Steven Spielberg (117 page)

The screenplay of
Hook
by Jim V. Hart and Malia Scotch Marmo (and Carrie Fisher, uncredited), from a story by Hart and Nick Castle, is based on J. M. Barrie’s play
Peter
Pan
(1904) and his novels
The
Little
White
Bird
(1902),
Peter
Pan
in
Kensington
Gar
dens
(1906), and
Peter
and
Wendy
(1911). Hart’s first revised draft of the screenplay (June 21, 1990) is titled
Hook!:
The
Return
of
the
Captain.
Two novelizations of the film, one by Terry Brooks and the other by Geary Gravel, were published by Ballantine Books, 1991. Sources on
Hook
include the author’s interview with Mike Medavoy; “Production Information” (TriStar, 1991); and articles including (1991): Schruers, “Peter Pandemonium”; Ivor Davis, “‘I Won’t Grow Up!’”
Los
Angeles,
December; Graham Fuller, “Hook, Line, and Spielberg,”
Interview,
December; Richard W. Stevenson, “Waiting to See If
Hook
Will Fly,”
NYT,
December 7; Hilary De Vries, “A
Peter
Pan
for the New-Age,”
NYT,
December 8; Strauss, “Spielberg Panning for Gold in
Hook,
”
LADN,
December 8; Clifford Terry, “Spielberg in Neverland,”
Chicago
Tribune,
December 8; Davis, “Boys on the Never Never,”
The
Sunday
Times
(London), December 8; Tom Provenzano,
“Hook:
Making It Fly,”
Drama-Logue,
December 12–18; John Evan Frook and Joseph McBride, “Sony Crows, but Jury’s Out on Whether
Hook
Will Fly,”
DV,
December 13; Michael Church, “Dreams Flying High on the Never-Never,”
London
Observer,
December 15; McBride,
“Hook
Bow Fails to Wow,”
DV,
December 16; David Lyman, “With
Hook,
It Was the Look,”
Long
Beach
Press-Telegram,
December 17; Jeannie Park, “Ahoy! Neverland!”
People,
December 23; and (1992): Robert Hofler, “The Look of
Hook,
”
US,
January; Martin A. Grove, “Hollywood Report,”
HR,
January 23; and John Calhoun,
“Hook,
”
Theatre
Crafts,
February. Reviews and commentary include Georgia Brown, “Hangin’ with the Lost Boys,”
The
Village
Voice,
December 17, 1991; Terrence Rafferty, “Fear of Flying,”
The
New
Yorker,
December 30, 1991; and Sheehan, “The Panning of Steven Spielberg” and “Spielberg II.”

The epigraph is from Horstman, “Spielberg’s Roots: Avondale Years Shaped
Schin
dler.
”
The birth of Sawyer Spielberg (1992) was reported in Army Archerd’s column,
DV,
March 12; “A Boy for Spielbergs,”
Long
Beach
Press-Telegram,
March 12; and
People
item, March 23. The birth of Destry Allyn Spielberg was reported in Claudia Puig, “Quick Takes,” LAT, December 3, 1996, and Mikaela Spielberg’s adoption in Casey Davidson,
“Monitor,”
Entertainment
Weekly,
April 12, 1996. Kate Capshaw’s comments on the eclipse of her career are from Schiff; her edict about Spielberg’s work schedule was reported by Bernard Weinraub and Geraldine Fabrikant in “A Hollywood Recipe: Vision, Wealth, Ego,”
NYT,
October 16, 1994.

