Steven Spielberg came to my school and gave a seminar. Many of you have probably seen the thing on television, and have probably seen a red-headed pale-faced chick among the faces in the crowd. That was me.
Spielberg was incredible with us. It’s true what they say about him: he retains a child-like sense of things (at the same time being completely pragmatic, in terms of movie-making, and also a technician and craftsman), but his imagination and his sense of: “What would it be like IF…” is intact. It is the thing that all kids have when they play make-believe, and which so many adults lose. He was funny, humble, really smart, he had on a baseball cap, he had come in from the Hamptons for the seminar, some of his kids were in the audience, Holly Hunter stopped by to say Hi because she lives in the neighborhood.
Lipton asked questions about Spielberg’s early childhood, and about his parents.
One of Spielberg’s earliest memories is of his father waking him up “in the middle of the night”, hurriedly, saying, “Get up – put your clothes on – we’re going out.” Spielberg was 4 or 5 years old, very little. Sleepily, Steven put his clothes on, and followed his father out to the car. He kept asking his dad, “What time is it?” His dad never gave him an exact hour, just: “It’s the middle of the night.” They got in the car, drove a bit to this big open field. And there were all these people in the field (you will remember this exact scene from Close Encounters – Richard Dreyfuss hurriedly waking up his family and racing them out to the cliff, where a bunch of other people were waiting to see if the UFOs would reappear) – and Speilberg’s dad put down a picnic blanket, and lay down on it with his son. They stared up at the sky, and a meteor shower began. Steven Spielberg remembers this as one of the most pivotal moments of his career, because it was in that moment that he first got the sense of awe in terms of what was beyond the earth, and also he just KNEW, inside, that “we were not alone”. Of course these themes would be pivotal in Spielberg’s art.
red, how cool. Yesterday, I watched the snow battle scene from “Empire Strikes Back” and the climb up Devil’s Tower scene from “Close Encounters” before going out on a teaching job interview. That’s the kind of stuff that psyches me up. :)
My favorite thing from Spielberg at school was that he came out with the baseball cap and said, “I always wear this when I’m meeting with other film people.”
Ha! I really enjoyed him, too.
Oh by the way: I owe you an email.
I LOVED what you wrote, and I will dig up that information for you.
There’s no one like him. Close Encounters is oneof the all time great movies of the 20th century. He’s sort of a Wilder/DeMille combination, you know? Genius.
The problem I have with Spielberg is I almost always disagree with his answers to the what if question. I’ve been meaning to post my Blade Runner rant on my blog, and now you’ve reminded me that I have a Minority Report rant as well.
If I ever have a kid we’ll be out at the field at dusk. Can’t miss the first meteor. Such is my geekitude that when I was a child I used to keep logs of the number of meteors per hour.