Steven Spielberg (112 page)

Information on
Close
Encounters
previews is from Michael Phillips, Veitch, and Trumbull; Crawley;
Making
“Close
Encounters”;
and 1977 articles: Gregg Kilday, October 10, November 5 (
“Close
Encounters:
Go or No-Go?”), and November 9,
LAT;
“Col Delays Press Preview of
Close
Encounters,
”
DV,
October 11; “Columbia Disputes Magazine’s Views on
Third
Kind,
”
HR,
November 2; William Flanagan, “An Encounter with
Close
Encounters,”
New
York,
November 7, and letter to the editor,
New
York,
November 21; Rich; Geri Fabrikant, “Wall Street Vigil; Col Stock Peaks with
Encounters,
”
HR,
November 8; and “Col Holds Bally Rally in N.Y. for
Encounters
Launching,”
Variety,
November 9. See also Shay, “Steven Spielberg on
Close
Encounters.
”

Julia Phillips’s claim that her cocaine problem began on
Close
Encounters
is from Joyce Wadler, “A Hollywood Outcast Treats the Stars to an Acid-Dip Memoir,”
People,
March 18, 1991. Spielberg’s no-comment reaction to her book is from Larry Rohter, “Hollywood Memoir Tells All, and Many Don’t Want to Hear,”
NYT,
March 14, 1991.

Close
Encounters
reviews (1977) include Rich; Charles Champlin, “Saucer Sorcery,”
LAT,
November 18; Kroll; Stephen Farber,
“Close
Encounters:
Smooth Takeoff, Bumpy Landing,”
New
West,
December 5; and Molly Haskell, “The Dumbest Story Ever Told,”
New
York,
December 5; also, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Close Encounters of a Benign Kind,”
Saturday
Review,
January 7, 1978. Spielberg’s 1994 comment on the film is from
The
Barbara
Walters
Special

Spielberg wrote about Truffaut in “He Was the Movies.” Writings by Truffaut on
Close
Encounters
include “En tournant pour Spielberg,” preface to Tony Crawley,
L’Aventure
Spielberg
(1984 French edition of
The
Steven
Spielberg
Story),
reprinted in Truffaut’s
Le
Plaisir
des
yeux,
Flammarion, Paris, 1987; Dominique Rabourdin, trans, by Robert Erich Wolf,
Truffaut
by
Truffaut,
Harry N. Abrams, 1987; and Truffaut, ed. by Gilles Jacob and Claude de Givray, trans, by Gilbert Adair,
Correspondence
1945–1984,
The Noonday Press, 1990. Other sources include “François Truffaut Moves to Other Side of Camera for
Close
Encounters
of
the
Third
Kind,
”
Columbia Pictures pressbook, 1977; Bridget Byrne, “Truffaut Savors Hollywood Treatment,”
LAHE,
December 13, 1977; Heathwood; Larry Van Dyne, “His Mind Is a Camera, His Life Is Film,”
The
Chronicle
Review,
March
19, 1979; William Kowinski, “François Truffaut, the Man Who Loved Movies,”
Rolling
Stone,
June 14, 1979; and David Lees, “Checking In,”
Playboy,
October 1981. Truffaut criticized Julia Phillips in James F. Clarity, “François Truffaut—A Man for All Festivals,”
NYT,
September 26, 1976; Spielberg responded in a letter to the editor, October 24, and Phillips in
You’ll
Never
Eat
Lunch
in
This
Town
Again;
Truffaut made additional remarks in “Truffaut, Part V,”
The
New
Yorker,
October 18, 1976. Jean Renoir’s comment on the film is from his March 7, 1978, letter to Truffaut, in Renoir’s
Letters,
ed. by Lorraine LoBianco and David Thompson, Faber and Faber, London, 1994.

Spielberg’s two versions of
Close
Encounters
are compared in Laurent Bouzereau,
The
Cutting
Room
Floor,
Citadel Press, 1994. Articles on the
Special
Edition
include Aljean Harmetz,
“Close
Encounters
to Get Even Closer,”
NYT,
December 6, 1978; “Col
Encounters
Plans News to Steven Spielberg,”
DV,
October 24, 1979; and (1980):
Cart.
(Todd McCarthy), “New
Encounters
a Refinement of Original Version,”
DV,
August 1; Miles Beller, “The High Cost of Going Inside the Alien Spaceship,”
LAHE,
August 1; Arthur Knight,
HR
review, August 1; Charles Champlin,
“Encounters
Even Closer in Revision,”
LAT,
August 3; Vincent Canby,
“Close
Encounters
Has Now Become a Classic,”
NYT,
August 31; and Pauline Kael, “Who and Who,”
The
New
Yorker,
September 1. Gail Rentzer’s lawsuit was reported in “Columbia Sued over Film’s Ads,”
NYT,
August 9, 1980.

Sources on Amy Irving include Laurent Bouzereau,
The
De
Palma
Cut,
Dembner Books, 1988; Phillips,
You’ll
Never
Eat
Lunch
in
This
Town
Again;
Kerry Segrave,
The
Post-Feminist
Hollywood
Actress:
Biographies
and
Filmographies
of
Stars
Born
After
1939,
McFarland, 1990; Cherie Burns, “Amy Irving’s Enjoying a Close Encounter of Two Kinds: Love with Steven Spielberg and Stardom in
The
Fury,
”
People,
March 27, 1978; Roderick Mann, “An Encounter for Amy, Steve,”
LAT,
March 13, 1979; “Amy Irving’s Voices,”
Look,
April 2, 1979; Janos; Andrea Chambers, “She’s Streisand’s Sweetie in
Yentl,
But Amy Irving Says Her Heart Belongs to Broadway,”
People,
January 16, 1984; Stephen Farber, “Once in Love with Amy …,”
Cosmopolitan,
March 1985; Meme Black, “Amy Irving’s ‘Charmed Life,’”
McCall’s,
June 1985; and Cliff Jahr, “Amy Irving: Mom Is Her Real Starring Role,”
Ladies’
Home 
Journal,
March 1989. Information on Spielberg’s Coldwater Canyon house is from the author’s interview with Bob Gale and various articles including Klemesrud; Seligson, “Steven Spielberg: The Man Behind Columbia Pictures’ $19-Million Gamble”; and Royal, “Steven Spielberg in His Adventures on Earth.”

Information on Spielberg’s pirate movie project is from A. H. Weiler, “Spielberg Weighs Two Projects,”
NYT,
June 9, 1974; his involvement in
The
Bingo
Long
Traveling
All-Stars
and
Motor
Kings
is from the author’s interview with Joseph Alves Jr. and from Bruce Cook, “The Saga of Bingo Long and the Traveling All-Stars,”
American
Film,
July–August 1976. Spielberg discussed
Magic
in his introduction to Andy Dougan,
The
Actors’
Director:
Richard
Attenborough
Behind
the
Camera,
Mainstream Publishing Co., Edinburgh, 1994; his plans to direct a TV production of
Twelve
Angry
Men
were mentioned in “Dialogue on Film: Steven Spielberg.”

Sources on Gale and Robert Zemeckis and their projects with Spielberg include the author’s interview with Gale; the June 23, 1978, Zemeckis–Gale screenplay
After
School;
Balaban,
“Close
Encounters
of
the
Third
Kind”
Diary;
“Steven Spielberg’s ‘Broker’ Position as Newcomers Film at Universal,”
Variety,
November 30, 1977; Ray Loynd, “Surprising Turns for Two Hit Filmmakers,”
LAHE,
December 9, 1977; “Studios Cheat Us All, Sez Spielberg,”
Variety,
February 22, 1978; “Spielberg Modest Cost for Universal; Actors’ Maximum Age Is 14,”
Variety,
March 1, 1978;
“Used
Cars
Tells Sleazy Side; 2d ‘Sale’ for Young Scripters,”
Variety,
November 21, 1979; Gregg Kilday, “The
1941
Campaign
Revisited,”
LAHE,
December 14, 1979; and Paul Attanasio, “The Zooming Zemeckis,”
Washington
Post,
July 3, 1985. Truffaut’s urging Spielberg to make a movie about “keeds” is from Spielberg, “He Was the Movies.” Information on the Oak Tree Gun Club is from the author’s interviews with Gale, Robert Stack, and Arnold Spielberg; the author’s 1975 visit to the club with John Milius; Hodenfield,
“1941:
Bombs Away!”; and Attanasio. Charlton Heston’s comment on Hollywood gun enthusiasts is from
In
the
Arena:
An
Autobiography.

The author interviewed the following people involved in the making of
1941:
Milius (in 1975), Gale, Stack, John Veitch, and Lionel Stander. The production was chronicled in Glenn Erickson and Mary Ellen Trainor,
The
Making
of
“1941,
”
Ballantine Books, 1980, and the 1996 MCA Home Video laserdisc documentary
The
Making
of
“1941,
”
produced by Laurent Bouzereau (the laserdisc also contains the 146-minute restoration of the film, outtakes, and Spielberg’s home movies of the filming). The ninth-draft screenplay by Zemeckis and Gale, from their story with Milius, is dated August 28, 1978. Gale’s novelization of the film, Ballantine Books, 1979, includes his preface, “About This Book.” Spielberg wrote about the film in his September 1979 introduction to
“1941”:
The
Illustrated
Story
by Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch, adapted by Allan Asherman,
Heavy
Metal/Pocket
Books; and in “Directing
1941,”
American
Cinematog
rapher,
December 1979. That issue also contains A. D. Flowers, “Mechanical Special Effects for
1941”;
Gregory Jein, “The Mini-World of
1941”;
and “Photographing
1941.
”
See also David S. Reiss,
“1941:
A Conversation with DP William A. Fraker, ASC,”
Film
makers
Monthly,
December 1979.

The first mention of
1941
in print, under the project’s original title
The
Night
the
Japs
Attacked,
was in McBride, “Milius Says
Apocalypse
Now
Is a ‘Descent Into Hell,’”
DV,
September 2, 1975; Milius told the author about Spielberg sending him a copy of the article. Objections to the original title were mentioned in “Col Signs Spielberg for
1941,
”
DV,
May 3, 1977; see also Gallagher and
“Rising
Sun
New Title for Spielberg,”
HR,
January 13, 1978.

Information on “The Great Los Angeles Air Raid” and Japanese attacks on the U.S. mainland is from Bert Webber,
Retaliation:
Japanese
Attacks
and
Allied
Countermea
sures
on
the
Pacific
Coast
in
World
War
II,
Oregon State University Press, 1975, and
Silent
Siege:
Japanese
Attacks
Against
North
America
in
World
War
II,
Ye Galleon Press, 1984;
LAT
coverage, February 22–27, 1942, including “Submarine Shells Southland Oil Field” (February 24), “L.A. Area Raided!” (February 25 extra edition), and “Army Says Alert Real” (February 26); and Sally Ogle Davis, “How Many Japanese Attackers Does It Take to Throw L.A. into a Panic?”
Los
Angeles,
November 1979.

General Joseph W. Stilwell’s activities in late 1941, including his viewing of
Dumbo,
are documented in
The
Stilwell
Papers,
ed. by Theodore H. White, William Sloane Associates, 1948. Samuel Fuller’s objection to playing Stilwell was reported by Fuller to the author in 1978 and to Lee Server,
Sam
Fuller:
Film
Is
a
Battleground,
McFarland, 1994. John Wayne’s reaction to the script was recalled by Spielberg in
The
Making
of
“1941
”
and in Joe Morgenstern, “Bob Z Can Read Your Mind,”
Playboy,
August 1995.

Additional reports on the filming of
1941
include “H’wood & Vine
1941
Location Lensing Nixed,”
DV,
July 24, 1978; Army Archerd columns,
DV,
December 20, 1978, and May 17, 1979; Chris Hodenfield, “Masters of Illusion,”
Rolling
Stone,
February 8, 1979, and
“1941:
Bombs Away!”; Wayne Warga, “Remembering Pearl Harbor with Steven Spielberg,”
LAT,
March 11,1979; and “Animal House Goes to War,”
Time,
April 16,1979. Spielberg’s description of
1941
as “a celebration of paranoia” is from the pressbook for the film, Columbia/Universal, 1979. The budget and final cost, and the film’s ramifications for Spielberg’s career, were discussed with the author by Veitch and Gale, and by Michael Finnell, Howard Kazanjian, A. D. Murphy, and David Tomblin. Spielberg’s self-criticisms are from “Of Narrow Misses and Close Calls”; Anthony, and Royal, “Steven
Spielberg in His Adventures on Earth.” Press coverage of the cost also includes Charles Schreger, “Milius’ A-Team Prods. Prepping Six Projects, One for Orion,”
DV,
March 6, 1978; Stuart Byron, “Rules of the Game,”
The
Village
Voice,
June 27, 1979; Andrew Epstein,
“1941
Gets a Bad Press, But Payoff Is Promising,”
LAT,
April 20, 1980; and “Tanen Says U Will Recoup on
1941
Release,”
DV,
May 12, 1980. The European reception was discussed by Veitch; Epstein; and in
“1941
Doing Well in Europe Theatres,”
HR,
April 2, 1980, and an item in
New
York,
April 7, 1980. Drug use by John Belushi and others who worked on
1941,
Spielberg’s notion of casting Belushi as the Japanese submarine commander, and Spielberg’s buyout price for
Continental
Divide
are discussed in Bob Woodward,
Wired:
The
Short
Life
and
Fast
Times
of
John
Belushi,
Simon & Schuster, 1984.