'Steven Spielberg, A Biography', Author, Joseph McBride

0:08Joseph McBrideHi there, Johan. How are you doing?

0:10Jawad MirHi, Joseph. How are you doing?

0:12Joseph McBrideGood. Good to see you again. I remember we did an interview before. It's good to do it again.

0:18Jawad MirYeah, it was a long time ago.

0:20Joseph McBrideYeah.

0:21Jawad MirYeah.

0:21Joseph McBrideSo… Somaya told me, it was back in '98 or something or...

0:26Jawad MirYeah, that's when I got this from you.

0:28Joseph McBrideWow, great. Great. That's a long time ago, yeah.

0:32Jawad MirYeah, it was.

0:33Joseph McBrideYeah.

0:33Jawad MirHow have you, how have you been?

0:35Joseph McBrideOh, I'm doing fine. I had, four books came out last year. From October through March, I had four books published, including a big, critical study of Billy Wilder and, a book on... Called, Political Truth: the Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy. That was another big book. And I have one on the Coen brothers, and so I've been very busy.

1:03Jawad MirWell, I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me.

1:06Joseph McBrideOh, I'm happy to do it. It's… Sorry, just one second.

1:09Jawad MirNo problem.

1:09Joseph McBrideTrying to turn off this phone. Yeah, no, I'm happy to do this. Great. Let me just change my background. I have a picture of myself. Let's see. I have a picture of myself, outside Spielberg's home in Phoenix. There we are.

1:30Jawad MirOh, nice.

1:31Joseph McBrideYeah. That's when I was researching the book. There I am. You see?

1:37Jawad MirOh.

1:37Joseph McBrideYeah.

1:39Jawad MirThis is…

1:39Joseph McBrideSo…

1:39Jawad Mir... Way back in the '90s, right? Like, your first edition came out in the nine… late '90s. Am I correct?

1:44Joseph McBrideYeah, '97, so this would've been around, '94 or '95, something like that, when I was researching the book.

1:53Jawad MirGreat. So I'm just gonna go through very random questions, and I might just have follow-up stuff. What... Tell me your background, how you became an author, and, also my guess is that you're primarily focused on entertainment and biographies. I'm sure there's other stuff that you do, too, but…

2:14Joseph McBrideYeah

2:14Jawad Mir... Talk me through that.

2:15Joseph McBrideWell, I'm, I teach at San Francisco State University. I'm a cinema professor. And, I am, I've been writing books since 1963. When I was a kid, I wrote a book on baseball slang… ... Called High… High and Inside, and, that started me off. And then I wrote three books on Orson Welles. The first one I wrote when I was in college, and then I wrote, did one on John Ford, a critical study. And, then I went to Hollywood and I worked for Variety as a reviewer and reporter for quite a while. And, I was a newspaperman in Wisconsin and California before, going to Variety. And, then I started, freelancing, as a book writer and, moved to northern California in the year 2000 and, got the teaching job, but I've been writing books all the way through. So I've done 24 books.

3:16Jawad MirWow.

3:17Joseph McBrideYeah. And

3:18Jawad MirThat's amazing.

3:19Joseph McBrideYeah. Thank you. So I'm, I'm currently, yeah, I'm working on a couple book projects. School is about to start, so I'm focusing on that, too.

3:31Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

3:31Joseph McBrideAnd but I did the Spielberg book. I mainly do these books, to rectify some kind of injustice, you know. If I feel that somebody's been neglected or maltreated by the public or the media, you know, like certain artists are misunderstood, like Spielberg is misunderstood. I felt that there weren't any serious... There... When I wrote my book, there was no really good biography or a critical…

3:59Jawad MirNope

3:59Joseph McBride... Study of him, you know.

4:00Jawad MirNo, there wasn't any at all.

4:02Joseph McBrideNo.

4:02Jawad MirAt all. And I think following your book, a lot of books came out, like, small, medium, but I mean, yours was the main one. And I remember, I was, at the time when I was starting my site, I don't know if you remember this, but I was starting my website on Steven Spielberg, and it kinda turned into a DreamWorks fan site. I remember the first thing that I kinda got it understood about Spielberg in terms of his childhood…

4:29Joseph McBridehuh

4:29Jawad Mir... Came from your book, and these pictures especially.

4:32Joseph McBrideOh, wow.

4:34Jawad MirThese pictures that you have in the book.

4:36Joseph McBrideOh, yeah.

4:37Jawad MirThe…

4:37Joseph McBrideYeah

4:37Jawad Mir... Nice.

4:38Joseph McBrideI got some rare pictures, yeah.

4:40Jawad MirAnd this was my first introduction to the film that w… that was later translated into Close Encounters of Third Kind

4:46Joseph McBrideYeah

4:46Jawad Mir... Finally. But no, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I would like to know more about your, t… you as a professor because I'm in film now, too. Like, that's my full time. I'm a, I'm a filmmaker. I direct…

5:02Joseph McBrideAh

5:02Jawad Mir... Human rights-based documentaries. And I was actually in Wisconsin just a few days ago at University of Madison. We were doing a screening

5:10Joseph McBrideYeah

5:10Jawad Mir... Of one of my films.

5:13Joseph McBrideOh

5:13Jawad Mir... Yeah.

5:13Joseph McBrideGot to Cinema Tech there, huh? The UW…

5:17Jawad MirNo. This was a... They have a... So my film, is about, it's called In Search of My Sister.

5:23Joseph McBrideYeah.

5:23Jawad MirIt's about a Uyghur American activist whose sister was taken by the Chinese Communist Party due to her activism in States. So there's a depart… department there called, Asian Studies or Euro-Asian Studies.

5:35Jawad MirAnd they contacted us for a screening event. So, anyways, going off-topic here. What, why, what sort of inspired you to be into, like, writing specifically about films? I know you like to write about artists that have not been done justice, but…

5:51Joseph McBrideYeah

5:51Jawad Mir... That connection with f… and you're teaching as a professor now, so you're connected with cinema a lot. Like, what is that…

5:57Joseph McBrideYeah

5:57Jawad Mir... That ingredient that's always stirring?

6:00Joseph McBrideWell, I was, I was a film bu…... Fan when I was a kid, but I was going to be a, politician or a lawyer politician, and I worked for John F. Kennedy in 1960…

6:12Jawad MirOh, you did?

6:12Joseph McBride... On his, on his presidential primary campaign. I'll just show you a picture here. I took this photograph of him. In the background is, it's a

6:24Jawad MirYeah

6:24Joseph McBride... Big crowd.

6:26Jawad MirI see it. I see it.

6:26Joseph McBrideAnd the…

6:27Jawad MirYeah

6:27Joseph McBride... Here's, here's another one I took, yeah, I took this one, too. I was a volunteer on his campaign, and I was, but I was very, disillusioned when he was killed and they didn't really s… bother solving the crime. And so I got into movies instead. I was in Madison. I went to the University of Wisconsin and I saw…

6:47Jawad MirOh, you did

6:47Joseph McBride... Citizen Kane in a film class in 1966, and that changed my life. I then thought, "I will write films, write and direct films, and, write about films." So I started writing a book on Welles. Right now they're having a 24-hour marathon of Welles films on Turner Classic Movies right in the background here.

7:07Jawad MirNice.

7:07Joseph McBrideSo I s… I spent four years writing a book on Welles, and then I got into The Other Side of the Wind. Y… you've seen that film?..

7:15Jawad MirThe, which one, sorry.

7:16Joseph McBrideThe Other Side of the Wind.

7:18Jawad MirLong time ago. Long time ago.

7:20Joseph McBrideWell, it came out in 2018.

7:24Jawad MirOh, then I'm…

7:24Joseph McBrideS…

7:24Jawad MirOh, I'm thi… mixing it with Gone With the Wind. Sorry about that. My apologies.

7:27Joseph McBrideNo. Well, Welles in 1970 started making a film, about filmmaking starring John Houston as an old director trying to make his comeback in the new Hollywood. And he put me in the film. I was my, it was my first visit to Hollywood. And I met him, and he said, "Would you like to be in, this film we're making?" And Peter Bogdanovich was rounding up young, film buff characters, you know, for the film, and they put me in it as a, as a young, film critic historian who's interviewing John Houston all through the film and pestering him.

8:02Jawad MirYeah.

8:02Joseph McBrideAnd, so this film w… I spent five years working for Welles as an actor, which was a really great experience. And, but the film didn't come out until 2018. It's on Netflix constantly playing.

8:16Jawad MirThe Other Side of the Wind.

8:17Joseph McBrideYeah, that's, that's worth mentioning if you want to. And, so, that was a great film experience. But I wrote screenplays for about 10 years, and I, the one film that I did that got a lot of attention was Rock 'n' Roll High School with the Ramones. Good film.

8:34Joseph McBridePunk rock musical.

8:35Jawad MirYeah.

8:35Joseph McBrideYeah.

8:36Jawad MirOkay.

8:36Joseph McBrideI also did a Canadian film called Blood and Guts, a wrestling film, called Blood and Guts.

8:42Jawad MirI've heard of it. I haven't seen it. I've heard of it.

8:44Joseph McBrideIt was made around Toronto. But I didn't…

8:47Jawad MirAnd…

8:47Joseph McBride... Like being a screenwriter because, you know, you're, treated badly in Hollywood. But I wrote…

8:54Jawad MirThat's true.

8:54Joseph McBrideYeah. I wrote five, AFI Life Achievement Award programs. Those were the best experiences I had. I

9:02Jawad MirSure

9:02Joseph McBride... James Stewart, John Houston, Lillian Gish, Frank Capra, and, Fred Astaire. And, I got to work with a lot of great people. And, but then I went full time writing books, on a, in '84 on Frank Capra that took seven years. Had a lot of problems, legal problems getting the book out. So I wrote a book recently called Frankly: Unmasking Frank Capra, which is about how I overcame the legal, battle to get the book out. So, but, it was really, I got to be a big film buff in the late '60s, and that's when film magazines and film books started coming out a lot. And, you know, the film studies, pr… was just starting up, and I was in the early part of that. And, but Spielberg and I are about the same age, and, I've always loved his films. And I thought of writing a biography of him when, around the time of ET, but I thought he was too young.

