Heidi Wilhite’s HUM210 uniblog

Heidi Wilhite
Final Course Paper
HUM 210
6 May 2006
 

Steven Allan Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio.  His father Arnold was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers, while his mother Leah, a concert pianist, looked after the four children.  Steven is the oldest; his siblings are Annie, Sue and Nancy.  The family soon moved to Scottsdale, Arizona.  Spielberg attended Arcadia High School in Phoenix.  It was there that his love for movies began to flourish.
            At the age of 12, he’d made his first unpaid film, an 8 minute Western called The Last Gun, which Spielberg financed with a tree planting business.  He charged admission to his home movies, while his sister Annie sold popcorn.  Just one year later at the age of 13, Spielberg won a prize for a 40 minute war movie in which he titled Escape to Nowhere.  In 1963, at the age of 16, his 140 minute production of Firelight a sci-fi epic based on a story his sister Nancy had written about a UFO attack, was revealed at a local movie theater and brought in $100 profit.  He would, as the entire world knows, return often to the subjects of war and alien life-forms (1).
            After being denied entrance into traditional film schools, Spielberg entered California State University in Long Beach to study English.  Spielberg’s professional movie career began the day that he decided to jump off a tour bus at Universal Studios Hollywood and roam around the back lots.  Rumor has it that he found an abandoned janitors closet and transformed it into an office and showed up for “work” everyday until somebody mistakenly gave him some work to do.  It was a 26 minute movie called Amblin that scored him his big opportunity.  The film was a prize winner at the Atlanta Film Festival and won Spielberg his 7 year contract with Universal.  In remembrance he named his first production company Amblin Entertainment (2).
Catch Me It You Can (2002) is a story of the courageous adventures of a youthful con artist.  The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role who successfully impersonates an airline pilot, doctor, assistant attorney general and history professor, cashing in more than 2.5 million in fraudulent checks in 26 countries. Tom Hanks is an FBI agent who tracks DiCaprio down and catches him.  The movie marked a turn of genre for Spielberg who was at this point seen to be branching out to different kinds of film genres aside from the usual sci-fi fare he was known for.  It is his most out of the ordinary film to date.  It earned considerable critical acclaim and box office success (3).
            The Terminal (2004) stars Tom Hanks along with Catherine Zeta-Jones.  It is a warm hearted comedy about a man of Eastern European descent who is stranded in an airport after his home country suffers a civil war during his flight, strongly paralleling the circumstances of Merhan Karimi Nasen.  It received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office (4).
            Munich is a film about the actions following the 1972 Munich Massacre.  Munich stands as Spielberg’s second film regarding Jewish relationships in the world, the first being Schindler’s List.  The film is based on Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas.  The movie is an examination of the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the September organization, followed by the event’s repercussion in which Israeli’s intelligence agency hunted down and killed the perpetrators (5).
            Spielberg’s films often deal with several recurring themes.  Most of his films deal with ordinary characters searching for or coming in contact with extraordinary beings or finding themselves in extraordinary  circumstances, this is especially evident in Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can & War of the Worlds.  The most persistent theme throughout his films is tension between parent-child relationships.  This mirrors Spielberg’s own relationship with his father.  The notable absence of Elliott’s father in E.T. is the most famous example of this theme.  Another theme is that of loss of innocence and coming of age.  In Catch Me If You Can, DiCaprio naively and foolishly believes that he can reclaim his shattered family if he accumulates enough money to support them.
            Without a doubt one of the most powerful film personalities in the record of film, Steven Spielberg is perhaps Hollywood’s best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world.  Spielberg has countless big grossing critically acclaimed credits to his name as producer, director and writer.
 

Works Cited
 

1. Steven Spielberg Biography. April 20,2006.
 

2. Steven Spielberg (I). April 16, 2006.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/>
 

3. Catch Me If You Can. April 17, 2006. http://www.dreamworks.com/catchthem/jump.html>
 

4. Gilsdorf, Ethan. Behind ‘The Terminal’ a true story. June 21, 2004. April 17, 2006.
 

5. Munich: New York Review. April 18, 2006
http://www.nymag.com/movies/listings/rv_51375.htm>