told us, they said, well, there's going to be a point where she discovers boys or she discovers girls, but in either case, when she makes that discovery, that's the turning point, they either continue writing or they stop writing, and Desprey stopped writing, but she always loved movies, and she always comes to the set, and she worked in the property department of West Side Story for three and a half, four months, we shot that. movies so she was on set every day and this was just something that she was always interested in doing the other thing that she did so well is she's a great stills photographer and her compositions and her use of black and white so i thought she might be the only kid that follows sort of my directing footsteps although all my kids are in one fashion or another in the arts that's great i love that's cool and now a word from our sponsor smartless is brought to you in partnership with airbnb so jet lag with a family is a different beast everyone's tired has their own needs and wants flexibility and space is everything for that kind of trip booking a stay on airbnb often makes more sense international travel with family takes space hotels can work but they don't always provide flexibility larger groups need a bathroom for one is not ideal for a family for and your kids bedtime doesn't need to be your bedtime when you book a stay on airbnb you can find a home with multiple bedrooms shared living areas and even outdoor space so everyone has room to unwind instead of gathering in a hotel lobby meals can be shared around the table not on a bed staying in a real neighborhood also means being closer to local cafes and markets not just the tourist corridor when it's time to plan your next international trip finding a home on airbnb can make it easier to stay together spread out and actually enjoy the time away all right back to the show i want to fan out and ask you about every single movie you've ever made in your entire life well sean by the way before you do that i was going to say steven you know it's so we've had the the honor of you know through the course of doing this podcast of talking to people who've done things that have you know that are really part of our culture or you know cultural fabric they're just woven right in there and certainly you're right at the top of that list your films for many many years have been like you know when people look back on their lives these are touchstone films these are films that represent different eras in people's lives and for you they have a representation too but everybody has their own interpretation because they watch it at whatever age and whatever they're going through and i can go back and think through all your films i saw jaws in the theater as a little kid i was way too young to see it in the theater but i did for my buddy jeffrey's birthday party uh because his mom is a little bit of a wingnut and she let us go and see it when we were too young and i remember this is a true story i laughed on purpose because i was so scared that i laughed in order to fool myself to not be scared yeah i still have that memory and that is a movie that you made and that is and so many people millions and millions of people like me like us have different memories from all those films do you ever i laughed i was so scared whenever i see jason is it something that you ever think about i mean is there i don't want to put you on the spot but is there a weight to that at all knowing that connection that you've had with the people of this planet yeah well you know i can only turn around and sort of pay it forward by paying it back by saying when i saw lawrence of arabia for the first time when i was like 16 years old um in peace arizona at the capri theater with those rocking seats with everybody smoking around you with a low smoking section you'll call um and i never smoked so for me that was kind of like a desert season i'm choking on people's cigarettes but that was seminal for me and that was the touchstone for me that really at first maybe not want to be a director because i thought i'll never ever be able to get anywhere near what i've just experienced but then i kept seeing the movie every couple of weeks i went back and saw it and again and wow you know that so when people come up to me and they say the first thing they come up to me and they say i'm talking to someone and they say you know i saw et when i was seven years old and the person telling me that looks like they're my age i'm going well how does that make me feel of course speaking of though speaking of the first time i ever met you years and years ago and i came up to you and i told you the story which was when i was i saw et when i was 11 years old my brother took me my brother captain took me for my birthday and uh i said uh after the movie was over and of course everybody was crying in the theater i said i'd give anything to be him and my brother said elliot i know to have a friend like et wouldn't be so cool i go no i'd give anything to be henry promise like at 11 years old i knew that i wanted to be i wanted that part i knew that i wanted to be an actor in a film that was that great and that's when i kind of knew um can i can i can how many callbacks did you have for et um can i work out on a process question real quick um so uh you have inspired so much so many of our of of us aspiring uh filmmakers in in many many things not the least of which is shot design and so i have a question about that you're clearly these things these these shots are designed sometimes so specifically to augment what the scene is trying to say so that whole sort of visual um presentation on the idea of the scene that that's obviously been designed by you before actors get on set and before you have discovered