10:05Joseph McBrideAnd, I liked his films from way back, you know. I saw Something Evil in 1971, '72… ... I guess it was. And it…

10:14Jawad MirNo, '70, '71. '72, Duel came out, I think.

10:18Joseph McBrideYeah, you're right.

10:19Jawad MirYeah.

10:19Joseph McBrideYeah, so my first exposure to him was I flipped on TV and, I heard he was this young director, very young guy, very unusual. And I thought this was a very, inventive film, you know, and I thought, I thought I would look him up in Hollywood. When I went to Hollywood in 1971, again, to work on the Welles film, I was gonna call Spielberg and ask for an interview, and I just didn't have time unfortunately.

10:42Jawad MirRight.

10:42Joseph McBrideBut so I wait. After a while I thought, "Well, there really should be a good book on him." And, what's his name? Nigel Morris, you know, wrote that good book on Spielberg, and he calls me the godfather of Spielberg studies. Which is very nice. He wrote, that's a very good critical study. And Lester Friedman just came out with a new edition of his, Citizen Spielberg, which is a really good book, and he's updated that.

11:09Jawad MirOh, I am, I have to take a look at that.

11:10Joseph McBrideMaybe you should have him on your show. He'd be a good guest, Lester.

11:13Jawad MirYeah. Absolutely. And, did you, for your book, did you ever interview Spielberg? I'm su… I'm imagining you…

11:21Joseph McBrideNo, he ... Well, I don't do authorized biographies because I…

11:26Jawad MirAh

11:26Joseph McBride... I, you don't have freedom unless you do them unauthorized.

11:29Jawad MirYes, that's true.

11:30Joseph McBrideSo I, what I did was I interviewed 100 people before I approached Spielberg, a… and I wanted to make it a fait accompli. And I wrote, I wrote to, Marvin Levy, you know, his PR guy…

11:42Jawad MirYeah. Yeah

11:42Joseph McBride... Who's a very nice man. And, I said I'd like to do an interview with him, but I'm doing an unauthorized biography. And he called back and said, "Steven knows your work and he respects you, but he's, he doesn't give interviews, for books." You know, he controls the books that are published about him basically, and

12:07Jawad MirYeah

12:07Joseph McBride... It was really because it's an unauthorized biography. His, he... There was a… an authorized sort of biography that somebody did with his help, and then he puts out these books on the making of films and stuff like that. And, so I never got to interview him. But he, Marvin said he will not do anything to, hamper your book. The only thing he did was he told his mother not to talk to me. We could, we, you could ask me this on the show if you want to. It's funny, you know.

12:38Jawad MirYeah, please do.

12:38Joseph McBride'Cause your mother, your mother knows all the really bad stories about…

12:42Jawad MirYeah

12:42Joseph McBride... About you know? What you have under your bed and stuff and... But I interviewed his father, which was more important to me, because his father had never been interviewed before, and he was a fascinating man. And I got a really good interview with him before s… Steven didn't even know I was gonna, talk to his father, and then he told his father not to talk to me anymore. But other than that, he,.. If people called Spielberg's office, they were told that, I was kosher, which I thought was very nice. So he kinda helped. Actually, he was one of the more helpful, biographical subjects I've had, because he didn't stand in the way, and he said I was kosher, and so people talked to me, and, you know. Not everybody would talk to me, but, you know.

13:28Jawad MirYeah.

13:29Joseph McBrideI talked to over 300 people.

13:31Jawad MirI think as an artist he probably understands that, but at the same time as an individual, he also wants to make sure that... I mean, like anybody else, right? Like, we would want to be like, "Okay, you shouldn't speak to that person if they're gonna ask me questions."

13:44Joseph McBrideYeah.

13:44Jawad MirAnd, I mean, he's a different type of a director and a filmmaker than, let's say, you know, like for example, Elton John had a, I think it was a movie that was made on him, Rocketman

13:56Joseph McBrideYeah

13:56Jawad Mir... That just recently came out, and he said in the interview that, "My whole thing was that you can ask me whatever you want, and I'll put it, put it out there." And I think it's more about a personality thing, right? Elton John is more of a…

14:08Joseph McBrideYeah

14:08Jawad Mir... Extrovert and Spielberg is more of an introvert.

14:10Joseph McBrideYeah.

14:11Jawad MirBut

14:11Joseph McBrideWell, and Spielberg is a control freak, and I'm a control freak, you know.

14:15Jawad MirExactly.

14:15Joseph McBrideIn other words, we both like to really control our work, and it's two…

14:18Jawad MirYeah

14:18Joseph McBride... Control freaks colliding.

14:20Jawad MirAbsolutely.

14:20Joseph McBrideBut I'm told by a director friend of mine who worked for Spielberg that he likes my book very much, which I thought was nice, you know. It's actually the only biography of him aside from the childr… there are many children's biographies that are, you know, kind of shallow, but it's, mine is the only, regular biography that is sympathetic. The o… other ones are negative. They attack him, you know?

14:45Jawad MirYeah.

14:46Joseph McBrideExcept for To… Tony Crowley did a little, biography way back in the '70s, I believe, or '80s, and it was a short book, but it was pretty good. It just didn't have a lot of interviews and a lot of research that I…

15:01Jawad MirOkay

15:01Joseph McBride... I wanna... I had to kinda invent the whole field of s… Spielberg studies, because nobody had done the research before, you know? So the great thing was, I spent a lot of time on his childhood, because it's so formative, and, I interviewed all these kids who worked with him on his amateur films, which was a wonderful story that nobody had ever done.

15:22Jawad MirOh, you did?

15:23Joseph McBrideYeah.

15:23Jawad MirThat's wonderful.

15:23Joseph McBrideSo, I mean, I covered the same ground that Fabelmans is covering, you know? And

15:29Jawad MirNice

15:29Joseph McBride... It's, it was great, because they all told me, you know, "We've been waiting 30 years for somebody to ring the doorbell and, ask us to talk about Steven," and they all had great stories, you know. It's a wonderful story of a kid teaching himself to be a filmmaker, you know?

15:44Jawad MirYeah. And th… and that's... You m… I mean, you mentioned about, like, negative portrayal of, Spielberg or, let's say, others, and, I fi… I find that sometimes, like I read this book, The Dream Team, which was about DreamWorks, and we, I actually spoke to the gentleman too. And it was... It's one thing to talk about how things happened to people and why things are not successful, by empathizing with the, with the character or protagonist. But then another thing just to completely write out, attack, like, which a lot of media, journalists do as well, not just in entertainment…

16:23Joseph McBrideYeah

16:24Jawad Mir... In every sector. So it's good. I think with your book, I remember, like, my world, I knew about Spielberg's films, like, from 1993 to 1997, but I didn't know about his life… ... At all until I read your book…

16:40Joseph McBrideOh

16:40Jawad Mir... When it came out. Yeah.

16:41Joseph McBrideOkay.

16:42Jawad MirSo, which was, which was certainly an eye-opener, and I'm, I haven't honestly s… I think you have had couple of, updated editions, right, that came out, 2000…

16:50Joseph McBrideYes. The last one was the third edition in 2012.

16:57Jawad Mir'12, yeah.

16:58Joseph McBrideIt's…

16:58Jawad MirAnd then…

16:58Joseph McBrideI brought it up to the point of him doing Lincoln, right up to Lincoln, you know?

17:03Jawad MirYeah. Speaking of, you've mentioned Fabelmans, which I, which I know you have seen. You were at the test screening.

17:10Joseph McBrideOh, no, I wasn't there, but I have…

17:11Jawad MirOh, you weren't

17:12Joseph McBride... A s… a source who reported to me on the test screening. I could talk about that.

17:15Jawad MirOkay. All right.

17:16Joseph McBrideAre we

17:16Jawad MirLet me get the other thing

17:17Joseph McBride... Are we rolling yet, or are we just chatting?

17:20Jawad MirNo, we're recording. I'll take this part out. Don't worry.

17:23Joseph McBrideOh, okay. Yeah.

17:24Jawad MirYeah. I'll take that…

17:25Joseph McBrideYeah

17:25Jawad Mir... Part out.

17:26Joseph McBrideYeah.

17:26Jawad MirBut yeah, Fabelmans, from what you have been told by your source who saw the test screening that happened I think in New York last week, w… was it two weeks ago?

17:37Joseph McBrideYeah. New J… New Jersey

17:39Jawad MirNew Jersey

17:39Joseph McBride... Back at the a… toward the end of July.

17:42Jawad MirRight. From what you heard, does it cover... Like, I know Spielberg has said it's loosely based on his childhood. But…

17:51Joseph McBrideYeah. It's kind of s… semi-fictional, but, it's semi-autobiographical is the best way to put it. And I was thinking it reminds me of The 400 Blows, the Truffaut film, because Truffaut, changed the name of his character and changed the time period and changed some of the circumstances, but it's really autobiographical, and… Truffaut was Spielberg's favorite director when he was young, and then he worked with him in Close Encounters, so they have an affinity.

18:19Jawad MirYep. Yep.

18:19Joseph McBrideBut The Fabelmans is about,.. It starts in New Jersey, where Spielberg lived. He was born in Cincinnati, but it begins in New Jersey when he was a small boy, and it begins with him being taken to see The Greatest Show on Earth, the Cecil B. DeMille film…

18:37Jawad MirRight, with the fire and…

18:37Joseph McBride... Which he says was the first movie he ever saw. He actually saw that in Philadelphia. I'm not sure if they made it, that scene in Philadelphia or New Jersey, but it... They lived right across the river. And, my source tells me that's how it starts. And, he said he was confused by it because his father t… said, "We're going to see a circus movie," and he thought they were going to see lions and, you know…

19:04Jawad MirElephants and…

19:05Joseph McBride... Acrobats and stuff, and…

19:06Jawad MirYeah

19:06Joseph McBride... And instead there was this curtain that opened and it was a flat screen. He was in… initially disappointed, but then he got into the movie and he got very excited and he was very excited by the terrific train crash sequence.

