The Thrill Isn't Gone

By KENNETH TURAN

Dec. 28, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES FILM CRITIC

Everyone calls him Steven; within the busy catacombs of Hollywood, no further identification is necessary. His record as a popular culture taste-master speaks for itself; through the end of 1997, seven of the 20 highest-grossing films bear his mark as either director, producer or executive producer. And in 1998, Steven Spielberg did it again, re-creating World War II to both critical and box-office success in “Saving Private Ryan,” the favorite for this year’s best picture Oscar.

Sitting in a comfortable conference room in his DreamWorks compound just days before his 51st birthday, Spielberg talks with the aplomb and maturity that come from having been a public figure for more than half of his life (not to mention being the father of seven children). Underneath a large poster for “Men in Black” (not the film he executive-produced but an early Three Stooges two-reeler), Spielberg provided a straightforward perspective on his own work and the industry that reveres him.

Question: I want to start with the studio system, where it has been, where it’s going. When you started at Universal, it was close to its last days. What’s the difference in Hollywood between then and now?

Answer: Huge differences. I think basically it was a lot calmer. It was a sweeter place to exist within. When I first got started, there didn’t seem to be this kind of hysteria and true nail-biting anxiety before a film opened. Films opened quietly, there weren’t full-page ads touting the three-day box office in the trades. It just didn’t seem as frantic as today.

Q: One of your strengths as a filmmaker, both as a producer and a director, is knowing what audiences like. With executives relying on testing a great deal, that’s become something of a lost art. Is this a good thing?

A: The movies that I personally direct I don’t test. I haven’t tested a movie since “Hook” in 1991. I think tests are deceiving. Even though the critical community vilified me and trounced that film, the test scores were some of the highest that had ever been gotten by a movie. People who got in to see “Hook” for free, in the one test screening, liked the movie a hell of a lot better than people who wound up having to pay for it and didn’t think it was worth five or six bucks.

When people say, “How do you define your success?” I feel the one thing that I’ve achieved as a filmmaker is I don’t test my movies--and it’s not because I’m so certain they’re going to succeed. “Amistad” certainly could have used a couple of tests; it might have benefited had I tested it. But I don’t have to go through the anxiety of knowing that the test is on Friday--”Oh, my God, I have to go to San Jose, I’ve got to sit with an audience.” You don’t know what that does to my giblets.

If I’ve ever earned anything, it’s the right to say to the studios, “Please, don’t even ask.”

Q: The movie business is turning into a fascinating two-track system, with the big studio films and the independent films. Twenty years ago this didn’t exist. How do you feel about it?

A: I think the independent revolution is the most exciting thing that’s happened since the French New Wave. The independent film has always been with us, but it’s never had this commercial reception.

Q: I think Miramax was one of the companies to prove that you could make real money with these films.

A: Miramax is actually my favorite company in town. I think it’s amazing that they didn’t narrow their range to European pickups or low-ball financing of very talented filmmakers; they also will occasionally make the Roger Corman films, the ones that go boo in the night. I like the way they’re stretching. It means they don’t take themselves that seriously.

Q: Why did you want to start a studio? What couldn’t you get that you wanted to get?

A: I had been thinking about doing something with Amblin to give myself more proprietary ownership in not only the negatives but the real estate. I’d actually been in conversation with Mike Ovitz, who was my agent at CAA, on privatizing Amblin and turning it into an independent entity. It’s because I woke up one day and realized that I really didn’t work for myself and never had. I had achieved success beyond my wildest dreams, but I’d achieved that working for everybody in Hollywood.

I was very happy to do that for the rest of my life, but starting my own shop, including distributing my own pictures, did nag at me a bit. So when Jeffrey [Katzenberg] suggested that I go into partnership with himself and David Geffen, it wasn’t something that I just began thinking about the day Jeffrey left Disney. I wanted to feel what it was like to go into business for myself. I’ve never really had my own place; I hadn’t had “Cheers.”

Q: Now that you have a company, does that impact the films you pick?

A: Not at all, I promise you. It really is just a galvanic skin response to what I read or what I hear. It just literally is, “Oh, I’d love to go see that picture.” It’s the same way I’ll go to see a movie like “Celebration.” I adored “Celebration,” and I think if [Danish director] Thomas Vinterberg had told me that story and come to me with that concept of shooting a movie in available light, I would have found the financing for him to make that picture, and I would have been very happy to put either DreamWorks name or a smaller, independent distribution branch of DreamWorks on it and release it. So I’m just open to anything.

Q: So do you envision having an independent film subsidiary of DreamWorks at some point?

A: Absolutely, I do. Right now I’ve got a larger appetite than our business plan allows me to have. Our plan only lets me make a maximum of nine live-action movies a year. Frankly, I have not been able to find more than six that I would really stand behind and claim pride of ownership. So I always wonder how studios can make 35 films a year and stand behind each and every one of them with a great deal of pride.

