"Steven Spielberg"

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Speaker 1 Hey guys, it's another Smartless episode. We've done a lot of these intros.
Here's another one. It's fresh for time.

Speaker 1 Why are you in such a room? Because we really kind of want to get to it. We got to get this in.
Nobody wants to wait at all. If you want it to be quick, just say this is Smartless.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 2 He got me.

Speaker 1 Jay was a little late today, but it's no big deal.

Speaker 2 We've all had it. Yeah, I got to get one of those cars that go up.

Speaker 3 That would be nice.

Speaker 1 No. That would go above the traffic.
Yeah. It's the worst.

Speaker 1 it's the worst feeling. I actually had to go to a thing this morning out here, no, all jokes aside, and it was like,

Speaker 1 there's never traffic here in the morning because it's wintertime. There was like,

Speaker 1 I couldn't, and it turned out there was a road closed. On Long Island, you're talking about.

Speaker 1 I couldn't make this left turn. And I, and I, from a certain part of me, I'm like, oh, this is a joke.
How am I ever going to make this turn?

Speaker 2 Did you have a daughter that got a flat tire on the way to school and you had to double back and pick her up?

Speaker 1 And is that what happened? Is that what happened? No.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I had to do two separate trips to two different schools.

Speaker 1 Just breathe. Just breathe.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'm all hopped up on coffee, so I already want to kill somebody.

Speaker 1 I know, no, no, no. Just breathe.
We're all together. We're all together.
We're all together.

Speaker 2 Do they make a non-violent caffeine?

Speaker 1 You mean violent to make you violent or violent for your bowels?

Speaker 2 But yeah, both. You know, I actually have cut down on my amount of coffee before I play golf because I get too angry at bad shots, which I'm going to make a lot of.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Caffeine is supposed to make you like, like, not angry. It's supposed to make you like energetic.

Speaker 2 No, it's not supposed to make you angry, but it gives you energy. And if you start to feel...

Speaker 1 He's had some. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, he had a tea with sugar.
So he just, it was a, it was a vessel for the sugar that he wanted. So

Speaker 1 so do you have, what's the latest you'll have a cup of coffee now, Jay,

Speaker 1 in the day?

Speaker 2 Right now. I've tried to go to a green tea caffeine stimulant in the afternoon because because I feel like it's less intense.

Speaker 1 What about a nice sleepy time tea at night?

Speaker 1 Sure. All right.
Sure. I mean

Speaker 1 do they make it in a gummy?

Speaker 1 They do. They do.

Speaker 1 They make a chamomile gummy. Well, from what I've heard,

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 it's out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Wait, do we have to, I'm going to take one minute to show you a picture that my sister got me. Wait, one second.

Speaker 2 He's going to take off his headphones, stand up, leave the microphone. We're already 15 minutes late.

Speaker 1 He's walking. It's going to be amazing.

Speaker 2 And he knows we're doing an audio show, right?

Speaker 2 He's stopping everything for a picture.

Speaker 1 There you go. No, no.
My sister just sent me this picture of my family that was drawn when we were kids. And I remember sitting for it.
She's like, I'm going to throw this out. Do you want it?

Speaker 1 I'm like, yes, send it. It's a hand drawing of the whole family.
And they drew my mom's eye

Speaker 2 like a glass.

Speaker 1 Like it was the one opportunity he had to draw regular eyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But he didn't. I wish you could see it.

Speaker 1 I'll show it to you next time. Oh, where is it? It's in the closet here.
Okay. Anyway, who cares?

Speaker 1 It was really funny because it's like...

Speaker 2 No, we're definitely going to talk after this.

Speaker 1 But you think it's like the one opportunity somebody has to draw her two normal eyes. And he went ahead and made an effort to make sure that that eye.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe for him,

Speaker 1 look, as an artist, maybe it was important for him to be authentic. His artist, yeah, to be really representative.
And you know what I mean, Sean? For the 2015 guests.

Speaker 1 Did you ever think about the artist? How dare you?

Speaker 2 And maybe he had some baggage. Maybe he had some baggage with your mom.

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 1 Were they having a thing? Is there a chance?

Speaker 2 Maybe he was pissed off at her.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're not going to make our guests wait any longer. Okay.
So, guys.

Speaker 1 Totally lost for words for this one. It's huge.
If picking guests was a competition, which it's not,

Speaker 1 I feel like I might be the winner today.

Speaker 2 That's the written portion.

Speaker 1 This is the written portion he's at the top of his game in his field but more importantly i've heard that is uh that good old coca-cola is his drink of choice which is something we have in common that's all i drink is coca-cola born in cincinnati ohio raised in arizona he fell in love with filmmaking at a very young age He was the youngest director to be signed to a major Hollywood studio long-term.

Speaker 1 Is this Steven Spielberg? We've had many successful folks on this podcast, but I don't think anyone that's had an Oscar nomination in six different decades. Scottie and I just saw his new film.

Speaker 1 We're obsessed. Guys, it's the goat, Mr.
Steven Spielberg. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 I made Steven Spielberg wait 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Good lord. Look at the way.
Look at this.

Speaker 3 Steven Spielberg. Oh, look at that.

Speaker 1 I guessed it. Will, why did you, how did you know that? Because I could see how nervous you were.

Speaker 1 And I just thought, of course, the only person who's going to make you nervous like this is Steven Spielberg. Yeah, absolutely.
Wow, Steven, how great to have you on the show?

Speaker 3 Oh, God, I hope this was worth waiting for.

Speaker 2 I am so sorry.

Speaker 1 It's these kids.

Speaker 2 These kids, I recommend having them.

Speaker 1 They'll make it late for things in school.

Speaker 3 No, don't worry about it, please. I'm just happy to be with all of you.

Speaker 1 All three of you have been doing it.

Speaker 2 Thank you for doing this.

Speaker 1 It's such an honor that you're here.

Speaker 2 So thank you.

Speaker 1 What an honor. Wow.
I meant it. Scotty and I saw the Fablemans the day it came out.

Speaker 1 And the only other time in recent memory I've enjoyed sitting in a theater that much was watching West Side's Story last year. You did speak highly of that.
Which I wrote you about, and I gushed.

Speaker 3 Which I love.

Speaker 3 Matter of fact, I reread the letter this morning.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank you again. Well, thanks.
Yeah, it was mindful.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to see the Fabelmans.

Speaker 1 It's so good. It's so good.
Which makes me think just right out of the gate,

Speaker 1 are you an avid movie? Like, do you go to the movies still? And is there anything you like recently?

Speaker 3 I do go to the movies.

Speaker 3 You know, sometimes not a movie theater per se

Speaker 3 during the pandemic. So I was starved from the movie theater experiences.
All of us were for over two years. But you stopped, yeah.

Speaker 3 Once it broke, yeah, once it broke, the first movie I saw, the first movie I went to a theater to see was Nope. That was the first, that sort of broke my fast.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I went in to see it in New York. So that was the first movie.

Speaker 2 He's an exciting film.

Speaker 1 Nope,

Speaker 1 not of Planet Earth, as we found out is what it stands for. True story.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Did you know that, Stephen?

Speaker 3 I did not know that. I should know that because I am not of Planet Earth either, and I should know my brethren.

Speaker 2 Now, Stevie, can I ask you,

Speaker 2 you hear that directors have to manage not only the process of making a film and the whole team that's assembled, but also their expectations as far as what they imagined versus what is happening and then what is ultimately you're left with as far as the finished product.

Speaker 2 Something as close to your life as this particular film is, I would imagine those stakes were even higher. So did the Fablemans turn out

Speaker 2 exactly the way that you wanted?

Speaker 3 Well, you know something,

Speaker 3 none of my films turn out exactly the way

Speaker 1 the way I wanted.