19:20Jawad MirI was gonna bring that up, that how he... You know, the cutting of it, and made him realize that how you can build suspense.

19:26Joseph McBrideYeah, so he went out and he started crashing his toy trains.

19:31Jawad MirYeah.

19:31Joseph McBrideAnd then his father said, this is a well-known story, that his father said, "Steven, if you keep doing that, I'll take away your toy trains." So Steven had the bright idea of filming it because one thing I discovered…

19:42Jawad MirYeah

19:42Joseph McBride... That nobody knew, his father, Arnold, was a, an amateur filmmaker from way back.

19:48Jawad MirHe had an eight millimeters camera, I think

19:50Joseph McBrideYeah, he was taking home movies…

19:52Jawad MirYeah

19:52Joseph McBride... And stuff, and, he apparently wasn't particularly good at it, but he was, he was into it. Arnold is a very, technical guy. He was one of the, inventors of computers. He had patents for computers. He was a pioneer. He worked for RCA and other companies, and, just a wonderful man, died, just a few years ago at

20:16Jawad MirYeah

20:16Joseph McBride... Well over 100. And…

20:18Jawad Mir100 years.

20:19Joseph McBrideYeah, so he did all kinds of fascinating technical things. So a… among them were movies. And the kids who made S… Steven's early films with him told me they... It was this father-son hobby, too. This is another big revelation in my book. 'Cause when my, I did my book, St… Steven had been saying for years that he and his father didn't get along. Well, I found out that they were very close, in his youth, and, Steven worked with his father on the early films. And one of the kids said, "I didn't know who was really directing the film, whether it was Steven or Arnold," the father, you know? And, he worked with him all the way through, on Firelight, his first feature film he made when he was…

21:02Joseph McBride... 16.

21:03Jawad MirYeah.

21:03Joseph McBrideAnd then, they formed, they even formed a little company called Playmount Productions when Steven and... Another discovery I made, for example, nobody had ever gotten the divorce records. The divorce of his parents was such an important, part of his story.

21:17Jawad MirRight.

21:17Joseph McBrideIt's been reenacted many times in his films. And…

21:20Jawad MirYeah

21:20Joseph McBride... In The Fabelmans, that's a big part of the story is the parents are getting divorced, and the mother is having an affair with, a family friend, which really happened, and I had that story in my book. I got the story. Bernie Adler was a good friend of theirs, and she had a romance with him. And Arnold was kind of a self-confessed workaholic, and, he was, you know, not around a lot. So, Leah, Steven's mother, had this romance. And I found out at the time Steven blamed his mother. He didn't quite know what was happening.

21:59Jawad MirYeah.

22:00Joseph McBrideAnd then later he became estranged from his father. But in the divorce papers, it said Arnold got the custody of Steven, which was interesting. And they moved to LA together, and Steven, went to college at, Cal State Long Beach because he was rejected by USC and UCLA.

22:18Jawad MirYeah.

22:18Joseph McBrideWhich sh… shows you how colleges should be more open to creative young people.

22:25Jawad MirYeah.

22:25Joseph McBrideBut anyway, Steven was living with his dad, and then they started, having some friction, over various things, and that's when the trouble began. But they had a little company together to make some films. And, so Arnold was supportive of Steven's hobby, and he worked on Firelight, et cetera, and he worked on the, s… all the little films St… Steven made before that. And I chronicled all that in my book, and I interviewed dozens of, people who were kids working on those films. It was just really wonderful to see the evolution of an artist at a time when there weren't too many, young people getting into films, you know, 'cause, when I was,.. I used to read Variety when I was young.

23:10Joseph McBrideAnd I would find out in Variety there was this 21 or 22-year-old kid making films in Hollywood, TV films. And, I thought, "Wow, that's amazing. I should interview this guy." And when I went to Hollywood in '71 to be doing more shooting on the W… Welles film, I thought, "I'll look up Steven Spielberg." And I could have called him and gone and interviewed him, and I wish I had, but I was just too busy. But I was aware of him, and then I saw S… Something Evil on TV, and the opening is very spectacular. And I, then…

23:44Jawad MirYeah

23:44Joseph McBride... I thought, "Wow, this guy really knows how to make a film." So he was on my radar. But, anyway, so I've, I've had a great time, tracing, you know, in great depth his youth and his path to… ... To becoming a filmmaker. I spent a lot of time on his TV work, too, which is very interesting. Hadn't been covered much. I interviewed people who worked with him on television. And

24:08Jawad MirHe worked on, Colum… I think he directed an episode of Columbo, right? And was it,.. Who was the actress that gave him a hard time, the older actress? Crawford something?

24:20Joseph McBrideOh, no. Joan Crawford, the first TV show he did was with Joan Crawford. It was called Eyes.

24:25Jawad MirEyes.

24:26Joseph McBrideIt's a, it was a production of Night Gallery, which

24:29Jawad MirYeah

24:29Joseph McBride... Rod Serling had this show after the Twilight Zone.

24:32Jawad MirRight.

24:32Joseph McBrideActually, she treated him very well. He, she was kind of shocked at first to be given this 21, 20, I guess he was 22 when he made that film. But she went along with him and she realized he was talented, and to her credit she treated him well.

24:49Jawad MirOh, okay.

24:49Joseph McBrideBut the c… the crew guys didn't treat him well. You know, back in those days, all the crew guys were these old men who had been around for a long time, and they were very…

24:57Jawad MirLong time

24:57Joseph McBride... Conservative and, h… hidebound and they were giving him a difficult time and, it was tough.

25:05Jawad MirHe…

25:05Joseph McBrideAnd he had to work under really tight schedules, et cetera. But he had the…

25:11Jawad MirAnd…

25:11Joseph McBrideSorry.

25:11Jawad MirSorry, go on. No, please go on.

25:13Joseph McBrideWell, he had this powerful patron, Sid Sheinberg, who was…

25:17Jawad MirYeah

25:17Joseph McBride... Head of tel… head of TV at the time. Then he became head of motion pictures. But h… Steven's mentor, and I, and how he got into films, is another story that had not been told correctly. He claims, and people still believe this story, that he got off a tour bus, you know, and wandered around, and then the next day he showed up with a briefcase and a suit…

25:38Joseph McBride... And opened a empty office. And that's just... I interviewed a woman who worked with him there, and she said that's horseshit. What he actually did was h… he had a family connection. This is what he was covering up. His father knew a guy at Universal who was in charge of computers, and his father called this guy and said, "Could you help my son?" And he said, "Well, the guy he should talk to is Chuck Silvers, who's the head librarian of Universal, film librarian."

26:06Jawad MirRight.

26:07Joseph McBrideAnd he's a very nice man, wonderful man, and I interviewed him. And, Steven met him and showed him some of his amateur films and, Chuck was immediately impressed. He recognized he was in the presence of a really talented guy. He said it was like meeting the young Leonardo da Vinci…

26:22Jawad MirDa Vinci

26:22Joseph McBride... Which I thought was amazing. And, Steven was making Firelight, and he told him about it. And so he gave Steven a job in summer of '64, when he was still in high school. For the summer he was an intern, just an unpaid intern in Chuck's office. He was running errands basically. He would carry, you know, invoices around to Technicolor Building and different offices and things like that. But it gave him the free run of the studio. See, he didn't crash the studio gates. I knew that was a false story, 'cause I used to go to Universal when I was a reporter, and you couldn't get on the lot without a pass. You know, they had security guards.

27:05Jawad MirYou know…

27:06Joseph McBrideIt was…

27:06Jawad Mir... It's, I'm so glad you mentioned that, because, that is something that is on, has been on the internet since the internet's been around, right? Like the '90s. And I heard that story several times, and I ended up not digging into it deeper. I thought that was it. And I used to wonder, like, was it that easy to walk over…

27:30Joseph McBrideNo

27:31Jawad Mir... Into the studio and, you know, like and…

27:32Joseph McBrideI knew, I knew it wasn't. It was tough, you know. And especially Universal was a very, controlled studio. They called it the Black Tower, that imposing building. It was kind of like a…

27:42Jawad MirYeah

27:43Joseph McBride... Very regimented place. But, so Steven was roaming the streets of Universal, and he would, go on sets and he'd watch people shoot films. And on one set he encountered John Cassavetes, who was acting in a TV show, and Cassavetes took a shine to him. And, he said, "Tell me some directions and I'll do them." You know, and so he let Spielberg kind of direct him in the show. And, they became friends, and Steven worked on Faces as a production assistant, for example.

28:15Jawad MirYeah.

28:15Joseph McBrideAnd then he would, he got thrown off a Hitchcock set of Torn Curtain. Hitchcock didn't want him looking at the set. Later, when he, Hitchcock made his last film, Family Plot, Steven wanted to go on the set of that and Spiel… Hitchcock said no. Now, I wangled a w… my way onto the set f… of Family Plot for three days, but Spielberg wasn't allowed. But Hitchcock would sit there. Jaws had just come out, and he would sit in his chair, and every day at noon somebody would bring him the reports on how Jaws was doing at the box office, and he was really excited because he was, he and his wife were the third-biggest shock… stockholders in Universal. But poor Steven was not allowed to watch him. But, Steven also did things like he would, he would see people in the streets. He would see Cary Grant, and he'd walk up and say, "Hi, can we have lunch?" And Cary Grant said sure, you know. And he was a likable young fellow, and people took a shine to him. And, Ch… Charlton Heston took him to lunch, Rock Hudson.

29:16Joseph McBrideYou know, he thought Heston was kind of condescending and arrogant. And so years later, Heston wanted to play the lead role in Jaws, and Steven had the pleasure of saying no to him. He…... Kind of got back at him for being kind of haughty. But anyway, so the way Steven got into films was not the way he portrays. And, but the story, that's... Directors all have what I call the creation myth of how they got started, and it's usually fabricated. And in my biographies I dispel the myths. You know, like Frank Capra's story of how…

29:52Jawad MirYeah

29:52Joseph McBride... He got into films is just totally, wrong. And, you know, it's, it's usually to make themselves seem like budding geniuses even more than they were. And he was, he was a budding genius, but he enhanced it. So anyway, I did a tremendous amount of research. And then I, did a lot of research on the films. Like Jaws, for example, I had a really in-depth, series of interviews with all kinds of people who worked on the film, and I got… Beyond the accepted versions of what happened on that film, and I really go into depth on how that got made. The problem I had on that book, when you're doing a living subject, people are more cautious. And, even though Spielberg's office said people could talk to me, a lot of actors especially didn't respond to my requests.