Q: Well, obviously, I don’t think they can.

A: I don’t think it’s possible. And it’s also a lot of work. You wouldn’t even have a life if you’re making 32 films a year. So when we formed DreamWorks, I said to Jeffrey, “Look, don’t ask me to go up from four films a year at Amblin, which I’ve done for 13 years, to 24 films a year, or even 14 films a year.” At the time I had five kids--I have seven now--and I said, “I just can’t do that.”

Q: Talk a bit about budgets. It seems that they go up every year. What’s behind this?

A: A lot of the costs are natural due to cost-of-living increases and wage increases, costs that follow a curve that you can chart from the time films began. And the use of money and what money can buy is a lot less than what money used to buy. When I look back at making “Jaws,” I see I spent almost $10 million, more than twice its initial $4-million-plus budget. But looking back at the 155 shooting days it took to make that picture, I know that today the film would have cost probably close to $140 million, and it’s only been 23 years. And there were no stars in “Jaws,” the shark was the star, so it would have cost $140 million in 1998 without stars.

Q: But can this go on forever? I mean up, up, up?

A: It can go on until it hits critical mass, which is when they make another “Titanic” for $300 million and it earns $30 million domestically. And if two other films that each cost $150 million that same year both do $60 million or $70 million domestically. Then you’d have a recession inside the film business. I think it would take something that traumatizing to get Hollywood to figure out some way to cut costs, like issuing some kind of common stock among the profit participants, dividing up the pie better so we’re all in it together.

Q: One of the reasons I worry about big budgets is that when a film costs a lot of money, studios get nervous and some films end up dumber than they need to be.

A: I don’t know that that’s correct, generally speaking. I know that we worked very hard not to dumb down “Deep Impact.” And sometimes, in a way, I have heard that same argument from the director of the film. I’ve heard directors much harder on their ownfilms than the suits watching the dailies.

Q: Really?

A: Let’s not kid ourselves. Directors of mainstream or independent films want success. They’re not making pictures just so they can show up on the Sundance Channel. We all want the same thing, and so I’ve found filmmakers actually giving me the speeches that characteristically I’m supposed to give them. They’re the ones saying to me, “Did you see the dailies today? Wasn’t that awful? I think I missed the mark with that character. I want that character not to die in the end. God, I think I’ve lost half my audience. Can I have the money to go back out and breathe life back into that guy so people will come see the movie?”

I’ve had directors asking me to change elements of their film that first attracted me to the picture, but now they’ve gotten cold feet based on having seen the stuff cut together. And I’ve found myself in situations encouraging directors, telling them it was a good idea--try not to worry so much.

Q: You mentioned all the trade ads and the focus on grosses. Is this infecting directors more than is good?

A: I’m a Pollyanna about this, so everything I’m about to say will never come true, but it’s a dream I’ve always had. I would love it if studios stopped boasting about how much money their movies made. It would be so wonderful if it didn’t become the Olympics every Monday of every holiday weekend. I would just love for that not to be the zeitgeist of why we’re doing this.

Q: Expand on that a little bit. What are the bad effects of the way things are now?

A: I just am afraid about audiences being so hip to what a movie does. If it’s advertised in very colorful adjectives how poorly a film did, it cuts off a whole segment of people who read magazines and newspapers and watch television, people who might have really intended to see that picture because the film got great reviews. But because of how much money it didn’t make, they may be less likely to see it next weekend.

Q: I think that’s very true. Filmmakers are always joking about how their maiden aunts in Dubuque know all about the grosses.

A: Listen, I got calls from relatives consoling me on the “Amistad” grosses on the second weekend. I got really nice calls the first weekend saying, “Gee, it did really good in so few theaters,” and the second weekend it was, “Gee, it did so poorly in so many more theaters.” I said, “Hey, have you seen the movie yet?” “Uh, no.” “But you know it did poorly the second weekend?” “Yes.” “Are you going to see the movie?” “Well, of course, because you made it.”

Q: There’s another thing I wanted to ask you about costs, especially vis-a-vis DreamWorks. You’ve done some co-productions with other studios. What’s the reasoning behind that?

A: We have no philosophy about finances; it’s on a case-by-case basis. With “Private Ryan,” I got the script from my agent, but Paramount owned the movie. I wanted very much to do it for DreamWorks, and Paramount agreed to split it. The Tom Cruise movie I’m going to make next is a similar situation; it originated at Fox. And by the way, I am making “Memoirs of a Geisha.” Everyone’s printing that I’m not, but I am. I just did not want to come out during the millennium with a small Asian movie when there will be the biggest Mardi Gras we have ever seen between October and January. So I pushed it back, but only a year.

Q: Do you have the feeling that you could make any film you wanted to?

