The past is no foreign country to Steven Spielberg. He lives there in his memory, in his fertile imagination and, triumphantly, in his films. "Everything that I do in my movies," he says, "is a product of my homelife in suburban U.S.A. I can always trace a movie idea back to my childhood." And each summer he invites moviegoers around the world to join him in that holy, haunted place. Here, as recounted to TIME Correspondent Denise Worrell, is the director's own montage of his first 16 years:
My father was an electrical engineer, part of the team that designed the first computers. In the late '40s and early '50s the computer industry was migratory, and my dad followed the movement. Within 13 years we moved from Cincinnati to Haddonfield, N.J., to Scottsdale, Ariz., to Saratoga, a suburb of San Jose. Just as I'd become accustomed to a school and a teacher and a best friend, the FOR SALE sign would dig into the front lawn and we'd be packing and off to some other state. I've always considered Arizona, where I was from nine to 16, my real home. For a kid, home is where you have your best friends and your first car, and your first kiss; it's where you do your worst stuff and get your best grades. Scottsdale was just like the neighborhood in Poltergeist: kitchen windows facing kitchen windows facing kitchen windows. People waved to each other from their windows. There were no fences, no big problems.
My mom and dad were so different. That's probably why they were attracted to each other. They both love classical music and they both love my sisters and me. Aside from that, they had nothing in common. With Dad everything was precision, accuracy, "bead-on." He had the fastest slide rule in Arizona and spoke two languages: English and Computer. When I was about eleven, my dad came home and gathered us all in the kitchen. He held up a tiny little transistor he had brought home and said, "This is the future." I took the transistor from his hand, and I put it in my mouth. And I swallowed it. Dad laughed, then he didn't laugh; it got very tense. It was like the confrontation scene between Raymond Massey and James Dean in East of Eden. One of those moments when two worlds from diametrically opposed positions in the universe collide. It was as if I was saying, "That's your future, but it doesn't have to be mine."
Mom had more energy than a hundred mothers her age. The image I have of her is of this tiny woman climbing to the top of a mountain, standing there with her arms out and spinning around. My mom was always just like a little girl who never grew out of her pinafore. The rest of us trailed after her, Dad and my three younger sisters and me. She left a large wake.