A sizable portion of the $18 million budget was allocated for fantastic special effects.
Steven Spielberg
At thirty, Steven Spielberg is a member of a very small band of young, ambitious, inventive, and commercially successful Hollywood directors. Spielberg joined this “club,” which includes George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Francis Ford Coppola, with his second feature film, Jaws, which became the screen’s all-time box-office champion; grossing more than $200 million to date. For thrill seekers, financiers, and critics alike, Spielberg captured the seemingly impossible on film — in this case by using a nineteen ton mechanical shark with four-foot fangs. While manipulating the monster, Spielberg gained a reputation for versatility and flexibility, rewriting the script every day on the set on advice from actors, always seeking human characters that audiences could identify with.
Now Spielberg has found a new subject for his explosively climactic, all-too-convincing mode of moviemaking: UFOs and extraterrestrial communication. Recognizing the enormous market for a UFO film in America — where, according to UFO authority Dr. J. Allen Hynek, there are 100 sightings reported within every twenty-four hours Spielberg began writing the original screenplay while editing his first movie, The Sugarland Express, and preparing Jaws for release. Five years of rewriting, directing, and editing have resulted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which opened nationally this past December.
The film, starring Richard Dreyfuss as a highway utility repairman obsessed with UFOs and French film director Francois Truffaut as a world-traveling UFO investigator, received a record advance of $24 million in exhibitors’ rentals. Interest heightened when Spielberg banned reporters from the film’s location sites in Alabama, Wyoming, California, and India, where security guards tossed out anyone who wasn’t wearing an ID badge.
The film utilizes totally new technology in photography, lighting, opticals, and special effects. Visual coordinator Douglas Trumbull, who created the special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, built an entire movie studio in Los Angeles with printing, developing, and editing rooms, electronically operated control booths, and a wood shop, metal shop, paint shop, and miniature-set construction shop.
Born in Cincinnati in 1947, Spielberg has been wielding a movie camera since his early youth; in fact, when he was sixteen, he made a two-and-one-half-hour, eight-millimeter film, called Firelight, about scientists investigating strange lights in the sky. He studied English at California State College, making films for industrial companies to pay his tuition. During this time he borrowed $10,000 to make Amblin’, a twenty-four-minute short about two young hitchhikers that so impressed Sidney Sheinberg, now president of MCA, that he signed Spielberg — six weeks before the director’s twenty-first birthday — to a Universal contract. “What I initially noticed about Steven, besides his talent, was his ability to listen and observe,” Sheinberg remembers. “Steven’s concern for humanity allows him to create films that are easy to relate to and are extremely commercial.”
Spielberg directed the first show of the hit television series “Night Gallery,” in addition to episodes of “Marcus Welby, M.D.”. His television movie Duel, with Dennis Weaver, was highly praised and prompted producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown to hire Spielberg to direct his first feature film, The Sugarland Express, starring Goldie Hawn. It received rave reviews but barely broke even at the box office. Spielberg then asked the Sugarland producers if he could direct a film based on a book he had stolen off their desk prior to publication. Referring to it now as “that shark movie,” Spielberg is still “personally disappointed” that he did not receive an Oscar nomination for best director of 1975 for the film.
Herbert Margolis, Penthouse West Coast editor, and Craig Modderno interviewed Spielberg at both his Hollywood film lab, while he was dubbing Close Encounters, and the director’s Laurel Canyon home, which he shares with Amy Irving, the twenty-three year-old actress who played Sue, the “nice girl,” in Brian DePalma’s Carrie. Margolis and Modderno report: “With his Prince Valiant hairdo, Levi’s, blue pullover sweater, and aviator glasses, Spielberg looks like a college student still trying to sneak onto a studio lot. Shy, handsome, and remarkably intelligent, Spielberg maintains a low profile, almost as if he fears that too much media exposure will jeopardize his recognition as a serious filmmaker. He is polite and somewhat reserved with strangers, tending to sit back and let them play their hands before he gambles on opening up to them. Once he does, one has to feel a healthy respect for the cool, sincere manner in which he conducts himself and for his lack of show-business pretension. ”
“The government has been concerned about the UFO phenomenon since World War II. I think the CIA knows whether we have been visited by other worlds”
Where did you first get the idea for Close Encounters?