Speaker 3 I don't think that's possible for anybody to achieve, no matter how much time and heart, right, and budget. And

Speaker 2 they put it in. It's been a process.

Speaker 3 Because it's a process that

Speaker 3 the vision is, by the way, I I really think it's not distilled by having so many collaborators. It's enhanced through collaboration.
So the more talented people who help you tell your story,

Speaker 3 the better the story is going to be told. So I'm a big believer in that.
But at the same time, I have a kind of high bar that is real hard for me to really reach at, and especially with the Fablemans,

Speaker 3 because one of the high bars of this movie were my three sisters.

Speaker 3 And I figured if I passed muster with them, because my mom and dad are no longer with us, but if they liked the movie, I was going to be okay.

Speaker 3 And if my wife wife liked the movie, I was going to be doubly okay.

Speaker 3 But this wasn't the kind of movie that I thought I was making for the masses. This was something, as I've said, this was $40 million of therapy.

Speaker 1 Which is about how much it costed anyway.

Speaker 3 Yeah, maybe that's how much it costs, having never been in therapy except one time to try to get out of the army.

Speaker 3 I was 18 years old. And my dad said, well, you can go see my psychiatrist and maybe he'll write you a letter.
And I saw him about five times,

Speaker 3 and then he was actually pro-the Vietnam War and wouldn't write me the letter. So

Speaker 3 that was the last time I actually was in therapy. That was it.
I'll teach you.

Speaker 3 But no, no, this was,

Speaker 3 I didn't have big expectations in terms of people understanding this, thinking that I was making

Speaker 3 a movie, obviously making a semi-autobiographical movie about key moments of my...

Speaker 3 formative years, of growing up inside a very unusual family until people started seeing the movie and telling me how they felt about the film and then immediately telling me about the similarities about their childhoods and the divorces and the and the bullying and the anti-Semitism.

Speaker 3 And suddenly all these notes and letters and emails and texts came pouring in and I actually felt like I wasn't alone anymore. I felt like I was in great company.
How great.

Speaker 3 My story wasn't so unique after all.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 which, by the way, is a great lesson I think that all of us go through as we get older.

Speaker 1 We start to recognize if we can look for the similarities in other people, then we can start to recognize how not unique we are as people. And certainly that's been part of my journey.

Speaker 1 But did you ever have or do you continue to have moments when you make a film that is semi-autobiographical, that does have these, incorporate these key moments from your life, did you ever have moments where

Speaker 1 you kind of wake up and you have like a almost like a panic of like, oh, gosh, that was so revealing. Or, oh, this moment, like, does it catch up with you in moments that you don't expect ever?

Speaker 3 I told the cast before we started shooting that I had gotten all my emotion out writing the script with Tony Kushner. And

Speaker 3 because Tony was like my therapist on this, and there were so many times that we were writing this and it would just be too hard. And then we'd step away and I'd have to step away and come back.

Speaker 3 And Tony was brilliant with me. And so was Katie, my wife.
And

Speaker 3 so I thought I got over the hardest part of telling the story and the telling of the story on paper. And then I said this to the cast, that I'm going to be fine.
Don't worry about me.

Speaker 3 You know, just get to know the characters you're playing and let's all do this together as a family.

Speaker 3 And then on the first day of shooting, literally the first day, and I had seen all the actors individually in hair and makeup, of course, but Mark Bridges did great costumes on it. And so Mark said

Speaker 3 the cast is coming out.

Speaker 3 Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, playing Burt and Mitzi, or Arnold and Leah, my parents, they came out and I was talking to somebody else and they I guess they were standing behind me until I finished my conversation and I turned around and I looked at them together

Speaker 3 as

Speaker 3 certainly as Bert and Mitzi, but really I turned around and there was my mom and my dad. And I completely lost it after that whole preamble to the cast.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be fine. I'm strong.

Speaker 3 I got all my emotion out writing the script. I just totally lost it.
And they immediately, Michelle ran to me and she hugged me here and Paul came behind me and he hugged me there.

Speaker 3 And it was the beginning of a beautiful three months of

Speaker 1 did you, did you really, in the movie, little Sammy is filming his parents' divorce? Yes. Like when they get,

Speaker 1 did that really happen? Did you have a camera filming your parents' divorcing?

Speaker 3 Well, I wasn't, no, I wasn't, you talked about the scene with the divorce. Yeah.

Speaker 3 The announcement of the. No, no, no, that was in Sammy's mind.
That's happening in Sammy's mind.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay.

Speaker 3 Sammy is going through something which we all went through. My sisters and I, that actually actually happened.
My parents, they made an announcement.

Speaker 3 They announced that they were separating and getting a divorce. Wow.
So in my imagination,

Speaker 3 years later, telling the story, I imagine wouldn't I need to get away from the trauma by putting a camera between myself and the event. So Sammy looks up and reflected in the mirror.

Speaker 3 Sammy imagines himself with the camera up to his eyes filming the divorce. Right, right.
And that was Sammy's way of disassociation.

Speaker 1 Sean, when you saw that, sorry, just that you picked up on that,

Speaker 1 what kind of effect did it have on you? Because your parents got divorced. Did it resonate with you? Oh my God, I'm the only one in the theater that clapped.
No, I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 when my dad left, we were like, hallelujah.

Speaker 1 But no, no, it was very touching. For all the reasons you said, it really resonated with me on so many levels.
The bullying, the divorce, the family interaction, like all of it.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh my God, that's me, that's me, that's me. But there's this beat at the very end of the movie, which I think is so clever.
And everybody in the theater erupted with

Speaker 1 like knowing laughter. The very, very, very last shot, the thing that you do at the end, which I don't want to give away, is so clever.
I loved it.

Speaker 1 But it's also one of those moments that you are known for, where you trust that comedy or levity.

Speaker 1 that you're bringing to a moment is going to work and not be cheesy or undercut the importance of the scene. It's such a fine line.

Speaker 1 And every movie, there's even in Schindler's List, there was like one line that was just a little comical from, I think, Ben Kingsley or somebody. And it was, you always ride that line.

Speaker 1 And how do you trust that that's going to work?

Speaker 3 Well, what I trust is that the audience remembers the movie I made, you know, that the audience remembers it well enough that if I if I recall something,

Speaker 3 it will be recallable. You know, if if it, if it, if the audience didn't understand the gist of that last big scene between Sammy and his hero,

Speaker 3 and if they didn't listen to the content of the lesson, that would have fallen on deaf ears of an audience. But when an audience pays attention, I just trust the audience follows everything

Speaker 3 and that they're going to understand that that little coda

Speaker 3 was the point that I was trying to make, that I listened, that I listened. The character is Sammy.
And that scene actually happened to me in real life.

Speaker 3 I met the master when I was like 16, 17 years old. And that word for word is

Speaker 3 to the best of my recollection, that word for word would have happened.

Speaker 1 When he says, now get the fuck out of my office.

Speaker 3 I love that. That's exactly what he says.

Speaker 1 To little Steven Spielberg.

Speaker 1 So Stephen, this is Stephen.

Speaker 2 This obviously,

Speaker 2 this story has been in your mind and with you since you were a kid.

Speaker 2 And I would imagine you've been revisiting the idea of doing this for a long, long time. What was it about, what, last year, I guess, when you finally decided to do it?

Speaker 2 Was it just timing of other projects kind of not yet fully ready?

Speaker 3 Well, it was interesting. It was the COVID pandemic.
It was sitting idle for a couple of years. It was not going into the office.
And, you know, directing is a social disease.

Speaker 3 And writing is something that's kind of like when writers write or artists paint. You know, it's something that you can do from home.
You can, you don't, you know.

Speaker 3 So all my writer friends kept working throughout the entire pandemic. I'm essentially a director.
I'm also a writer director, but I identify as a director.