30:42Jawad MirYeah.

30:42Joseph McBrideLike Richard Dreyfuss, for example, and Liam Neeson, and, you know, so I couldn't get to some of the people. I think they're afraid, actors as a, as a group are, tend to be more timid because they're worried about jobs, and they're worried about working with the guy if they say something he doesn't like. But the farther back in time it went, people who worked on TV shows and early films with S… Steven were more than happy to talk because they wanted to tell the world how they contributed to his work. You know, people who worked on Duel…

31:15Jawad MirYeah

31:15Joseph McBride... And things like that, you know?

31:16Jawad MirI think that's, I think that's also true for any profession because, and maybe, you know, for yourself and for me too, is like when if it's something in the recent past, you don't wanna talk about it, you know, publicly or privately. But when it goes history, like, you know, we always look at our childhood, "Oh, you know, when I was a kid, I used to do this, and I, and I used to do that," but we would never say, "Oh, you know, last year I did this," you know?

31:37Joseph McBrideYeah. Yeah. The more recent it is, the more touchy it is.

31:41Jawad MirIt is. It is.

31:41Joseph McBrideBut with Capra, I interviewed, 175 people, you know, all the way back to people who knew him when he was a boy in Los Angeles. And, most of them had never been interviewed before, too. And one thing I did in my biographies that had not been done in film biographies before that, I interviewed so-called ordinary people, not just stars. Because film biographies before that poi… time, they'd interview, like, 10 or 15 movie stars and directors or whatever, and that was it. But I interviewed, I was inspired by Robert Caro, who wrote the biographies of Lyndon Johnson. He's, he's on the…

32:18Joseph McBride... Final volume now. And he interviewed all kinds of regular people in Texas who were affected by Johnson, for example, and it really gives a sense of, you know, who this guy was and what milieu he came out of. And so…

32:32Jawad MirYeah

32:32Joseph McBride... With the living subject, I was able to interview, school teachers, his co… his Cub Scout and Boy Scout leaders, and his babysitters, and his neighbors, you know, adults who knew him as well as the kids. And it was a goldmine of stuff that had never been tapped. But I had a great time interviewing all those folks, and very few of them said no. And, so I really presented this portrait. I'm, I'm fascinated by how artists begin and how they evolve, and this was a great evolution of a child.

33:05Jawad MirIt's a arc, right? It's a…

33:07Joseph McBrideYeah

33:07Jawad Mir... It's certainly an arc. And I find it interesting you talked about Alfred Hitchcock, and to me it resonated with the story of Jaws. You said that how Spielberg wanted to be on the set of Hitchck… Hitchcock's film, but he never allowed Spielberg to be.

33:22Jawad MirAnd the same thing w… in Jaws, the shark, Bruce… ... Which was never working, but it kind of played in its favor, the film's favor. So I wonder if, I wonder, again, this is just a speculation, I wonder if Spielberg had been on the set of Hitchcock movie, would he be the filmmaker that he is today? Not that he won't be as good, but it's just that enticement of not ha… you know, that ability of, not ability, that element of not knowing what your hero is, how he works on the set.

33:53Jawad MirMaybe that made him, you know. That's, again, this is just my theory. I'm not an expert by any means.

34:00Joseph McBrideWell, he did, he did see a little bit of Torn Curtain, so, but he was in the background, you know. And when I was on the set of Family Plot, I got very close to the shooting. Like, I was in the garage set when they were, they had kidnapped a bishop, and he was in the trunk of this car, and they were putting a needle into him. And I was standing right next to Hitchcock and the cinematographer, and Hitchcock got all excited and started making up shots. He made up seven shots in a row, and I'm writing all this down. And I found the notes yesterday. I was going through my storage. And this influenced a book called Hitchcock at Work by Bill Krohn. And he, and he found out that Hitchcock improvised a lot more than he let on. 'Cause people think he storyboarded everything, and Bill found out that's not true. He tended to storyboard action sequences and special effects sequences, but not the dialogue sequences. And like any director, he would, set up the scene and have the actors move around and then start staging it.

35:00Joseph McBrideAnd one of the best pieces of advice I heard, I interviewed Joan Darling, who's a wonderful actress who was in The Psychiatrist episode, one of, one of two that Steven directed, and she was brilliant in it, and she became a director. And she said, to me that when she directed Amazing Stories, she did a really good episode for that, she asked Steven for advice on directing. And he said, "Well, get a pair of comfortable shoes." And she said, "Okay." And then he said, "Sit down a lot. Conserve your energy." And she said, "Okay." And then she said, literally, she said, "Steven, 30 years from now, some scholar's gonna come around and ask me what you told me. Is that all you're gonna say?" And he said, "Well, what do you wanna know?" And she said, "Where do you, how do you decide where to put the camera?" Great question. And he said, "Okay. Watch where you're standing when you watch the rehearsal, and that's where you should put the camera."

35:57Jawad MirAh.

35:58Joseph McBrideI quote that to students a lot. That's a great piece of advice.

36:01Jawad MirThat's great advice.

36:03Joseph McBrideYeah. So that's what a director does. Hitchcock, I saw him do that, and Spielberg does that. And, that allows the actors some freedom, you know, within your visual concept. You…

36:13Jawad MirYeah

36:13Joseph McBride... You discover things with them, and then you, stage it accordingly. And, Spielberg has a tendency I noticed, and he talks about it now, of doing three or four shots in one. He likes to do long takes… not a, not terribly long like some directors do, but, you know, fairly involved takes where, you know, there'll be a medium shot, it'll move into a close-up then pan over and move in…

36:38Jawad MirYeah

36:38Joseph McBride... Pull back and, you know, y… i… instead of just cut. He does that, and he's very big with, film geography. You always know where you are in a Spielberg film, which is not…

36:49Jawad MirYeah

36:49Joseph McBride... True most films today.

36:51Jawad MirWell, the way his films are, I was talking about this to, the director of, the House of Sand and Fog, which is like a DreamWorks film, Vadim Perelman. And with Spielberg, the way... There are other filmmakers like that, too, but Spe… I know Spielberg more than I know any other filmmaker, is you cannot, even though his, you know, his, the way he's acting, his per… his characters put the performance on, the cinematographer moves the camera, when you're watching it, the film, you're so much into it that no matter how hard you try to appreciate a great shot, it's like invisible camera, right? Like, you just don't see…

37:30Joseph McBrideYeah

37:31Jawad Mir... Y… you can't, you can't appr… not that you don't appreciate the shot because it's not good, but because you're just so into it. And I think one of the longest takes he's done, to my knowledge, which was not the intention at the production time, you've seen the movie The Post, right? With Tom Hanks…

37:45Joseph McBrideSure

37:45Jawad Mir... Meryl Streep. So the opening, was quite long, them sitting in the restaurant. And he had done, like, coverage, all of that during the production. But, and I think it was a great decision, obviously, I mean, he made that it really engrave, pulled you in to those two characters'…

38:05Jawad Mir... Chemistry and their arc right in the beginning. Because they go back and forth throughout the film, their form of decision-making, whether one is right or the wrong. And that was, and I honestly didn't even pay attention that until I read it, that it was, like, a one-take shot. So that's what, that's what's so genius about that, right? And…

38:25Joseph McBrideYeah, there are…

38:25Jawad Mir... They're not just doing it as a gimmick.

38:28Joseph McBrideYeah, no, I love directors who do that. George Cupid is another one. He has shots that go on for several minutes. Hitchcock famously did Rope in a series of long takes. Orson Welles has done some of the greatest long takes in film history.

38:42Jawad MirScorsese.

38:42Joseph McBrideMax Ophüls, Scorsese, yeah. ... But Spielberg likes to, that, you're right, it immerses you into the scene and, you know, he is a somewhat flamboyant director, but you do kind of forget the camera when you're,.. I mean, he's very complex with his mise en scene, and most viewers are not conscious of that. But he,.. I'll tell you a funny story. This is, I f… I found this out from one of the TV people that on his, Columbo show…

39:16Joseph McBride... One of the actors, and I won't identify who it is because it's…

39:20Jawad MirThat's fine

39:20Joseph McBride... It's embarrassing. Steven had set up a very long take for the first, thing in the morning. They were gonna shoot a scene in a kitchen, and it was gonna be this long, complicated take. And the actor arrived drunk. I'll just say s… it wasn't Jack Cassidy. People assume it was, but he…

39:39Joseph McBride... He was perfectly okay during the shooting. But this actor arrived drunk and was stumbling into the furniture and stuff. And Steven called the producers and said, "What am I gonna do?" And they said, "Well..." He wanted to recast the part, you know, run out in the streets of Universal, find another actor. But it's, it's not that easy. So they said, "You gotta do what you gotta do," you know? So he restaged the scene with a whole lot of cuts to make it possible for the actor to do the scene in short takes, but he was disappointed. But even then, and then I saw Marcus Welby TV show he did with a very long shot, moving around with a moving camera and stuff. And, you know, TV shows back then were pretty formulaic and he would break…

40:20Joseph McBride... The formula, and that's why he had some problems with some of the older guys at the studio. But Sid Sheinberg, being his mentor, really b… believed in Steven. And the way he got to be Sheinberg's protege was Chuck Silvers kept telling him, "Steven, the eight millimeter and 16 millimeter films you're making, nobody will watch them except me. You know, in Hollywood, they're very biased against that kind of film because they think it's…

40:46Jawad MirYeah

40:46Joseph McBride... Amateur time." So he said, "They're not gonna watch the film until you make 35 millimeter professional looking film." And so he found a guy named Dennis Hoffman, who was a friend of... Julie Raymond was, Sid Sheinberg's assistant, and Steven was sitting. He didn't have an office, she told me. He was sitting in a chair next to her desk. That was his office. And she would hand him these invoices, and he'd go running for them. And she's the one who said, the story about him having his own office was horseshit. But anyway, she knew this guy, Dennis Hoffman, who was, he managed a rock group called October Country, and he had a little money, and he had a little studio where he rented the studio out for commercials, but he wanted to be a producer. And so Steven, went to him and, Dennis said, "You know, I'll make a short film for you as long as it doesn't have dialogue, because it's too expensive to do that, and you can use…

41:43Joseph McBride... My rock group for the soundtrack." So he wrote Amblin, which is a beautiful film.

