One of the most successful directors of epics began as a child besotted with filming toy train wrecks with an 8mm camera. But Spielberg’s latest is a semi-autobiographical drama about his parents, touching on a family secret he had buried for years.
« Every one of my movies is a personal movie, » said director Steven Spielberg. « I don’t make films that I don’t consider to have something of myself left behind in them. »
Spielberg has left something of himself behind in 35 movies. Along the way he’s become the highest-grossing film director of all time, with such hits as « Jaws, » « Close Encounters of the Third Kind, » « Raiders of the Lost Ark, » « Jurassic Park » and « Schindler’s List. » Now, at age 75, he has made « The Fabelmans, » a film he calls semi-autobiographical.
« My mom was really kind of pushy about, ‘Steve, when are you gonna tell our story? When are you gonna tell my story?' » he told « 60 Minutes » correspondent Lesley Stahl.
« She did? »
« Absolutely. This is something that they embraced. »
« I kind of assumed that you were waiting – a little crass – but waiting for your parents to die, because you wouldn’t want their critique, or you wouldn’t want to hurt them or disappoint them? »
« No, I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt or disappoint my parents, » he replied. « To me it was more of a gift to them than any kind of a criticism about how my life and my sisters’ lives wasn’t as hunky-dory as people assume. »
In the film, his father (as in real life) is a computer engineer, played by Paul Dano. Michelle Williams is his mom, a free spirit who he has described as Peter Pan. It’s a coming-of-age movie, a coming-of-Spielberg’s-obsession-with-making-movies movie, starting with the first film he ever saw at age six: Cecil B. DeMille’s « The Greatest Show on Earth. »
To overcome that fear, he kept recreating the crash with his electric trains, then filming it with his dad’s 8mm camera. And that was it – Spielberg the filmmaker was born.
Stahl asked, « Is it true that when you did re-shoot some of the movies you made when you were a kid, that you changed the angles to make it look better? »
« I really, really tried, Lesley, my best to make the 8mm movies I was recreating look as amateurish as the films I made as a 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old.
