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The family room is the food room. "We have about six wasted rooms in our house," Spielberg says, "because we just live in the kitchen." On one wall hangs a large board that notes everyone's activities, from karate lessons and art classes to Dad's location shoots; nearby, behind safety glass, is one of the original balsa-wood Rosebud sleds from Citizen Kane. "There's also this couch," says Capshaw, "which is Steven Central. He has a bunch of scripts to read, and tapes--casting reels, dailies, bits of animation--that he pops into the VCR. But if one of the kids asks him to build a castle, he's immediately down on the floor, building that castle. The kid runs away, Steven crawls back on the couch and gets back to business."
Such was life with father, 1993-96. "In the family sense," he says, "I was fulfilled and happy, living the life of Chester A. Riley." But half of him was missing--his professional life on the sound stage. "I didn't have my eye in a viewfinder, except the one little High-8 video camera I used to take home movies of my kids," he recalls. "In those three years I probably told more stories at my kids' bedtime than I did to the public in my entire career. Then later I'd ask myself, 'Is there the germ of a movie in here? Where is the story? Where is my place? When can I tell a story, not just to my kids, but back to me?'"
Spielberg may also have chafed as an executive and poster child for investors in the long launch of DreamWorks, which is moseying toward its first feature release more than two years after attracting $2 billion in start-up capital. "You can tell he was depressed over the business stuff he's got into," says a colleague. "He always says, pleadingly, 'I'm only a film director!' But of course he's much more: studio owner, pop icon, a father, a mentor, a major mogul in spite of himself."
Spielberg recalls with a shudder the morning at DreamWorks when he glanced at his daily log and saw that "every meeting I had scheduled had nothing to do with directing movies. That's when I realized that what I do best is what my partners would want me to do: direct." Katzenberg agrees. "The best thing Steven can do for us is to stay on a movie set," he says. Spielberg's deal with DreamWorks is that he will direct one film "at home" for every two he makes outside. Amistad is a DreamWorks venture; The Lost World is for Universal, and Saving Private Ryan is co-produced with Paramount.
So last September, like a Spielberg movie kid back home after an encounter with aliens, pirates or the wartime Japanese, he walked into the woods of Eureka, Calif., to begin shooting The Lost World. "A chortle came out of me when I saw him that first day," says Jeff Goldblum, who reprises his role as mathematician Ian Malcolm. "He said he was nervous because he hadn't directed in a while, but he fell right into it. He was massively prepared, brimming with confidence--a creative, improvisatory force on the set, thrilled and confused about making stuff up right there."