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.
