Spielberg Page #5

---

We were very, very fortunate

to be part of that time.

The culture

was converging.

That's Albert.

It was filmmakers,

it was artists,

musicians, performers.

It was an incredible,

fertile time.

And here we have

Amy Irving in the car.

Brian De Palma introduced us

when she was making "Carrie."

- That's how we first met.

- De Palma:
Then they started

to go out together.

They were together

and then they were apart,

and then they got back

together again.

- De Palma:

Amy half dressed.

- As usual, sewing.

Yes, sewing Steven's pants

to get him ready

for the big day

that's coming very soon.

- Noogies, noogies.

- ( laughs )

Phillips:

Steven was a nerd.

( laughs )

Master of the world!

Phillips:

A loveable nerd,

but he was a nerd.

He was not into sports

or drugs or rock 'n' roll,

but he was passionate

and he was so enthusiastic.

He used to love

to talk about film,

and it was infectious,

his enthusiasm.

- Steven had

the first car phone.

- ( phone ringing )

It's ringing.

So, Steven and I

used to go around

and call up a girl and say,

"Well, let's get together,"

and she'd say, "Fine."

And then of course we'd be

parked right outside her house.

That was like--

I would say--

it may seem

extremely silly now,

but in those days

it was like a miracle.

He was fun.

He was fun to be around.

I'm Julia Child,

the French chef.

- ( gasps )

- ( laughs )

Today we are carving...

turkey for Thanksgiving!

De Palma:

We were all struggling

with our first

very unsuccessful attempts

to penetrate

the Hollywood establishment,

but Steven was working

all the time.

Coppola:

Steven always was

a creature of the studio,

and his thinking

and his methodology

went that direction,

and he became

a master of it.

He was very fortunate

that the kind of movie

he really had a sense for

was also the kind of movie

that the audience

had a sense for.

We are now

in the Scorsese kitchen.

We are going to show

"Hell's Angels."

Scorsese:

We all gravitated

towards each other.

We had that one thing

that kept us all together,

the one element.

The one kind of a madness

and an obsession with movies.

Spielberg:

We were consulting

with each other,

and unabashedly giving opinions

about each other's works.

Lucas:

It was very much that way,

but we were

still competitive.

"Come and see my movie.

Sit down-- sit here.

The sound's best here."

And blow

the other guy away.

Everybody was sort of

forced to do a better job

to impress everybody,

because Marty had done

this movie,

or Francis had done

that movie.

Scorsese:

They became

like the acid test.

You get some real grounding

and you hope an honesty--

maybe not too honest.

Spielberg:

George showed a bunch of us

"Star Wars"

for the first time,

and there were

no effects in yet.

It was just World War II,

black-and-white stock footage

intercut with blue screen

production color footage,

and then showed

that movie to us,

expecting us to be able

to see the movie.

Lucas:

It was basically

a children's film.

You know, it wasn't what

the other friends of mine

would think of as something

really worthwhile.

Steven was the one person

who was really enthusiastic

about it

and said, "This is gonna be

a huge smash."

Spielberg:
But George said,

"I think it's gonna be

a disaster."

He was very depressed,

and we all went

to a Chinese restaurant

after the film was over,

and Brian stood up

and started to geschrei about,

"What's going on around here?

I don't understand the story.

Who are these people?

Who's the hairy guy?

Where do they come from?

Where's the context?

Where's the backstory?

It's driving me crazy."

Brian went off

on George.

And George just sat there.

He turned red.

George, I think,

wanted to kill him.

But out of all that,

something great came.

Brian basically

said, "You need, like,

an old-fashioned movie

to start the picture

with a foreword,

and all these words

come on the screen,

and they travel up,

and the foreword tells you

what the hell you're looking at

and why you're in the theater

and what the mythology is.

Tell us

what this world is,

and then we can enjoy

the picture."

And that was the birth

of the famous prologue.

De Palma:

Steven came to visit me

when I was shooting "Scarface,"

and I gave him

one of the units

to shoot the Colombians

coming up the staircase.

- ( gun clicks )

- Say hello to my little friend.

De Palma:

So, we were just shooting

people getting shot

for a couple of weeks.

We all had great respect

for each other's work,

and we were just trying

to help each other out

when we would

see things that we thought

could be improved.

Man:
All right,

now I am turning the--

the camera over

to our new director--

That's the worst swish pan

I've ever seen.

The worst swish pan

I've ever seen.

He's shooting me.

I'm totally in darkness.

How do you expect

to see anything?

Lucas:
It's kind of like

what happened in Paris

in the '20s.

You know,

you get a group of people,

they're all crazy people,

and they're controversial

and doing the same struggle,

but you sort of look at it

later and you say,

"How could

that whole group--"

the whole group

became successful

and dominated

the film business.

It's like,

how could that be?

We were just

a bunch of crazy kids.

But, you know, I think

a lot of it was really

love of film

and all desperate to make film

any way we could.

( music playing )

( gasping )

Oh, my God.

Tony Kushner:

When you're watching

Steven's movies,

you feel like

you're in the presence

of something mysterious

and inexpressible

and poetic.

Enjoying

very simple pleasures--

being scared, being amused,

being dazzled.

( music playing )

Spielberg:

I had been very influenced

by how far Stanley Kubrick

took "2001:
A Space Odyssey"

into the world of, really,

expressionist art,

and I wanted to take

"Close Encounters"

even further.

I really wanted the audience

to look at the screen and say,

"I'm having a sighting,"

but I wasn't sure

any of this was gonna work.

Bob Balaban:

It was very risky.

The effects

for "Close Encounters"

basically had never

been done before.

Zsigmond:

He shot the people

with a motion control camera,

making the camera move,

pan, tilt,

whatever he want to do.

And then that's recorded,

actually, on a tape,

and then when Doug Trumbull,

the special effects

supervisor,

goes back to

the post production

facilities,

he can actually duplicate

exactly that camera move.

Balaban:
So, when you

married the two images,

they were perfect,

and you could have,

for really about

the first time,

moving special effects.

Always before, you had

to kind of sit there quietly,

because if you moved,

it would destroy everything.

Everybody

is doing that today.

They could not be doing

those effect movies

unless Steven and Doug didn't

try all these things already.

Phillips:
The stakes

were so high for Steven

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes