Steven Spielberg’s Story
Steven
dreamed of being a movie director from childhood. He began amateur films
with a primitive camera when he was still a child and the dream never
subsided.
How
Spielberg broke into Universal Studios is a legend in the movie industry.
He took the Universal Studios Tour, an attraction that enables visitors to
get an inside look at the movie business. Visitors ride around the studio
lots on a tram. Steven sneaked off the tram and hid between two sound
stages until the tour ended. When he left at the end of the day, he made a
point of saying a few words to the gate guard.
Day after
day, he went back to the studio for three months. He walked past the
guard, waved at him, and he waved back. He always wore a suit and carried
a briefcase, letting the guard assume he was one of the students with a
summer job in the studio. He made a point of speaking to and befriending
directors, writers and editors. He even found a vacant office, took it
over and listed his name in the building directory.
He made it
his business to get to know Sid Sheinberg, then head of production for the
studio’s television arm. He showed him his college film project, which so
impressed Sheinberg that he put the young man under contract with the
studio.
His first
full-length film, The Sugarland
Express, received critical acclaim and won a best screenplay award at
the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. Unfortunately, it did not do very well at
the box office.
His big
break came a year later when he discovered the book Jaws. The studio had
already decided to produce Jaws and had chosen a well-known director to
film it.
Spielberg
desperately wanted to make this movie. Despite the financial failure of The Sugarland Express, his
self-confidence had not diminished and he persuaded the producers to
dismiss the chosen director and give it to him.
It was not
an easy assignment. From the beginning trouble beset the production. It
ran into technical and budget problems. However, when Jaws was released in
June 1975, it enjoyed twofold success: it broke box office records, and
the critics loved it. Within a month of its release, the film had taken in
60 million dollars at the box office, an unheard-of amount at the time.
Over the
next few years, Spielberg directed several movies, including the popular Indiana Jones series. He later
directed
Jurassic
Park
, which would
also become – at its time – the most successful movie in history, the
third Spielberg film to break the record. It also brought in over one
billion dollars in gross receipts, toys and other merchandise.
Spielberg
continues to pursue his dreams. When he and two other
Hollywood
moguls created their own production company, they called it ‘Dreamworks’.
(taken from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill)
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