Speaker 3 And it was social starvation, not being able to go into the office, not being able to sit around

Speaker 3 at a writer's room with all the writers in person. Zoom wasn't quite working for me.

Speaker 3 And I kind of also was terrified that this was an end of days, an epic level event, and I mean an extinction level event that was happening to the world.

Speaker 3 By the time Tony and I sat down to seriously start engaging in discussions about writing this, we'd already lost 250,000 Americans to COVID. And I didn't know,

Speaker 3 and I actually was saying to Katie and my family, if there was one thing I wanted to leave behind,

Speaker 3 if I got a chance to make one more movie, what would that movie be? And without even blinking, it was going to be the story. Wow.
That's cool.

Speaker 1 You know, James Gray, who directed Armageddon Times, said something like, and I'm paraphrasing, during the pandemic, we were locked away for two years and everybody got very introspective.

Speaker 1 and that's why all these movies now coming out are personal.

Speaker 1 And he said, but I think it's because we think it's all over. We think this is always our last movie we're ever going to make and that's why they're making these.

Speaker 1 What are your thoughts about that?

Speaker 3 You know, I've never had that feeling until now, till the pandemic, because I was seeing that, look, like all of us, I was riveted to the Fauci reports.

Speaker 3 I was riveted at the time to what all the anchors were saying on all the different news outlets and all the experts that were coming out and the denial from that White House that this wasn't so bad.

Speaker 3 It was just like a passing flu epidemic.

Speaker 3 And I really thought that between the denial and between the battle between politics and science, that we were not heading in a good direction and that this was not going to end well for many of us.

Speaker 3 And that just got me thinking about

Speaker 3 telling a story that has been on my mind.

Speaker 3 Jason, it's been on my mind all my life. I've thought about this.
And I thought about someday I got to tell the story. And I would tell episodes

Speaker 3 with your friends, you're always talking about your childhood, right? You're sitting around smoozing about what it was like to grow up.

Speaker 3 And I would often tell some of these more seminal events that appear in the Fablemans. And I had a lot of friends of mine saying, why don't you tell that story on film someday?

Speaker 3 That'd be a pretty good movie. And my mom even said, Steve, when are you going to tell the story? When the HBO, Stevens Lacey HBO documentary came out a number of years ago.
Fantastic.

Speaker 3 My mom saw it and called me up and she said, okay, now you got to make that a movie. That's got to be a movie that we we can go out and see.
So, so, and then, and then Kate was always supportive.

Speaker 3 And Tony was the one that really, Tony Kushner was the one who really wouldn't let it alone. All through Westside Story, he kept saying, I love that.
And then, for our next number, right?

Speaker 3 And so, Tony was really the one that lit the

Speaker 3 hottest fire to get me to think about getting serious about this.

Speaker 2 And now I read, you're going to get to see

Speaker 2 one of your kids, your daughter, direct a movie I just read. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1 I'm excited about that.

Speaker 3 Destri. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm so excited about that.

Speaker 3 She was hired based on a short film she made,

Speaker 3 a wonderful short film, which I adored. And

Speaker 3 the producers behind the John Wick series saw it and gave her a movie. That's cool.

Speaker 1 That's really great.

Speaker 3 With a respectable budget, too. So it's exciting for the whole family.

Speaker 2 Was she a bit of a set rat? Has she been shadowing you for a long time?

Speaker 3 She has been, but, you know, for most of her life, she was in love with the equestrian arts.

Speaker 3 She was a fantastic hunter-jumper, and she had horses ever since she was three years old.

Speaker 3 And we all thought that she was going, you know, for the junior Olympics, that she was going to like Jesse Springsteen, Bruce's daughter. She was really going to make this a career.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 then what happens is, and the trainers all told us, they said, well, there's going to be a point where she discovers boys or she discovers girls.

Speaker 3 But in either case, when she makes that discovery,

Speaker 3 that's the turning point. They either continue riding or they stop writing.
And Destri stopped writing.

Speaker 3 But she always loved movies and she'd always come to the set. And she worked in the property apartment of Westside Story for three and a half, four months.
We shot that movie.

Speaker 3 So she was on set every day. And this was just something that she was always interested in doing.
And the other thing that Destri did so well is she's a great stills photographer.

Speaker 3 And her compositions and her use of black and white, so I thought she might be the only kid that follows sort of in my directing directing footsteps, although all my kids are in one fashion or another in the arts.

Speaker 1 That's great. I love that.
That's cool.

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Speaker 2 All right, back to the show.

Speaker 1 I want to fan out and ask you about every single movie you've ever made in your entire life. Okay, fan out.
Fan out.

Speaker 1 Well, Sean, by the way, before you do that, I was going to say, Stephen, you know, it's so,

Speaker 1 we've had the honor when we, you know, through the course of doing this podcast, of talking to people who have done things that have, you know, that are really part of our culture or, you know, cultural fabric, you know, just woven right in there.

Speaker 1 And certainly you're right at the top of that list. Your films for many, many years have been like, you know, when people look back on their lives, these are touchstone films.

Speaker 1 These are films that represent different eras in people's lives. And for you, they have a representation too.
But

Speaker 1 Everybody has their own interpretation because they watch it at whatever age and whatever they were going through. And I can go back and think through all your films.
I saw Jaws in the theater.

Speaker 1 I was a little kid. I was way too young to see it in the theater, but I did for my buddy Jeffrey's birthday party because his mom was a little bit of a wingnut.

Speaker 1 And she let us go and see it when we were too young. And I remember this is a true story.
I've never said it.

Speaker 1 I laughed on purpose because I was so scared that I laughed in order to fool myself to not be scared. And I still have that memory.
And that is a movie that you made.

Speaker 1 And that is, and so many people, millions and millions of people like me, like us, have different memories from all those films. Do you ever

Speaker 1 scared whenever I see Jason?

Speaker 1 Is it something that you ever think about? I mean, is there a, I don't want to put you on the spot, but is there a weight to that at all, knowing

Speaker 1 that connection that you've had with the people of this planet? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, I can only turn around and sort of pay it forward by paying it back by saying when I saw Lawrence of Arabia for the first time when I was like 16 years old in Phoenix, Arizona at the Capri Theater with those rocking seats with everybody smoking around you in the low smoking section, you recall.

Speaker 3 And I never smoked, so for me, that was kind of like desert scenes, and I'm choking on people's cigarette smoke.

Speaker 3 But that was seminal for me, and that was the touchstone for me that really at first made me not want to be a director because I thought I'll never, ever be able to get anywhere near what I've just experienced.

Speaker 3 But then I kept seeing the movie. Every couple of weeks, I went back and saw it again.

Speaker 3 And wow, you know, that's so when people come up to me and they say, well, the first thing they come up to me and they say, I'm talking to someone and they say, you know, I saw E.T.

Speaker 3 when I was seven years old and the person telling me that looks like they're my age. And I'm going, well, how old does that make me feel?

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 1 Speaking of, though, speaking of the first time I ever met you years and years ago. And I came up to you and I told you the story, which was when I was, I saw E.T.
when I was 11 years old.

Speaker 1 My brother took me, my brother Kevin took me for my birthday. And I said, after the movie was over, and of course, everybody was crying in the theater.
I said, I'd give anything to be him.

Speaker 1 And my brother said, Elliot, I know to have a friend like E.T., wouldn't that be so cool? I go, no, I'd give anything to be Henry Thomas.

Speaker 1 Like, at 11 years old, I knew that I wanted to be, I wanted that part. I knew that I wanted to be an actor in a film that that was that great.

Speaker 1 And that's when I kind of knew.

Speaker 3 That's fantastic.

Speaker 2 Can I, can I, can I?

Speaker 1 Jason, how many callbacks did you have for E.T.?

