Steven Spielberg (110 page)

Spielberg’s relationship with Jennings Lang was recalled by the executive’s son Jennings Rockwell (Rocky) Lang as well as by his assistant, Peter Saphier, and Orin Borsten. Other sources include Rosenfield,
The
Club
Rules;
“Meet the Executives: Jennings Lang,”
Universal
City
Studios
News,
December 1965; Wayne Warga, “He Keeps His Assets Moving,”
LAT,
December 22, 1974; Mel Gussow, “Jennings Lang, 81, Executive on High-Gross Disaster Films,”
NYT,
and Myrna Oliver, “Jennings Lang: Produced
Earth
quake,
Airport
Movies,”
LAT,
May 31, 1996 (obituaries).
Clearwater
was announced by Universal as a Spielberg project in an
LAT
item
,
November 5, 1973.

See notes for the previous chapter on the genesis of
The
Sugarland
Express
(working title:
Carte
Blanche
).
The second-draft screenplay of
The
Sugarland
Express
by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, from a story by Spielberg, Barwood, and Robbins, is dated October 18, 1972. A novelization by Henry Clement was published by Popular Library in 1974. Information on the film’s development by Universal is from the author’s interviews with Saphier, Rocky Lang, Richard D. Zanuck, and William S. Gilmore Jr.; Reed’s booklet on the film; and Wayne Warga, “Spielberg Keeps His Touch in Transition,”
LAT,
April 3, 1974.

Sources on Zanuck and David Brown, in addition to the author’s interview with Zanuck, include John Gregory Dunne,
The
Studio,
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969; Zanuck and Brown, American Film Institute seminar (April 17, 1975), in Joseph McBride, ed.,
Filmmakers
on
Filmmaking,
Vol. 1, J. P. Tarcher, 1983; Stephen Farber and Marc Green,
Hollywood
Dynasties,
Delilah, 1984; Marlys J. Harris,
The
Zanucks
of
Hollywood:
The
Dark
Legacy
of
an
American
Dynasty,
Crown, 1989; Brown,
Let
Me
Entertain
You,
Morrow, 1990; Anthony Haden-Guest, “The Rise, Fall and Rise of Zanuck-Brown,”
New
York,
December 1, 1975; and “Son of Darryl F., He Made His Own Name with Hollywood’s Most Toothsome Grosser Ever,”
People,
December 29, 1975. Spielberg’s comment on Zanuck and Brown is from Alan R. Howard,
“Sugarland
Tough Sell,”
HR,
April 29, 1974. The film was announced on October 17, 1972, in
“Carte
Blanche
at U for Zanuck, Brown,”
DV,
and “Zanuck, Brown Set
Carte
Blanche
for Filming in January,”
HR;
the title
The
Sugarland
Express
was announced in
“Carte
Blanche
Retitled,”
Box-
office,
November 13, 1972.

The author interviewed the following people who worked on the film: Zanuck, Gilmore, Joseph Alves Jr., Vilmos Zsigmond, Carey Loftin, and Edward S. Abroms; and also Bob Polunsky. Other sources on the filming include (1973): Lightman, “The New Panaflex Camera Makes Its Production Debut”; Bobrow; “Filming of
Sugarland
Express
Begins in S.A. Monday,”
San
Antonio
Express
and
News,
January 27; Ron White, “Filming Site of Movie Resembles Lawmen’s Meeting,”
Express
and
News,
January 31; White, “Crash, Wham, Crunch—Carey Loftin at Work,”
Express
and
News,
February 15; Jerry Deal, “Goldie Grabs Hot One,”
Express
and
News,
February 26; Jeff Millar,
“Sugarland
Role a Departure for Sweet Goldie Hawn,”
LAT,
March 4; “‘Thanks, S.A.,’ says producer of movie,”
Express
and
News,
April 4; and Paul Vangelisti, “Almost 5,000 Extras Carried Aboard
Sugarland
Express,
”
HR,
April 18. Spielberg’s comment on Goldie Hawn is from Mary Murphy, “All That Giggles Is Not Goldie Hawn,”
LAT,
September 26, 1974; Hawn on Spielberg is from Millar; other information is from Tom Burke, “All That Glitter Is Goldie’s,”
NYT,
January 28, 1973, and Universal’s pressbook for the film (1974). Rocky Lang remembered the mementos Spielberg brought back from location. Colonel Wilson Speir’s criticism of the film was reported in “Texas Lawmen Dispute
Sugarland.
”

Reviews (1974) include Pauline Kael, “Sugarland and Badlands,”
The
New
Yorker,
March 18; Vincent Canby, “Fascinated with Young Couples on the Lam,”
NYT,
April 7; Zimmerman, “Hard Riders”; Stephen Farber, “Something Sour,”
NYT,
April 28; and Dilys Powell, “Westerns on Wheels,”
The
Times
(London), June 16. Henry Sheehan’s essay “A Father Runs from It” was published in
DV,
December 7, 1993. Box-office figures for
Sugarland
(and subsequent Spielberg films through
Hook
)
are from “Filmography: Films
Directed by Steven Spielberg,”
DV,
December 7, 1993, and Paula Parisi, “Spielberg’s list,”
HR,
March 10, 1994.
Sugarland
postmortems included Spielberg’s 1974 comments to Murphy and to Howard, who also reported on the industry preview screenings.