where everyone's going to walk and talk um what what can you say to a young filmmaker when they've got some great shot design and you get on the set and the actor says well no i don't think i would sit in that chair i think i'd be standing over here against this wall which destroys your shot design and therefore might not have the same visual kind of support for what the scene's trying to say what do you say to that actor i mean i imagine you don't have that problem nowadays with enough of the actor but um how do you how do you manage that sort of that creative um collaboration and negotiation fired i mean that happened to me in television when i was first running tv in the late 60s and early 70s and when i met this actor he had wanted to be a director he was much older than me and he never had a chance of directing was starring in this tv movie i was making and he wouldn't do anything i told him at all and he wouldn't do a single thing i told him and i finally on the last shot the last shot happened to be a conference room and he was supposed to give a speech and he was supposed to exit at the end of the scene out the door there wasn't really a door it was a teeny little space it was maybe only three feet deep and he was going to open the door go in and close it and i was supposed to say cut and by that time i was at the end of my rope and he was a professional and so when i when i when i said actually he played the scene and then he made his exit he went into the closet and closed the door and i turned to the table of other actors and i said okay start improvising and i made them talk i improvised for eight minutes while he stood in the closet for eight minutes and then when i finally said cut the door open i was expecting to get punched out in front of the whole crew and he walked right by me didn't look at me and he apparently left the soundstage got in his car and went home i was going to ask you too i think that you're i think you're known um of you know as one of the great uh stagers of directors your staging is is beyond uh i don't think anybody's ever staged the way you do is that something that you learned is that something that you just innately knew like it's just because i think it's kind of a lot that the art of that is just i don't think it's talked about enough in filmmaking thank you very much for that i i've you know staging to me is one of the most important things i can contribute to telling a story again because i think that the shots essentially are a way to illuminate what the writer has already put down on paper and what the actors have already interpreted to be their new selves as we all work as a company and and so my my part of that collaboration is to illuminate and and even even to strengthen some of the moments through shot study or through blocking and and i just know growing up that i was always amazed at moving cameras and especially lewis milestone the moving cameras of all quiet on the western front or his korean war drama pork shop hill those amazing shots where the camera just climbs a hill with gregory peck and woody strode and and and robert blake and they're climbing this hill and the first thing i thought about was that is the coolest shot and the second thing i thought was how many people to take a push a dolly you know so i was always for behind the scenes as i was admiring what was happening in front of me and i just and william wilder staging and blocking and certainly billy wilder staging about blocking i just they're just directors that i learned so much from what about like sorry sean i just want to say as a follow-up to that then because there is a very you know i noticed especially now with filmmakers not to get again too inside baseball but we become increasingly reliant on on you know on cutting and on close-ups etc etc and i remember i i watch close encounters probably once every year maybe a year and a half i can't stop watching that film it's for whatever reason certain films speak to you and it always scratched an itch for me and there's a scene where richard dreyfuss is finally losing it and he's at home and the camera's almost like it's on the threshold of this door between the two rooms you know between the living room and the kitchen and you never cut and it's not gratuitous it's not like oh this is one take and you're looking for applause because you're telling the scene and you're able to capture that frenzy of that moment of this family that's falling apart everybody's talking over each other but you can still understand and the camera moves with everybody and i just thought it's and it's so it's such an unheralded moment and yet once you start to understand what the filmmaking process like this is a great way to tell this part of the story in a way that people don't realize and i think and thank you and i think that that particular moment is something that did not come out of storyboarding or was not on a shot list part of what inspires me to figure out how to frame or how to travel in terms of blocking the actors is you know getting everybody on stage and letting them do what comes naturally to them if they get to know their characters well enough they're gonna know whether they should be sitting standing kneeling or turning and there's an intuitive trust i have in the intuitive ability of an actor a really fine actor and even a real fine intuitive actor that might just be starting out in movies or television that they bring things to the table and i'll just let them block themselves meaning just move around and usually in terms of safety when i say let's just run the lines the actors pretty much stand delivered they stand looking at each other and they have their scripts open if they're still on book and they'll just start doing the dialogue and