41:49Jawad MirOh, I love it.

41:49Joseph McBrideWhich he... Yeah, it's, it's wonderful. He doesn't let people see it, unfortunately, you know.

41:54Jawad MirIt's on, it's on YouTube.

41:56Joseph McBrideYeah, it pops up on YouTube in a very…

41:58Jawad MirYeah

41:58Joseph McBride... Bad print. You know, I have a…

41:59Jawad MirYeah

41:59Joseph McBride... Pretty good, pretty good copy of it myself. But it's a lovely film. It's very poetic, and it's kinda like a Truffaut film, and it's bittersweet and says a lot about the period. He thinks it's, a cliched film about the period, but I think actually it conveys a lot about that period of the hippie movement. The young guy's kind of fake hippie conning this young girl. And

42:24Jawad MirWell…

42:24Joseph McBride... Anyways, s… so what happened was, Silvers saw this film, and he was knocked out by it, and he showed it to all the other editors at Universal, and they all were weeping. He said all these old guys were crying. And one, and one guy said, "It's the perfect motion picture." So, Sheinberg, s… Silvers thought, "How can I help this kid?" And he said, "I think he should go into TV because he can get a lot of work." You know, you couldn't just jump in and do a feature. But…

42:52Jawad MirYeah

42:52Joseph McBride... He p… he told Sheinberg's projectionist to put on Amblin at the end of the rushes every night. He watched the rushes at 9:00, and he put on Amblin, which is 26 minutes long.

43:02Jawad MirYeah.

43:03Joseph McBrideAnd the next morning, Chuck Silvers came to his office. He had eight phone messages from Sid Sheinberg. "Who is Steven Spielberg? Where is Steven Spielberg? Get me Steven Spielberg." You know, all that kind of stuff. So, Silvers called him, and Steven was staying with some relatives in LA. And he said, "Put on a suit and tie or a sport coat and tie and get over here for a meeting with Sheinberg today, and call him sir because he calls everybody sir, and be very polite." And so he went in to see Sheinberg, and Sheinberg told him how impressed he was by the film. He later said, he was impressed not only by this young director but also by his choice of actors. That was a good comment, 'cause Spielberg's most underrated talent is he's a really terrific director of actors.

43:49Jawad MirYeah.

43:49Joseph McBrideI interviewed a guy named Anson Williams, who was a young actor on one of the TV shows and later became a director. And he said, "Any director can get a great performance out of Al Pacino, but only Steven Spielberg can get a great performance out of a rubber puppet."

44:05Jawad MirYeah.

44:05Joseph McBrideWhich I thought was a great comment.

44:07Jawad MirWell, you look at his films, right, like ET, you look at, Empire of the Sun, Christian Bale. Now, he's a…

44:14Joseph McBrideOh

44:14Jawad Mir... You know, back to nobody.

44:16Joseph McBrideYeah.

44:16Jawad MirYou look at so many of his films, even Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List, I don't think he was Ralph Fiennes at the time. Like, he probably had done some stuff like theater stuff. But to me personally, it's not just even actors. It's also directors. His biggest dis… discovery was Sam Mendes, who…

44:35Jawad Mir... Directed American Beauty. And he actually, if I, if I... If this story is correct, I mean, who... From what I remember, that I read, he watches a lot of theater in the UK.

44:47Joseph McBrideYeah.

44:47Jawad MirSo he saw a play that Sam had directed, and American Beauty was in his possession. And he went to him and said, "Here you go." And that, the way Sam Mendes made that film, not a single scene shot was cut, like, you know, in the test screenings.

45:04Joseph McBrideYeah.

45:04Jawad MirIt was just spot on 100%. So he has that talent of spotting talent, which I think is…

45:08Joseph McBrideYeah, he does. And yeah, War Horse, he went to see the play, which is very interesting…

45:12Jawad MirYeah

45:12Joseph McBride... And, very stylized. And he thought this would make a good film, and he made the film. But so anyway, Sheinberg, you know, said, "Sir, would you like to make films?" And Steven said, "Well, you know, I'm a third-year student at Cal State Long Beach," blah. And he said, "Sir, do you wanna make films, or do you wanna finish college?" And Steven said, "I wanna fin… I wanna make films, sir," you know. And so he signed him to a seven-year contract, and Steven dropped out of college, which his father was not happy with. But, he went back many years later and finished college to kind of give an example to his children.

45:49Jawad MirYeah.

45:49Joseph McBrideBecause when he would say to them, "Go to college," they'd say, "Well, Dad, you didn't finish college." And so he got his degree at Cal State Long Beach, and he turned in Schindler's List as his film project. And, he did a... I guess Jaws was his paper on ichthyology.

46:06Jawad MirThat's right. That's right.

46:07Joseph McBrideBut he did, he did some papers. He did a paper on the California coastline and things like that. He did some work, you know. But anyway, so Sheinberg then signed him to this contract, and Steven, after a while, resented it because, he was kind of frustrated giving these assignments. He learned a lot. You can... I've seen almost all the TV work, and he learned a lot from it. For example, he did the first Columbo.

46:29Jawad MirYeah.

46:29Joseph McBrideIt wasn't the first one to be shot, but it was the first one that aired because they thought it was so good. Levinson and Link, the creators, said it was their favorite of all the Columbos. It's just wonderful. It's about

46:43Jawad MirYeah, I have... I've seen it. I have the episode…

46:45Joseph McBrideYeah

46:45Jawad Mir... As well.

46:46Joseph McBrideMurder by the Book. You can get that one on DVD.

46:49Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

46:49Joseph McBrideI wish there was a box set, by the way, of all of Steven's TV work. They should put that out. And there should be... I've also lobbied in my books for Steven to put out his amateur films in a box set on DVD, that would be wonderful, called Steve Spielberg's Home Movies.

47:05Jawad MirYeah. That would be great. And that's another thing that I think, I hope that he does, which he's never done. He's the only director who doesn't do a commentary track on DVDs, which is…

47:12Joseph McBrideRight. He doesn't believe in that.

47:14Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

47:14Joseph McBrideBut he does all these elaborate, documentaries on each film, which is good.

47:19Jawad MirYeah, true.

47:19Joseph McBrideHe docu… documents the shooting.

47:21Jawad MirYeah.

47:21Joseph McBrideAnd they do books, making of books. So he controls all that. But, it would be... I understand the commentary thing because, you know, John…

47:29Jawad MirYeah, so do I. Yeah

47:30Joseph McBride... John Ford, who is my favorite director, I interviewed him my first week in Hollywood, and he's almost impossible to interview. I did the last... I came on the last day of his career. He was realizing his career was over that day because a project just fell through, and he announced his retirement during my interview. And he kind of stonewalled me a lot. He said a few good things, and it was very valuable for me to spend an hour with him as a future biographer. But he never told people what he intended, you know? And I was frustrated by that at the time. But now I really respect that because he wanted the public to make up our own minds about his films. Yeah.

48:09Jawad MirAnd I couldn't agree more. That's... I remember when I first learned about the DVD thing, I was in the same position as you were. But, you know, about seven, eight years ago, I realized that, yeah, it's up to the people to figure out and make their own interpretations, about…

48:25Joseph McBrideI think that shows respect for the audience, right?

48:27Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Respect for the audience, and at the same time, you don't want…... People, you lose that element of, you start thinking the film is a film instead of being a somewhat of a close to reality thing. Like, it becomes more unreal, at…

48:42Jawad Mir... I feel.

48:44Joseph McBrideYeah.

48:44Jawad MirGo on, sir.

48:47Joseph McBrideWell, yeah, and, yeah, I was just gonna say one more thing. Steven became very friendly with Stanley Kubrick. I went to Kubrick's memorial service at the Directors Guild, and Steven got up and gave a really interesting talk about his friendship with him, and nobody really knew about it. He had met him a few times in England at his home. He was, you know, a recluse kind of guy. I mean…

49:06Jawad MirHe was

49:06Joseph McBride... He worked out of his home. It was kind of an ideal setup. He made his films right around his home area. But, Steven was on the phone with him a lot, and also they had a fax, hookup. Kate Capshaw finally told Steven, "I will not allow the fax machine in the bedroom," because Kubrick would send faxes at 2:00 in the morning and stuff, you know?

49:29Jawad MirYeah.

49:29Joseph McBrideBut Kubrick advised him at one point, he said, "Never tell the press what your intentions are in making a film because that's all they will say about the film. You know, they won't think for themselves." And Steven has a… has adhered to that. That's kinda like Ford. The only time he made an exception was with Munich, which I think he did because it's a very fraught political issue, you know, the Palestinians and the Israelis.

49:53Jawad MirYeah.

49:53Joseph McBrideAnd he gave an interview to Richard Schickel for a Time Magazine cover, and he explained his point of view and, very clearly explained his point of view, and still he got attacked by, you know, people on different sides. But, he is, he's one of these guys. He's a wonderful interview subject. He's very introspective and thoughtful and, doesn't just tell the same old stories most of the time and... But he doesn't tell you, "Here is what I intended, guys," and, you know.