Spielberg: The real origin of the idea goes back to when I was a five-year-old kid in New Jersey. One night my dad woke me up in the middle of the night and rushed me into our car in my night clothes. I didn’t know what was happening. It was frightening. My mom wasn’t with me. So I thought, “What’s happening here?” He had a thermos of coffee and had brought blankets, and we drove for about half an hour. We finally pulled over to the side of the road, and there were a couple hundred people, lying on their backs in the middle of the night, looking up at the sky. My dad found a place, spread the blanket out, and we both lay down.
He pointed to the sky, and there was a magnificent meteor shower. All these incredible points of light were crisscrossing the sky. It was a phenomenal display, apparently announced in advance by the weather bureau. My dad had really surprised me — actually, he’d frightened the hell out of me! At the same time, though, I was tremendously attracted to the source, to what was causing this. Years later we got a telescope, and I was into stargazing.
When you’re looking at stars and the moons around Jupiter and Venus and trying to spot the polar caps on Mars, your mind begins to explore and go out much, much further, thinking about other solar systems around other suns, other life forms. Looking at the sky at night is probably the greatest stimulation for anyone’s imagination.
When did you begin thinking of extraterrestrial phenomena as a subject for a movie?
Spielberg: About three years ago. At first I was just going to do a documentary. I wasn’t even going to try to re-create reported sightings but just interview people who said they had seen UFOs. But then, never having made a documentary before and finding that I really wasn’t in control, except in the editing room, I decided that maybe the best thing to do would be a drama about UFOs?
Have you seen UFOs?
Spielberg: No. I’ve vicariously relived experiences that other people have had. While I was making Close Encounters, I had several very strange dreams that I turned into scenes in the movie. The dreams seemed as real as being awake, and they always involved the same thing — my bedroom window and something in the sky. The dreams weren’t telling me anything — I didn’t have the feeling they were coming from a force that was telling me how to write the script or giving me dialogue or scenes.
But somehow those dreams gave me a living experience of what it would be like to have a real UFO experience. They set a mood, a tone if you will, for my film. Each dream — or encounter — was more vivid than the one before, and each was very seductive. I would wake up angry that what had happened was simply a dream, because it seemed so real; and when it stopped, I wanted to know so much more.
What happens to people after they’ve seen a UFO?
Speilberg: Usually, they choose anonymity, because in the past UFO sightings have been pooh-poohed and debunked. Those who have reported them have often undergone social humiliation. For every reported UFO experience, ten go unreported. That’s a hard statistic. Most people don’t want a reencounter of the first, second, or third kind. They are so taken aback by the experience, which is usually so unsettling to all the forces of logic that they never really want to experience it again. There are others, however, who are compelled to visit the location of their encounter again and again. They go back and walk around and wait for it to happen again. It rarely does.
Is this what happens to Richard Dreyfuss, the lead in Close Encounters?
Spielberg: In certain ways. He’s more of an exception to the rule. He doesn’t just report his experience; he becomes obsessed by the hope of reliving it.
“When you succeed in Hollywood, it’s like getting your Master Charge renewed. The more successful you become, the more rope you’ve given to hang yourself with later.”
People are making comparisons between Close Encounters and Star Wars, especially in the innovative use of special effects. Do you see any connection?
Spielberg: The movies are very different, and so are the effects. You’ve got to remember that Close Encounters has been three years in the making, and the final edit was done about the time Star Wars was coming out. As for the public’s response, I can tell you, if Star Wars had been a bust, it would really have hurt Close Encounters, because it would have shut the lid on science fiction as a film genre. The films are quite dissimilar, though. Close Encounters is an earthbound movie. Its roots are in the familiar routine of suburban life. Star Wars is a beautiful, enchanting space opera — a fantasy. Those who walk into Close Encounters expecting to see the sequel to Star Wars will be disappointed.
