Steven Spielberg (93 page)

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a stinging review in the
Chicago Reader
contrasting
Saving Private Ryan
with a satirical DreamWorks film about war toys,
Joe Dante’s
Small Soldiers
(released two weeks earlier). Calling Spielberg “a huckster with a conscience,” Rosenbaum identified Dante as his conscience: “Unlike the violence in
Toy Story
or even in an allegedly grown-up movie like
Saving Private Ryan
—where the brutality is postulated as real within the terms of the story being told—the mutilation of toys in
Small Soldiers
is always referential, making us think about the mutilation of characters we witness in other movies. This pointedly includes the hypocrisy of such highly validated flag-waving ‘history lessons’ as the graphic carnage in
Saving Private Ryan
, which are used to simultaneously sell tickets and provide moral
correctives
to other war movies (though the movies being corrected often upped the violence quotient in their own eras with identical rationalizations and mixed motives)…. One of the finer virtues of
Small Soldiers
is that it cuts through this kind of crap and makes the very idea of a war film look ridiculous.”

Although it seems excessive to accuse Spielberg of simply trying to make war “good again”—the shattering impact of the D-Day sequence cannot be easily shaken, despite the letdown of what follows it—the film’s ideological confusions are self-inflicted wounds. It’s a truism that a film’s problems
usually
begin with the screenplay, and in this case the Rodat script, which came to Spielberg as a package from his agents (the Creative Artists Agency) with Hanks attached, founders on its own commercial gimmickery and its
fundamental
lack of authenticity.

Spielberg’s problems sorting out his conflicting attitudes toward the war may also account for why he has not filmed A. Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize– winning biography
Lindbergh
after buying the rights to the book (sight unseen) in 1998. Charles Lindbergh’s record as an isolationist, Nazi sympathizer, and anti-Semite came as something of a shock to Spielberg, who evidently had been drawn to the project because of his boyish fascination with Lindbergh’s aviation heroics. Spielberg nevertheless vowed to take an “unflinching”
attitude
toward this complex subject, which he said “bothers me to my core, and I don’t want to celebrate an anti-Semite unless I can create an understanding of why he felt that way.” But after commissioning screenplay adaptations from Paul Attanasio and Menno Meyjes, Spielberg let the project lie fallow. New York
Observer
writer Ron Rosenbaum publicly challenged Spielberg to film Philip Roth’s 2004 novel,
The Plot Against America
, a “what-if” story about Lindbergh becoming president in 1940. Spielberg’s difficulties coming to terms with such fraught subject matter show the limitations of his
historical
perspective.

T
HE
conflicted ideology of
Saving Private Ryan
may have been part of what gave it such appeal to people with opposing viewpoints on war. The film brought Spielberg an avalanche of acclaim, though not the best-picture Oscar, which went to
Shakespeare in Love
after a contentious campaign
between
DreamWorks and Miramax. In 2000, Spielberg received the Directors Guild of America lifetime achievement award, and the British Academy of
Film & Television Arts, Los Angeles, gave him its Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film. The recognition went far beyond the film industry. Just as
Schindler’s List
had made Spielberg an international spokesman on the
Holocaust
,
Ryan
turned him into a champion of World War II veterans and
something
of a world statesman, roles that were most unusual for a filmmaker. He received a Department of Defense medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1999 for the film’s role in fostering “understanding of the contribution that our military has made to our nation’s security and character.” The army, the navy, and the Smithsonian Institution gave him awards, as did President Bill Clinton, who presented him with the National Humanities Medal in 1999. Along with Hanks, Spielberg helped sponsor the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, founded by Stephen Ambrose and later renamed the National World War II Museum.

