FREE ESSAY ON STEVEN SPIELBERG BIOGRAPHY

STEVEN SPIELBERG BIOGRAPHY

Rob Martinelle
American Literature C Block
Research Paper: Final Draft
18 May, 1999
Steven Spielberg: Revolutionary and Visionary
Who would have thought that a brilliant career in filmmaking could have originated with a
modest jar of Skippy Peanut Butter smeared on a neighbor's window in a tiny Cincinnati
suburb? One might not think that such an average boyhood prank could evolve a boy into a
man who would become the most financially successful film director in history. Well, that
is exactly where Leah Spielberg, Steven Spielberg's mother, would trace her son's initial
entry into becoming one of our nation's most creative storytellers. "His badness was so
original," she recalls (Stein 3).
Steven Spielberg, the only child of Leah and Arnold Spielberg, was born on December 18,
1946 at the beginning of the Baby Boom years in Cincinnati, Ohio. It does not take a
great stretch of the imagination to see that Steven's film influences were derived from
his father's experience as a World War II veteran and computer technician and his
mother's past profession as a concert pianist. The love and amount of technology,
history, and music within Steven's films can all be traced back to his early life with
his family.
While many men returning from war never want to reiterate their experiences, Steven's
father seemed to be an exception. Steven said of his father, " he intoxicated me with
bedtime stories about the war. His stories were like the war movies I was watching on
television, all worthy of cameo appearances by John Wayne" (Stein 1). It is no wonder
that at the age of twelve Steven's first film, Fighter Squad, was filmed on a WWII
fighter plane (Corliss 79). However, when Steven was unable to find certain props or
realistic backdrops, he simulated dogfights and plane crashes by editing in footage from
a WWII documentary. Only a year later, in 1960, he featured the war family Jeep in his
second film, Escape to Nowhere, which was an action picture in which GIs invaded a Nazi
hideout in the Libyan Desert. Since his family had moved to Arizona in 1960, the Arizona
desert near his house would easily replicate the simulation of the Libyan Desert. It is
clear that Steven's love and knowledge of visual effects began many years before his
creation of a mechanical great white shark in 1975. There have been many incidents
throughout Steven's childhood that have made it into his films.
At the age of six, Steven's father awoke him to witness a meteor shower in the middle of
the night (Stein 2). In time this event would also find its way into his 1977 film, Close
Encounters of the Third Kind. The grin of a clown, a deadly tree outside a window, and
being afraid at night, all out of 1982's Poltergeist, were all born out of Steven's real
childhood phobias (5). Influence for films such as 1993's Academy Award winning
drama/documentary Schindler's List could be attributed Steven growing up in a Jewish
family. Steven has recalled that during his days in school he felt discriminated from
others for being apart of the only Jewish family within the whole community (Graham 530).
During the Christmas season, he would be embarrassed that his family's house would be the
only one without lights or decorations. When his father offered to place a menorah in the
window, Steven responded, "No!...People will think we're Jewish" (Graham 528). 
Steven has claimed to have learned his numbers as a toddler with the help of a
concentration camp survivor who pointed out the numerals tattooed on his arm. However, it
was at high school, where he was first exposed to anti-Semitic behavior. He would suffer
verbal and sometimes physical abuse from other students. Making movies was definitely an
escape for Steven who told the New York Post, "I enjoy the sense of being transported and
no longer thinking anyone is in the audience" (529). 
"Nearly three years after finishing Escape to Nowhere, he made his first feature-length
film Firelight. It was a two-and-a-half-hour science fiction epic about an investigation
of mysterious lights in the sky. However, it was also a look at a rocky marriage. Could
the couple within the film have been Arnold and Leah who divorced when Steven was
nineteen? Although Steven disregarded it as a terrible film, it was a commercial success.
After his family had hired a local movie theatre to screen it, it earned back its entire
500-dollar budget in one night." (Stein 7) 
Throughout high school, Steven did not receive grades one might call "Harvard quality."
Because of this, he was not accepted to any film schools. Therefore, he later enrolled in
California State College where he majored in English. In his spare time, he studied films
and spent a lot of time trying to get into the parking lots of motion picture studios in
an attempt to get producers to look into his films. Unfortunately, the studios would not
budge. It would not be until Sidney Sheinherg, head of television at Universal Studios,
caught a glimpse of Steven's twenty-five minute road movie, Amblin. After seeing it,
Sheinherg offered Steven a seven-year contract to direct television episodes. 