Are the special effects spectacular in Close Encounters?
Spielberg: The story doesn’t necessarily need special effects to succeed as a dramatic narrative. The special effects that we used are successful to the degree that they fit naturally into the picture — most of them will go unnoticed. They were expensive, though! Doug Trumball supervised the effects. He built the first sixty-five-millimeter front-projection machine and the first sixty-five-millimeter matte stand for Close Encounters. He actually built his own Close Encounters lab in Marina del Rey.
One difficult thing we had to do was to create the effect of night, since about 65 percent of the film takes place at night. There is no film fast enough to photograph nightlight and show it as our eyes see it in the country or the city. So, all our night effects had to be created, had to be synthesized. It works beautifully; and I think that when you look at a night scene in the movie, you won’t be aware that every night shot is a special effect.
What is the overall effect you’re trying to achieve with Close Encounters?
Spielberg: I want people to walk out of the theater with more questions than they had when they walked in. I want them to consider the probability that we are not alone in the universe, that the stars are not simply a kind of nocturnal wallpaper to be viewed indifferently. People should enjoy looking up at night, exercising their imaginations a little more.
Will you do for UFOs in Close Encounters what you did for sharks in Jaws?
Spielberg: That’s up to people who see the film. There has always been something frightening about the unknown. Both films explore the things around the corner that you can’t see. You didn’t see much of the actual shark in the first hour of Jaws — you saw only the line. We created a surreal fear of the unknown, a fear of water. In Close Encounters, when the camera cuts to the sky — all black with stars — a sense of mystery should evolve.
How do the extraterrestrial beings communicate with the humans in Close Encounters?
Spielberg: By music. They use the twelve-tone scale. They give us the first five tones, and we are able to take those notes, return them, and signal our willingness to meet. It has to do with the science of dividing sounds up into parts. This is a constant natural law that any intelligent life form can relate to. We also try assigning to these sound frequencies different hues of shades, and suddenly we are communicating in light and sound. There is no ”Take me to your leader,“ no telepathy.
Also, I can tell you that when we do make contact with the aliens, nobody gets eaten.
Are the visitors in the film threatening?
Spielberg: If you mean aggressive or hostile, with intent to do us bodily harm, the answer is absolutely not. But the dangers of contact are certainly conceivable, both bacteriologically and sociologically. I mean, how can we interact with an extraterrestrial race when we can’t exchange ideas and customs peacefully with different races from our own planet? We can’t leave earth to research our cosmic neighbors, but they’re here researching us. I never give much motivation for their actions in the film, because I think it’s presumptuous of me to pretend that I know what they would be thinking or why they would be here. I have no profound answers to the riddles of the universe.
How did you come up with the title for your film?
Spielberg: I didn’t. The phrase was coined by Dr. Hynek, currently director of the Center for UFO Studies. He wrote a book entitled The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry and was my technical adviser on the film. He also served for more than twenty years as astronomical consultant to the air force on projects involving UFOs until the projects were discontinued.
How did he define encounters of the first, second, and third kind?
Spielberg: Encounters of the first kind are when you see something mysterious in the sky: you are provoked into asking lots of questions. Close encounters of the second king are sightings of UFOs that come close enough to leave physical evidence — something like burn rings on the ground. Close encounters of the third kind occur when a spacecraft is sighted and the observer has an encounter with the occupants.
Do you think anyone has real proof of UFO activity?
Spielberg: I think the CIA knows for a fact whether we have or have not been visited by other worldly intelligences. I also think similar intelligence-gathering organizations could have been involved in clandestine operations for several decades, attempting to discover the truth, if any, behind UFOs.
If that is true, why hasn’t this information been made public?
Spielberg: I can only speculate. The government and the CIA have been concerned about the UFO phenomenon since the end of World War II. There was a committee formed, called the Robertson Panel, and they submitted the following conclusion — I’m reading from the document.