Speaker 3 Couldn't get a reading.

Speaker 2 Can I dork out on a process question real quick?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 you have inspired so many of our

Speaker 2 filmmakers in many, many things, not the least of which is shot design. And so I have a question about that.

Speaker 3 You're clearly, these things,

Speaker 2 these shots are designed sometimes so specifically to augment what the scene is trying to say. So that whole sort of visual

Speaker 2 presentation on the idea of the scene,

Speaker 2 that's obviously been designed by you before actors get on set and before you have discovered where everyone's going to walk and and and talk um

Speaker 2 what what what can you say to a young filmmaker when they've got some great shot design and you get on the set and the actor says well no i don't think i would sit in that chair i think i'd be standing over here against this wall which destroys your shot design and therefore might not have the same visual kind of support for what the scene's trying to say.

Speaker 2 What do you say to that actor? I mean, I imagine you don't have that problem nowadays with an uppity actor, but

Speaker 2 how do you manage that sort of creative collaboration and negotiation? They're fired.

Speaker 1 Immediately fired.

Speaker 3 That happened to me in television when I was first starting in TV in the late 60s and

Speaker 3 early 70s. And when I met this actor, he had wanted to be a director.
He was much older than me, and he never had a chance to direct.

Speaker 3 And he was starring in this TV movie I was making, and he wouldn't do anything I told him at all. And he wouldn't do a single thing I told him.

Speaker 3 And I finally, on the last shot, the last shot, it happened to be a conference room and he was supposed to give a speech and he was supposed to exit at the end of the scene out a door that wasn't really a door.

Speaker 3 It was a teeny little space. It was maybe only three feet deep.
And he was going to open the door, go in and close it. And I was supposed to say cut.
And by that time, I was at the end of my rope.

Speaker 3 And he was a professional. And so

Speaker 3 when I said action, he played the scene. And then he'd made his exit.
He went into that little closet and closed the door.

Speaker 3 And I turned to the table of other actors and I said, Okay, start improvising. And I made them talk and improvise for eight minutes while he stood in the closet for eight minutes.

Speaker 3 And then when I finally said, Cut the door open, I was expecting to get punched out in front of the whole crew.

Speaker 3 And he walked right by me, didn't look at me, and he apparently left the soundstage, got in his car, and went home.

Speaker 1 And that was the last I saw of him.

Speaker 1 That's oh, God, that's the win. I would love to know who that is.
I was going to ask you, too. I think that you're, I think you're known

Speaker 1 as one of the great

Speaker 1 stagers of directors. Your staging is beyond.

Speaker 1 I don't think anybody's ever staged the way you do. Is that something that you learned? Or is that something that you just innately knew?

Speaker 1 Because I think that it's kind of

Speaker 1 the art of that is just, I don't think it's talked about enough in filmmaking.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Bishop. Thank you very much for that.

Speaker 3 Staging to me is one of the most important things I can contribute to telling a story, again, because I think that the the shots essentially are a way to illuminate what the writer has already put down on paper and what the actors have already interpreted to be their new selves as we all work as a company and and so my my

Speaker 3 part of that collaboration is to illuminate and and even even to strengthen some of the moments through shot study or through blocking.

Speaker 3 And I just know growing up that I was always amazed at moving cameras, especially Lewis Milestone, the moving cameras of All Quiet on the Western Front, or his Korean war drama, Pork Chop Hill, those amazing shots where the camera just climbs a hill with Gregory Peck and Woody Strode and

Speaker 3 Robert Blake, and they're climbing this hill. And the first thing I thought about was, that is the coolest shot.

Speaker 3 And the second thing I thought was, how many people does it take to push a dolly up a 30-degree incline?

Speaker 3 So I was always sort of behind the scenes as I was admiring what was happening in front of me. And I'm just, and William Wilder staging and blocking, and certainly Billy Wilder staging and blocking.

Speaker 3 I just, there are just directors that I learned so much from.

Speaker 1 What about,

Speaker 1 sorry, Sean, I just want to say, as a follow-up to that, then, because there is a very,

Speaker 1 you know, I notice, especially now with filmmakers, not to get, again, too inside baseball, but we've become increasingly reliant on,

Speaker 1 you know, on cutting and on close-ups, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember I watch Close Encounters probably once every year.
I just got it. Maybe every year and a half.

Speaker 1 I can't stop watching that film.

Speaker 1 For whatever reason, certain films speak to you, and it always scratched an itch for me. And there's a scene where Richard Dreyfus is finally losing it, and he's at home.

Speaker 1 And the camera's almost like it's on the threshold of this door between the two rooms, you know, between the living room and the sort of the kitchen. And you never cut.
And it's not gratuitous.

Speaker 1 It's not like, oh, this is one take and you're looking for applause because you're telling the scene and you're able to capture capture that frenzy of that moment of this family that's falling apart.

Speaker 1 And everybody's talking over each other. And everybody's talking about

Speaker 1 it. And the camera moves with everybody.
And I just thought it's, and it's so, it's such an unheralded moment.

Speaker 1 And yet, once you start to understand what the filmmaking process, you're like, this is a great way to tell this part of the story in a way that people don't realize.

Speaker 3 And I think, and thank you. And I think that that particular moment is something that did not come out of storyboarding or was not on a shot list.

Speaker 3 Part of what inspires me to figure out how to frame or how to travel in terms of blocking the actors is

Speaker 3 getting everybody on stage and letting them do what comes naturally to them.

Speaker 3 If they get to know their characters well enough, they're going to know whether they should be sitting, standing, kneeling, or turning.

Speaker 3 And there's an intuitive trust I have in the intuitive ability of an actor, a really fine actor, and even a real fine intuitive actor that might just be starting out in movies movies or television, that they bring things to the table.

Speaker 3 And I'll just let them block themselves, meaning just move around. And usually, in terms of safety, when I say, let's just run the lines, the actors pretty much stand and deliver.

Speaker 3 They stand looking at each other, and they have their scripts open if they're still on book.

Speaker 3 And they'll just start doing the dialogue. And sometimes

Speaker 3 actors will start just traveling. They'll just start wandering around and it'll give me an idea.

Speaker 3 And I won't even say, why did you walk to the refrigerator and open it? I won't even ask that. I'll say, oh, that's great.

Speaker 3 It just seems to be an honest, it's like theater.

Speaker 3 And Mike Nichols is one of my favorite directors, and so is Ilya Kazan. And you look at their blocking.
Look at Nichols' blocking in Carnal Knowledge and in The Graduate.

Speaker 3 And also, especially, maybe the best blocking Nichols ever did was his first movie, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. And then you look at the blocking that Kazan did with Streetcar Name Desire.

Speaker 3 And you wonder, you got to wonder, was that blocking, those brilliant blocking choices not made in in collaboration with the actors who put ideas in Kazan and Nichols' head?

Speaker 3 And that's the kind of collaboration that happens in theater, as you know from your experience on stage. That's so cool.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love that. So, you know, like I said, I could go through every single movie you ever made.

Speaker 1 It's just the effect that you and your films has had on me and, like Will said, billions of people is just.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable. But I want to talk about, I could ask you a thousand questions about Jaws, but you're probably so sick of talking about that.

Speaker 1 By the way, is it true that the word blockbuster came from Jaws?

Speaker 3 I don't know. I don't know where the word blockbuster came from.
It's true.

Speaker 1 It's true. It's true.
Yes. So

Speaker 1 because the line was around the block. So, but Indiana Jones.

Speaker 3 But it was also around the block for The Greatest Show on Earth by C.B. DeMille and also around the block for Gone with the Wind.

Speaker 3 Everybody thinks that Jaws was the first blockbuster, and Jaws was by far not the first blockbuster.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I know somebody coined that phrase, I think, for that movie, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 Take it, Stephen.

