Steven Spielberg has made a name for himself after decades in the film industry. Being one of the most talented filmmakers of all time, sheer talent and will to make something lasting has gotten him to where he is today. Having broken records with his movies, as well as the Oscar wins and nominations he gets for them, he deserves the title of one of the greater directors of all time.
While power and glory can force an artist to make even better art, sometimes, such vanity can also get in their head. Spielberg, at the very peak of his career, fell from the precipice of his success so hard, that he could have easily not gotten back up. All because of how much faith he had in his talent, his audience, and the movies he made.
Hubris- A Dangerous Overconfidence
The tale of Icarus has been used as a cautionary one for centuries now. A boy whose biggest wish was to fly. Who crafted wax wings with his father to travel as far as his heart’s content. Who lost it all even though he was warned. Hypnotized by the beauty of the sun, he flew too close, even though his father told him not to. As his wax wings melted, he fell the great fall.
Steven Spielberg got recognition as a filmmaker after he released his 1975 film, Jaws. It became one of the biggest movies of all time and helped him get attention in a way he had not before. This being followed up by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a movie that earned him his first Oscar nomination in the many to come.
After years of trying, all of a sudden, all eyes were on the filmmaker, and the world was excited about what he was going to make next. They had faith in his capabilities and it would seem that the only thing that Spielberg trusted was his genius. He believed himself to be invincible and the world would love any movie he would make because of it.
He was very wrong.
Steven Spielberg Learnt The Harsh Truth
After two films that were massively successful, it was inevitable that the next film that Steven Spielberg released would get a lot of attention. For years, he was making very specific types of films; dramatic, plot-heavy stories. With his film, 1941, the filmmaker decided to shift gears. He wanted to make something different, and experiment with the knowledge that the public would eat up anything he put out. So, the film was made a wartime comedy as a calculated risk.
What the filmmaker did not account for, however, was how the world would react when they did see the film. It was as though Spielberg had been wearing rose-colored glasses when he was making the film and as soon as the movie was released, they were snatched off. The reviews that the movie got were nowhere near what anyone expected, the audience – underwhelmed and the ratings, concerningly low.
“I have to tell you, when I made 1941, I felt like I was made of Teflon. I felt that anything I put on film was going to succeed; that every laugh I set up would receive not only a laugh, but huge applause.” He went on, “I sobered up so quickly after that was over. And I look back, and it’s not that I misbehaved, I didn’t, but I just became so precious and indulgent about getting everything right.”
The filmmaker spoke to the Directors Guild of America about how the shift in public perception made him feel, as well as his thought process when he was making the movie. The filmmaker revealed that when he made 1941, he felt as though he was unstoppable; no force being able to stop him from being the phenomenon that he was becoming.
When the harsh light of day hit him, he learned a lesson that stuck with him for the rest of his career; not one is that perfect.