“The continued emphasis on the reporting of these (UFO) phenomena does, in these perilous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic. We cite as examples the clogging of channels of communication by irrelevant reports, the danger of being led by continued false alarms to ignore real indications of hostile action, and the cultivation of a morbid national psychology in which skillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duty, constituted authority.”
The Robertson Panel recommended “that the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.” It also recommended “that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence training and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognize most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent of action.”
Perhaps the most important thing about the report is the fact that the meeting was called by the CIA and that these conclusions were made after consultation with the CIA. My own feeling is that if the country were told tomorrow that we have been coexisting — tough perhaps not actually communicating with — “foreign” entities, it would score headlines for several years. Then, after a while, if no miraculous solutions were found to our global problems and no direct interstellar intervention took place, the UFOs — now identified — would be tucked away with other wonders of the world and forgotten. Of course, fundamentalists would go on arguing for centuries.
There have been UFO sightings all over the world. Do you think the CIA is working with other governments to suppress them?
Spielberg: I don’t think there is any kind of coalition to suppress UFO reports. I feel, however, that there are valid reasons for different governments not to tell their people that there could be other seats of power up there that are much moore powerful than theirs, powers that could perhaps serve the citizenry better. Yet, there are certain important government officials in some countries, including Brazil and France, who believe that UFOs exist but who have no fear that this information will lead to public hysteria, ridicule, or culture shock.
There has been talk in the media about alien beings visiting our civilizations at various times over the last 5,000 years. Why haven’t they made a concerted effort to communicate with us?
Spielberg: It seems to me that it’s just their choice not to intervene in our growing pains.
Do you anticipate more UFO sightings and government denials as a result of your movie?
Spielberg: If the film is popular, people will be seeing UFOs in their soup. I hope visitors from outer space will take me to another world for about five days to prove I was right. Either way, I expect dozens of strange creatures to suddenly appear and tell me, “I’m a UFO. You’ve stolen my story.”
When did you begin making movies?
Spielberg: A long, long time ago. I became interested in moviemaking simply because my father had an eight-millimeter movie camera, which he used to log the family history. I would sit and watch the home movies and criticize the shaky camera movements and bad exposures until my father finally got fed up and told me to take over. I became the family photographer and logged all our trips.
Then I began to think that staging real life was much more exciting than just recording to let me out of the car 100 yards before we reached the campgrounds when we went on trips. I’d run ahead and film them arriving and unpacking and pitching camp. Then I began cutting the films together, speeding the camera up, slowing it down, experimenting with time-lapse photography. I also played the bully brother, dressing my sisters up as German soldiers, blasting at them with toy submachine guns, and filming them tumbling down a hill — they died four or five times in each picture. But I never really thought I would make movies for a living. Mainly, it was something fun to do, to keep me away from studying algebra and French.
When did you go to Hollywood?
Spielberg: When I was sixteen, my mom and dad split, and there was no longer a routine to follow. My life changed radically. I left home and went to L.A. I lived with my second cousins for a summer. One day I went on the Grey Line tour of Universal Studios. I was fascinated by it all, so when the bus made a rest stop. I got out and hid behind one of the sound stages. So the bus left without me, and I spent the day walking around the lot. I watched the television shows being shot. It was my first exposure to the clapper sticks, the ringing bells, all the great nonsense and shouting.
For about the next three months, I returned to the lot every day and got in by dressing up in a suit, waving to the guards, and bluffing my way around. I suspect that the guards were afraid to kick me off the lot because they thought I might have been related to somebody in the black tower.
Did you get involved with gangs or drugs when you were young?
Spielberg: No, and none of my friends did either. By today’s standards, we were pretty straight. But I did have a six-month fling as a juvenile delinquent. One day I went with four of my friends to a modern shopping mall that was being built and threw rocks at plate-glass windows for three hours. We later discovered we had caused about $30,000 worth of damage.