He would go on to direct episodes of Marcus Welby, M.D., Columbo, and The Name of the
Game (Corliss 80). Eventually Universal assigned Steven to his first made-for-television
film, Duel. Showing off his skills at editing and creating heart-stomping action
sequences, the film was well received critically. Pauline Kael of the New Yorker writes,
"it is one of the most phenomenal debut films in the history of movies" (Graham 531) Many
critics still consider it "the best American television movie ever made" (529). Due to
the film's success overseas, Universal Studios handed Steven the adaptation of Peter
Benchley's popular novel Jaws, a story of a great white shark terrorizing a seaside
community. The film, starring Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider, broke ground in many
ways. Aside from eclipsing every box office record at the time, it broke ground in visual
effects, constructing a mechanical, remote-controlled replica of a great white shark.
Steven reflects back on 1975 during the shooting of Jaws, "it was the loneliest time of
my life. Jaws exacerbates the loneliness by the sheer size of the Atlantic Ocean and the
challenge of shooting a complete motion picture on the water" (Corliss 78). Gary Arnold
wrote of Jaws, "There has never been an adventure-thriller quite as terrifying yet
enjoyable as Jaws, and it should set the standard in its field for many years to come"
(Graham 529). And that it did. The film would set the standard in the thriller genre with
films like John Carpenter's 1978 slasher Halloween. Replace the seaside community with
Haddenfield, Illinois and the shark with "Michael Myers" and you have a prime example of
the "Jaws" influence. Not only influencing the genre, the film had a lasting affect on
ordinary moviegoers alike. Betty Martinelle, your average film fan recalls at the time,
"although it probably didn't keep most people out of the water that summer, there's
hardly a person around that didn't at least take a good glance at the water before going
in" (Martinelle). Aside from establishing himself as Hollywood's director to watch out
for, Jaws marked his first time collaborating with composer and former head of the Boston
Pops, John Williams. He created the now famous two-note theme to the movie as well as
doing the scores for everyone of Steven's films to come afterward. Grossing well over 200
million dollars, Jaws created the concept of the "summer movie blockbuster."
Coming off the phenomenal success of Jaws, Steven went back to his passion for science
fiction with 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film, which Steven both wrote
and directed, focuses on an alien-obsessed family man played by Richard Dreyfuss and his
fascination with alien spaceships. "It's a movie for people who like to use their
imaginations," he told Film Comment (Graham 530). Stanley Kaufman described the film's
finale as "one of the most overpowering, sheerly cinematic experiences I can remember"
(529). Having released his second box office smash in a row, Steven also earned his first
Oscar nomination as well. Unfortunately, he would lose in what would be the beginning of
an Oscar losing streak. 
This time period would also mark his meeting and collaboration with another director whom
he met at a film festival, George Lucas. "Steven saw Lucas as both compadre and
competition" (Empire 5). The two would develop a close friendship over the years that
stands to this day and would collaborate on many projects. Steven would be the executive
producer on Lucas's 1977 mega-hit, Star Wars. The film would even gross more money than
that of Spielberg's own Jaws. 
It was in 1981, however, that Lucas and Spielberg would collaborate on Raiders of the
Lost Ark. Aside from making the lead character Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford,
the biggest action hero in American cinema next to James Bond, the film was nothing short
of non-stop entertainment and suspense. "Raiders puts people in the same place that made
me want to make movies as a child, which wanting to enthrall, entertain, take people out
of their seats to get them involved in the kind of dialogue with the picture you've made.
They're just a lot of fun to make" (Graham 530). Grossing around 300 million dollars and
spawning two sequels, it earned Steven his second Oscar nomination for Best Director.
While "Raiders" gave him the reputation as the master of action sequences, it would not
be until later on that he would be taken as a serious film director. 
Following "Raiders," Steven released what he calls his most personal film, E.T.: The
Extra-Terrestrial, in 1982. The film, starring a then young Henry Thomas and Drew
Barrymore, told the story of an alien and his friendship with a young boy after being
left behind by his spaceship. At the time, Steven revealed to the Harper Bazaar, "the
movie is about how I felt when my parents broke up" (Corliss 78). In the words of a USA
Today columnist after E.T.'s release, "Steven is the first director since Alfred
Hitchcock to become a household name" (Graham 530). In addition to earning Steven yet
another Oscar nomination which he lost again, E.T. grossed nearly 400 million dollars
beating fellow buddy Lucas's blockbuster, Star Wars.
