Steven Spielberg’s Advice for ‘Obsession’ and ‘Backrooms’ Directors: “Don’t Let Success Go to Your Heads”
4d 14h ago by lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/cerebralhawks in tvmovies@lemmy.dbzer0.com from www.hollywoodreporter.com
Before anyone gets on Spielberg for sour grapes or anything, my read on this is he’s advising them to keep doing what they did to find success early.
The article doesn’t put a negative spin on Spielberg’s comments, but it was my first instinctive reaction until I read the article.
This came immediately after talking about how he loved both films. He was providing two pieces of advice from his experience:
- As super young directors, they were in charge but also the least experienced people on those sets. The quality of the product indicates they were open to ideas and guidance. If they get too sure of their own abilities, that will suffer. A good director should be as collaborative on their 30th film as on their 1st.
- Nearly every film is a significantly different problem with a different group of people. Turning one great movie into a career requires you to ride those problems out and make the best film you can every time.
It's a good interview. His repeated use of the term 'first-run' got me thinking about how home video has killed the market for theaters running older films. There aren't too many theaters left that regularly show things that aren't brand new. You get 'special events' showing and older film for it's anniversary, etc, but not just movies rotating in and out. That was normal when he was young and it still impacts how he talks.