Spielberg’s comment on his agent’s dealmaking is from Reed. His rejection on
The
Taking
of
Pelham
One
Two
Three
was reported to the author by Steven Bach, former head of creative affairs for Palomar Pictures, which made the film with Palladium Productions. Richard D. Zanuck discussed Spielberg’s rejection of
MacArthur
with the author; David Brown’s report about Spielberg passing on another project is from his memoir,
Let
Me
Entertain
You.
Information on Spielberg’s 1973 development deal with Columbia for
Watch
the
Skies
is from the author’s interview with Michael Phillips; David McClintick,
Indecent
Exposure:
A
True
Story
of
Hollywood
and
Wall
Street,
Morrow, 1982; and a February 22, 1974, IFA document outlining the terms of Michael and Julia Phillips’ deal to produce what was then titled
The
Close
Encounter
of
the
Third
Kind.
Paul Schrader discussed his work on Spielberg’s UFO project in Jackson,
Schrader
on
Schrader
&
Other
Writings;
other sources include Phillips; and a December 12, 1973, IFA document giving the terms of Schrader’s writing deal with Columbia for his version of the script,
Kingdom
Come.
Information on David Begelman is from McClintick’s book and his article “Final Exposure,”
Vanity
Fair,
November 1995; and from Corie Brown, “Final Exposure,”
Premiere,
November 1995. Additional sources on Spielberg’s relationships with Phillips, his wife Julia, and their coterie include the author’s interviews with Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck; Julia Phillips,
You’ll
Never
Eat
Lunch
in
This
Town
Again,
Random House, 1991; Jackson; and Cook (which includes Michael Phillips’s 1977 comment on Spielberg). Wallace Reyburn’s
Flushed
with
Pride:
The
Story
of
Thomas
Crapper
was published in 1969 by Macdonald and Company (London).

The author interviewed the following participants in the making of
Jaws:
Peter Benchley, Richard D. Zanuck, William S. Gilmore Jr., Carl Gottlieb, and Joseph Alves Jr., as well as observers including Katz, Huyck, Michael Phillips, Peter Saphier, William Link, Rocky Lang, Joan Darling, Allen Daviau, Vilmos Zsigmond, Orin Borsten, and Bob Gale (the author also attended the April 24, 1975, preview of
Jaws
at Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome). Benchley’s novel
Jaws
was published by Doubleday, 1974; his final screenplay draft is undated. The making of
Jaws
has been the subject of two books, Gottlieb’s
The
“Jaws”
Log
and Edith Blake’s
On
Location
on
Martha’s
Vineyard
(
The
Making
of
the
Movie
“Jaws”
)
.
Oral histories were compiled in the MCA Home Video laserdisc
The
Making
of
Steven
Spielberg’s
“Jaws,
”
produced by Laurent Bouzereau, 1995 (which also includes Spielberg’s home movies of the filming); and Nancy Griffin, “In the Grip of
Jaws‚” Premiere,
October 1995.

Spielberg’s most extensive location interview about the film was with Helpern. Brown wrote about
Jaws
in
Let
Me
Entertain
You;
he and Zanuck discussed the film in McBride,
Filmmakers
on
Filmmaking,
Vol. 1; Zanuck also recalled the production in Susan Royal, “Interview with
Cocoon
Producers Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck of Zanuck/ Brown Productions,”
American
Premiere,
June 1985. Other accounts by participants in
Jaws
include “Dialogue on Film: Verna Fields,”
American
Film,
June 1978; Fields’s American Film Institute seminar (December 3,1975) in
Filmmakers
on
Filmmaking,
Vol. 1; Valerie Taylor, “The Filming for
Jaws,
”
in Ron and Valerie Taylor, with Peter Goadby,
Great
Shark
Stories,
Harper & Row, 1978; and cinematographer Bill Butler’s interview in Schaefer and Salvato,
Masters
of
Light.
Richard Dreyfuss recalled his reluctance about appearing in
Jaws
to Michael Rogers, “Jawing with Richard Dreyfuss,”
Rolling
Stone,
July 31, 1975; Dreyfuss’s comment on Spielberg’s direction of actors is from Cook. Gottlieb’s comments on Dreyfuss are from his essay “Richard Dreyfuss: Forceful Intellect,” in Danny Peary, ed.,
Close-Ups:
The
Movie
Star
Book,
Workman, 1978. Gottlieb
also recalled the filming in Ray Loynd, “In the Teeth of the Storm,”
LAHE,
August 3, 1975.