A: No, not really. I wouldn’t want to do a comedy, I don’t think I’d be very good at it. If something that read funny on paper came to me, I’m sure I’d find some way to ruin it. “1941” was supposed to be a comedy, but it turned into a Demolition Derby. “ET” has really good comedy because the context is drama, I’m not selling it for its laughs. So I feel safer experimenting and doing things that I think are funny, and if it doesn’t get a laugh, nobody came for them so I’m off the hook.

But there are genres that I haven’t quite gotten into yet. I’d like to, but I haven’t made a love story yet. A real love story. Oddly, I’d like to make an old-fashioned musical. Sing and talk, talk and sing. And dancing.

Q: Would you like to be able to make a small film that everyone in the world wasn’t watching and saying it’s the next Steven Spielberg film?

A: Well, it’ll never happen. The only time I’d ever make a sleeper again is if I go out of style and people are looking the other way and something slips through the big 747s. Every time I’ve attempted to make a small film, the problem is--I don’t care what company I make the picture for--they’re going to sell the movie as if it’s a big movie. I do have a very small movie that I do intend to direct written by my sister, Anne, and the thing that scares me about it is people are going to be looking at it through magnifying glasses. They’re not really going to let it be the light confection that it is meant to be.

Q: Are you as satisfied with “Private Ryan” as most critics are?

A: I’m very satisfied with it. There’s nothing I would have changed, even though the bookends, the beginning and end in the cemetery, have gotten some criticism. I really did that for the veterans, and those two scenes actually affect the veterans more than the Omaha Beach landings. I feel a little bit vindicated by the amount of mail and number of people who stop me when I’m going somewhere. If they’re men over 70, they’ll always comment about the bookends of the picture being the most poignant moments for them.

Q: I don’t know anyone who wasn’t impressed by the opening Omaha Beach sequence in “Private Ryan.” How did it feel to be making that sequence?

A: I shot the whole sequence in continuity, starting in the boats and ending on the push into Tom Hanks’ eyes. And because every shot formed the next shot, and because I’d done a lot of research as to what that must have been like and used my imagination based on what people were telling me and what I was reading, I didn’t storyboard anything.

We shot four weeks just for the first 25 minutes of the movie, and on the second week I turned to Tom Hanks, and I said, “Despite you being in this movie, nobody’s showing up for this picture.” I was convinced of that.

Q: Why?

A: I didn’t think this would be tolerable to audiences. I had always had a line, a line that I never crossed, that was my own measurement of my own good to bad taste. For myself, I never crossed that line, but I presumed that the audience had crossed that line 19 shots ago. And this isn’t like the end of the schedule where suddenly you’re having this horrible attack of guilt. This was the beginning of the picture, in the second week, when I thought this was going to be inaccessible.

I thought we’d have a good opening--though not to the level we had--simply because Tom was in the movie.

I thought the second weekend it would be over. And so every weekend this summer I just sat there with my mouth falling open. It was amazing.

I’d said to my whole cast midway through the shooting, “Don’t think of this movie as something we’re going to go out and make a killing on but just as a memorial. We’re thanking all those guys, your grandparents and my dad, who fought in World War II.” And so we had kind of noble ambitions but never really any commercial ones. Which is why the budget was relatively low for a film that size.

Q: Your budgets have a reputation for being reasonable.

A: I’m my own worst producer is why. I take things away from me. Listen, I stopped running into people who would take things away from me after my second movie. After the success of “Jaws,” the people I craved to be my kind of strict parent suddenly looked at me like I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t know what I was doing. And so I had to sort of do it to myself.

Q: We started out talking about what’s changed within the studio system. For you, what’s remained the same about the movie business?

A: What’s remained the same is the passion for it and the fact that you have to really fight your natural instincts, which is to be a father and a husband, because the movie business is such a powerful magnet.

For me, nothing’s changed from the first day when I was 12 years old and showed an 8-millimeter movie I made to the Boy Scouts. The reaction the Boy Scout troop had and the feeling that gave me inside is no different than the feeling I have today when an audience has the same reaction to something made by hundreds of people and for a lot more money.

People don’t believe me when I say this, but it’s absolutely true: Whenever I have a movie coming out, I am the same nervous blob of misshapen Jell-O I was when I first began showing those little 8-millimeter films to teeny audiences. That hasn’t changed, and it’s a very good thing, because I think all of us do our best work when we’re the most frightened.

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Crossroads

The daily Calendar section will continue through Jan. 7 its series of interviews, conducted by Times critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment.

TUESDAY

Classical music: MaryAnn Bonino

WEDNESDAY

Television: Jeff Greenfield

THURSDAY

Jazz: Tommy LiPuma

FRIDAY

Dance: Garth Fagan

SATURDAY

Restaurants: Nobu Matsuhisa

JAN. 4

Architecture: Phillip Johnson