The movie business has been very good to Steven Spielberg, even if the film critics haven't always played along.
With rare exception, reviewers have been sharply dismissive of the Spielberg oeuvre, which spans nearly four decades. Serious film-world respect has long been denied him, despite his track record as the most successful director in film history and his ongoing omniscient rank as the most powerful man in Hollywood.
The industry has made some concessions. Spielberg has won the best-director Oscar on two occasions - for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan - though his name still evokes the stronger imagery of Jaws and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. To the serious cineaste, Spielberg will forever remain the king of the big, dumb movie blockbuster.
It's possible the title still galls Spielberg, a man well known for his artistic pretensions. Why else would he cast François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? There must be some reason why the famously private director chose to participate in Spielberg on Spielberg (Monday, TCM at 8 p.m.), a new documentary in which the 61-year-old director provides a chronological recap of his own film catalogue - dating back to his first efforts on 8-mm.
Save for a fatuous Biography profile several years ago, there have been few attempts to cover Spielberg's brilliant career, which makes Spielberg on Spielberg required viewing.
Running 90 minutes, with no commercials, the special focuses solely on Spielberg, filmed from three angles and intercut with moments from his films. The program was produced and directed by Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel, who has essayed earlier profiles on Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Employing the identical format, Schickel is the unseen, unheard off-camera interviewer, who again elicits a previously unseen side of a movie icon. In this instance, it's Spielberg's belief that movies were his manifest destiny.
In Spielberg's view, there was simply no other choice but to become a director. There is some ego on display in Spielberg on Spielberg, though much of it is backed up with the clips of his earliest works. In his own words, he describes himself as a child obsessed with film, even in grade school. He won his first award for a war film, Escape to Nowhere, when he was 13. As he tells it, he never looked back.
A few years later, he made his professional debut with a 24-minute short called Amblin'. The breezy Spielberg style is clearly evident in the footage shown.
The film caught the attention of Hollywood executives, who signed him to a seven-year contract as a TV director. While still in his teens, he was shooting episodes of Marcus Welby: M.D. and directing Joan Crawford in the pilot episode of Night Gallery.
Spielberg reveals that television taught him an early hard lesson: "A director in television loses control the second he walks off the soundstage. ... I realized my next goal was to make movies, and at some point have control over the movies I make."
His creative autonomy came with Duel, a 1971 TV-movie starring Dennis Weaver as a man in a Plymouth Valiant being terrorized by an 18-wheeler. The theme was repeated four years later when he directed the film version of Jaws, based on a bestseller by Peter Benchley. It still seems to rankle him that he was the second choice to direct the movie.
Jaws led to E.T. and Close Encounters, which in turn led to Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Color Purple, which Spielberg claims was "my first grown-up film."
The program conveniently skips past several of Spielberg's most notable screen misses - namely, Hook, Always, Twilight Zone: The Movie -- but he does admit to excess with his most momentous flop - the 1979 epic 1941, which he describes now as "too loud, too much."
Spielberg has never deigned to provide commentary on a single DVD release, which makes Spielberg on Spielberg a TV event, of sorts. While it's far from a critical analysis, he makes an affable interview subject and the program reveals him to be in a reflective mood in his late-career years. At this point, it appears he's no longer worried about gaining respect. He just wants people to like him.