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ALSO IN SALON:
No more magic realism
A young Latin American novelist says no more flying grannies.
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steven Spielberg:
A Biography
BY JOSEPH MCBRIDE
BY DAVID EGGERS much of what confounds and frustrates so many people about Steven Spielberg, especially those who would hope to champion the value of his work, is that he doesn't come off as a very smart guy. From his early triumphs with "Duel" and "The Sugarland Express" to his mid-career blockbusters like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "E.T.," all the way to his eventual critical "breakthrough" with "Schindler's List," he's been hopelessly inarticulate when explaining his most critically successful work or defending his more dubious efforts. Worse, he's always the first one to unintentionally hand ammunition to his critics. ("I have always felt like Peter Pan," he said in 1985. "It has been very hard for me to grow up.") His apparent motive (to make a lot of money) and inspiration (drawn, again and again, from his childhood) have made him an easy target for those who would dismiss his work as simplistic, emotionally manipulative theme-park offal. Which, of course, it often is. But even when his movies are bad ("1941," "Hook," "Jurassic Park" and its shockingly dumb spawn, "The Lost World"), they possess a technical mastery and a visual brilliance that is almost unparalleled in Hollywood, past or present. From the start, even his detractors knew that he was some sort of genius, if a puerile one, and "Schindler's List" finally silenced his legions of slanderers. Now, Joseph McBride has written what's arguably the most comprehensive biography of Spielberg to date. Though "unauthorized," and as such forced to make do without any formal interviews with Spielberg or those closest to him, McBride's book is surprisingly engrossing and thorough, recounting every step of Spielberg's career, from his days as a 22-year-old prodigy working for Universal Television to his acceptance by the Academy. McBride spends almost one-third of the book's 450-odd pages on Spielberg's childhood -- fittingly, since many of Spielberg's characters and themes came from that time. As a boy, he was "skinny and unpopular," and thus most of Spielberg's protagonists are misfits. He had an interest in dinosaurs and World War II yarns and spent a great deal of time in front of the TV. Most important, though, was his strained relationship with his father, from whom he inherited his penchant for storytelling and fascination with technology, but whose emotional distance -- there are no happy nuclear families in Spielberg's movies -- became the primary theme running through his work.
By the end we know Spielberg a little too well. The perception of the director as a cynical genius, desperate for approval and perhaps a little greedy, is at first confounded, then finally confirmed. After "Schindler," Spielberg could have continued to bring substantive stories to the screen, but instead his first project was a sequel to "Jurassic Park" ("Something ... Has ... SURVIVED!"). He quickly reminded everyone, after winning his long-coveted Academy Award for best director, that what Steven Spielberg is most interested in is Steven Spielberg.
David Eggers is the editor of Might magazine. |