sometimes actors will start just traveling they'll just start wandering around and it'll give me an idea and i won't even say why did you walk to the refrigerator and open it i won't even ask that i'll say oh that's great it's just to be an honest it's like theater and and and and mike nichols is one of my favorite directors and so is elia kazan and you look at their blocking look at nichols blocking in carnal knowledge and the graduate and also especially maybe the best blocking nichols ever did was his first movie who's afraid of virginia wolf and then you look at the blocking that kazan did with street card name desire and you wonder you gotta wonder was that blocking those brilliant blocking choices not made in collaboration with the actors who put ideas in kazan and nichols head and that's the kind of collaboration that happens on theater as you know from your experience on stage that's okay i love that so you know like i said i could go through every single movie it's just the effect that you and your film has had on me and like will said billions of people is just unbelievable but um i want to talk about i could ask you a thousand questions about jaws but you're probably so sick of talking about that by the way is it true that the word blockbuster came from jaws i don't know i don't know where the word blockbuster came from it's true yes um because the line was around the block so um but indiana jones but it was also around the block for the greatest show on earth by cb de vil and also around the block for gone with the wind everybody thinks that jaws was the first blockbuster and jaws was by far not the first blockbuster yeah but i don't know somebody coined that phrase i think for that movie but i don't know um take it steven take it by the way before i get into those george took it from me a couple years later yeah or what or what well speaking of george how did you meet george and then and i want to go back to all those but how did you meet george and and two parts about indiana jones how did you meet george and then also casting harrison ford on the heels of star wars empire strikes back wasn't there like a concern about the audience buying him as anything other than han solo like how did you how did it come about well in quick succession i met george through a writer friend of mine matthew robbins and uh and he suggested i go to i was at long beach state college and he said there's a contest between ucla film students and usc film students having the race hall at ucla and uh so i went to the to the contest to the competition and thx 1138 played and won everything just won all the awards and so i went backstage and i had met francis coppola a couple times and francis and matthew robbins introduced me to george we met backstage when he had just won he just beat ucla usc beat ucla not just basketball football but movies and that was a good deal for them and for me to beat george for the first time and then you know the uh george and i became fast friends and when star wars was coming out i told the story before but when star wars was about to come out george like to run to hawaii and hide from bad news uh he was very much like me if we're gonna get bad news let's get bad news in hawaii let's not get bad news in ensino you know nothing wrong with ensino by the way but it better to have bad news in hawaii and so we went to hawaii george inaugurated this thing about building lucky sandcastles and you build it close to the to the high tide mark and then if the sandcastle the next morning is no longer there the ocean wiped it out your film will be a flop and if the castle still is there the film's gonna be hit so we built the sandcastle just the sun was going down the next morning we ran down to the beach and it was intact and about i don't know a couple hours later he found out on a telephone call that every single 10 30 a.m show of star wars was sold out across the entire nation wow wow so this is before tracking this is before tracking and so that's when george in his euphoria asked me what i want to do next and i said i want to do a james bond film but cubby brockley won't hire me i've asked him twice and we went after joss he wouldn't hire me george says well i got that beat i got something called raiders of the lost ark you should do that instead and that's how i got involved in that and the harrison story is very simple george asked me to come up and look at a kind of empire strikes back and we were still casting for indie and i just said to him um what about that guy for indiana jones and george said well that's han solo and i said yep he's an actor he can play more than han solo john wayne was in 57 westerns 20 different characters as john wayne and uh and george started taking it seriously so we sent the script to harrison and he loved it and said yes i love that you mentioned that you went you saw kind of a vampire strikes back uh how that's something that's i just think so cool that that you guys your peers at a very very high level um look at each other's work uh at an early stage and give notes and help one another out um how is that still very very frequent for you and i imagine that group changes a little bit every once in a while it was part of a it was part of a wave where all of us were interactive with each other for years it doesn't happen so much anymore but oh my god in the 70s and 80s you know we couldn't wait to take our movies and we couldn't wait for the royal drubbing you know because it was not always our rough guys were not always greeted with support it was usually this doesn't work you got to fix it you got to throw that out you got to reshoot this you got to reshoot that so it would get kind of violence you know sometimes i remember when george showed star wars all of