Recognizing Spielberg’s frequent filming in the United Kingdom on
Ryan
and other films, Queen Elizabeth II in 2001 made him a Knight Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire,
allowing
him to put “KBE” after his name but not to use the title “Sir Steven” since he is not a British subject. Accepting the honor at a Washington
ceremony
, he said, “This is the stuff that all of our childhood fantasies come from. Courtliness, civility, and honor.” In 1998 Spielberg received the Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his work in examining the Holocaust. In 2004 the French government presented him with the chevalier (knight) badge of the Légion d’honneur. Although Spielberg has handled his role as a public figure gracefully and used it and his Shoah foundation to foster tolerance among national and ethnic groups, the honors from governments and his championing of World War II veterans have tended to obscure the darker aspects of
Saving Private Ryan
and have exacerbated the schism between the hostility often shown toward
Spielberg
in academic film studies (much of which remains Marxist in its political orientation) and the adulation of the general public.

S
PIELBERG’S
most
influential
public activity in the late 1990s and the early years of the new century was not his acceptance of the knighthood and the other honors he received for his work but his political support of Democratic candidates, especially Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Spielberg became friendly with Clinton and often had him as a house guest in the Pacific Palisades. Spielberg was also Clinton’s guest at the White House, and DreamWorks was conceived while the partners were in Washington attending a White House dinner for Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Clinton attended the Washington premiere of
Amistad
and asked Spielberg to make
The Unfinished Journey
. The president read from Lincoln’s second inaugural address during that film’s live
multimedia
performance at the Lincoln Memorial. Spielberg loyally supported Clinton during his impeachment crisis, though he expressed some disappointment over the way Clinton had handled the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“Morality is defined not just by a sexual dalliance,” Spielberg told the
New York Times Magazine
in 1999. “What hurt me is what hurt a lot of his friends, which is that he didn’t confide in any of us. But I never came out and asked him if it was true, so he never had to lie to me. Whenever we were together, we talked about family and all sorts of stuff, but we never talked about the elephant in the room.”

Public records show that from 1997 through 2009, Spielberg gave $470,100 to various political candidates and causes, and Kate Capshaw gave $190,200. The only Republican candidate to whom Spielberg contributed was Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania ($3,000), who later became a Democrat (
receiving
another $2,400 from Spielberg), but Spielberg, Katzenberg, and television producer Haim Saban jointly endorsed the reelection of Republican
California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006; in 2009, Spielberg,
Katzenberg
, and Geffen endorsed the Democrat Jerry Brown for governor. Spielberg’s largest political contributions were to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In 2008, he and his wife also gave $100,000 to the campaign to oppose Proposition 8, the successful initiative to ban gay marriage in California.
Steven
and Kate stated that anti-gay discrimination “has NO place in
California’s
constitution, or any other.” Seven years earlier, despite being a lifelong supporter of the Boy Scouts of America (which had encouraged some of his early filmmaking), he resigned in protest from its national advisory board
because
of the organization’s ban on gays. He said, “The last few years in
scouting
have deeply saddened me to see the Boy Scouts of America actively and publicly participating in discrimination. It’s a real shame. I thought the Boy Scouts stood for equal opportunity.” Spielberg became involved in another political controversy in 2008 when he resigned as an artistic advisor for the Beijing Olympic Games in protest over China’s lack of progress in using its influence on Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur. He said, “I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual.” Actress and activist Mia Farrow had warned Spielberg that if he went ahead with his plans to help Chinese film director Zhang Yimou design the opening and closing ceremonies, he risked becoming the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing games. Spielberg said he instead would spend his energies “doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur.”

During the 2008 presidential primaries, Spielberg hedged his bets by
contributing
$2,300 each to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson, but he and his DreamWorks partners also held two key campaign fund-raising events for Obama. Although Spielberg wavered in his support for Obama after being lobbied heavily by the Clintons, leading him to endorse Hillary Clinton in June 2007, he eventually committed publicly to Obama, to whom he had first contributed during his 2004 U.S. Senate race, and donated another $30,800 for his presidential campaign in October 2008 ($28,500 of that amount to a political action committee run by the DNC in support of Obama’s primary campaign). The support of the
DreamWorks
partners played an important role in influencing the Hollywood
liberal
community to switch its allegiance from Clinton to Obama. For the 2008 Democratic convention, Spielberg directed a formulaic and impersonal short documentary paying tribute to veterans,
A Timeless Call
.