Jurassic
Park
is based on the novel by Michael Crichton, Knopf, 1990. The continuity script by David Koepp, based on adaptations by Crichton and Malia Scotch Marmo, is dated December 11, 1992 (Crichton and Koepp shared script credit onscreen). The making of the film was chronicled in Shay and Duncan,
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park”;
the documentary
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park”
(Universal/Amblin/MCA Home Video, 1995, directed by John Schultz); the
Behind
the
Scenes
of
“Jurassic
Park”
exhibit, Universal Studios Hollywood Tour, 1994; and the
Filmscapes
exhibit, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Beverly Hills, 1994. Koepp, production designer Rick Carter, and cinematographer Dean Cundey discussed the making of the film in the Academy’s “Filmscapes” seminar on October 6, 1994. Information on dinosaurs is from John R. Horner and James Gorman,
Digging
Dinosaurs,
and from Horner and Don Lessem,
The
Complete
T. rex, Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Crichton recalled his story conference with Spielberg in “Across Time and Culture.” Information on Crichton’s
ER
screenplay and his first conversation with Spielberg about
Jurassic
Park
is from Shay and Duncan,
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park,
”
and Janine Pourroy,
Behind
the
Scenes
at
“ER,
”
Ballantine, 1995. Sources on the sale of the
Jurassic
Park
film rights include the author’s interview with Joe Dante; and (1990), Andrea King, “4 Studio-Director Teams Bid $1.5 Mil for Crichton’s
Park,
”
HR,
May 24; King, “Spielberg to Helm Dino Sci-Fier
Park
with Crichton Scripting,”
HR,
May 25; Will Tusher, “U Pays $2 Mil for
Jurassic,
”
DV,
May 25; and Alan Citron, “Hollywood Agency Adds New Twist to Bidding on Story,”
LAT,
May 25. Malia Scotch Marmo’s screenplay rewrites were discussed in Shay and Duncan,
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park”;
“The
Jurassic
Job,”
New
York,
March 2, 1992; and “Todd Graff and Malia Scotch Marmo,”
On
Writing,
No. 1, 1993. Crichton’s sequel to
Jurassic
Park,
The
Lost
World,
was published by Knopf in 1995.

Additional articles on
Jurassic
Park
include (1992): Christian Moerk,
“Jurassic
Looks Like an F/X Classic,”
Variety,
September 7; Andy Marx, “Hawaiian Hurricane Shuts Down Prod’n on
Jurassic,
”
DV,
September 14; Donna Parker, “Storm Blows
Jurassic
Park
to Costa Rica,”
HR,
September 14; and Army Archerd column,
DV,
September 15; (1993): Matt Rothman, “Computer Effects Leap Ahead,”
DV,
January 12; Don Lessem,
ed.,
Jurassic
Park
Special Edition,
The
Dino
Times,
Spring; Richard Corliss, “Behind the Magic of
Jurassic
Park,
”
Time,
April 26; Bob Fisher,
“Jurassic
Park:
When Dinosaurs Rule the Box Office,”
American
Cinematographer,
June; Malcolm W. Browne, “Visiting
Jurassic
Park
for Real,”
NYT,
June 6; Sharon Begley, “Here Come the DNAsaurs,” and David A. Kaplan, “Believe in Magic,”
Newsweek,
June 14; Jody Duncan, “The Beauty in the Beasts,”
Cinefex,
August; Ron Magid, “After
Jurassic
Park,
Traditional Techniques May Become Fossils,”
American
Cinematographer,
December; and Rex Weiner, “SSFX (Special Spielberg Effects),”
DV,
December 7; also, Rod Bennett,
“Jurassic
Park
and the Death of Stop-Motion Animation,”
Wonder,
Winter 1994–95. Information on Spielberg’s satellite hookup in Poland (1993) is from Matt Rothman, “ILM Beams F/X to Spielberg in Poland,”
DV,
March 29; Paula Parisi, “Dinosaurs Make Long-Distance Call,”
HR,
March 30; and David Gritten, “Cue the Dinosaurs: Editing Via Satellite,”
LAT,
May 9. George Lucas’s supervision of the film’s postproduction was reported in Archerd columns,
DV,
December 1, 1992, and January 13, 1993. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s comment on the “test of a first-rate intelligence” is from his 1936 essay “The Crack-Up,” in
The
Crack-Up,
ed. by Edmund Wilson, New Directions, 1945.

Sources on the shooting schedule include Shay and Duncan,
The
Making
of
“Jurassic
Park”;
the August 24, 1992, production callsheet,
Behind
the
Scenes
of
“Jurassic
Park”; 
Archerd column,
DV,
December 1, 1992; and Universal advertisement,
HR,
December 2, 1992. The official production cost was reported in Thomas R. King,
“Jurassic
Park
Offers a High-Stakes Test of Hollywood Synergy,”
Wall
Street
Journal,
February 20, 1993. Other estimates of the cost (1992) appeared in Doris Toumarkine, “Spielberg
Sked:
Jurassic,
List,
”
HR,
August 24 ($80 million); Joseph McBride, “Spielberg’s
Jurassic
Rolls Today in Kauai,”
DV,
August 24 ($90–100 million); and Moerk ($100 million);
Fortune
’s
$95-million estimate is from Lane, “‘I Want Gross,’” which also estimated Spielberg’s earnings from the film. Data on the
Jurassic
Park
vs.
E.
T.
box-office competition are from
Variety:
Leonard Klady, “Spielberg’s Lizards Eat E.T.,” October 18, 1993; “Top 100 All-Time Domestic Grossers,” October 17, 1994; and “Foreign Leverage” chart, August 28, 1995. Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic is from his play
Lady
Windermere’s
Fan
(1892).