us he showed star wars for the first time to about 40 of us and i would not say it was the best rough cut screening anybody had ever seen and i'm not saying that i was pressing it or anything but i was the only person in the room that said this is great it's gonna make up you know a ton of money and we went to a chinese restaurant everybody just started coming down on the film it didn't make sense you know who are these guys who are the guys that look like nazis but they're all white you know all this as stormtroopers and it was not what there were no special effects you have to understand it was all blue screen and like bang bang there was nothing every time there was star wars when star wars were happening george got the black and white gun camera footage of p51's and stuka's dive bomb thing right right so you went from color with blue screen to black and white stock footage from world war and you were probably like like this is good luck george i thought it was great the only people that flipped out for it was me and the head of the studio alamand jr who had financed the film yeah sure and laddie and i and we thought it was gonna be great uh i have a quick question from scotty here who's you know in love with you like i am like anybody else he says first of all he can sing every single word in mandarin from anything goes from indiana jones in the temple of doom for real he memorized the whole thing in mandarin well my wife doesn't remember i keep asking cater to sing it for me and she says i forgot the mandarin yeah no he'll remind you uh and if i said this is a real question if by some miracle this from scotty you happen to be home with kate watching tv and you're scrolling for something to watch what is the movie we'll always stop and watch even with commercials uh dr jivago because it's kind of the film we sort of fell in love with together oh that's nice that's cool um can i ask you about uh there's a shot in empire the sun uh which thank you for discovering christian bale um where i think it's that spot when he runs up on the roof and uh you know i forget what he says about the jack one 51's cadillac out of the sky and and i think the camera stops its pan and in the deep deep distance there's a parachute coming down in the background it might be that shot might be different but i always thought my god it'd be so easy to make that incredible shot without that parachute the fact that you it must be very difficult to drop a a world war was it one or two parachute and get in the right in the frame the composition of that how difficult was that to do and how ambitious to say no we're that's what we're doing today and it's going to take you know a whole day to do an eighth you know that was in the script that was tom stopper's contribution who wrote the script based on the jg ballard book and And Tom just created a kind of dream world for Jim, played by Christian Bale. And he's been hugged by Dr. Rawlings because he's sort of gone, you know, he's become hysterical, let's say, on the roof.
And Dr. Rawlings is trying to calm him down. And when he embraces him, Jim looks up and his parachute's coming down. And it was just something that Tom had put in the script to create a kind of dream state for both the character and for the audience.
In order to call him the question, is this really happening in reality or is this only happening in Jim's imagination? Because Jim had an overly active imagination. Yeah, but so difficult probably to. I don't remember if it was difficult or not.
I have a feeling that it was one of those things where we had the stuntman on a crane. And there was probably even, I'm not really sure. I kind of forgot how we did that. It was a long time ago.
I'll bet you probably had to drop him from a plane and just pan the camera to wherever he's going to drop down, frame left or frame right. And just kind of pivot with it. Because I don't think you get a crane up that high. I'm not sure.
It might have been actually just, you know, we might have cheated the shot also and lowered the roof or something. But I'm not sure we didn't drop him from a crane because, I mean, from an airplane. Because everybody would just be panic-stricken. I hope his chute would open.
That's what I mean. The shot was just amazing. So I think it was early 90s. I remember the 92 or 93 or something.
One of, as of many, but one of your most impressive years in your career. Both Jurassic Park and Schindler's List came out in the same year. And Jurassic Park was the highest grossing movie ever at that time. And did you have any, like, they're so contrasting films, obviously.
Was that, that wasn't by design? Was that just by accident? Like, did you know when you were making other films that come out the same year and be as successful and when they're both so different? You know, it was interesting because I was, I was very much working only on Jurassic Park.
In the editing room, I finished my cut. What was left was the mixing and the color correction. But we had a release planned already. And I'd been working with Steve Zalian on the Schindler's List script for quite a while.
And we went to Poland together. And we went to Oshawa, Steve and I. And we went to all the actual locations. We went to Saw the Apartment, Oshawa Schindler, had taken over from a Jewish family in Krakow.
We went to the site of the Poshaw forced labor internment camp. We went to all of these places. And then we both got inspired. And Steve had already written, like, a 115-page draft.
And I kept saying to Steve, this has got to be, like, 170 pages. I mean, let's not, let's just go for it. And when he came back, he had written this extraordinary draft after, you know, several months later. And I read it right in the middle of post-production on Jurassic Park.
