Founders
Episode 209 #209 Steven Spielberg: A Biography
Founders

Episode 209: #209 Steven Spielberg: A Biography

Founders

Episode 209

#209 Steven Spielberg: A Biography

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride.

What I learned from reading Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. 

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Whatever is there, he makes it work.

Spielberg once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring, "I am the audience."

"He said, 'I want to be a director.' And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.' He said, 'No, Dad. The first picture I do, I'm going to be a director.' And he was. That blew my mind. That takes guts."

One of his boyhood friends recalls Spielberg saying "he could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thanking the Academy.” He was twelve.

He was disappointed in the world, so he built one of his own.

Spielberg remained essentially an autodidact. Spielberg followed his own eccentric path to a professional directing career. Universal Studios, in effect, was Spielberg's film school. Giving him an education that, paradoxically, was both more personal and more conventional than he would have received in an academic environment. Spielberg devised what amounted to his own private tutorial program at Universal, immersing himself in the aspects of filmmaking he found most crucial to his development.

At the time he came to Hollywood, generations of nepotism had made the studios terminally inbred and unwelcoming to newcomers. The studio system, long under siege from television, falling box-office receipts, and skyrocketing costs, was in a state of impending collapse.

When Steven was very discouraged trying to sell a script and break in, he always had a positive, forward motion, whatever he may have been suffering inside.

In the two decades since Star Wars and Close Encounters were released, science-fiction films have accounted for half of the top twenty box-office hits. But before George Lucas and Spielberg revived the genre there was no real appetite at the studios for science fiction. The conventional wisdom was science-fiction films never make money.

Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? We have a few special years with our children, when they're the ones who want us around. So fast, it’s a few years, then it's over. You are not being careful. And you are missing it.

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#209 Steven Spielberg: A Biography

Introduction

“One of his boyhood friends recalls Spielberg saying, ‘He could envision himself going to the Academy Awards and accepting an Oscar and thinking the Academy. He was 12.’ ‘I've been really serious about filmmaking as a career since I was 12 years old,’ Spielberg said. ‘I don't excuse those early years as a hobby. Do you know what I'm saying? I really did start then.’”

That was an excerpt from the book that I’m going to talk to you about today, which is Steven Spielberg, A Biography and is written by Joseph McBride. And that is one of the reasons I wanted to read a biography of Spielberg.

It’s because I think it's so -- there's a few reasons, but one of them is the fact that from 12 -- from the age of 12 to 74, which is how old he is today, he's had the same goal. He has been making movies for 62 years. It's very rare for somebody to do something for that long, for 62 years. So I think that's somebody that we should obviously be studying and learning from. Another reason that he came to my attention is because he appears in one of my favorite books that I've ever read for the podcast that's back on Founders #35, and that's the biography of George Lucas. It's called George Lucas: A Life. And George and Steve had met when they were in the early 20s and they became best friends and collaborators throughout their entire career.

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