50:23Joseph McBrideI can tell you more about The Fabelmans based on my source, but, anyway, we're, we're having a wonderful time navigating different parts…

50:31Jawad MirNo, this is great

50:32Joseph McBride... Or parts of…

50:32Jawad MirThis is, fantastic. This is

50:35Joseph McBrideYeah

50:35Jawad Mir... This is super cool, and I, y… I'm glad you mentioned Munich. Munich is an amazing film, especially for me when I was watching it, I still remember that scene on the, stairway…

50:55Joseph McBrideOh, yeah

50:55Jawad Mir... Between the Palestinian and, w…

50:59Joseph McBrideThe Israeli

51:00Jawad MirEric Bana

51:00Joseph McBride... Yeah. Yeah

51:01Jawad Mir... Eric Bana, who plays the Mossad agent.

51:03Joseph McBrideYeah.

51:03Jawad MirAnd they have this conversation, and the great thing of Tony Kushner, he wrote the script based on the book, but the great thing about that conversation was it wasn't I am right or you're right or I'm wrong. It was just a very organic conversation that two normal people would have, and there was no conclusion in that…

51:24Joseph McBrideYeah

51:24Jawad Mir... Scene as to who was right.

51:25Joseph McBrideYes.

51:25Jawad MirAnd that to me was Munich. Like, that, the way they did it and also at the end, you know, as the, as the story moved forward, at… it came out five years after 9/11. So that's like how many... I don't remember the exact line, but it was like, you know, "When we kill, when we kill some, there are gonna be more who are gonna get…

51:45Joseph McBrideRight

51:45Jawad Mir... Inspired. What's the point of doing that?"

51:48Joseph McBrideRight.

51:48Jawad MirSo it was w… it was a great study of human condition that I thought was amazing, and I don't think it was appreciated that film was very underappreciated. I genuinely…

52:01Joseph McBrideYeah

52:01Jawad Mir... Feel it was under…... From many sides. And I think when you, when you offend all the sides, then you've done something right.

52:08Joseph McBrideThat's true. I agree with you. Yeah, no, it was a very complex and subtle film, and well-written, as you say, and it shows you that both sides have some points in their favor, and it's a very difficult situation that's not easy to solve and may never be solved. And it's a very honest thing. At the end of the film, he shows the World Trade Center buildings with s… CGI in the background.

52:32Joseph McBrideAnd, most, a lot of his films from, 2001 onward were about two, about 9/11 an… in effect and what it did to our country. You know, Minority Report and

52:45Jawad MirYeah, that's right

52:45Joseph McBride... The film with Tom Hanks, the one where he's…

52:49Jawad MirTerminal

52:49Joseph McBride... Terminal, you know, is very much about civil liberties. And, War of the Worlds is about imagining what it would be like…

52:56Jawad MirThat was his…

52:56Joseph McBride... If our country was invaded. Like, if you're an Iraqi, you know, what's it like to be…

53:01Jawad MirYeah

53:01Joseph McBride... Invaded? You know, and, so he was really getting political, and, he's, he still is. I just watched Lincoln again last night for pleasure, and it's such a good film about American politics. It's very complex. And also it shows you how a, an idealistic President Lincoln ending slavery, he had to result, re… resort to some chicanery and some semi-corrupt methods to get it passed and persuasion. It really shows you how the political system works, and…

53:31Jawad MirYeah

53:32Joseph McBride... Demystified Lincoln. A really good film. Tony Kushner again. Kushner wrote The Fabelmans also.

53:38Jawad MirHe's been working with him since the, since Munich, I think.

53:42Joseph McBrideYeah.

53:42Jawad MirAlso.

53:42Joseph McBrideWith a couple of exceptions, but he wrote…

53:45Jawad MirThat's true

53:45Joseph McBride... West Side Story, et cetera, which is a good film, I think. But he's, he's a very sophisticated filmmaker. And, you know, when I did the book, what, the trigger for me finally doing a book was I heard he was gonna make Schindler's List, and I thought for years that was kind of a litmus test o… of his seriousness if he tackled that very difficult subject because Sheinberg bought the rights to the book in '82…

54:13Jawad Mir'82

54:14Joseph McBride... From Spielberg, and Spielberg kept…

54:15Jawad MirYeah

54:15Joseph McBride... Hesitating about directing it. He didn't think he was right for it or whatever or wasn't mature enough. And he tried to get Polanski and Scorsese to make it. But he finally decided to make it, and I thought, "Okay, let's do this book." And it fortuitously, you know, took him to a new level of…

54:35Jawad MirOh, yeah

54:35Joseph McBride... Finally getting some critical respect. But people said it was his first serious,... Mature adult film, but it wasn't. I mean, you know, Sugarland Express is a serious mature adult film, and is a tragic film. But even before that, there was a psychiatrist episode I mentioned, with Joan, Darling, and Clu Gulager called Par for the Course, in which, he, Gulager is a golf professional dying of cancer. It's about a man's death and the effect on his wife. Very powerful film, great performances. And Chuck Silver is, when he saw that, he was very moved. He said, "Steven, how do you, as this young guy, know about death?" You know. And he said, "Well, when my grandfather was dying, for a year I would go and sit with him next to his bed and observe him," you know. So there are a lot, there's a lot of depth in s… even the young Spielberg that people didn't recognize. And…

55:33Joseph McBride... Close Encounters is a great film. And I mean, he made films that dealt with children, like ET, but that's also about the divorce of his parents, and it's a painful film. That's why that film was successful. I th… I think I remember Art Murphy, who was our critic at Variety, said at the time that Disney was not doing well at the time because they were stuck in the past. They were making the kind of films that Walt Disney used to make.

55:58Jawad MirYeah.

55:58Joseph McBrideAnd, Spielberg made a film about a divorced family, and Disney would not do that at the time. But Spielberg was in touch with the zeitgeist because most, half of the marriages ended in divorce, so a lot of people, it resonated with people. And, Disney was making the kind of films they made in the '50s, you know?

56:18Jawad MirYeah.

56:18Joseph McBrideAnd then Empire of the Sun is a great film. It's been more appreciated lately. It's a m… magnificent film. As you say…

56:25Jawad MirColor Purple

56:25Joseph McBride... Christian Bale gives, it's one of the greatest child performances in film history. And very deep film about war and its effect on children and other people, you know?

56:35Jawad MirWell, that I find that with Spielberg, right, that aside from having the nag of finding a talent, he also knows when the time is right to make a certain movie or to release it. You know, Color Purple is a phenomenal movie, and it was, as I remember, it was Out of Africa and Color Purple were the two leading nominations, and Color Purple didn't win a single award.

56:58Joseph McBrideYes.

56:58Jawad MirAnd

57:01Joseph McBrideBut then, Out of Africa's all about white people, you know.

57:04Jawad MirI saw Out of Africa recently. It was actually pretty good movie. But at the same time, I mean, you can argue why, w… why it didn't Color Purple win, but at the same time, you can't argue that why didn't it win a single award. Like, you know, it's just, it was just so weird that it was nominated…

57:22Joseph McBrideYes

57:22Jawad Mir... For so many Oscars and didn't win a single award. And, but I… I if you look at his career, you're right. I mean, if you think about it, even Jaws in a way was a serious movie, you know?

57:37Joseph McBrideYeah.

57:38Jawad MirThe family story, all of them were.

57:41Joseph McBrideYeah, no, he's been a…

57:42Jawad MirThough he's not rated

57:43Joseph McBride... He's been a serious... Yeah, I mean, he makes Raiders and those kind of films…

57:47Jawad MirYeah

57:47Joseph McBride... As escapist films, but, you know, there are two sides of him. Like, there, Graham Greene divided his novels in two kinds. There were the, you know, really serious novels and then the, what he called entertainments, but the entertainments were often as good as the other novels, you know. And so, but Steven likes to make those kind of fun movies.

58:07Joseph McBrideI'm glad he still does that because if he was making Schindler's List all the time, it would become oppressive. But he alternates that with some lighter films, you know?

58:16Jawad MirYeah.

58:16Joseph McBrideAnd the… there is that side of him. He's got many sides. One reason he's a producer is he likes to do a lot of kinds of films that he wouldn't necessarily direct.

58:25Jawad MirRight.

58:25Joseph McBrideAnd he likes to supervise them and have his hand in them. He's, a lot of those films he produces are not very good. There are occasional good ones, but he's, he's a very multitasking person who, he said he thrives on multitasking. Like, you know, if he had to do one thing for two years, he said he would get really tired of it.

58:45Joseph McBrideBut his mind works with when he's juggling all these balls, and that's…

58:49Jawad MirWell…

58:49Joseph McBride... That's, you know, the kinda guy he is.

58:52Jawad MirYou look at DreamWorks too, I mean, when he came after the success of... I mean, find me one director who has done Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in…

59:00Joseph McBrideYeah

59:00Jawad Mir... The same year.

59:01Joseph McBrideYeah.

59:01Jawad MirYou know, completely opposite. And then how do you top that, right? And then I think it took, like, a co… a year after Schindler, when, the year Schindler's, when Schindler's List won the Oscar, that's when the idea of DreamWorks started. And then he ran the studio at the same time he was making films like Minority Report, Amistad, AI, Terminal.

59:22Joseph McBrideYeah.

59:22Jawad MirAnd, whi… which didn't go in the direction that he probably wanted it to, but at the same time, it, I mean, that's a story in itself. He is a, he, wha… he's in his mid-70s now, right?

59:34Joseph McBrideYeah. He's, well, what is he? 75, so he'll be 76 this…

59:39Jawad MirYeah

59:39Joseph McBride... December.

59:40Jawad MirHe…

59:41Joseph McBride... I uncovered his true age, by the way, in the book. That was one of my discoveries, 'cause when you're a biographer, you know, you have to find out when the person was born. That's pretty important.

59:50Jawad MirYeah.

59:50Joseph McBrideAnd a lot of people in show business cover up their age, but I began hearing, I had a girlfriend who was a journalist, and she told me that Steven was a year older than he admitted, and she found that in a school record. So I made it a point, I did a very simple thing, journalism 101. I called the Cincinnati Board of Health and asked for his birth certificate, and I sent $8, and I got it back, and it said he was born in December of 1946. He had been saying '47 all those years. In the early days, I found he told the truth, the last time he told the truth about it was to a rabbi who interviewed him. I guess you don't lie to your rabbi. But, he was, he was a year older than he claimed, and I found out the reason for it was, I deduced this from my interviews. Dennis Hoffman, the guy who made Amblin… The contract they had was Steven didn't get paid for it, but for the privilege of directing Amblin, he had to, let, Dennis produce a film that he would make later on.

