E.T. and Poltergeist: two from the heart
Once upon a time there was a little boy named Steven, who lived in a mythical land called Suburbia. His house was just like everybody else's house; his family's car and dog and swimming pool were just like everybody else's too. But little Steven's dreams were different. He dreamed of telling the stories of his strange land—wonderful tales of his home and his school, his parents and especially his friends—and making them shine like new. So every night he would tiptoe outside his ranch-style house and make a wish on the brightest star in the suburban sky. Over and over he would whisper, "Help me tell the story."
One August night, when the sky seemed clearer and the starlight stronger, Steven felt himself drawn to his family's two-car garage. There, gleaming in a forgotten corner, was an old piece of machinery he had never noticed before: an 8-mm movie camera. He picked up the camera, turned around, and what do you think he saw? Yes, it was a beautiful rainbow, ribboning the night sky: a sign that the little boy had found the key to his dreams. And just before the rainbow disappeared—a rainbow no one else saw that sweet summer night—Steven aimed the camera heavenward and pressed a button. The little boy from suburbia had begun to tell his story.
Steven Spielberg did grow up. He became rich and famous as the director who enjoyed playing with sharks, spacemen and snakes—and turning these fearsome critters into the stuff of blockbusters. Jaws, which Spielberg and Producer Richard Zanuck had feared might prove to be "a shark with turkey feathers," terrified moviegoers to the tune of $410 million. Close Encounters of the Third Kind built a sense of biblical awe around man's first meeting with beings from outer space and put another $250 million into the till. Last year Raiders of the Lost Ark sent Saturday-matinee chills down a record-breaking number of spines—another $310 million. Spielberg won plaudits as well as profits for his masterly film-making technique. Still, critics often accused him of creating Pavlovian exercises in zapme thrills—movie machines that destroyed, with systematic elegance, the viewer's emotional defenses.
Now it can be told: inside Spielberg, the machine that built the machines, was little Steven and his suburban child's pulsing heart. Look into the mouth of Jaws, and you will find the infant fear of things that go chomp in the night. Search the skies for a Close Encounter, and you can chart a child's hope that whoever is out there will be just like him: small and smooth and smart and cuddly. Track the Lost Ark's Raiders, and you will discover the thrill of escape that whets the imagination of every fifth-grade Indiana Jones.