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Today, after 20 summers on and off the Universal lot, the erstwhile trespasser practically owns the place. He might deserve to: E.T. and Jaws have grossed $835 million on a $19 million investment. Moreover, Sheinberg, now president and chief operating officer of Universal's parent organization, MCA, has maintained a paternal relationship with Spielberg. So, according to Sheinberg, "when Steven called me about two years ago and said, 'I want to come home,' I said, 'When?' and 'How much space do you need?' " In this fashion the man who saw a boy's film called Amblin' determined 15 years later to build that boy the movie industry's most sumptuous clubhouse as headquarters for Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. The building is reputed to have cost between $4 million and $6 million to construct and furnish. Spielberg says he doesn't know, and will never ask, the price tag, and Sheinberg won't snitch. "It would be like telling how much the birthday present cost," he says.
Playpen and sweatshop, summer camp and botanical gardens, Amblin is where Steven Spielberg dreams for a living. The two-story stucco building, on a far corner of the Universal lot, looks like Walt Disney's Frontierland as it might have been designed by a very hip Hopi. The studiously roughhewn walls and ceilings refuse to form right angles; instead they bend and breathe, going with the architectural flow. Native artifacts are everywhere. A cave painting ornaments one wall in the steam room; in the courtyard a pink marble bust of an Indian madonna with children stands guard over an abandoned plastic tricycle. The staff bustles about, casually garbed in jeans and boots, like cowpokes at home on an impossibly opulent reservation. You are reminded that in more than one Spielberg movie, insensitive white folks get their comeuppance when they build their homes on sacred Indian ground. Amblin means to lift the curse: it is a big happy tepee erected on the real estate of infidel Hollywood.
Inside and out, state-of-nature merges with state-of-the-art. In the brick- lined conference room, a massive oak chest conceals fancy video equipment that glides up pneumatically with the push of a button. Across the path from the front entrance, a giant weeping willow shades a wishing well out of which Bruce, the Jaws shark, pokes his snout. Behind the high-tech kitchen, and over the wooden bridge that crosses a stream fed by a rushing waterfall, is a clear-water pond stocked with fat fish, black and silver and gold Japanese koi. As you walk through the voluptuous gardens, a golden retriever named Brandy trots up to you and, no kidding, smiles. She is the genial cerberus of Amblin, the mascot that welcomes you inside Spielberg's paradise.