Steven Spielberg

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Steven Spielberg
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Childhood

• Steven Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946,
  in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Grew up as the only Jewish family in the
  neighborhood, this impacted his childhood and
  later his movies.
• Looking for a distraction from life, young
  Spielberg picked up his fathers 8mm camera,
  which was to be his newfound hobby. In which he
  created many short films, enlisting his family
  members as cast members.
• At the age of 13, Spielberg taught himself how to
  master camera angles, technical tricks, and
  visual storytelling skills.
• His first feature-length film, Firelight, was
  two-and-a-half-hours long. Firelight showed at a
  local movie theatre, whereby Spielberg made one
  hundred dollars in profit in one night from his
  film.
• After graduating from high school, Spielberg
  attempted to enroll into film school but failed
  due to poor high school grades.

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Early Years

• He attended California State College at Long
  Beach, and majored in English.
• After graduating from college in 1970, Spielberg
  snuck onto the Universal Studios lot and tried to
  convince producers to look at his films.
• Spielbergs film, Amblin told the story of a
  couple hitchhiking from the Mojave Desert to the
  Pacific Ocean.
• Spielberg scrounged together fifteen thousand
  dollars from his friends and family to make this
  22-minute film.
• The film Amblin revealed Spielbergs talent and
  a producer from Universal Studios, contracted
  Spielberg for 7 years after he saw the movie
  Amblin.

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1973 - First assignment at Universal Studios

• Universal assigned Spielberg to make a film made
  for television, Duel. Duel is about a
  traveling salesman whose car is relentlessly
  chased down rural highways by a large truck with
  an unseen driver.
• The American public enjoyed this thriller, and
  was popular enough to be shown in theaters
  overseas. The movie Duel may still be
  considered to be the best American television
  movie ever made.

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1974

• The film Sugerland Express was released in 1974
  as Spielbergs feature film debut.
• Inspired by a real incident, Spielberg
  constructed this movie about a young couple that
  led a police chase across Texas as they attempt
  to retrieve their baby from the foster parents.
• It received praise from box office critics but
  failed at the box office.
• The Sugerland Express won a Cannes Film
  Festival Award for Best Screenplay

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1975 Jaws

• Jaws became Spielbergs claim to fame, becoming
  the top-grossing film of all time in 1975.
• The movie was nominated for Best Picture at the
  Oscars, and won a few technical awards.
• Jaws marked a new movie genre, the blockbuster.
  The blockbuster movie could be interpreted as a
  highly anticipated movie that made a lot of money
  and captured both critics and viewers attention.
• In 1998, the film was named by the American Film
  Institute as one of the 100 best American films
  of the century.

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1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind

• Spielberg created and directed Close Encounters
  of the Third Kind, in 1977.
• He showed the viewing audience his passion for
  science fiction.
• This film earned Spielberg his first Oscar
  nomination for best director.

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Indiana Jones

• 1977 - Spielberg told George Lucas he wanted to
  make a film with the James Bond character.
• Lucas suggested a movie set in the 1930s about
  an archaeologist and his adventures.
• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc
  came out in 1981.
• Spielberg won an Academy Award nomination for
  best director.
• Later he directed the films two sequels,
  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and
  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

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1982 E.T.

• In 1982, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial toppled
  the film Jaws from the all time top-grossing
  movie ranking.
• Appealed to suburban America, the story line
  became a classic hit.

• Once again, Spielberg earned an Academy Award
  nomination for best director, Spielbergs status
  was the first director since Alfred Hitchcock to
  become a household name.

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1982 - Spielberg creates Amblin Entertainment

• Universal Studios restricted the amount of films
  he could produce, this was a hindrance to
  Spielbergs will, therefore, he was stimulated to
  found his own production company Amblin.
• Amblin Entertainment, using the E.T. logo as its
  trademark of good fortune from the movie E.T.
• At this point in his career Spielberg was
  perceived more as of a producer than a director.
• Spielberg did not find producing as satisfying as
  directing and gradually has become less involved.
  

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1985 The Color Purple

• Spielberg directed The Color Purple (which
  launched Oprah Winfrey's career), as a response
  to critics claiming that he can't make a
  "serious" movie.
• This serious movie received a lot of serious
  critical acclaim, and brought the Directors Guild
  of America award to Spielberg for Theatrical
  Direction in 1985, as well as 11 Oscar
  nominations, but not one honoring the director.
• As a consolation prize, he did receive the
  prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1987.

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• 1987 saw the release of Empire of the Sun

Always was released in 1989
Hook was released in 1991.
These were each moderate successes, while the
latter two were pretty forgettable, especially by
the time 1993 came around.
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1993 Jurassic Park
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Jurassic Park

• Spielberg made a major career resurgence in 1993
  with the special effect-heavy dinosaur
  extravaganza Jurassic Park.
• Jurassic Park made an outstanding impression,
  with a record-setting opening weekend gross of
  70 million and a total gross of 357 million.
• The film encouraged and launched other big money
  franchises, including two sequels, the lost
  World Jurassic Park (1997), which Spielberg
  directed, and Jurassic Park 3, which he produced.

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Schindlers List

• Also in 1993, Spielberg displayed an
  affectionate, caring, and giving side of himself
  when he released his sobering black and white
  adaptation of Thomas Keneallys prize winning
  novel "Schindlers List", the story of a
  complicated real life hero.
• "Schindlers List" earned over 100 million at
  the box office.
• Spielberg gave all of his earnings from the film
  to the Righteous Persons Foundation, an
  organization that supports a number of projects
  that impacted modern Jewish life.

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1998-2005

• 2005 Munich
• 2005 War of the Worlds
• 2004 The Terminal
• 2002 Catch Me If You Can
• 2002 Minority Report
• 2001 A.I.
• 1998 Saving Private Ryan

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• Roger Ebert (Sun-Times film critic) said "If
  Spielberg never directed another film, his place
  in movie history would be secure. No other
  director has been more successful at the box
  office and few placed more titles on various
  lists of great films. No director or producer has
  ever put together a more popular body of work"
  (Filmmakers).