Because Steven was always interested in so many projects, he was never able to attend to
all of those he wished. Thus, in 1984, he founded his own production company, Amblin
Entertainment. The result would be a number of great films including Gremlins, The Back
to the Future Trilogy, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 
Growing tired of creating action packed stereotypical Spielberg pictures, in 1985 Steven
made his first attempt at serious filmmaking, The Color Purple. The story evolved around
a woman, played by Whoopi Goldberg, who is oppressed by the men around her. The film,
though received by most as deeply moving, received criticism for what some called
"insensitivity to the realities of poverty, brutality, and black experience" (Graham
531). The film made Whoopi Goldberg into huge star and earned eleven Academy Award
nominations. Ironically, Steven was snubbed for Best Director and the film failed to win
one award in what would mark the beginning of the Academy's reputation for disregarding
films that deal with African-American culture. His first attempt at serious filmmaking
would lead to 1987's Empire of the Sun, a film about a British boy's experience within a
Japanese concentration camp during World War II. Once again, his father's influence
showed up on screen. Empire of the Sun and The Color Purple would be among Steven's least
commercially successful efforts.
In an attempt to rebound off of 1991's box office flop, Hook, Steven released in the
summer of 1993 what would become at the time the most successful film in the history of
American cinema. When Jurassic Park was released, Steven made us believe that dinosaurs
existed through the use of digital effects on computers. Astounding crowds with trademark
Spielberg action, the film's gross would not be toppled until the 1997 winter release of
James Cameron's historical epic Titanic. 
During the shoot of Jurassic Park, Steven began work on another project, Schindler's
List, which would become his most critical success of his career. Schindler's List is the
true story of Oskar Schindler who saved over one thousand Jews from certain death by
employing them in his factory during World War II. One writer for Newsweek noted, "this
movie will shatter you, but it earns its tears honestly" (Corliss 81). The film was
nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won seven including Best Picture and finally
after all the rejections, Steven won his first Oscar for Best Director. In 1997 when the
American Film Institute announced the "100 Greatest Films of All Time," five of Steven's
films were among them including Schindler's List which ranked at number nine. Following
the production of the film, in 1994 Steven founded the Survivors of the Shoah Visual
History Foundation, which recorded oral histories of Holocaust survivors. He then
followed that up with the Righteous Persons Foundation, which provided grants for Jewish
groups and causes. 
After taking a three-year break from film making, Steven returned in 1997 with a not
surprising follow-up to 1993's Jurassic Park entitled The Lost World. Despite the film's
commercial success, the film has been regarded as the worst work of Steven's career. Even
Steven himself has noted that the film was made because he knew that it would be a huge
blockbuster. 
Later that same year, he released the drama Amistad, the true story of African-American
men's struggle for freedom aboard the slave ship "La Amistad." Even though the film was
named as one of the best pictures of the year by critics throughout the country, the film
failed to receive any Oscar recognition which some might attribute to the Academy's
reputation of, once again, disregarding films that deal with African-Americans and their
culture. 
Most recently in 1998, Steven released the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan which
single-handedly redefined the term "movie violence." Creating what some may call the most
graphic and realistic war movie ever made, Steven made the film as a tribute to his
father and dedicated it to him after receiving his second Oscar at the seventy-first
Annual Academy Awards. People were taught that war is no laughing matter. 
Steven Spielberg's films have left us with so much to remember. From the horrors of
Auschwitz to the image of a boy on a bicycle, sillouhetted against the moon, his films
have sketched images in our minds we are unable to forget. His influence upon mainstream
Hollywood directing is more than evident. Whether it be making us reflect on past
tragedies or teaching us that differences should be celebrated aside from being just
recognized, his methods of storytelling have established him as more than just a
wonderful film director, but as a great humanitarian. 
Bibliography
Works Cited
Corliss, Richard. "Peter Pan Grows Up, but Can He Still Fly?" Time 
Magazine. 19 May, 1997. 75-82.
Dyer, Richard. "At Work Again, he and John Williams Exalt in their 
Admiring of 24 Years." Boston Globe 24 Feb. 1998: 4/13/99
http://www.multimania.com/spielbrg
Stein, Ruthe. "Biography : Steven Spielberg." Empire Mar. 1998: 4/13/99 
http://www.multimania.com/spielbrg
Graham, Judith. Current Biography Yearbook 1996. New York: H.W. 
Wilson Company, 1996.
Gritten, David. "When the Going Got Tough: Steven Spielberg's D-Day 
Drama 'Saving Private Ryan' salutes the 'citizen soldier of WWII'." L.A. Times 10, May
1998: 4/13/99 http://www.multimania.com/spielbrg
Martinelle, Betty. Personal Interview. 11 Apr. 1999.