Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
HBO’s Spielberg documentary, debuting tonight at 8pm, is a bit of a two-sided coin. On the one hand, you don’t envy HBO’s position, having to find new and interesting things to say about the most discussed, debated, and appreciated living filmmaker. On the other hand … you’re HBO. You’ve got a little bit of muscle. If anybody could have arranged to pull something new out of Steven Spielberg, it may well have been them.
Spielberg for the most part doesn’t offer anything new on the director’s legendary story. Director Susan Lacy, a longtime veteran of the PBS series American Masters, runs through the Spielberg mythology as we all know it: the son-of-divorce thing; didn’t get into USC film school; the fraternity with ’70s pioneers like Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola; the unexpected success of Jaws; the reputation for blockbuster-izing the film industry; the attempts to get serious and earn industry respect. It’s the Steven Spielberg story we know like the back of our hands.
Lacy’s strong suit is her cast of characters. She’s basically gotten everybody to sit down for an interview for this film. Scorsese, Lucas, De Palma, Coppola, all there. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, Drew Barrymore. Most significant are the members of Spielberg’s family: sisters, mother, and his father, who’s become such a boogeyman in the Spielberg mythos that it’s strange to see him in the flesh. As the documentary reminds us, so many of Spielberg’s films have carried with it the theme of divorce and absentee fathers. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. are framed as twin exorcisms of this notion. The story of the Spielberg family, its fracture, and its effect on young Steven is told in more detail than we’re used to, and if Spielberg breaks any new ground, it’s in these interviews with the family.
Otherwise, it’s the Steven Spielberg legend, told by those who helped to build it. Just because it’s a familiar story, though, doesn’t mean it won’t hold you in the palm of its hand as it guides you through the filmography of the quintessential American filmmaker. Spielberg scholars likely won’t find much new information here, but for even the casual appreciators of his work, there’s much to look forward to:
- the story of Spielberg’s first TV job, directing the great (and demanding) Joan Crawford on Night Gallery
- His reasons for refusing ABC’s demands that he re-shoot the ending of Duel
- shooting second-unit for Brian De Palma for the “say hello to my little friend!” scene on Scarface
- De Palma’s role in creating the crawl at the beginning of the Star Wars movies
- a mea culpa on criticisms of his adaptation of The Color Purple, including admitting he was too timid to include the full Celie/Shug lesbian storyline
- a phenomenal story from Liam Neeson about Spielberg directing him on how to smoke a cigarette cinematically on the set of Schindler’s List
All in all, the two-and-a-half-hour doc is the perfect companion for the Spielberg marathon you are definitely going to want to embark on once you’re done watching. It’s the secret weapon of making a movie like this: you can never really flop, because the movies are too good, and just seeing the people who made those movies with Spielberg talk about them is pretty irresistible.
If anything, the doc gets thin after Spielberg wins his Schindler’s List Oscar. Maybe it’s that the director doesn’t have enough distance to offer criticisms of that part of his filmography yet. Still, it’s odd to watch, for example, a movie like Amistad brushed over with gauzy praise in the same movie that legitimately takes Spielberg to task for The Color Purple.
It’s tempting to say that Spielberg is a for-fans-only documentary. But when you’re talking about Steven Spielberg, what does that even mean? The most popular and broadly visible filmmaker in history … who but the most committed curmudgeons among us sits outside that Venn diagram? Spielberg may not go much deeper than what we’ve already known about Steven Spielberg, but it certainly will get you in the mood to watch some great movies.