Obama rewarded Steven and Kate with four tickets to the VIP gallery for the 2009 inauguration. Interviewed on the platform by a television reporter who asked what inspired him about Obama, Spielberg said: “He’s young, he has tremendous optimism and courage about this country, and the most important thing is, he’s got great ideas. He’s a president of ideas. Look, I’m not expecting Lincoln’s second inaugural, but … This is more than just a presidential election, this is really the new beginning…. And two of my kids are here, because I wanted them to rub up against history, which is what all of us are doing today.”

As president four months later, Obama attended a Beverly Hills
fundraiser
sponsored by the DreamWorks partners in Los Angeles. He told the crowd, “If it weren’t for you, we would not be in the White House.”

O
N
the eve of the release of
Saving Private Ryan
, Spielberg asserted, “I get home really early, and I have a very normal life. My deal with my wife is coming true.” But however much he has tried to lead a normal life in recent years, his rampant celebrity status has kept getting in the way.

While shooting the D-Day sequence on the beach in Ireland, Spielberg took a phone call that jolted him with the fear of real-life violence. He was informed by his attorney, Bruce Ramer, in Los Angeles that a man had been arrested outside his home in Pacific Palisades with intent to cause harm to him and his family but had just been released from custody. The case of
Jonathan
Norman and his crazed obsession with Spielberg was the most troubling manifestation of the downside of the filmmaker’s growing celebrity. He called it “the toughest price my family has had to pay for my success.” It showed why Spielberg, over the years, has become increasingly isolated from ordinary life, out of self-protectiveness. As screenwriter Bob Gale, who worked with Spielberg on
1941
, said, “By the time he made [the 1987 film]
Empire of the Sun
, Steven was cut off from normal, everyday stuff by virtue of his success and how he lived.” As Gale suggested, before Spielberg became world-famous, he had been the boy in
E.T.
, someone open to experience and adventure, but gradually he turned into the boy in
Empire of the Sun
, viewing the world from an isolated perch, locked away in a prison camp.

The thirty-one-year-old Norman, an aspiring screenwriter who lived in Los Angeles and had applied for a job at DreamWorks, was arrested on July 11, 1997, after his third attempt to get into Spielberg’s home. He was
carrying
a knife, razor blades, duct tape, and handcuffs. In his rented vehicle, a Land Rover similar to Capshaw’s, were an
E.T.
videotape, a
Jurassic Park
logo, and pictures of dinosaurs and Spielberg, and he was carrying a day planner that included magazine articles about Spielberg, information about his wife and mother, and a list of his seven children’s names (a detail Spielberg found “absolutely chilling”). Norman claimed he was Spielberg’s adopted son, and authorities said the objects he carried were part of a “rape kit” for restraining
both Capshaw and Spielberg, and that Norman planned to make her watch him rape her husband.

“In my entire life, there’s never been another incident resembling this one,” Spielberg testified at Norman’s trial. “… Disbelief was my first reaction. I have had a lot of fans and people asking me for autographs and wanting to send scripts, but I’ve never had someone stating their intention to do me harm and my family harm…. I became completely panicked and upset, and very afraid to tell my wife.” Spielberg ordered extra security around his home and his children, who were in London at the time. He explained how worried he was about his own safety before Norman was rearrested on July 15: “I was shooting a war movie, and we had a thousand soldiers, real Irish Army
soldiers
firing guns and firing blanks, and I was very upset that he could have shown up in Ireland, put on an American uniform, gotten access to a gun with live ammunition, and created an international incident….

“Had Jonathan Norman actually confronted me, I genuinely in my heart of hearts believe I could have been raped, maimed, or killed. The same thing could have happened to my wife or kids…. I’m very distraught over the
possibility
that this man could come out of jail and go right back on the warpath again. It’s become an emotional obsession with me…. These thoughts continue to haunt me.”