Speaker 3 Take it. I'll take it.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 By the way, before I get into this.

Speaker 3 George took it from me a couple of years later.

Speaker 1 For what? What? For what?

Speaker 3 What did you take from each other in the old fashioned?

Speaker 1 Well, speaking of George, how did you meet George? And then, and I want to go back to all those others, but how did you meet George? And two parts brought Indiana Jones. How did you meet George?

Speaker 1 And then also casting Harrison Ford on the heels of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. Wasn't there like a concern about the audience buying him as anything other than Hans Solo?

Speaker 1 Like, how did you, how did that come about?

Speaker 3 Well, in quick succession, I met George through a writer friend of mine, Matthew Robbins, and

Speaker 3 he suggested I go to, I was at Long Beach State College, and he said there's a contest between UCLA film students and USC film students happening at Royce Hall at UCLA. And so I went to the...

Speaker 3 to the contest, to the competition, and THX 1138 played and won everything. Of course.
Just won all the awards.

Speaker 3 And so I went backstage and I had met Francis Koppel a couple times in Francis and Matthew Robbins introduced me to George. So we met backstage when he had just won, he had just beat UCLA.

Speaker 3 USC beat UCLA, not just in basketball and football, but in movies. And that was a good deal for them and for me to beat George for the first time.

Speaker 3 And then, you know,

Speaker 3 George and I became fast friends.

Speaker 3 And when Star Wars was coming out, I've told the story before, but when Star Wars was about to come out, George liked to run to Hawaii and hide from bad news yeah uh he was very much like me if we're going to get bad news let's get bad news in hawaii let's not get bad news in encino you know that was a good idea

Speaker 3 so nothing wrong with encino by the way but it better to have bad news in hawaii and so we went to hawaii we george inaugurated this thing about building lucky sandcastles and you build it close to the to the high tide mark And then if the sandcastle the next morning is no longer there, the ocean wiped it out, your film will be a flop.

Speaker 3 And if the castle still is there, the film's going to be a hit. So we built the sandcastle just as the sun was going down.
The next morning we ran down to the beach and it was intact.

Speaker 3 And about, I don't know, a couple hours later, he found out on the telephone call that every single 10.30 a.m. show of Star Wars was sold out across the entire nation.

Speaker 1 Wow, wow. So this is before tracking.

Speaker 3 This is before tracking. And so that's when George, in his euphoria, asked me what I wanted to do next.
And I said, well, I want to do a James Bond film, but Cubby Broccoli won't hire me.

Speaker 3 I've asked him twice. Even after Jaws, he wouldn't hire me.
And George says, well, I got that beat. I got something called Raiders of the Lost Ark.
You should do that instead.

Speaker 3 And that's how I got involved in that. And the Harrison story is very simple.

Speaker 3 George asked me to come up and look at a cut of Empire Strikes Back. And we were still casting for Indy.
And I just said to him,

Speaker 3 what about that guy? for Indiana Jones. And George said, well, that's Han Solo.
And I said, yeah, but he's an actor. He can play play more than Hanzolo.

Speaker 3 John Wayne was in 57 Westerns, 20 different characters as John Wayne.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 George started taking it seriously. So we sent the script to Harrison, and he loved it and said, Yes.
I love that.

Speaker 2 You mentioned that you went and you saw a cut of Empire Strikes Back. How that's something that's, I just think, so cool that you guys, your peers at a very, very high level,

Speaker 2 look at each other's work at an early stage and give notes and help one another out.

Speaker 2 How is that still very, very frequent for you? And I imagine that group changes a little bit every once in a while.

Speaker 3 It was part of a wave where all of us were interactive with each other for years. It doesn't happen so much anymore.

Speaker 3 But oh my God, in the 70s and 80s, you know, we couldn't wait to take our movies and we couldn't wait for the royal drubbing, you know, because it was not always, our rough cuts were not always greeted with support.

Speaker 3 It was usually, this doesn't work. You got to fix it.
You got to throw that out. You got to reshoot this.
You got to reshoot that. So it would get kind of violent, you know, sometimes.

Speaker 3 I remember when George showed Star Wars to all of us, he showed Star Wars for the first time to about 40 of us. And I would not say it was the best rough cut screening anybody had ever seen.

Speaker 3 And I'm not saying that I was prescient or anything, but I was the only person in the room that said, this is great. It's going to make a, you know, a ton of money.

Speaker 3 And we went to a Chinese restaurant and everybody just started coming down on the film. It didn't make sense.

Speaker 3 You know, who are these guys? Who are the guys that look like Nazis, but they're all in white, you know,

Speaker 3 all this, the stormtroopers.

Speaker 3 And it was not what, and there were no special effects in. You have to understand it was all blue screen.
It was like bang, bang. There was nothing.

Speaker 3 And every time there was Star Wars, when Star Wars were happening, George cut to black and white gun camera footage of P-51s and Stuka's dive bombing things.

Speaker 3 So you went from color with blue screen to black and white stock footage from World War II. And what were you like?

Speaker 1 You're like, this is good luck, George.

Speaker 3 I thought it was great.

Speaker 1 I actually thought.

Speaker 3 The only people that flipped out for it was me and the head of the studio, Alamat Ladd Jr., who had financed the film at Fox.

Speaker 3 And Laddie and I,

Speaker 3 we thought it was going to be great.

Speaker 1 I have a quick question from Scotty here, who's, you know, in love with you like I am, like anybody else.

Speaker 1 He says, first of all, he can sing every single word in Mandarin from Anything Goes from Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. For real.
He memorized the whole thing in Mandarin.

Speaker 3 My wife doesn't remember. I keep asking Kate to sing it for me, and she says, I forgot the Mandarin.
Yeah, no, he'll remind you.

Speaker 1 And if by, this is a real question.

Speaker 1 If by some miracle, this is from Scotty, you happen to be home with Kate watching TV and you're scrolling for something to watch, what is the movie you will always stop and watch, even with commercials?

Speaker 3 Dr. Javago, because it's kind of the film we sort of fell in love with together.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's nice. That's cool.
Good question.

Speaker 2 Can I ask you about

Speaker 2 there's a shot in Empire of the Sun, which thank you for discovering Christian Bale,

Speaker 2 where I think it's that spot when he runs up on the roof and, you know, I forget what he says about the jet going on.

Speaker 3 251's catalog of the sky.

Speaker 2 And I think the camera stops its pan. And in the deep, deep distance, there's a parachute coming down in the background.
It might be that shot. It might be a different one.

Speaker 2 But I always thought, my God, it'd be so easy to make that incredible shot without that parachute. The fact that you, it must be very difficult to drop a

Speaker 1 World War, what was it, one or a parachute?

Speaker 2 Two parachutes and get it in this, in the right, in the frame and the composition of that. How difficult was that to do and how ambitious to say, no,

Speaker 1 that's what we're doing today.

Speaker 2 And it's going to take, you know, a whole day to do an eighth?

Speaker 3 You know, that was in the script. That was Tom Stoppard's contribution who wrote the script based on the J.G.
Ballard book. And Tom just

Speaker 3 created a kind of dream world for for Jim played by Christian Bale and he's been hugged by Dr. Rawlings because he's sort of gone you know he's he's become hysterical let's say on the roof and Dr.

Speaker 3 Rawlings is trying to calm him down and when he embraces him Jim looks up and this parachute's coming down and

Speaker 3 and it was just something that Tom had put in the script to create a kind of dream state for both the character and for the audience in order to call into question, is this really happening in reality or is this only happening in Jim's imagination since Jim had an overly active imagination

Speaker 3 yeah but it's so difficult probably to I don't remember if it was difficult or not I have a feeling that it was one of those things where we had the stuntman on a crane and there was probably even I'm not really sure I kind of forgot how we

Speaker 3 did that. It was a long time ago.