The other heinous thing I did happened at the largest movie theater in Phoenix. It seated about 1,200 people and had two balconies. My friends and I took a lot of white bread and mixed it with milk, Parmesan cheese, creamed corn, and peas. We put this foul-smelling mixture into bags, went to the movie, and sat in the highest balcony. They were showing The Lost World. At the most exciting part, we made vomiting sounds and squeezed the solution over the balcony on the people below. We did it for laughs. Little did we realize that it would begin a chain reaction of throwing up. The movie was stopped, the house lights came on, and ushers appeared with their flashlights — ready to kill. We were so frightened that we raced out the fire-escape exit. Even though we had brought two cars, the seven of us ran about a mile and took a bus home.
How did you relate to girls while you were growing up?
Spielberg: I didn’t, much. My time was spent in scouting, baseball — I was a good second baseman in the Little Leagues — and making eight-millimeter movies. I was always seducing a camera. Girls came later, when I was a first-year student at college, but I never was a stud jock. I always lusted after the lady cornet player in the high-school band, who had the round mouth and forehead acne.
What kind of women turn you on now?
Spielberg: In high school and college, bright women intimidated me and drove me off. Not any more. It’s nice to have a friend who also becomes your confessor, your lover, a second voice in your head. To me a sensuous woman is one who, first of all, has a sensible knowledge of herself. She isn’t a drifter. She is goal oriented. She has a sense of humor about herself and enough energy to light her life on fire and keep it burning until she has what she wants — and still not be satisfied. I like liberated women. Women are much more aggressive about themselves today. There’s a whole self-realization movement occurring, which is enormously healthy.
The success of Jaws has made you one of America’s most powerful filmmakers. How are you using this power?
Spielberg: Well, right now I expect to produce several films over the next few years for other directors, some of whom I’m helping to get started. I am also being more courageous in finding new ideas for films. I am losing the fear of failure. I’d like to help abolish the adage that you’re only as good as your last picture.
When you succeed in Hollywood, it’s sort of like getting your Master Charge card renewed for twelve more months. The more successful you become, the more rope you’ve given to hang yourself with further on down the line. I don’t think it’s possible to accumulate too much power in the movie industry. The movie industry is only a diverting entertainment for people in politics and business. In a way, I’ve always looked at movies as dessert, something you treat yourself to after a hard day at work or school. In a few years, perhaps I’ll change my whole philosophy, be anxious to do a personal movie and not give a shit about what the majority thinks of it. But right now it’s very exciting to make an impression on the mass audience — an impression that will stay with them for years.
But I’m not going to fool myself. Movies might be my life, but it’s not that way for 225 million other Americans. There’s more to living than re-creating life on celluloid. This is something I’m beginning to find out.
Why didn’t you direct the sequel to Jaws?
Spielberg: I never designed Jaws for sequels. Universal is making a sequel because Jaws has become a multi-million-dollar business. The title alone will bring in $30 million in preexhibitor advances. I couldn’t find a story that would justify doing another Jaws film. The premise of the sequel — that another huge shark would attack again in the same place — was a fish story very hard for me to swallow.
How did you feel about the whole Jaws phenomenon that followed that film’s huge success?
Spielberg: I was proud as a father whose kid goes off and gets straight A’s in college. Jaws developed a life of its own beyond anything I gave it. It was the type of film on which the audiences superimpose their own creative imaginings and make it an even better picture than it actually is. Jaws became a sociological event. I would read about it in “Peanuts” watch Johnny Carson talk about it, see Nixon compared to it in political cartoons, and watch TV specials and commercials either spoofing or imitating it. It was a great feeling to see the film become the sole property of the American public and part of our pop culture.
You make it sound as if Jaws was pure exhilaration to make. Was it?
Spielberg: Far from it! I believe Jaws was the only picture in Universal’s history to have taken 155 days to shoot. For a long time, I was accumulating only about thirty seconds of usable film every three days. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the studio actually considered pulling the plug on the entire film and making their money back by putting the shark on tour and raising the prices a nickel. They thought we were mad. Most of us were.