And something seized me. And all I knew was I had to do the movie now. I couldn't wait for another winter. Winter was about to come up.
I needed winter for Schindler's List. And I kind of put the production, the Schindler production, onto a fast track in terms of having to cast it and having to location scout. And I kind of, I went to George Lucas. And I said, George, I need a huge favor from you.
I've never done this before, but I've got to make Schindler's List. And don't ask me why. It's just in me. It's in the marrow.
In the deepest parts of my, I guess, in that sense. And I have to tell the story. It's in my marrow. And I don't want to wait a year.
I don't want to let this feeling wane or dissipate. And when you take over the rest of Jurassic Park, so George agreed. And George mixed the movie. Oh, wow.
Corrected the color. And it had already been cut. I locked the cut, but George did everything else after the locked cut. And that allowed me the freedom to go off and start.
I mean, you know, and the confidence that you've always had. I mean, I remember that documentary talking about called Spielberg, which is so great, that you said when you were much younger and making your first films, once you finished one movie, you couldn't wait to start another because you felt good about yourself when you were making films. And when you weren't making anything, you know, you had to be with yourself. And you're flacking with the doubts that, as you call them, the scary whispers of lack of self-esteem or whatever it is.
Do those, when do those feelings, I'm sure they don't creep in anymore. I mean, look at you. But how and when did that shift for you where you became, you know, I'm going to trust the moments in between movies. That's never, I've never taken that beautiful pill.
That's never happened for me. I mean, oh my God, I wish that would have happened for me. No, fear is my fuel. I've often said that.
And it's true. The scarier I get, the sort of more proactive I become. Yeah. And I get more inspired if I'm not secure.
If I'm really secure, look at my sequels. They're not as good as the originals because I know at least it's going to open. It's going to open really well. And so.
But you had the confidence not to make Jaws 2, which is. Yes, I did. I had the confidence not to make Jaws 2. And I didn't think there should have been a Jaws 2.
And we will be right back. And now back to the show. I don't know if there's an answer for this, but if there is one, you'd be the one to be able to come up with it. It seems like every year the distance between the films that get great reviews versus the films that make a lot of money gets further.
And you have seamlessly been able to marry both commercial viability and artistic accolades in every film that you do. It's just, it's an incredible accomplishment. What would you say to a filmmaker that was looking to, you know, make money with a film or, you know, be commercial, sell popcorn, but also really impress the most discerning of critics, viewers, et cetera? What is that?
What is that ratio? What's that sauce that it's not, it's not this, it's not that it's, it's together. I mean, I think every filmmaker needs to make a movie that that filmmaker would not be able to live without making, not be able to live without in their lives. So the first, the first person the filmmaker has to please is him or herself.
I mean, that's absolutely essential that you've got to do something, you know, right for you. Then you have to, of course, be responsible and you don't want to overspend. You want to control the budget as much as possible. The film doesn't feel like a commercial movie on the outset.
You want to spend a ton of money if it's not going to make a money back for the studio, because often it's the commercial success of something that gives you your second job. Or if the film gets great reviews, by the way, and doesn't make any money, that can also get you your second job. But you've got to please yourself before you try to please the studio or try to please the critics. I could live with the story I told and the work in that story.
That's good enough for me, and that should be the main criterion for filmmakers. So the story, so you're not thinking, I need to do this to achieve this, you know, so that it's viewed by other people in a certain way. And how they feel about it is secondary to how I feel about it, and that's where I'm at it. That's exactly right.
But if you want to make commercial movies, then what are you going to go for first? A high concept. You're going to want to get into the high concept business, and you're going to want to do something that's already been proven to have been successful. And the kind of movies I really admire are the films that nobody ever guessed would make any money at all.
They make a lot of money. You know, that's always really, really, when something like that happens, that's very exciting. It seems like, lucky for us, what you seem to think is commercially viable or is super relatable ends up being very, very human stories, which is a great guess as to what is going to be commercially appealing. It's something that we can all relate to.
We're all human. We all have parents. There's a small little person inside of all of us that we've been with since we were little kids, that no matter how old you get, it's still there, and you always see it. Yeah, a little chicken, thank you.