Speaker 2 I'll bet you probably had to drop him from a plane and just pan the camera to wherever he's going to drop down, frame left or frame right, and just kind of pivot with it.

Speaker 2 Because I don't think you get a crane up that high for those old paranoes.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 It might have been actually just, you know, we might have cheated the shot also and lowered the roof or something, but I'm not sure we didn't drop him from a crane because, I mean, from an airplane, because everybody would just been panic stricken, hoping his chute would open.

Speaker 1 But right. That's what I mean.

Speaker 2 It was like the shot was just amazing.

Speaker 1 So I think it was early 90s.

Speaker 1 I can't remember that, 92 or 93 or something, one of, as of many, but one of your most impressive years in your career, both Jurassic Park and Schindler's List came out in the same year.

Speaker 1 And Jurassic Park was the highest-grossing movie ever at that time. And did you have any, like, they're so contrasting films, obviously.

Speaker 1 Was that that wasn't by design? Was that just by accident?

Speaker 1 Like, did you know when you were making either film they'd come out the same year and be as successful and and when they're both so different?

Speaker 3 You know, it was interesting because I was I was very much working only on Jurassic Park.

Speaker 3 In the editing room, I had finished my cut. What was left was the mixing and the color correction.
But we had the release planned already.

Speaker 3 And I had been working with Steve Zalien on the Schindler's Lift Script for quite a while. And we went to Poland together.

Speaker 3 And we went to Auschwitz, Steve and I, and we went to all the actual locations, saw the apartment Oscar Schindler had taken over from a Jewish family in Krakow.

Speaker 3 We went to the site of the Proshaw forced labor internment camp.

Speaker 3 We went to all of these places and then we both got inspired and Steve had already written like a 115 page draft and I kept saying to Steve, this has got to be like 170 pages.

Speaker 3 I mean let's not, let's just go for it. And when he came back he had written this extraordinary draft after

Speaker 3 several months later. And I read it right in the middle of post-production on Jurassic Park and something seized me, and all I knew was I had to do the movie now.
I couldn't wait for another winter.

Speaker 3 Winter was about to come up. I needed winter for Schindler's List.
And I kind of put the production, Schindler production, onto a fast track in terms of having to cast it and having to location scout.

Speaker 3 And I kind of...

Speaker 3 I went to George, Lucas, and I said, George, I need a huge favor from you. I've never done this before, but I got to make Schindler's List.
And don't ask me why. It's just in me.

Speaker 3 It's in the marrow, in the deepest parts of my,

Speaker 3 I guess, in that sense,

Speaker 3 I have to tell the story.

Speaker 3 It's in my marrow. And I don't want to wait a year.
I don't want to let this feeling wane or dissipate.

Speaker 3 And will you take over the rest of Jurassic Park? So George agreed. And George mixed the movie.
Oh, wow. He corrected the color.
And it had already been cut.

Speaker 3 I had locked the cut, but George did everything else after the lock cut. Wow.
And that allowed me the freedom to go off and start.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, and the confidence that you've always had.

Speaker 1 I mean, I I remember that documentary talking about called Spielberg, which is so great, that you said when you were much younger and making your first films, once you finished one movie, you couldn't wait to start another because you felt good about yourself when you were making films.

Speaker 1 And when you weren't making anything,

Speaker 1 you know, you had to be with yourself and reflect on who you were, the doubt, as you called them, the scary whispers of lack of self-esteem or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Do those, when do those feelings, I'm sure they don't creep in anymore.

Speaker 1 I mean, look at you, but how and when did that shift for you where you became, you know what, I'm going to trust the moments in between movies?

Speaker 3 That's never, I've never taken that beautiful pill. That's never happened for me.
I mean, oh my God, I wish that would have happened for me.

Speaker 3 No, fear is my fuel. I've often said that, and it's true.
The scareder I get, the sort of more proactive I become.

Speaker 3 And I get more inspired if I'm not secure, if I'm really secure. Look at my sequels.
They're not as good as the originals because I know at least it's going to open.

Speaker 3 it's going to open really well yeah and and so um but you had the confidence not to make jaws too which is i had yes i did i had the confidence not to make jaws two and and i didn't think that there should have been a jaws two

Speaker 3 and we will be right back

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Speaker 2 I don't know if there's an answer for this, but if there is one, you'd be the one to be able to come up with it.

Speaker 2 It seems like every year the distance between the films that get great reviews versus the films that make a lot of money gets further. And you have

Speaker 2 seamlessly been able to marry both commercial viability and artistic

Speaker 2 accolades in every film that you do. It's just, it's an incredible accomplishment.

Speaker 2 What would you say to a filmmaker that was looking to, you know, make money with a film or, you know, be commercial, sell popcorn, but also really impress the most discerning of critics, viewers, et cetera?

Speaker 1 What is that ratio?

Speaker 2 What's that sauce that

Speaker 2 it's not this, it's not that, it's together?

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I think every filmmaker needs to make a movie that that filmmaker would not be able to live without making, would not be able to live without in their lives. So

Speaker 3 the first person the filmmaker has to please is him or herself. I mean, that's absolutely essential that you've got to do something

Speaker 3 right for you. Then you have to, of course, be responsible and you don't want to overspend and you want to control the budget as much as possible.

Speaker 3 The film doesn't feel like a commercial movie on the outset. You

Speaker 3 don't want to spend a ton of money if it's not going to make a money back for the studio because often it's the commercial success of something that gives you your second job.

Speaker 3 Or if the film gets great reviews, by the way, and doesn't make any money, that could also get you your second job.

Speaker 3 But you've got to please yourself before you try to please the studio or try to please the critics.

Speaker 3 You've got to say, you know, if nobody goes to see this movie, and if nobody really writes nice things about it, but if I like it and I could live with the story I told and the work in that story, that's good enough for me.

Speaker 3 And that should be the main criterion for filmmakers. Right, right.

Speaker 1 So, the story is so, so you're not thinking I need to do this to achieve this,

Speaker 1 you know, so that it's viewed by other people in a certain way. And

Speaker 1 how they feel about it is secondary to how I feel about it. And that's where I'm going to.

Speaker 3 That's exactly right. But if you want to make commercial movies, then what are you going to go for first? A high concept.

Speaker 3 You're going to want to get into the high concept business, and you're going to want to do something that's already been proven to have been successful.

Speaker 3 And the kind of movies I really admire are the films that nobody ever guessed would make any money at all. They make a lot of money.
You know,

Speaker 3 that's always really, really, when that something like that happens, that's very exciting.

Speaker 2 It seems like lucky for us, what you seem to think is commercially viable or is super relatable ends up being very, very human stories, which

Speaker 2 is a great guess as to what is going to be commercially appealing is something that we can all relate to. Something we're all human.
We all have parents.

Speaker 2 We all, there's a small little person inside of all of us that we've been with since we were little kids. That no matter how old you get, it's still there.
And you always have to be a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Little janky baits. Yeah, little janky baits.

Speaker 2 It seems like they're at the center of all of your stories, no matter whether they're big movies or small movies or black and white or color or effects or not.

Speaker 2 There is something you just drill us right in the chest.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 just thank you for that. No question in that.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Do you have a

Speaker 1 Jason kind of touched on this already? And we've asked this, we've kind of talked about this area a lot on our show, but

Speaker 1 does it bum you out that certain films you may be drawn to direct would be for streaming and not the theater now? Like that whole argument of like

Speaker 1 the movies that we that used to be in the theater are now on our TV

Speaker 3 When you say bum me out,

Speaker 3 are you talking about my own work and the choices I make? No,

Speaker 1 sure, but in terms of the business as a whole.