What was your emotional state like during the filming?
Spielberg: I felt very strongly that my career was at stake. Had Jaws only broken even, I would have taken both barrels point-blank from all the people who were watching our clumsy progress and predicting doom. There are some grim realities involved in directing a picture. Many people in the Hollywood community are more interested in seeing you fail than succeed. I sometimes feel that only my folks, my girl friend, my secretary, and the New York investors are on my side. You have no time to yourself, except to eat, shoot your movie, plan your shots for the next day, sleep, and forget women. When I’m making a movie I become partially celibate. I get into the routine of fucking my movie.
“Fucking your movie”?
Spielberg: A movie is a painful act of conception. I become mad Doctor Frankenstein with test tubes and electrical sparks, creating a living organism from dead parts. I’m just trying to be honest, though, by saying that the sexual urge isn’t as strong when I’m making a movie as it might be fore several film producers I know, who take that opportunity to just sport-fuck seven days a week.
Is there a lot of “sport-fucking” on location?
Spielberg: Does a bear shit in the woods? Location shooting is the Rites of Spring for certain members of the crew, who may even be happily married, and for young cast members who have never been away from home before. Holiday Inns across America are probably host to more sprung beds and screaming orgasms when a movie company comes to town than at any other time. Walking down the hall at 1:00 in the morning at those Holiday Inns sometimes sounds like Gyorgy Ligeti’s Atmospheres from 2001.
It seems you have enough material for a porn film. Have you ever made one?
Spielberg: No, but I have seen a couple — Behind the Green Door and Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door was a little more erotic because of the sexual imagination of the filmmakers and some of the stunts they pulled. I didn’t find anything especially moving about Deep Throat when she was gorging herself. I mean, I couldn’t especially feel it. I could just watch and hope everyone was having a good time.
How do you feel about current legislative attempts to close down so-called porno theaters and ban their newspaper advertising?
Spielberg: I’m against any censorship regarding films, but I think porno films should have age restrictions. There’s something pure and natural about sex. Taking a small child into a porno theater, where he sees slabs of meat coupled in clinical, unloving fashion, could be detrimental to a healthy understanding of sex.
Do you think the rating system is valid?
Spielberg: It should have a few more degrees of G, PG, R, and X. For example, I think there should be extra consideration given to certain films, such as George C. Scott’s The Savage Is Loose. The film was given an R rating, not for the sum of its parts, but because of an overall idea, a parochial taboo. That’s one hell of a bum deal. Sex films don’t bother me as much as violent films. Maybe it’s naive to say, but I would rather see someone go to a porn film and later imitate what he has seen with a consenting adult than see someone run out of a violent flick, buy a gun, and blow someone’s head off. I think it’s much more dangerous to see violence than sex.
How did you feel about the violence in Jaws?
Spielberg: I thought, in all fairness, that Jaws should have received an R rating, but I can also defend its PG. The violence in Jaws couldn’t easily be emulated — unless some psychotic who saw the film ran out into the street and ate his victims. People can’t identify with the violence in Jaws and then reenact the plot in real life. Let me tell you, I cut a lot of very gory scenes from the final picture. I shot one scene with a man’s head protruding from the jaws of the shark. The head was crushed and spewing blood when the shark pushed it into a small child, screaming hysterically in the water. I cut that out even though it took three days to shoot. It was just too horrifying.
There comes a point where horror is too theatrical, and the people start using defense mechanisms, like hysterical laughter. I worked in a hospital when I was growing up and saw things that were so horrifying that I had to fantasize that there were lights, props, makeup men, just to avoid vomiting. The one scene in Jaws that I cut was so horrifying to look at that it went beyond reality. People would have started thinking: “Is this real blood? Wor! How is the actor able to breathe in all that water? Isn’t that shark mechanical-looking!” It’s a coping mechanism we all use.
I think I retained the mystique of the shark by not showing him too realistically, too graphically. It’s like erotic art. Seeing a woman through a veiled negligee is far more stimulating than seeing her in the raw, with hard, front light.
