An article by Jamie Stuart
I suppose I saw God on Monday night. There
weren’t any drugs involved. No, I wasn’t boning Winona Ryder. Nothing
salacious. And while he might not be the single greatest filmmaker ever, I’m
just not so sure I could position anybody higher. The event was An Evening With
Steven Spielberg, at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, on November 25th.
I didn’t bring a tape recorder or a pen. I didn’t go as a reporter intending
to write about it. Let’s face it: if Spielberg is talking, I’d rather enjoy
it free from the constraints of work.
Even after I left, I had no intention of writing about it. My reporting to a few
friends was minimal. Almost rhetorical in banality. It took a few days to settle
in, then I got started.
The program consisted of a dozen segments split between an interview conducted
by Richard Pena, and clips from his films in a predominantly sequential manner (Jaws
was shown first, even though it came after The Sugarland Express).
The print quality on the clips was exquisite. Not a single artifact anywhere.
Even 1974’s The Sugarland Express, in gorgeous widescreen, looked
undated. Aside from the two previously mentioned films, they played Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The
Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List,
Saving Private Ryan, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, and in
conclusion, a 14-minute sequence from the upcoming Catch Me If You Can.
The main points I took away from the interview were: he was an auteur as a
teenager with his 8mm camera, but as soon as he became a professional that
concept was quickly obliterated. Filmmaking is quite simply a collaborative
effort. The term is mildly accurate if the director does more than just direct
it -- if he also writes or photographs it -- but predominantly speaking, unless
you’re happy to make $100,000 features with a few people involved, you’re
not going to be an auteur. Spielberg offered to share the stage with his
writers.
(Anybody questioning his point of view should look no further than Citizen
Kane. Its boy genius Orson Welles shared his title card with cinematographer
Greg Toland. Also, Kane was made before anyone had even concepted the Auteur
Theory.)
He recommended that the best way to maintain cut over a film is to only shoot
what’s needed. If you shoot lots of coverage, you’re giving the studio or
the producers more leeway to tamper with your vision. It costs money to reshoot
things, and they hate spending money -- but if there’s lots to choose from
already, then re-editing is cheap. Ultimately, it’s up to the director to be
savvy about his choices.
Another major point is that Spielberg considers himself a Ludite for still
editing his films with a Moviola (that’s right, Minority Report was cut
the old-fashioned way). But he clearly feels that when state of the art digital
projectors have been installed in most theaters, he’ll consider showing them
that way. As long as they leave the old film projectors bolted to the floor.
When asked about his regular collaborators, he replied that Janusz Kaminski is a
storyteller with light, Michael Kahn is a storyteller with editing, and John
Williams is a storyteller with music. Spielberg said that his job was to tell
stories with pictures.
He maintains that he’s inspired by all filmmakers -- not just older models
like David Lean or Stanley Kubrick, but newer ones like Paul Thomas Anderson,
Todd Haynes and Todd Field. It shows in his work. Even in his newest films he
still seems a step ahead of where everybody else is. It’s as if he’s got a
built in barometer or something.
There were a few hooligans in the crowd. Two guys placed letters for him at the
bottom of the stage, and an actor did the same with his headshot. It reminded me
of when I asked Naomi Watts if she’d read The All-Nighter at the
premiere of The Ring.
So, I’m going to make an argument. And I formulated this after picking up the
DVD of E.T., as well as reading a jaundiced piece about Leonardo DiCaprio
in the NY Times magazine section last Sunday. (The article covered his two big
holiday releases -- the other being Gangs of New York -- and the writer
clearly favored Martin Scorsese and his “high art” over Spielberg’s
accomplishments. This was done by attributing various sentiments to DiCaprio,
though never directly quoting him.)
My argument is: I think E.T. is a better film than Raging Bull.
And when I say E.T., I mean the original, not the new version with all
the CG crap. Raging Bull has a poorly constructed script that functions
as numbing alternations between gorgeously overshot fight sequences and crude
improvisational scenes of Robert DeNiro’s Jake LaMotta arguing with everybody.
The continuity is inconsistent, though better than in Taxi Driver.
Scorsese’s ultimate goal was to have audiences still loving the main character
by the end -- but nobody did to begin with. With E.T., on the other hand,
Steven Spielberg convinced $1 billion worth of people to fall in love with a
rubber space alien.
Which assignment was more difficult? And which was more successful? You can only
blame audiences for so long. Critics are elitist. The discrepancy between these
films is gaping.
