News culture “The hardest thing I've ever done” Steven Spielberg suffered on the set of this history-making film
Publié le 14/03/2024 à 08:20
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During a recent interview, the director of War of the Worlds, Ready Player One and Jurassic Park looked back on one of the most exciting, but also difficult, periods of his career.
After the storm, the snow
There is almost no need to introduce Steven Spielberg. The famous filmmaker has in fact directed numerous films that have marked the history of cinema, such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Indiana Jones, ET and Minority Report. It was during a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter that the father of Pentagon Papers looked back on his rich career. Regarding the difficulties encountered, there is a date that immediately comes to mind for the director: 1993. That year, Spielberg completed two major projects: Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, pushing the limits of what he could handle.
“I was in the middle of making Jurassic Park, had just finished filming and had edited the film when Steve Zaillian finally finished his draft and asked me to read it,” he explains. Before adding: “I read it with my wife. We turned the pages, and I knew when we got to page 167 that I had to make the movie now. I had to do it because I didn't want to miss the winter in Poland. I didn't want to wait a whole year because the film had to be shot in the snow.”
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While Jurassic Park was filmed and almost edited, Spielberg called the producer of the dinosaur film, Cathy Kennedy, to tell her that he absolutely had to jump ship. “I have to do Schindler's List, and don't ask me why. I have to do it right away.”
Black is black, there is no more hope
While he exhausted himself physically on Jurassic Park, a film whose filming held its share of surprises (including inclement weather), the director embarks on a complex film which will affect him emotionally. “The hard days were more than I expected, and the easy days were never easy,” he says. “Everything we filmed at Auschwitz with the women (…) was very difficult” he adds, before confessing: “I was often demoralized, a wreck, and Kate (his wife – editor's note) would always sit down with me, let me vent and talk to me, or just let me be quiet and she would shut up. We would sit there and look at each other. Emotionally, it's the hardest thing I've ever done as a director.
The Hollywood Reporter tells us that in order not to break down, Spielberg regularly called Robin Williams so that the latter could lighten the atmosphere, every Friday. “Robin knew how difficult the film was for me,” he recalls. “So he would call me on the phone and tell me jokes. Whether it was after 10 or 20 minutes, when he heard me laughing out loud, he would hang up.”
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