Steven Spielberg (143 page)

Spielberg’s secret in eliciting such extraordinary performances from children is simple—he treats them as equals. Speaking quietly to Henry Thomas before they shoot the scene of Elliott watching his alien friend dying in
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
, the director is telling the young actor, “It’ll be sadder if it’s happy-sad, you know what I’m saying? I think
you’ll
feel sadder if it’s more you’re trying to cover that up, trying to cover the sadness with some happy talk to E.T.” (
Universal Pictures
)

Making
E.T.
left Spielberg with a “deep yearning” to become a father. Here he directs the irrepressible Drew Barrymore as Elliott’s little sister, Gertie. (
Universal Pictures
)

Inspired by the nursery rhyme “The Cow Jumped over the Moon,” this famous Spielberg image from
E.T.
later became the logo of his production company, Amblin Entertainment. (
Universal Pictures
)

During the making of
Twilight Zone—The Movie
on July 23, 1982, veteran actor Vic Morrow struggles to cross a river carrying seven-year-old My-Ca Dinh Le (
left
) and
six-year
-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen (
right
) at Indian Dunes Park north of Los Angeles. Moments later, the three were killed by a crashing helicopter. This footage was not included in the film but became an exhibit in the trial of director John Landis and four others involved in the filming. Spielberg, who produced the film with Landis, was not charged.

Kate Capshaw as she appeared in
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(1984), five years before becoming the director’s second wife. (
Paramount Pictures
)

Spielberg’s decision to film
The Color Purple
, Alice Walker’s novel about a battered African American woman, baffled many observers and angered some. But the director felt a deep personal kinship with the emotionally resilient Celie, played by comedienne Whoopi Goldberg in her heartrending 1985 film debut. (
Warner Bros.
)

Spielberg’s film of J. G. Ballard’s
Empire of the Sun
(1987) looks at World War II through the eyes of Jim Graham (Christian Bale), a British adolescent interned in a Japanese prison camp in China. Bale, whose performance is among the finest Spielberg has drawn from a child actor, is seen on the set in Spain with Spielberg and John Malkovich. (
Warner Bros.
)

Spielberg’s true coming-of-age film,
Empire of the Sun
perversely celebrates the death of innocence even as it mourns the loss of childhood through his surrogate Jim Graham. Despite his identification with his Japanese captors, Jim’s love of airplanes also helps him identify with American flyers attacking his prison camp. (
Warner Bros.
)

Spielberg at work on
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(1989) with producer Frank Marshall (
far left
) and executive producer George Lucas, two of his most important collaborators throughout the 1980s; British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe is at
far right
. (
Paramount Pictures
)

One reason
Jurassic Park
became (for a time) the
highest-grossing
film ever made is that Spielberg so effectively tapped into primal fears about children in jeopardy. In the film’s most bravura set piece, child-hating paleontologist Grant (Sam Neill) is forced to protect young Ariana Richards from the rampaging
T. Rex.
(
Universal Pictures
)

“The critics in awe of how much I’ve stretched just don’t know me,” Spielberg said after filming Thomas Keneally’s
Schindler’s List
in 1993. “… I
had
to tell the story.” With Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who rescued eleven hundred Jews from the Holocaust, Spielberg filmed this scene outside the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. (
Universal Pictures
)