Saturday 21 November

BLOGS

blogCategory
Previous
Back to blog
Next

Hollywood's last boy scout

Steven Spielberg
  • Posted at 6:20pm
  • 14 December 2007
  • by AndrewCollins-RT
  • 1 comment

He was short and thin. His ears stuck out. His beaky nose was so embarrassing that he stuck tape to the tip of it and his forehead, praying it would develop a tilt. When teams were chosen for any game, he was always the last to be picked.

Not my description of the young Steven Spielberg, but biographer John Baxter's. The boy who would become arguably the greatest popular film-maker of our time was never cool. At high school in Phoenix in the early 1960s, he joined the Boy Scouts, learned the clarinet and was obsessed with movie music rather than rock 'n' roll.

The classic nerd, he dealt with social isolation by becoming a showman, putting on puppet shows and, eventually, making home movies. The rest is cinema history.

A new feature-length documentary, Spielberg on Spielberg, showcases a long conversation with the man. It offers countless insights into the film-making process, but reveals little of his personality.

This fits in with his reputation as one of cinema's great technicians (as Baxter notes, "He communicates best from behind a protective grille of technology"). Though he was one of Hollywood's "movie brat" generation of the 1970s, unlike George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola, he didn't attend film school, learning his craft in television. (His first feature, Duel, was made for TV.) He was unfashionable before he started, and steered clear of the drug-taking that became so emblematic of the "New Hollywood".

Once his breakthrough, Jaws, had reinvented the summer blockbuster, Spielberg was too successful to be cool. And with the belated Oscar success of the powerful Schindler's List in 1994, he even lost his "outsider" cachet. Although he doesn't shy away from depicting violence in films like Saving Private Ryan and Munich, it's never gratuitous. Even the mass destruction in War of the Worlds comes with a 12A certificate.

His next project, the "fourquel" Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (due for release in May 2008), sees him playing to the gallery once again. Perhaps, like his populist forebears Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock, it will take French critics, or his own death, to finally bestow cool upon Steven Spielberg. But for now, he remains Hollywood's last boy scout.

Link to this post
Post a comment | 1 comment

Comments

  • Posted on 19 February 2009
  • at 3:58pm
  • by Francis

It's a good thing he was in the Boy Scouts a while ago. They have gotten out of hand with their rules lately. Discriminating against people outside a height weight chart without supplying proof that its a valid judgment of fitness. It is a great organization that affects many lives. Think of the insperation lost on youth, who can't participate because good members are turned away unnessecarily. Look into the new health form. Our future leaders and entertainers are at risk.

Post a comment

Do you have something to say about this post? Share your thoughts…

Post a comment

(first or nickname only)

Please do not include any personal or personally identifiable information about yourself or others (including email addresses). All information you submit about yourself or others can be viewed by others.

Thank you for your comment

Thank you for your comments. All comments will be looked at by a moderator, however, due to the numbers of comments we receive, we can't promise that all will be posted on the site.

Post another comment

More


Advertisement