Stephen Jay Gould discussed
Jurassic
Park
in “Dinomania,”
The
New
York
Review
of
Books,
August 12, 1993, and
“Jurassic
Park,
”
in Mark C. Carnes, ed.,
Past
Imperfect:
History
According
to
the
Movies,
Henry Holt, 1995. Other reviews and commentary (1993) include Julie Salamon, “Watch Out! There’s Trouble in Dinosaurland,”
Wall street
Journal,
June 10; David Ansen, “Monsters to Haunt Your Dreams,”
Newsweek,
June 14; Georgia Brown, “Prospero Cooks,”
The
Village
Voice,
June 22; Henry Sheehan, “The Fears of Children,” and Peter Wollen, “Theme Park and Variations,”
Sight
and
Sound,
July; Stuart Klawans,
The
Nation,
July 19; and Sheehan, “A Father Runs From It,”
DV,
December 7.

Schindler
’
s
List
is based on the novel by Thomas Keneally, Simon & Schuster, 1982 (published in England as
Schindler
’
s
Ark
).
The third-draft screenplay by Steven Zaillian is dated March 24, 1992. Universal Pictures, in 1993, published a
Schindler
’s
List
photo album, with an introduction by Spielberg; and “Production Information” in the film’s pressbook. Oskar Schindler’s life also was the subject of Jon Blair’s documentary film
Schindler
(1983). The making of
Schindler
’s
List
was documented in the “Spielberg’s Oskar” segment of
Eye
to
Eye
with
Connie
Chung
(1993) and in “The Film Makers,”
Nightline
(ABC-TV), March 21, 1994. Spielberg discussed the film in 1994 on
The
Bar
bara
Walters
Special
and in his July 18 appearance at the National Governors’ Association meeting in Boston (cablecast on C-SPAN). A
Viewer’s
Guide
to
“Schindler’s
List”
was published in 1994 by the Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust, Los Angeles.

Articles on the film were collected in Fensch, ed.,
Oskar
Schindler
and
His
List:
The
Man,
the
Book,
the
Film,
the
Holocaust
and
Its
Survivors.
See also Abraham Zuckerman,
A
Voice
in
the
Chorus:
Memories
of
a
Teenager
Saved
by
Schindler,
Longmeadow Press, 1991; and Elinor J. Brecher, foreword by Keneally,
Schindler’s
Legacy:
True
Stories
of
the
List
Survivors,
Penguin, 1994. Other books on the Holocaust consulted for this study include Elie Wiesel, trans, by Stella Rodway,
Night,
Hill
&
Wang, I960; Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann
in
Jerusalem:
A
Report
on
the
Banality
of
Evil,
Viking, 1963; Primo Levi, trans, by Stuart Woolf,
Survival
in
Auschwitz:
The
Nazi
Assault
on
Humanity,
Collier, 1969; Annette Insdorf,
Indelible
Shadows:
Film
and
the
Holocaust,
Vintage, 1983; David S. Wyman,
The
Abandonment
of
the
Jews:
America
and
the
Holocaust
1941–1945,
Pantheon, 1984; Claude Lanzmann,
Shoah:
An
Oral
History
of
the
Holocaust:
The
Com
plete
Text
of
the
Film,
Pantheon, 1985; Art Spiegelman,
Maus
I:
A
Survivor’s
Tale:
My
Father
Bleeds
History,
Pantheon, 1986, and
Maus
II:
A
Survivor’s
Tale:
And
Here
My
Troubles
Began,
Pantheon, 1991; Michael Berenbaum,
The
World
Must
Know:
The
His
tory
of
the
Holocaust
as
Told
in
the
United
States
Holocaust
Memorial
Museum,
Little, Brown, 1993; Deborah E. Lipstadt,
Denying
the
Holocaust:
The
Growing
Assault
on
Truth
and
Memory,
The Free Press, 1993; James E. Young,
The
Texture
of
Memory:
Holocaust
Memorials
and
Meaning,
Yale University Press, 1993; Eva Fogelman,
Con
science
&
Courage:
Rescuers
of
Jews
During
the
Holocaust,
Doubleday, 1994; Lawrence
L. Langer,
Admitting
the
Holocaust:
Collected
Essays,
Oxford University Press, 1995; and Edward T. Linenthal,
Preserving
Memory:
The
Struggle
to
Create
America’s
Holocaust
Museum,
Viking, 1995.