And you know what, E.T. is really well-written by Melissa Mathison and
gorgeously photographed by Allan Daviau. The performances are all perfect, and
after seeing Drew Barrymore’s Gertie again, it’s not hard to understand why
her life derailed. Where else was there to go?
Spielberg has been such a central part of our culture for the past three decades
that he’s the star of his films, regardless of who’s starring in them. E.T.
came out at the apex of his initial cultural impact. Jaws was the first
film ever to gross $100-million at the box office. Four of his next five films
did likewise. There had never been anyone like him in history.
Even in his mid-50s he’s still pushing the medium forward more so than anybody
else. Look at the impact that even a recent film like Saving Private Ryan
had: it virtually redefined the way that all war movies will be portrayed from
now on. It single-handedly pushed aside every attempt at realism that had come
before it. I’m not saying it’s the best war film ever. I didn’t even like
it. It’s just the most influential. There’s a big difference! But you simply
have to recognize that success can only be excused for so long. No other
director could have orchestrated a $200 million gross out of a film like that.
He’s moved effortlessly from exploitation like Jaws to the fairy tale
of Close Encounters. From the pictorial virtuosity of Empire of the
Sun to the lack thereof in Schindler’s List. Like Stanley Kubrick,
his imprint is felt in multiple genres and time periods -- horror, science
fiction, historical, war, epic drama.
Martin Scorsese, on the other hand, while working in multiple genres, has never
had any major influence outside of one. The only genre his films ever had any
serious impact on is the all-American gangster flick. And in the process he’s
probably glorified violence better than any other director ever. His films and
Brian DePalma’s Scarface are ubiquitous among wannabe gangsters. They
stylized and romanticized the modern American warlord for the masses.
The reason Spielberg’s early films were so impersonal was because he was too
shy to let anything directly of himself into his movies. As he became more
comfortable directing, he began injecting more of his own life into the mix. Of
course, his personality was on display in all of them, just not specific
references.
(If specific references are what makes a filmmaker a great artist, then how can
Hitchcock have achieved such worthy status? Or any filmmaker from the first half
of the 20th Century? Every film Hitch ever made was for the studios. He was no
auteur, just a great director and entertainer. And not nearly as great as his
reputation suggests. But that’s another article.)
Spielberg’s new film Catch Me If You Can was apparently more personal
for him than E.T., in terms of dealing with his parents’ divorce and
his subsequent con of pretending to be a Universal junior exec in his teens.
The footage shown at Lincoln Center looked light and breezy, and moved like
gangbusters. There was one overdone bit involving a dollar bill that should be
toned down before its release. Aside from that random detail, my mouth is shut
on everything else.
I will suggest that anyone looking for evidence of this man’s gift look no
further than his last three films, released within the space of 1 1/2 years.
They’re all totally different in look, tone, setting and subject matter. And
though I haven’t seen Catch Me If You Can in its entirety, I’m
willing to bet it makes the grade.
For those who don’t consider Spielberg an
intellectual director, wait until people finally start getting A.I. and Minority
Report a few years from now. He’s emphatically stated recently that movies
need a serious injection of ideas, while taking credit for creating a type of
film that helped diminish ideas in the first place. Empire of the Sun,
which host Pena specifically singled out, is only just finding its audience 15
years after its release.
He explained that his motivation behind painting the little girl red in Schindler’s
List, was that during the war both Roosevelt and Churchill knew about the
Holocaust, but did nothing. The little girl represented the voice of the
suffering crying out to be heard.
Scorsese’s greatest attempt at depth was The Last Temptation of Christ,
in which he pontificated about a fairy tale. I don’t mean to sell Scorsese
short. I don’t even know him. But he basically goes around promoting himself
as the world’s greatest director and acts as if there’s nobody who could
possibly know more about movies than him.
Gimme a fucking break! It’s shameless self-promotion. It’s like Michael
Jackson proclaiming himself the King of Pop.
He doesn’t know more than Spielberg or Francis Ford Coppola or the Coens or
Ingmar Bergman or any great filmmaker worldwide. It’s a role he’s playing,
because it’s one he wants. He’s no messiah. Just like Christ in his film: he
wasn’t chosen, it was a choice he made.
Back to that rubber space alien. I was an E.T. kid. I was 7 when it came out. An
only child. I wanted to find an E.T. of my own.
People tend to dismiss it as a kids movie. First of all, it isn’t. Second,
even if it is, so what? The reason it was so successful in 1982 was because
adults were willing to let themselves relate to their inner-child. The
counter-culture generation had been domesticated and was having children. This
was the perfect film at the perfect time. It briefly bridged every imaginable
social gap.