Speaker 3 Well, the streaming business has given a chance for five times more filmmakers to get their start making films than had there never been a streaming business. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 So right away, it is a huge opportunity for storytellers to get their feet wet.

Speaker 3 And if they have a good idea or they find a book and a streaming service wants it, and the person's only done music videos, or the person's only done commercials, or the person's, you know, just on someone else's recommendation if the streaming service trusts or an actor that says, I want this person to direct me.

Speaker 3 It's a great way to get started in this business. My God, if we had streaming services back when I was starting out, a lot more filmmakers would have gotten their breaks.

Speaker 3 So I think the streaming services are very, very good.

Speaker 3 What I would like to see the streaming services do, however, is to allow more theatrical window dressing so that they're at least given a chance to make some of their money back theatrically, where people can go out to the movies and see them before they debut on the service.

Speaker 3 Right, right. And I think

Speaker 3 if you come out with a movie that is popular, or at least is critically popular, if not commercially popular, you build up the IP. You build up a cachet is created.

Speaker 3 And suddenly the film becomes kind of famous. So

Speaker 3 when it comes on the streaming service, debuts three weeks, six weeks later, it's recognizable and people say, oh, I've heard all about that. Wow, I want to see that.

Speaker 3 And so I don't understand the day and date philosophy, which is why I'd be terrible running a streaming service and why I'd probably get fired the first day.

Speaker 2 Well, one of the other things that

Speaker 2 streaming has given us an opportunity for as viewers and filmmakers is more of the long-form

Speaker 2 approach to...

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 these stories. And I'm sure that you've answered this, so I apologize for not knowing your answer, but if you wouldn't mind repeating it,

Speaker 2 your instinct or appetite for doing something that is perhaps a limited series, some sort of an eight-hour story as opposed to a two-hour story.

Speaker 2 Where do you sit on that? I'm sure you play with certain ideas.

Speaker 3 I was willing to do Lincoln as a six-hour

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 I couldn't raise all the financing for it. Nobody believed in it.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 our company was only good for 50% of the budget. And I went all around town and everybody turned me down.
I'm not going to name names, but every single person turned me down.

Speaker 3 And I was ready to make a a deal with HBO to do it, to expand it to six hours. Tony Cushman's first draft was 550 pages.
So

Speaker 3 I had the goods. I had the material.
I don't know if I could have talked Daniel Day-Lewis into doing

Speaker 3 six hours, but I was on the brink of that, and the person that came in at the 11th hour and sort of saved it for the movie screen was Tom Rothman over at 20th Century Fox.

Speaker 3 And he read the script and he put up the other half of the money, and that's why the film became a feature film.

Speaker 1 Wow, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 But But are you, do you have an appetite of long formation?

Speaker 3 But I'm not, I do have an appetite for long form, and I someday will direct a long form series. I mean, if somebody had brought me Mayor of East Town, I would have done that.

Speaker 3 That was a beautifully directed story.

Speaker 1 Great. Let me get an email address on you real quick.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 Stephen, what is the, so the... Fablemans is the movie that you always wanted to make.
It's the story. Is there another story out there?

Speaker 1 Is there another thing out there that you're you're like, nobody will ever make it? Or this is improbable? Or like, but it's something that's always kind of,

Speaker 1 I don't know, maybe something you read years ago that you've always like, God, maybe there's a world where I could make that.

Speaker 1 Is there one out there?

Speaker 3 If there was, I wouldn't be talking to you guys.

Speaker 1 Have the application somewhere shooting it.

Speaker 3 I would say, I'll do it next year when I'm available. I'll talk to you guys next year because I love the show so much or pop shirt so much.
No, I don't. I actually haven't crossed that bridge yet.

Speaker 3 I don't have what

Speaker 3 you would call

Speaker 3 the next film I've always wanted to make. Westside Story fulfilled a deep, abiding love of the idiom of the Hollywood and the Broadway musical.

Speaker 3 And it was the only musical I would ever turn into a movie. And not to say that I didn't love the 61 movie.
I adore the 61 movie.

Speaker 3 But Tony Kushron and I found a way to make it relevant for today, for our time. And that's why I did it.
And I don't have any desire or appetite to make another musical. That was it for me.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I don't have a wish list that goes much beyond the Fablemans as my personal kind of love letter to my family and

Speaker 3 not so much of a love letter for the bullies in my life, but certainly the way that

Speaker 3 I was able to work out the trauma because I think we all work out trauma through the art we create. That's how you work out trauma.

Speaker 1 One of the greatest lines in the Fablemans is when the bully's bullying you in the hallway and you say, maybe I'll make a movie about it one day.

Speaker 3 It's like, we're watching that movie.

Speaker 1 It's so cool.

Speaker 2 You mentioned mentioned Westside Story. Can I ask you about

Speaker 2 the choreography in that was just so exciting.

Speaker 1 Incredible.

Speaker 2 Not only just the dancing and the actual design of the choreography, but the way in which you guys shot that.

Speaker 2 Sorry to ask another process question about

Speaker 2 shot design and cover strategy.

Speaker 1 But what was the call time on that?

Speaker 1 Jason really likes to get into the nitty.

Speaker 3 But it did seem to me like the choreography had to happen first, and then you and your cinematographer was that was that yanish as well yanis kominski and and so you would you guys watch these dances fully done and then decide how you're going to shoot it yes i would i would watch the dances fully done uh the first thing i did was i storyboarded the choreography so i sat down just with a pencil and i sat with justin peck and um

Speaker 3 and I did the whole thing on paper. I went to Justin's office.
He's the choreographer with his associate, now his wife, Patricia Delgado. And I just started, we put on the Broadway, 57 Broadway

Speaker 3 score, the Broadway album.

Speaker 3 And I basically used the Broadway album, and I just started doing shots.

Speaker 3 And I just started figuring out what could be a sustained shot where all the dancing could take place in front of your eyes, before your eyes, so it doesn't seem cheated.

Speaker 3 It's all happening right before you, and what things needed the staccato energy infused of montage, of editing. And I figured that out.

Speaker 3 But then when Justin started started choreographing it, I'd go down to Dumbo, Brooklyn, and I would just watch him put all these numbers on their feet. And I took my iPhone.

Speaker 3 And guys, I just basically shot every number up with my iPhone by myself. I'd be sometimes in a chair with four casters and they'd dolly me around, but I got all my shots on my iPhone.

Speaker 3 I would cut it together to the music and then realize, well, that sucked. And I would go back the next day and I would reshoot the whole thing on my iPhone.

Speaker 3 And because he kept repeating the choreography and he kept fine-tuning it, I was able to make six, seven passes and cut all those passes together with my camera device. Wow.

Speaker 3 So by the time I got to the stage, or the time I got to the streets of Brooklyn or and the streets of Patterson, New Jersey and down to Harlem where we shot a lot of the film, it had already been shot on video and I just went and converted that to film.

Speaker 1 By the way, Tim Cook is going to request the tapes from this for his new iPhone commercial.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I want to ask you one of my favorite moments, and a lot of people, but one of my, to me, a profoundly funny, great moment.

Speaker 1 I want to know how much of it was planned before or how long before is that great moment in Indiana Jones when the guy pulls out the knife and the sword and he starts swinging it around and Harrison Ford just pulls out his gun and shoots him and not only just shoots him, then turns away as if and like back to business.

Speaker 1 To me, it's profoundly funny. Everything about it is great.

Speaker 2 And then beautifully recalled in the end of the trailer of the new film.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Yeah, it's recalled.

Speaker 3 I think what's funny about that, and I'll tell you in a second how that came about, but I think what's funny about that is

Speaker 3 the last thing he does when the swordsman threatens him, and I felt this was really important,

Speaker 3 I asked Harrison to wipe his brow. And in so doing, fold the front of his fedora hat upwards so he looks a bit like Gabby Hayes.