1:00:57Joseph McBrideAnd Dennis kept after him saying, "When are we gonna make this film?" He could have put Dennis on as a producer of Close Encounters or Jaws or something…

1:01:05Jawad MirRight

1:01:05Joseph McBride... But he di… didn't do it. So Dennis had to run a donut shop in Hollywood instead of being a producer, and Steven invested in the donut shop, but, Dennis's career was blighted by that. And, so I came along and I interviewed Dennis, and I decided I would kinda blow my scoop, and I showed him the birth certificate. And he was totally shocked because he said when, he sold Amblin to Spielberg bought it back in the '70s, the film and the name, you know, all the rights to the film. He said he was underage when he signed the contract to make Amblin.

1:01:46Joseph McBrideBut in fact, he was 21. They lied to him. And he was 22 the day it came out, but this had been fudged in the media. So I showed Dennis the birth certificate, and he was shocked that Spielberg had misled him. And he was really sad, but he wound up suing Spielberg for $33 million, and it got into the press. And I figured it's worth blowing my scoop to get more information, because I wanted more information. So in the course of the lawsuit, they turned up more and more evidence of, you know, like a birth, announcement in a Jewish publication that I hadn't seen. And so Steven settled the lawsuit out of court, with Dennis and made him a millionaire reportedly. But it was sad. And a friend of mine who's a psychologist, said,.. I said, "Why was he sad that he got a million dollars?" And she said, "Well, because Steven was his friend, you know, and his friend let him down."

1:02:47Joseph McBrideThat's a sad story, you know? But, so that was part of his, mythos. He created that. But, just to talk about Color Purple, for example, that had 12 Oscar nominations, but not…

1:03:02Jawad MirYeah

1:03:02Joseph McBride... For dir… not for director, which was…

1:03:03Jawad MirNot for directing

1:03:04Joseph McBride... A real snub, a real snub. And he was cool about it at the time, but on the Oprah Winfrey Show l… later, he admitted that he was very angry and upset that he was snubbed like that. He felt he didn't get respect from the Academy until he got the Oscar for Schindler's List, and it's true. And some of the reviews were really vicious. They compared it to Amos 'n' Andy or Gone With the Wind or, you know, and they said he was stereotyping Black people, which isn't really true. And a lot of the comments were just false. For example, people attacked the film because the characters lived in a nice big house with nice furniture and stuff. And Allen Daviau, the cameraman, told me, he said Alice Walker, the novelist, told them, she said, "These people, they're middle class people. They shop in Atlanta. They buy the best silverware and plates," you know?

1:03:55Jawad MirRight.

1:03:56Joseph McBrideAnd Allen said, "We re… really followed that carefully." And he said, "Steven..." I remember his voice rose. He said, "Steven was personally attacked for the way the house looked," because the critics were so racist that they thought all Black people lived in shacks back then. They actually didn't know there was a Black middle class, for example, you know? And that was part of the story, was that the father had risen to middle class status…

1:04:23Jawad MirYeah

1:04:23Joseph McBride... And, you know, it was about patriarchy to some extent.

1:04:27Jawad MirRight.

1:04:27Joseph McBrideAnd it's a good film, not a, not perfect, but, it didn't deserve the attacks. Every time he makes a film about Black people, he gets viciously attacked.

1:04:35Jawad MirWell…

1:04:35Joseph McBrideAmistad, I think, is a great film, one of his best films.

1:04:38Jawad MirYeah.

1:04:38Joseph McBrideHe got pilloried for making Amistad. A magnificent film, you know?

1:04:43Jawad MirI think, I think that would probably still happen today but from the other way around. Like, you know, it would be more like, well... I spoke to, David Franzoni, who wrote Amistad. And, he said to me, he told me that, Spielberg was very particular about making sure that the film doesn't come across as white man saving Black man.

1:05:13Joseph McBrideRight.

1:05:13Jawad MirRight? Djimon Hounsou, the, I forget the character name that he played, he needed to find his own destiny, and he had this whole monologue at the…

1:05:24Joseph McBrideYes

1:05:24Jawad Mir... End of the film. But that is, that is some great valuable information. I wanted to speak to you, just kind of quickly…

1:05:31Joseph McBrideCan I just mention a couple things about Amistad before we…

1:05:34Jawad MirSure

1:05:34Joseph McBride... Move off it? 'Cause I love that film. Actually, Franzoni's script was rewritten by Steven Zaillian, who wrote the great script for Schindler's List.

1:05:42Jawad MirYes.

1:05:42Joseph McBrideAnd I've read both scripts, and, they had an arbitration. And for some reason, the Writers Guild wouldn't give Zaillian credit, and he and Spielberg were upset because, in my opinion, he really deserved credit with Franzoni…

1:05:55Jawad MirOh, I didn't know that

1:05:56Joseph McBride... 'cause he improved the script a lot. But, you're right that, the Black characters have a lot of agency in the film. The Cinqué, the Hounsou character… ... Really has a lot of ideas, and he... And part of the fun of the film is he keeps telling John Quincy Adams, the former president of the United States, "You should do this. You should do that." And Adams is getting kind of testy about it, but then he realizes that Cinqué is a very, intelligent guy and he should listen to him. And that's part of the theme of the film…

1:06:26Jawad MirSure

1:06:26Joseph McBride... Is that the Black characters are not just passive victims or whatever. And Steven went to a lot of trouble to get Mende, d… dialogue experts to train the actors in how to speak the authentic language, et cetera. But you know, it was a white-dominated society, and you have to show that. The Supreme Court and the Congress were white.

1:06:49Jawad MirNo, yeah.

1:06:49Joseph McBrideBut it's, it's, it's kind of about Black people educating white people about…

1:06:54Jawad MirYeah

1:06:54Joseph McBride... About eq… equality, and it's just a profound film and, deeply moving. And, to Steven's credit, he still makes films about subjects like that, knowing he will be attacked. Even, and this happened when the film came out, Spike Lee went on Nightline and said a white director like Spielberg shouldn't have made that film, and I really didn't like that because the corollary would be that Spike Lee shouldn't make films about white people, right?

1:07:21Jawad MirExactly.

1:07:22Joseph McBrideAnd he did The 25th Hour, which is about white people. It's a good film and, I think, anybody should be able to make a film about anything. And Spike Lee had not made the Amistad film. Un… the thing is, it took somebody of Spielberg's clout to get that film made, so Spike Lee in a sense had the point that, well, you know, he couldn't get certain films made. He wanted to make a film on, say, Jackie Robinson, which seems like a no-brainer, but they wouldn't let him do it. But, Steven should be commended for dealing with, that kind of subject matter, and he's, he's very interested throughout his career in outsiders. And Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, said that she recognized that E.T. Was a being of color, as she put it, and, she identified with E.T. She's, 'cause, you know, it's about an outsider coming down and making people better…

1:08:13Jawad MirYeah

1:08:13Joseph McBride... You know, Earth people better.

1:08:15Jawad MirRight.

1:08:15Joseph McBrideAnd that's what happens in Amistad. They come from a ship, just like in E.T. Or Close Encounters. And one reason Close Encounters is so good is that the aliens are not sinister, destructive characters. They're benign.

1:08:29Joseph McBrideAnd it's a vision of h… brotherhood, you know, between different, planets, different species, where…

1:08:35Jawad MirRight

1:08:36Joseph McBride... In, Amistad they come from a ship, and, Amistad translates, it's friendship. That's the Spanish word for friendship, and that's a pun because it's about friendship, but it's also about a ship of friends coming to help…

1:08:51Jawad MirYeah

1:08:51Joseph McBride... Wh… help white people get educated, you know?

1:08:55Jawad MirNo, it, i… it's, I'm glad that you mentioned that part about why should Spielberg direct a movie about Black people and vice versa because that conversation is very relevant today. You know, where you have, like, actors who opt out of films because they are going to be portraying, like a white actor portraying, let's say, n… you know, not a white character, but there's makeup and all that. Because that's what acting is. Acting is portraying someone that you're not, and that's not, you know, borderline, that's not, prevented by color and whatnot. And honestly, like I have seen, you know, Ali, which is done by Michael Mann, Spike Lee movies, which are great. The thing with Amistad was, maybe I'm biased being a Spielberg fan, it moved me more than it, any other movie has about slavery.

1:09:48Jawad MirI don't know what it was. It, there was just something in there that resonated with me, especially that scene when the, on the ship, when they're being thrown in the water.

1:10:00Joseph McBrideYeah.

1:10:00Jawad MirI mean, who has ever shown that before?

1:10:04Joseph McBrideYeah, that's…

1:10:04Jawad MirWhere they get…

1:10:04Joseph McBride... Terribly har…

1:10:06Jawad MirThat…

1:10:06Joseph McBride... Harrowing. It's like Schindler's List, isn't it? Yeah.

1:10:09Jawad MirYeah. And that was not CGI. That was real people being pulled in, you know, and pushed into the, into the water. They w… actors. Yeah, I wanted to speak to you about The Fabelmans, from just kinda closing it out, is that from what you have heard, is it close to Spielberg's... I know we talked about it's kinda like semi-fiction, semi-auto… autobiography.

1:10:32Joseph McBrideYeah.

1:10:32Jawad MirBut is it close to Spielberg's childhood, and it, how long, how many years does it cover in terms of…

1:10:37Joseph McBrideWell, from what I'm told, The Greatest Show on Earth begins, that's 1952, and it goes to his time when he moves to LA, which is '65, thereabouts. So it's a 13, 14-year period. So it shows him in New Jersey, Arizona, and Northern California. And I kinda deduced from looking at some of the sh… stills that have come out that, for example, it shows his young, alter ego, Sammy Fabelman is the character, Gabriel LaBelle, filming a high school graduation party at the beach.

