Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later raised in Camden, New Jersey, Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, Los Gatos, California and Saratoga, California. His last name comes from the name of the Austrian city where his Hungarian Jewish ancestors lived in 17th century: Spielberg. He is a contemporary of filmmakers George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, and Brian De Palma. Spielberg grew up making movies. He was making amateur 8 mm "adventure" movies with his friends as a teenager, and he made his first short film for theatrical release, Amblin', in 1968, at the age of twenty one. (Spielberg's own production company, Amblin Entertainment, was named after this short film.)

He attended Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona and subsequently graduated from Saratoga High School in Saratoga, California in 1965. On attending Saratoga High School, he said that it was the "worst experience" of his life and "hell on Earth". [2].

Spielberg attended California State University: Long Beach, majoring in English, because Long Beach did not have a film school at that time. While attending college at Long Beach State in the 1960s, Spielberg was a member of Theta Chi Fraternity. He dropped out in 1969 to take a television director contract at Universal Studios. In 2002, thirty-five years after starting college, Spielberg finished his degree via independent projects at CSULB, and was awarded a B.A. in Film Production and Electronic Arts with an option in Film/Video Production.

Spielberg applied for admission to the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television three separate times, and the prominent school later awarded Spielberg an honorary degree in 1994. Two years later, Spielberg became a Trustee of the University and has since tirelessly devoted himself to supporting USC.

Spielberg, an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), developed the requirements for the Boy Scout Cinematography merit badge. He eventually resigned from the national board of BSA because of his disapproval regarding the BSA's anti-homosexuality stance.

Spielberg started a fanciful story of how he broke into Hollywood by sneakily squatting in an unoccupied office on the Universal Studios lot. In fact, he had an unpaid summer job on the lot.

His first professional job came when he was hired to do one of the segments for the pilot episode of Night Gallery. The segment, Eyes, starred Joan Crawford, and she and Spielberg were reportedly close friends until her death. The episode is unusual in his body of work, in that the camerawork is more highly stylized than his later, more "mature" films. After this, and an episode of Marcus Welby M.D., Spielberg got his first feature-length assignment: an episode of Name of the Game called "L.A. 2017". This episode played to his interests in futuristic science fiction, and Universal first began to take note of his talents. He did another segment on Night Gallery (some people claim that he also directed a short five-minute segment called "A Matter of Semantics" when the credited director had to back out for unknown reasons, but this has never been confirmed and is hotly debated), and did some work for shows such as Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and The Psychiatrist before landing the first series episode of Columbo (previous "episodes" were actually TV-Movies).

Based on the strength of his work, Universal signed Spielberg to do three TV movies. The first was a Richard Matheson adaptation called Duel, first broadcast in 1971. It was immediately recognized as a taut, well-made thriller, and cemented Spielberg's emerging reputation. (Note that all video/DVD releases of the film have been the extended cut which was released theatrically in America in 1983, not the original, shorter cut.) Realizing what they had, Universal would not release Spielberg to CBS, and insisted he fulfill the contract. In 1972, he directed a TV movie called Something Evil, which was made and released to capitalize on the popularity of The Exorcist, then a major best-selling book which had not yet been released as a movie. Spielberg is said to be quite disappointed with the film, which he never regarded as more than a knock-off. He fulfilled his contract by directing the TV movie length pilot of a show called Savage, starring Martin Landau. Though the series was not picked up, the movie was shown on TV in 1973, and is occasionally re-run, usually highlighting Spielberg's participation.


1970s
Spielberg's debut theatrical feature film was The Sugarland Express, based on the true story of a married couple who lead the Texas police on a highway chase as they embark on a journey to regain custody of their baby. Welcomed with warm reviews, the film nevertheless failed to catch on at the box office, but his producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown were prepared to offer Spielberg a more ambitious directing assignment.

Spielberg's next film was Jaws, a horror film based on the Peter Benchley novel starring Roy Scheider about a killer shark that attacks people off the coast of a New England isle community. Jaws won three Academy Awards (for editing, original score and sound), and grossed over USD$100 million at the box office, setting the domestic record for box office gross. It was also nominated for Best Picture and featured Spielberg's first of three collaborations with actor Richard Dreyfuss. To this day, Spielberg maintains that Jaws was the hardest film he ever had to make. He would decline offers to direct its sequel by using his new influence to pursue more personal projects.

Rejecting offers to direct Jaws 2 and Superman, Spielberg and actor Richard Dreyfuss re-convened to work on a pet project Spielberg had had in mind since his youth: a film about UFOs, which became Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The film remains a cult sci-fi classic and has been highly influential ever since. This is one of the rare movies that Spielberg both wrote and directed. A hit at the box office, the film also gained Spielberg his first Best Director nomination from the Academy and was nominated for six other Academy Awards, taking home Oscar in two (Cinematography -- Vilmos Zsigmond, and a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing -- Frank E. Warner)

The success Spielberg was beginning to enjoy, as well as his eventual tendency to make films with wide mainstream and commercial appeal, also subjected him to disdain in critical circles by film reviewers. For example, Spielberg's next film was 1941, a big-budgeted World War II comedy farce set in L.A. days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the two top stars from Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, along with other all-stars. An exercise in excess, the film provided just the ammunition cynical critics would require to take down the young director. Over-budget, over-long (in its extended version), the film flopped with both audiences and critics alike, although in the end it did make a small profit at the box office, and eventually found its audience in television showings. Expanded versions of 1941 have been shown on network television and later on Laserdisc and DVD and it has earned a cult status partly because of Spielberg's eventual fame and partly because of its camp status. Desperately in need of quick redemption, Spielberg would next team with Star Wars creator George Lucas on a new action adventure film.

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