Speaker 3 And I thought by making him look a little funny looking, by taking the brim of his fedora and forcing it to go up as opposed to coolly be down just over the brow.

Speaker 3 It took the onus off of cold-blooded murder.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 That was a little thing that I was hoping would work for us. But the whole reason it happened was Harrison, you know, had some tainted lamb the night before

Speaker 3 at a restaurant where we were shooting in Karawan, Tunisia. And he had some tainted lamb and he had a case of what we call the taristas.

Speaker 3 And he said that morning, he said you only got an hour I'm going back to the hotel in an hour what can you do in an hour and I said but it's a three-page scene between a swordsman and a whip you're supposed to fight this guy with your bull whip he said yeah but you only got an hour

Speaker 3 and I remember saying well why don't we just shoot the guy and Harrison remembers saying to me why didn't we just shoot the guy so I don't know whose idea it was but I know it was one of the two of us came up with the idea.

Speaker 1 That's great.

Speaker 1 And about an hour and a half later, we had done four shots and he went back to the hotel wow that's amazing that is amazing when i corner jason at a party sometimes he calls me gabby haze anyway um

Speaker 1 so i have one question about um nobody's gonna know who gabby hayes is by the way i know exactly

Speaker 1 um but uh one question about and then we'll let you go because i don't want to take up too much of your time john williams okay so john williams been nominated for 52 Academy Awards

Speaker 1 for all of his scores.

Speaker 1 It's unbelievable. It's like,

Speaker 1 but the the Fablemans was.

Speaker 3 That's more than camel soup makes soup.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But your collaboration with him in the Fablemans, as he now famously has made it known that he's retiring from film scoring, tell me what that was like, knowing, sitting in those sessions with him, knowing that this is going to be your last collaboration together.

Speaker 3 Right. Well, you know,

Speaker 3 we collaborated on Indiana Jones 5, which he just finished, and that'll be his last film score, which I'm, you know, emeritus now.

Speaker 3 I'm executive producer, no longer directing, Jim Mangles, the director.

Speaker 3 But for the Fablemans, that was going to be the last score that he was going to write for me as director. And I knew that going in.
And Johnny did something very special.

Speaker 3 I mean, he always previews the scores for me, but he had come up with a tune we only play one time, which is in the last scene between Mitzi and her son Sammy, the last scene they had together in the film.

Speaker 3 And John composed it just for that scene. And then, of course, it recalls itself in the end titles.
You have to hear it a second time over the end credits.

Speaker 3 But it was one of the loveliest pieces of music he has ever written for any of my movies. And he did it as a gift to my mom, and to my dad, and to me.

Speaker 3 And I'll never forget it, and I'll never forget my reaction to it.

Speaker 3 And the other only, I've had a lot of very emotional reactions to Johnny's music, but the only thing that this reminded me of was when he wrote the main theme from Schindler's List

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 how deeply moved I was. And then it happened again less than a year ago when he previewed the score on the piano.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's one of the greatest collaborations ever, you two, for how many movies? It's just incredible.

Speaker 3 It's the greatest collaboration I've ever had in my career, ever. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 1 Which is saying a lot.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it is. I've had a lot of great collaborations, but that one takes the cake.

Speaker 1 Well, we haven't worked together yet, but that's okay.

Speaker 1 But anyway,

Speaker 3 that's coming. That's coming.

Speaker 1 That's coming. That'll be one of the greatest.
Check your email, Sean. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Sean. Stephen, thank you for your time.

Speaker 1 I could ask you 75,000 more questions, but you're very, very kind to give us even this little bit of time.

Speaker 3 This flew by for me. I just had the best time talking to all three of you.
Thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Huge, huge honor. Thank you so much.
Please keep going. Thanks, Pal.

Speaker 3 All right. And Jason, Jason, keep directing.
I love your Ozark episodes.

Speaker 1 I love all your work. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Sean, good luck on Broadway and Will. Good luck with everything that you do.
And I just, I'm just very honored that you three guys chose me to talk to you.

Speaker 1 That's so sweet.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Stephen, very much. Have a great great day.

Speaker 3 You too. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Bye.

Speaker 2 Yeah, who wants to start crying first?

Speaker 1 I did just a little bit already.

Speaker 1 I will say this to one of the,

Speaker 1 first of all,

Speaker 1 how incredible that we got to sit and have an hour talking with Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg.

Speaker 2 Sean, I think you win

Speaker 2 the guest grab of the year.

Speaker 1 Was he on your guys' list too?

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I would never dream of pitching him as like

Speaker 1 a Mount Rushmore of guests that I was like, you know.

Speaker 1 Here's the other thing I can mention, and I want to say this is that

Speaker 1 when we got, when

Speaker 1 we were finished interviewing him,

Speaker 1 and we can cut this if we want, but we were able to talk to him for a few minutes after we stopped rolling for a second. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he said goodbye to us and to have that moment of which we don't generally have with people.

Speaker 2 Never, by the way.

Speaker 1 Never had a guest stay stay on for 20 minutes. We cut for a second and we started talking to him and

Speaker 1 he made the sort of the he made a point to go around and ask each one of us what was going on and how I know in like personal

Speaker 1 so kind. Yeah, and very kind and generous of spirit and

Speaker 1 really a sweet guy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's he's got that I mean he's got that thing that not a lot of people have where

Speaker 1 He checks a lot of boxes just in this business of being an incredibly talented man, a personable guy a people person like social skills are incredible yeah like he and the talent

Speaker 1 these are stuff you should strive for i'm looking up these two you want to say them i know you're

Speaker 1 people person oh that requires going around people you have to be around other people

Speaker 2 he does seem yeah incredibly generous with the um the presence that he he seems to be aware that he has with with folks and he's not doesn't take that for granted.

Speaker 2 And so he was really generous with us. And as you said, Will, made it a point to make sure that he just said, hey, how are things going on in your life? And how important that would be to him.

Speaker 1 Well, and Jason, you said it too. It's hard for him to ignore who he is.
He knows who he is and where he fits within the sort of the,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 certainly, like I said to him on the show, culturally, the impact that he has had.

Speaker 1 And the other thing is,

Speaker 1 you know, like I said, you know, he was very generous. I told him the story of,

Speaker 1 and you guys know this, when I came, when we were shooting Blades of Glory, and

Speaker 1 we made it for DreamWorks, and he had seen the first dailies, and I was coming out of SNL with, it was Sudeikis and Will Forte, and we were talking after SNL, and this was like 2006, I guess.

Speaker 1 And the winter of 2006, and we're standing there waiting to go to the after party, and Spielberg, Steven Spielberg, walks into our little crew of guys who are talking, waiting to get in the cars, go to the after-party, and he goes, hey, Will, Steven Spielberg, I just want to say I've seen the dailies of Blades of Glory and you're doing such a terrific job.

Speaker 1 And then disappeared into the night, got into a car, and drove away. And I remember Sudeka because of him being like, what the fuck, man?

Speaker 1 Like, did that just happen? And it was such a, and he didn't need to do that. He didn't need to go out of his way.
He knows who he is. He understands the impact.
For me, as a...

Speaker 1 you know, as a performer, as a thing, it was like, it was mind-blowing.

Speaker 1 He lifted me up, and I think that that's what he does. He lifts people up.

Speaker 1 And when you're, you live your life in the service of lifting other people up, you, you get to, you know, it lifts your own spirit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's incredible, man. Incredible.

Speaker 1 If you have like a light bulb to change or a picture to hang, you have to lift people up.

Speaker 1 I think that you're going a little

Speaker 1 bit. You know what you are? You know what, Sean?

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't mind it, but that's a little. Bye the book.
Bye.

Speaker 1 the book

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