Haven’t you and some of your filmmaker friends banded together?
Spielberg: Yes. There’s George Lucas, his wife, Marcia — who is a filmmaker in her own right — Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, Brian DePalma, John Milius, Marty Scorsese, and a few others.
“People in Hollywood are more interested in seeing you fail than succeed. I sometimes feel that only my folds, my girl friend, and the New York investors are on my side.”
It’s been reported that you sometimes exchange percentages of each other’s films.
Spielberg: We sometimes consult on each other’s pictures. We’re always trading scripts, making comments and criticisms, seeing rough cuts of each other’s movies. But as friendly as we get, we are still a very competitive, ambitious group of people who are all trying to be number one.
Is your group planning to form an invisible studio?
Spielberg: No. An invisible studio would mean that we would all get together to make movies for each other. It’s better for us to just be friends and leave business out of it. We have agreed to protect each other’s films, that studio is going to alienate a lot of good film directors for a few years. Freedom, within the parameters of a certain budget, is more important to me than how much I get paid to make a movie. Sometimes, it requires a big hit film to assure your creative autonomy
I’ve been fortunate, however. Somehow, even before Jaws, I had complete control over what I did. So I’ve been solely responsible for my successes and solely responsible for my failures. You know, though, no one seems to want to declare his contribution to a film that bombs, whereas a hit has a hundred fathers. The shameless credit grabbing that occurred after Jaws would rock you back. I guess that, too, was just part of the Jaws phenomenon. There are several individuals whose careers have taken off as a result of their avowed contribution to the success of Jaws, when the sad fact is that these people did the least work of all.
You have a reputation for maintaining a low profile in Hollywood. Is that important to your creative process?
Spielberg: Yes. I need privacy. I work a lot late at night, when I’m alone.
Do you enjoy solitude?
Spielberg: Sometimes I do. The truth is I do my best work when I’m in the pits emotionally. Sometimes I’m in the pits for six months straight, but it’s okay, because my creative juices don’t flow as well when I’m happy.
Given the competitive nature of your business, can you really trust your friends?
Spielberg: Friendship and loyalty are two of my most cherished values. I have a lot of casual friends, but there is just a handful I consider really true friends — people who would stick by me when things aren’t so hot. You would be surprised at the number of friends who turn away when you achieve success. Some acquaintances who I thought were my friends turned into snipers when Jaws hit the top. I’m leery — really cautious. I don’t make friends that easily, because I think a lot of people don’t know what it means to be a true friend: how to reciprocate, how to share the bulk of the problems, how to be honorable.
One of the worst things about the movie community is the way it gossips. I sometimes think that the good news, and especially the bad news, travels faster than the speed of light. That’s one of my peeves about living in this town. It’s hard to protect yourself and your work from gossipy speculation. You begin to question whether or not you should even trust yourself. The only time I feel totally happy is when I’m watching films or making them.
Do you ever think of escaping?
Spielberg: Sure. My false poetic dream has always been to meet a female bank teller from Kansas, with hay in her hair, and go off and marry and live on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Of course, that’s the last thing I’d ever want to do. But when things are getting too hot to handle and nothing’s going right, and I don’t like my movie anymore and I don’t like my associates anymore, and I just want to go off somewhere before I think of Hawaii or the Virgin Islands, I think about the roots of the American heartland. It’s a completely dishonest dream. I must have picked it up by looking at too many Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth paintings. Let me tell you, if I were ever given my wish, I’d be the unhappiest boy on the farm.
As you may know — presuming you have not been living under a rock or in some virtual world for the past 48 years — Steven Spielberg has had some more successes after “Close Encounters” as he illustrated them. A couple dozen Oscar nominations will sort of draw some attention, after all. Some people in life have just been touched by angels, and the rest of us, if we’re lucky, just get to enjoy them. When you’re done being amazed by Mr. Spielberg, go listen to Karen Carpenter sing.