Norman was sentenced in June 1998 to a sentence of twenty-five years to life for felony stalking. He was not the last stalker to enter Spielberg’s life, however. In 2002, Spielberg obtained a restraining order against a forty-
six-year
-old former social worker named Diana Louisa Napolis, who claimed he had implanted a mind-control device in her brain. That same year a
thirty-year
-old aspiring actor named Christopher Richard Hahn, after being arrested for trespassing at Spielberg’s office, was sentenced to two months in jail and ordered to stay away from Spielberg and his family for three years. In another bizarre case, a twenty-seven-year-old Iranian immigrant named Anoushirvan D. Fakhran changed his name to Jonathan Taylor Spielberg and pretended to be his nephew at a Catholic high school in Virginia. After a school official contacted DreamWorks, Spielberg’s security consultants alerted police, and the impostor was sentenced to two years’ probation for forgery in 2000.

Even before all these incidents, Spielberg was surrounded by personal security, and his protection only intensified over the years. Gone are the days when he invited
Architectural Digest
into his homes to do revealing photo spreads. His concern for privacy, verging on a phobia, extends to people with whom he works. Animators who work on his television shows have been told not to ask him for autographs; a student intern working at DreamWorks was instructed not to say hello to him if she passed him in the hall. Confidentiality
agreements
reportedly continue to be requested of some employees. Spielberg, who describes himself as a “control freak,” carefully controls his personal
publicity
, supervising his own documentary coverage of his films for DVD extras (mostly through house producer-director Laurent Bouzereau) and never
giving
interviews for unauthorized book projects about his life or work. He still
gives frequent press interviews but is much more guarded than he had been in his youth. He took up smoking cigars in the late 1990s (“Makes me look like John Ford, eh?”) but blocks the release of photos showing himself
smoking
. He frets about his receding hairline (one reason he still wears a baseball cap in his sixties) and had a makeup artist color in his bald spot on the night he received his Oscar for
Schindler’s List
. But the makeup smeared at the ball afterward when he kept patting his head and stroking his face, until Kate alerted him, “You look like Al Jolson!”

Despite all his worries about celebrity and image, Spielberg tries to
maintain
a semblance of “normal” living at his sprawling hilltop estate in the Pacific Palisades with his wife and seven children. They include his
stepdaughter
, actress Jessica Capshaw, who is married to Christopher Gavigan and made Spielberg a grandfather in 2007 when she gave birth to her son, Luke Gavigan. Steven is usually home from work in time for dinner, as he promised Kate when he founded DreamWorks. He drives his children to school three days a week as part of a car pool. At night, he ensconces himself on a couch in the family room that Capshaw calls “Steven Central” and alternates reading scripts and watching films with crawling on the floor to play with his kids. One of their favorite family rituals is storytelling, with Steven leading the children in embellishing communal tales, his way of helping them share their feelings and develop their artistic talents. He also encourages his children to make their own movies with one of the family’s video cameras.

“I’m not a great man to my children,” Spielberg said in 1999. “I’m just Pop. The more involved I am with my kids, it keeps my head flat on top.” David Geffen observed, “Having seven children in different age groups keeps him young and active. He watches movies with them, and he plays games with them. The kid in him is as alive today as it was when he was a kid.” But after so many years of arrested development, and having resolved some of his deep-seated conflicts over father figures in his later years, Spielberg has settled happily into the role of paterfamilias both at home and with his professional “family” of regular collaborators. “He’s a mature guy now,” his father
observed
in 1997, “and the biggest reason is his family. Kate is a smart, loving woman. She made up her mind she was going to get him—that’s the smart part. The loving part is how she treats him.”

Capshaw appears contented with her role as majordomo of her large and lively household (the Spielbergs also make frequent visits to their posh rustic retreat in East Hampton, New York). But in 1998, in a rare public
comment
on her marriage, she hinted at a bit of tension with Steven concerning her career: “I think it takes a great deal for him to allow me to pursue my career in a way that’s not as controlling as he’d probably love to be.” In 1999, DreamWorks sponsored a starring vehicle for Capshaw that she also helped produce,
The Love Letter
. This tepid romantic comedy suffers from her general lack of emotional affect as an actress and was a box-office dud. Aside from a couple of minor television roles, Capshaw has been inactive professionally ever since.