1:11:14Joseph McBrideAnd Steven did that, I found out, in Santa Cruz. They have a boardwalk there. It's kinda like Coney Island, and he made a movie called Senior Sneak Day of kids cavorting on the beach, and, that's what the guy is making in the film. And, in the film, it deals with the divorce of his parents and the mother having an affair with, a, the, a person they consider kinda like an uncle, but he's really a family friend, and it's played by Seth Rogen.

1:11:44Jawad MirSeth Rogen, yeah.

1:11:45Joseph McBrideThe mother is Michelle Williams. And, Steven's parents, long after my... Well, some years after my book came out, they went on 60 Minutes with him, and they talked very frankly about why they got divorced. And, Leah mentioned, "Yeah, I had an affair with our friend, Bernie Adler," and, Arnold said, "I knew about it, but I took the blame 'cause I didn't want the kids to turn against their mother," et cetera. But one of Steven's best friend at that time told me that Steven was very angry at his mother, and she'd drive, they'd be walking to school, and she'd drive by in her Jeep and offer them a ride, and he wouldn't take the ride, et cetera. So he kind of knew, but he blamed the father later, you know, which was not really fair. So they talked about it. So this film deals with that. And, Steven has an uncle, in the film played by Judd Hirsch, who apparently is, gives a wonderful performance, as a very supportive uncle, helps him buy a camera. Steven, in this film, he's not making Firelight as I thought he might do.

1:12:49Joseph McBrideHe make, he's making a Western in the film, and he shows it to his Boy Scout troop. And, that happened. He made a Western. He made some early Westerns, and, He showed one to his Boy Scout troop, and he got a great reaction. I think it's interesting that until recently, Steven said the two kinds of films that he always wanted to direct and never had were a musical and a Western. Which he did. So he did his big musical finally… Yeah... With West Side Story. But he hadn't, he hasn't made a big theatrical Western, but maybe this is one reason he did that. But, so, then he goes to Northern California, and Saratoga in Northern California is, was a very b… white-oriented, WASP place. Steven grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Cincinnati, and then as his…, ... Father advanced in the computer world, he, they moved into more and more WASPy areas that, he had some problems in Arizona, but more problems in Saratoga, which he called Hell on Earth, which is the title of my chapter on that.

1:13:51Joseph McBrideAnd he was, abused. There was some antisemitic bullies who abused him. So that is in the film. He's, called names. Like they call him Bagelman for example. They leave a bagel in his locker, and they have other insulting terms. And there's a girl who, sh… two girls who try to get Steven to, embrace Jesus Christ, for example, you know. One of the ironies of Steven's films is that he's Jewish, but there's a lot of Christian imagery in his films, interestingly… Yeah... Enough. Yeah... C… C… I think 'cause he wanted to be accepted by the bigger culture, so… Yeah. Yeah... He kind of, you know, his films are just full of Christian imagery, like ET is a kind of Christ story. But anyway, in this, he starts dating a girl who's a goyim, you know, a Gentile. And, he, one of the great things Steven did as a kid, he had a bully who was abusing him, and he put him in his films playing a Nazi, and he controlled these kids by being a director.

1:14:59Joseph McBrideThe kids told me, he was this nerdy guy, and then he got out on the set, and he was a totally different person. He's like David Lean, you know, telling them what to do. Right. So he took the bully and made him a actor in his film so he could boss him around and so, a… and that happens in this film. And then, so Steven goes to LA, and then, it's, it is apparently some poignant scenes between him and his mother about a conflict they had. But the way the film ends, there were rumors that David Lynch plays John Ford, and that is true. Some people will know the story 'cause Steven has told it on numerous occasions. You could see it in Peter Bogdanovich's film directed by John Ford. It's a documentary that, in 1965 or '6, Steven went to John Ford's office, and it shows him in the film going on the set of Hogan's Heroes., And he met the producer, and the guy said, "Well, the person you should talk to is John Ford.

1:16:00Joseph McBrideHe's in the office over there." So Steven walked in the office and Ford wasn't there, but his secretary was there. And she said, "Well, sit here and wait. Mr. Ford will be back from lunch pretty soon." And so the way he told it was Ford came in wearing a, sort of safari jacket or a military kind of outfit, and he had kisses all over his cheeks, you know, like kiss marks. And the secretary ran in the office with a b… box of Kleenex and wiped them off, and then she came out and said, "Mr. Ford will give you one minute." And this is how the film ends. And Ford sits there and says, "So who are you?" And Steven said, "Well, I'm, I'm making films, you know, with my friends. I made a lot of films in Arizona and Saratoga, and I'm making a feature film." And, Ford was very impatient, so he said, "Look at those pictures on the wall." He had… Sure... Western prints on the wall. He said, "Tell me what you see." And he had the eye patch. This is David Lynch, the a… the director playing this part.

1:17:01Joseph McBrideRight. Good casting, I think. And, Steven goes over to a Western painting. He says, "I see an Indian on a hill on a horse." Ford said, "No. Where's the horizon?" And Steven said, "Oh, yeah. It's in the bottom of the frame, low horizon." Ford said, "Okay. Look at the other picture." And Steven goes to the other picture, and Ford said, "What do you see?" And he said, "Oh, okay. I see the horizon is very high in the frame, you know." Ford would do that. He said, then Ford said, "Once you learn that it's never good to put the horizon just in the middle of the frame but always have it low or high… Yeah... You might learn to be a picture maker. Now, get the fuck out of here." And then it cuts to, black, and it says, "Directed by Steven Spielberg," and that's the end of that film. So that sounds wonderful. I, and it's supposed to be a, you know, it's the story of a portrait of the artist as a young man, which I relate to 'cause I told that story in my book, and I went into… Sure... Great detail.

1:18:01Joseph McBrideAnd all these wonderful m… you know, older people, who were kids with him told me all these great stories. One of my favorite stories was there was a guy who was a jock at Steven's school, and he said that bunch of guys said, "Steven is shooting at the airport." And they had two old World War II planes that were just sitting at the airport as kind of exhibits, you know. And Steven was so charming, he talked the airport into letting him use the planes, and he made a film called Fighter Squad, eight-millimeter film., And he got kids to sit in the cockpit, and he would tilt the camera and make it look like the plane was moving, and he intercut it with eight-millimeter footage that he had bought of, actual World War II dog fights. And anyway, this kid said, he got out on the airport, and Steven was directing. And he said he was to… like a totally different person. He said this nerd who we were kicking around at school was t… giving orders to the…...

1:19:02Joseph McBrideBullies and the tough guys. And he said it was like, a nerd comes out and plays the piano and he's Van Cliburn. I thought that was a good analogy.

1:19:12Jawad MirYeah.

1:19:12Joseph McBrideThat's how they perceived him, and that's... See, that was, Steven used, filmmaking to get social acceptance. It was a big thing for him because he was Jewish, and he said, "I was wimpy and Jewish," and those were two, negative things in that culture. But he became accepted by being the boss of this group of kids, and he would, he was in the drama club, and he would use, girls, for example. He had a lot of girlfriends.

1:19:38Jawad MirOkay.

1:19:39Joseph McBrideOne of the, one of the girls said he had girlfriends, by which she mean, she meant girls who were friends, not necessarily dating.

1:19:47Jawad MirYeah, right.

1:19:48Joseph McBrideBut, also these nice... There were some other kids who were filmmakers. He worked with them. But then there were these, b… bully characters he put in his films. But that's how he got control of his life, and, he was a fanatical filmmaker from the age of 10. He's been working as a filmmaker steadily since 1957, which is what? 65 years now.

1:20:10Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, I'm gonna, and sort of really talk ab… just briefly talk about what you just said about totally different person, when he's a filmmaker, and that's, that's what's so great about art. At least, even for me, is that you are... It's like Two-Face from Batman, right? It's like you're…... You're a completely different person when you're not in the world of films. When you're making films, you're, because you're loving what you're doing, you just become this, superhero, if you wanna call it, right? And

1:20:44Joseph McBrideYes

1:20:44Jawad Mir... Or more like, Kent Clark or Bruce…

1:20:48Joseph McBrideYeah

1:20:48Jawad Mir... Wayne and Batman and Superman.

1:20:50Joseph McBrideYeah.

1:20:50Jawad MirSo, yeah, with that, with that said, Joseph, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I will, prob… we're probably gonna be posting this within the next two weeks.

1:21:01Joseph McBrideOkay.

1:21:01Jawad MirMaybe next week.

1:21:02Joseph McBrideOkay.

1:21:02Jawad MirWe're gonna try and figure that out. And, yeah, thank you so much.

1:21:07Joseph McBrideThank you. Thank you. I really appreciated, being on your show, and, my Spielberg book, there were three editions. The third edition came out from, Faber and Faber in England in 2012. But the American edition from University of Press of Mississippi came out in 2011. And

1:21:26Jawad MirSure. We'll link that after

1:21:27Joseph McBride... I need to, I'm gonna do a fi… another version, after The Fabelmans, because it's a good time to do a, taking stock. He's 75 years old now, and he's doing his autobiographical film. So I will be doing that, and I have a book on Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder: Dancing to the Edge…

1:21:46Jawad MirGreat

1:21:46Joseph McBride... Which came out in October, critical study. And I have a book called Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy, and I updated my Orson Welles critical study/memoir called Whatever Happened to Orson Welles. And then I did a critical study, a short book, on the Coen brothers called The Whole Darn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers, so I've been busy. But…

1:22:10Jawad MirGreat

1:22:10Joseph McBride... I'll get back to Spielberg before too long. I'm excited about The Fabelmans.

1:22:14Jawad MirYeah, so am I. So am I. Thank you so much again. Appreciate it. You have yourself a great day.

1:22:19Joseph McBrideYeah, it was great talking to you again, Joao. Thank you very much.

1:22:22Jawad MirYeah.

1:22:22Joseph McBrideSee you.

1:22:23Jawad MirTake care. Bye.

1:22:23Joseph McBrideYeah, take care. Bye-bye.

1:22:25Jawad MirI hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share, and comment, and do come back for another episode. Until then, have a great day.