It seems like they're at the center of all of your stories, no matter whether they're big movies or small movies or black and white or color or effects or not. There is something you just drill us right in the chest, and just thank you for that. No question in that. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Do you have a, Jason kind of touched on this already, and we've asked this, we've kind of talked about this area a lot on our show, but does, how does it make you, does it bum you out that certain films you may be drawn to direct would be for streaming and not the theater now, like that whole argument, like the movies that we, that used to be in the theater are now on our TV? When you say bum me out, are you talking about my own work and the choices I make? Sure, but in terms of the business as a whole.
Well, the streaming business has given a chance for five times more filmmakers to get their start making films than had there never been a streaming business. Yeah, that's true. So right away, it is a huge opportunity for storytellers to get their feet wet, and if they have a good idea or they find a book and a streaming service wants it, and the person's only done music videos, or the person's only done commercials, or the person's, you know, just on someone else's recommendation, the streaming service trusts or inaccurates, as I want the person to direct me. It's a great way to get started in this business.
My God, if we had streaming services back when I was starting out, a lot more filmmakers would have gotten their breaks. So I think the streaming services are very, very good. What I would like to see the streaming services do, however, is to allow more theatrical window dressing so that they're at least given a chance to make some of their money back theatrically, where people can go out to the movies and see them before they debut on the service. And I think if you come out with a movie that is popular, or at least is critically popular, if not commercially popular, you build up the IP, you build up a cachet that is created, and suddenly the film becomes kind of famous.
So when it comes down to the streaming service, it debuts three weeks, six weeks later, it's recognizable, and people say, oh, I've heard all about that. Wow, I want to see that. And so I don't understand the day and date philosophy, which is why I'd be terrible running a streaming service and why I'd probably get fired the first day. Well, one of the other things that streaming has given us an opportunity for, as viewers and filmmakers, is more the long-form approach to these stories.
And I'm sure that you've answered this, so I apologize for not knowing your answer, but if you wouldn't mind repeating it, your instinct or appetite for doing something that is perhaps a limited series and sort of an eight-hour story as opposed to a two-hour story, where do you sit on that? I'm sure you play with certain ideas. I was willing to do Lincoln as a six-hour because I couldn't raise all the financing for it. Nobody believed in it.
You know, our company was only good for 50% of the budget, and I went all around town, and everybody turned me down. I'm not going to name names, but every single person turned me down. And I was ready to make a deal with HBO to do it, to expand it to six hours. Tony Kushner's first draft was 550 pages, so I had the goods.
I had the material. I don't know if I could talk Daniel Day-Lewis into doing five or six hours, but I was on the brink of that, and the person that came in at the 11th hour and sort of saved it for the movie screen was Tom Rothman over at 20th Century Fox. And he read the script, and he put up the other half of the money, and that's why the film became a feature film. Wow, that's pretty cool.
But do you have an appetite? I do have an appetite for long-form, and I someday will direct a long-form series. I mean, if somebody had brought me, Mare of Easttown, I would have done that. That was a beautifully directed story.
Great. Let me get an email address on you real quick. Hey, Stephen, what is this? So Fablemans is the movie that you always wanted to make.
It's the story. Is there another story out there? Is there another thing out there that you're like, nobody will ever make it, or this is improbable, but it's something that's always kind of, I don't know, maybe something you read years ago that you've always like, God, maybe there's a world where I can make that. Is there one out there?
If there was, I wouldn't be talking to you guys. I'd be having a taste of somewhere shooting it. I'd say, I'll do it next year when I'm available. I'll talk to you guys next year.
I love you so much about your podcast. No, I don't. I actually haven't crossed that bridge yet. I don't have what you would call the next film I've always wanted to make.
West Side Story fulfilled a deep, abiding love of the idiom of Hollywood and the Broadway musical, and it was the only musical I would ever turn into a movie. And not to say that I didn't love the 61 movie. I adore the 61 movie, but Tony Kushner and I found a way to make it relevant for today, for our time, and that's why I did it. And I don't have any desire or appetite to make another musical.
That was it for me. But I don't have a wish list that goes much beyond the Fablemans as my personal kind of love letter to my family, and not so much of a love letter to the bullies in my life. But I was able to work out the trauma, because I think we all work out trauma through the art we create. That's how you work out the trauma.