When I saw the re-release in the the theater earlier this year (stick to the
original), there were two things that really struck me. First, it played the
audience better than any other film I’ve ever seen. Period. Second, I realized
just how small it was. It was an intimate portrait of a family in California. No
giant dinosaurs. No laser guns. No explosions. Nothing associated with modern
blockbusters. It was the film’s simplicity that awed me. THIS had been the
highest grossing film of all-time for a decade. And it seemed so quaint.
Watching E.T. 20 years later was difficult in a sense. It genuinely
captured America at a specific moment. It didn’t take place in the past, the
future or some fantasy world. But right then and there. We connected with
Elliott because just like him, we played with Star Wars action figures
and rode our bikes around suburban communities where new developments kept
springing up.
Spielberg’s decision to remove the guns from the reissue was wrong -- after
all, the government was being run by the Reagan administration at the time. They
probably would have nuked E.T.! There’s a not-so subtle scene where Michael is
wearing a “No Nukes” T-shirt. There’s even a specific shot that starts on
the U.S. government’s logo on a car, then tilts up to a poised shotgun. E.T.,
as a character, was designed as an almost religious symbol for world peace.
Even the ending is bitter-sweet. Yeah, E.T. came back to life, but he still left
Elliott. Even as a kid I knew they’d never meet again. Lots of people deride
Spielberg over his endings. I do too, sometimes. But he isn’t being cynical
about resolution. I think he genuinely means it. I think he genuinely feels life
can be so harsh that people need certain reassurances. It’s his prerogative.
There are only two other living directors that I feel are at Spielberg’s
level, and Martin Scorsese is not one of them. The other two are Francis Ford
Coppola and Ingmar Bergman, both mentioned earlier. They’re the only other
living filmmakers who’ve had no peers at their game. Unfortunately, both have
been out of commission for the past two decades.
Scorsese’s reputation was built on his headstrong attitude during the
1980’s. He kept making his films without selling out. Everybody else from the
‘70s had self-destructed. Ashby was dead, Altman was in exile, Malick was
AWOL, Coppola was incapacitated, and Kubrick was too meticulous. The recent
returns of some of these greats has put Marty’s output in perspective. Since
1990, when Scorsese released Goodfellas and received his last Oscar
nomination, Altman has put forth The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford
Park, Malick had The Thin Red Line, and Kubrick aced everybody with Eyes
Wide Shut. Now, if Coppola can just get Megalopolis going already!
Scorsese followed up his triumph with Cape Fear, his only box office hit
(produced by Spielberg), then the beautiful but misdirected The Age of
Innocence, the Goodfellas retread Casino, the beautiful but
misdirected Kundun, and the Taxi Driver retread Bringing Out
the Dead.
Meanwhile, Spielberg released both Jurassic Park, the temporary
highest-grossing film of all-time, and Schindler’s List, the most
lauded American film of the decade, in 1993. The Lost World was a
contractual obligation and Amistad was well-intended but rushed. Then
came Saving Private Ryan, probably the second most lauded film of the
decade, and his second win for Best Director. Next was the brilliant, but
controversial A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, followed by the jaw-dropping
Minority Report, which was possibly more fulfilling as entertainment than
its predecessor.
The two S’s, Spielberg and Scorsese, represented dual sides of 1980’s
filmmaking. One was the defiant independent, the other was King of Hollywood.
Personally, I’m much more sympathetic to Scorsese’s independence -- I just
happen to think Spielberg’s a better filmmaker.
Both have new movies opening within five days of each other starring Leonardo
DiCaprio. If you judge both directors’ recent output and remove the hype,
which one stands to better the other? Scorsese says he’s completely out of
touch with the present. Spielberg, on the other hand, fiercely fights to remain
on top of things.
My feeling is this: even if Gangs of New York clocks Catch Me If You
Can, it won’t stand a chance against Minority Report. In fact,
Spielberg will have released three films during the entire excessive period it
took to get Gangs to the screen. Two of them, in my opinion, are bolder
than anything Scorsese has ever directed. If Gangs flops, Marty will have
the distinct aroma of mothballs about him. New York and agnostic Catholicism are
stale. It’s time for him to walk the walk. If he wants to be the best, then he
actually needs to be the best.
It’s not good enough for Gangs of New York to be great. For Marty to
wear the crown, this thing’s going to have to be career-capping. It’s got to
be Apocalypse Now great. Good luck.
Now that that’s out of my system, I think it’s time to find some good drugs
and track down Winona.
-Copyright 2002 by
Jamie
Stuart