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Therefore it's worth taking the emotional pulse of the man as he emerges from a three-year directorial hiatus to shoot three movies in 12 months: The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the sequel that opens next week; Amistad, the true story of a slave revolt, expected at year's end; and Saving Private Ryan, a World War II saga starring Tom Hanks. Ever since Jaws in 1975, Spielberg has led the way for mainstream movies, with their kinetic savvy and kid-centric sentiment. To an extent, they are what he has been. But what is he now? Has Peter Pan grown up?
During his downtime, Spielberg wasn't exactly lying in a hammock monitoring cloud patterns. As the head of Amblin Entertainment he shepherded a passel of hit movies, including The Flintstones, Casper and Twister. He helped develop TV's ER, masterminded a CD-ROM (Steven Spielberg's Directors Chair) and oversaw the giddy, multithrill Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios, Hollywood. Oh, yes, he also started, with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, a little outfit called DreamWorks SKG; Spielberg oversees the live-action film unit. And in the noblest spin-off generated by a hit movie, the director of Schindler's List established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which records the testimony of Holocaust survivors. In April its first film won a Peabody Award.
Even more important to Spielberg was the quality and quantity of the time with his burgeoning family. Amy Irving gave him his first child, Max, in 1985. With Kate Capshaw, 43, whom he married in 1991, he has a brood of seven: Max (whose custody he shares with Irving); Jessica, 20 (from Capshaw's first marriage); Theo, 8; Sasha, 7; Sawyer, 5; Mikaela, 14 months; and Destry, 5 months. Before the hiatus, he was often too preoccupied to be a perfect dad. "On the Jurassic Park shoot my family was with me," he says, "but I'm not quite sure I was with them." He would now be a full-time father to the seven little Capshaw-Spielbergs. Kate even got Katzenberg to promise that Spielberg would work only until 5:30. And did Katzenberg have to sign a binding document? "Let me ask you this," he counters. "Is the Bible a binding document?"
During his directorial break, says Spielberg, "I was Mr. Carpool. We had breakfast and dinner together every day. It's full-time work, because every one of our kids is a leader. Seven leaders, no followers--which makes our kitchen at dinnertime look and sound like the House of Commons between the Labour Party and the Tories." This genial chaos ("It's like the Cirque du Soleil over there," says Hanks, a neighbor and close friend) is managed by Capshaw and a live-in couple in the Spielbergs' palatial home in the Los Angeles suburb of Pacific Palisades. "I really love the diaper part," Kate says, "the rocking and the lunch menus. The things Steven does are the things he can do uniquely: telling stories and drawing creatures I could never imagine."