By the way, one of the greatest lines in the Fablemans is when the bully is bullying you in the hallway, and you say, maybe I'll make a movie about it one day. We're watching that movie. It's so cool. You mentioned West Side Story.
Can I ask you about the choreography in that? It was just so exciting. Incredible. Not only just the dancing and the actual design of the choreography, but the way in which you guys shot that.
Sorry to ask another process question about shot design and cover strategy. But what was the call time on that? I didn't really like to get into the video. But it did seem to me like the choreography had to happen first, and then you and your cinematographer.
Was that Janusz as well? Janusz Kaminski. And so would you guys watch these dances fully done and then decide how you're going to shoot it? Yes.
I would watch the dances fully done. The first thing I did was I storyboarded the choreography. So I sat down just with a pencil, and I sat with Justin Peck. On paper?
And I did the whole thing on paper. I went to Justin's office. He's the choreographer with his associate, now his wife, Patricia Delgado. And I just started, we put on the Broadway, 57 Broadway score, the Broadway album.
And I basically used the Broadway album, and I just started doing shots. And I just started figuring out what could be a sustained shot where all the dancing could take place in front of your eyes, before your eyes, so it doesn't seem cheated. It's all happening right before you. What things needed, these staccato, energy-infused montage of editing.
And I figured that out. But then when Justin started choreographing it, I'd go down to Dumbo, Brooklyn, and I would just watch them put all these numbers on their feet, and I took my iPhone. And guys, I just basically shot every number up with my iPhone myself. I'd be sometimes in a chair with four casters, and they'd dolly me around.
But I got all my shots on my iPhone, I would cut it together to the music, and then realize, well, that sucked. And I would go back the next day, and I would reshoot the whole thing on my iPhone, and because he kept repeating the choreography, and he kept fine-tuning it, I was able to make six, seven passes and cut all those passes together with my camera device. Wow. So by the time I got to the stage, or by the time I got to the streets of Brooklyn, and the streets of Patterson, New Jersey, and down to Harlem, where we shot a lot of the film, it had already been shot on video, and I just went and converted that to film.
By the way, Tim Cook is going to request the station for his new iPhone commercial. Yeah, exactly. I want to ask you one of my favorite moments, and a lot of people, but to me, a profoundly funny, great moment, I want to know how much of it was planned before, or how long before, is that great moment in Indiana Jones when the guy pulls out the knife, and the sword, and he starts swinging it around, and Harrison Ford just pulls out and shoots him, and not only just shoots him, then turns away, and back to business. To me, it's profoundly funny.
Everything about it is great. And then beautifully recalled in the end of the trailer of the new film. That's right. I think what's funny about that, and I'll tell you in a second how that came about, but I think what's funny about that is the last thing he does when the swordsman threatens him, and I thought this was really important.
I asked Harrison to wipe his brow, and in so doing, fold the front of his fedora hat upwards, so he looked a bit like Gabby Hayes, and I thought by making him look a little funny-looking, by taking the brim of his fedora and forcing it to go up, as opposed to coolly be down just over the brow, it took the onus off of cold-blooded murder. Right. That was a little thing that I was hoping would work for us, but the whole reason it happened was Harrison had some tainted lamb the night before at a restaurant where we were shooting in Carawan, Tunisia, and he had some tainted lamb, and he had a taste of what we call the Teresa's, and he said, that morning, he said, you only got an hour. I'm going back to the hotel in an hour.
What can you do in an hour? And I said, but it's a three-page scene between a swordsman and a whip. You're supposed to fight this guy with your bullwhip. He said, yeah, but you only got an hour.
And I remember saying, but why don't we just shoot the guy? And Harrison remembers saying to me, why don't we just shoot the guy? So I don't know whose idea it was, but I know it was one of the two of us gave up an idea. And about an hour and a half later, we had done four shots, and he went back to the hotel.
Wow, that's amazing. When I corner Jason at a party, sometimes he calls me Gabby Hayes. Anyway, so I have one question about, nobody's going to know who Gabby Hayes is, by the way. But one question about, and we'll let you go, because I don't want to take too much time.