Articles published about
Jaws
during production include (1974): “Hunting the Shark,”
Newsweek,
June 24; Robert Riger, “On Location with
Jaws
—‘Tell the Shark We’ll Do It One More Time!’”
Action,
July–August; Gregg Kilday, “Books, Lines and Clinkers on Martha’s Vineyard,”
LAT,
July 7; and “Introducing Bruce,”
Time,
September 2; also, Mik Cribben, “On Location with
Jaws,”
American
Cinematographer,
March 1975.

The genesis of Benchley’s novel was discussed in Richard Ellis and John E. McCosker,
Great
White
Shark,
Stanford University Press, 1991. Information on Universal’s purchase of the film rights (1973) includes: Peter Saphier’s memo to Lew R. Wasserman recommending the purchase of the novel, April 16; a synopsis of the novel by Universal story department reader Dennis McCarthy, April 17; the MCA deal memo regarding the film rights, Paul Miller to Joe DiMuro, May 1; and a May 8 IFA document outlining the terms of Benchley’s deal with Universal and Zanuck–Brown. Spielberg’s hiring was announced in “Spielberg Signed for Zanuck–Brown
Jaws
Production,”
HR,
June 21, 1973. Robert Shaw’s comment on Benchley’s novel is from the
Time
cover story on the film, “Summer of the Shark,” June 23, 1975, which also includes comments by Dreyfuss and Brian De Palma. Additional information on Shaw is from Karen Carmean and Georg Gaston,
Robert
Shaw:
More
Than
a
Life,
Madison Books, 1994.

Spielberg commented on Benchley’s novel in “Hunting the Shark” and in Stettin; Benchley’s criticisms of Spielberg appeared in Kilday. Benchley’s letter to Spielberg is quoted in
The
“Jaws”
Log.
Spielberg’s worry that
Jaws
could be a “turkey” was related to Desmond Ryan,
“Jaws
Director Raises His Sights—to UFOs,”
Philadelphia
Inquirer,
April 10, 1977. His phrase “a primal scream movie” is from Combs; his comments on fear are from Ryan and “Spielberg Spanks Sequels as ‘Cheap, Carnival Trick,’”
Variety,
October 29, 1975, in which he also remarked that
Jaws
could have been a “laugh riot.”

Sources on Spielberg’s interest in directing
Lucky
Lady
include Reed and the author’s interviews with Zanuck, Rocky Lang, and
Lucky
Lady
screenwriters Huyck and Katz; Sid Sheinberg told Latham of his insistence that Spielberg make
Jaws
and his description of the film as
“Duel
with a shark.” Sheinberg’s denial that Universal was thinking of canceling the film or firing Spielberg is from Griffin, “In the Grip of
Jaws.
”
The charges of nepotism over the hiring of Lorraine Gary in
Jaws
and two sequels were reported in Sue Ellen Jares, “Lorraine Gary Got a Big Bite of
Jaws
2
—But Not, She Insists, Because She’s the Boss’s Wife,”
People,
August 7, 1978; Zanuck’s suggestion of casting Linda Harrison was reported in “All in the Family,”
New
York,
October 6, 1975, and in Harris,
The
Zanucks
of
Hollywood.

Verna Fields’s role in the making of
Jaws
was discussed in Mary Murphy, “Fields: Up from the Cutting Room Floor,”
LAT,
July 24, 1975; “Making It in Film” (advertisement),
Millimeter,
June 1976; Paul Rosenfield, “Women in Hollywood,”
LAT,
July 13, 1982; Todd McCarthy, “Oscar-Winning Film Editor Verna Fields Dies of Cancer,”
DV,
December 2, 1982; Margy Rochlin, “In the Editing Room, Many Propose, Few Dispose,”
NYT,
July 23, 1995; and Gottlieb,
“Jaws
Did Not Need Saving” (letter replying to Rochlin),
NYT,
August 6, 1995. Fields’s promotions by Universal were reported in studio press releases, “Verna Fields—Biography,” June 5, 1975, and “Verna Fields Named a Vice President of Universal Pictures,” February 18, 1976. Spielberg’s decision not to work with Fields on
Close
Encounters
of
the
Third
Kind
was reported in Phillips,
You’ll
Never
Eat
Lunch
in
This
Town
Again;
Schrader’s remarks about Spielberg resenting his helpers are from Crawley.