John Williams, okay? So John Williams, been nominated for 52 Academy Awards for all of his scores. It's unbelievable. But the Fablemans was your, that's where Campbell's soup makes soup.
But your collaboration with him in the Fablemans, as he now famously has made it known that he's retiring from film scoring. Tell me what that was like, knowing, sitting in those sessions with him, knowing that this is going to be your last collaboration together. Right. Well, the director.
But for the Fablemans, And that was going to be the last score that he was going to write for me as director. And I knew that going in. And Johnny did something very special. I mean, he always previews the scores for me, but he had come up with a tune.
We only play one time, which is in the last scene between Mitzi and her son Sammy, the last scene they have together in the film. And John composed it just for that scene. And then, of course, it recalls itself in the end titles. You have to hear it a second time over the end credits.
But it was one of the loveliest pieces of music he has ever written for any of my movies. And he did it as a gift to my mom and to my dad and to me. And I'll never forget it. And I'll never forget my reaction to it.
And the other, I had a lot of very emotional reaction to Johnny's music. It's just incredible. It's the greatest collaboration I've ever had in my career. It's insane.
We're just saying a lot. Yeah. We've had a lot of great collaborations, but that one takes a kick. Well, we haven't worked together yet, but that's okay.
But anyway. That's coming. That's coming. That'll be one of the great ones.
Check your emails, Sean. Yeah, for sure. Steven, thank you for your time. I could ask you 75,000 more questions, but you're very, very kind to give us even this little bit of time.
This flew by for me. I just had the best time talking to all three of you. Steven, we're so appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. Please keep going. Thanks, pal. I did just a little bit already.
I will say this to one of the, first of all, how incredible that we got to sit and have an hour of talking with Steven Spielberg. Sean, I think you win the guest grab of the year. Was he on your guys' list too? Yeah, but I would never dream of pitching him as like, hey, let's call Steven Spielberg.
He's got a Mount Rushmore of guests, but I was like, you know, here's the only thing I can mention, and I want to say this is that when we were finished interviewing him, and we can do this if we want, but we were able to talk to him for a few minutes after we stopped rolling for a second, and he said goodbye to us, and to have that moment of, which we don't generally have with people. Never, by the way. We cut for a second, and we started talking to him, and he made a point to go around and ask each one of us what was going on. I know, and he's so kind.
Yeah, and very kind and generous of spirit, and really sweet guy. Yeah, he's got that thing that a lot of people have where he checks a lot of boxes just in his business of being an incredibly talented man, a personable guy, a people person, like social skills are incredible. These are stuff you should strive for. I'm looking up those terms and you're saying them.
I know, you're a people person. You have to be around other people. He does seem incredibly generous with the presence that he seems to be aware that he has with folks, and he doesn't take that for granted. He was really generous with us, and as you said, Will, made it a point to make sure that he just said, hey, how are things going on in your life, and how important that would be to him.
Well, and Jason, you said it's hard for him to ignore who he is. He knows who he is, and where he fits within the sort of the, you know, certainly, like I said on the show, culturally, the impact that he has had. And the other thing is, you know, like I said, he was very generous. I told him the story of, and you guys know this, when I came, when we were shooting Blade of Glory, and we made it for DreamWorks, and he had seen the first dailies, and I was coming out of SNL with, it was Sudeikis and Will Forte, and we were talking after SNL, and this was like 2006, I guess, and the winter of 2006, and we're standing there waiting to go to the after party, and Steven Spielberg walks into our little crew of guys, we're talking, waiting to get in the cars to go to the after party, and he goes, hey, Will, Steven Spielberg, I just want to say I've seen the dailies of Blade of Glory, and you're doing such a terrific job, and then disappeared into the night gun in a car and drove away, and I remember Sudeikis and Forte being like, what the fuck, man?
Like, did that just happen? And he didn't need to do that. He didn't need to go out of his way. He knows who he is.
He understands the impact. For me as a, you know, as a performer, as a thing, it was like, it was mind-blowing. A light bulb to change, or a picture to hang, you have to lift people up. I think that you're going a little, uh, you know what, Sean?
I mean, I don't mind it, but that's a little, buy the book! Buy the book! Buy! Well done.
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