Slate has an article up on one of my favorite cinematic topics: the epic friendship of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. And, unfortunately, since friendship doesn't make news, and conflict does, writer Tom Shone has gone and twisted an interesting tale of two men who happen to be the two most successful directors in the history of film into a bitter catfight. I mean, just look at the title: "Lucas vs. Spielberg - the Worst Best Friends in Hollywood." Basically, the article's a steaming load of crap, a ridiculously poor attempt to create controversy where there is none. Tom Shone, you're a jackass. Here's why.
"Lucas' Revenge of the Sith opened on May 18, while Spielberg's War of the Worlds arrives in time for July 4. It is a battle that, in terms of the box office, Spielberg is expected to lose由evenge of the Sith has already taken in $400 million in just over three weeks, while War of the Worlds' top projections stop short of $300 million."
How does two films opening two months apart constitute a "battle?" Wow, Spielberg must take that as a bitter blow: your summer movie might not beat the box office tally of the climatic sequel to THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FILM SERIES OF ALL TIME. Does anyone really expect it to? And do you honestly think Steven's going to be crying in his cornflakes if War of the Worlds takes in 300 mil?
"Theirs is a battle fought out in box-office millions and backhanded compliments, blockbusters, and casual slights. 'He's taught me a lot about creative compromise,' Spielberg once said of Lucas, with a straight face."
Had the quote not been taken out of context, and had the snarking writer left off the asinine "with a straight face" aside, the reader would have known that Spielberg was talking about how Lucas, during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark, showed Spielberg that a movie could be brought in under-budget and under-schedule, something Spielberg hadn't been able to do with his last three films. "I found with these movies [Raiders, Poltergeist, and E.T.] that the compromises I made to deliver the films responsibly were actually better than the original ideas I started with," Spielberg said in a 1982 interview with American Premiere. "This isn't a a rule, and maybe I'll change my mind later, but when I had to make a compromise to save some money, I found that the second idea was better and fresher for the movie."
"And when Spielberg repeatedly begged to direct one of the new Star Wars episodes, Lucas reported the story with the glee of a child keeping his favorite toy just out of reach. 'I was getting ready to shoot in Australia,' Lucas told reporters, 'and Steven was whining on the phone all the time, "Oooh, I'm sitting here by the pool, and poor me, I don't have a movie to direct ... "' "
Impressive. Shone manages to take a direct quote from Lucas' Entertainment Weekly interview, and yet directly contradict the same interview in the same paragraph. Lucas says that he ASKED both Spielberg and Ron Howard to direct an episode of the prequel trilogy, and they turned him down. Spielberg's "whining on the phone," another quote taken out of context, was a teasing joke referring to how Spielberg came to direct a scene in REVENGE OF THE SITH, not the sneering jibe that Shone makes it out to be.
"It's a beguiling image: two young men, carving out movie empires for themselves as they build sandcastles on the beach. The important thing to remember, though, is how sad and unbalanced their relationship was at the time: Lucas was very much the top dog, with Spielberg the humble amanuensis, gratefully accepting scraps from the master's table."
"The humble amanuenis," "gratefully accepting scraps from the master's table." This is how Shone chooses to describe the man who had at that point in time directed the highest-grossing pictures for two of the major studios, Universal and Columbia. JAWS was the first movie to ever gross a hundred million dollars at the box office. Depicting Spielberg as a Cinderella scrubbing the kitchen floor while evil stepsister Lucas goes to the ball isn't only a stretch, it's absolutely ridiculous.
"At the time, it was Spielberg's career that seemed checkered. Both Jaws and Close Encounters had gone wildly over budget, as did his elephantine World War II farce, 1941祐pielberg's first flop耀o that by the time he got around to Raiders, if anyone resembled a man trying to outrun a giant runaway boulder, it was he. Lucas, as executive producer, had a hard time convincing studio heads that Spielberg was the right director for Raiders."
Um, not quite. See above. While 1941 might have been a flop and Jaws and Close Encounters DID both go over budget, the sheer volume of money grossed by the latter two meant that any studio executive at the time would have given his right nut to grab the next Spielberg picture.
"'We took [Raiders] to every single studio in town and got turned down by everybody,' says Lucas, 'except Michael Eisner, and Eisner got a lot of heat for it, because of the $20 million budget.' Lucas assured Eisner that Spielberg would bring the picture in under budget and on schedule."
Again, studio execs were falling all over each other for the chance to work with the Spielberg/Lucas tag team. The reason Raiders was turned down by most of the majors was that Lucas and Spielberg were demanding that they would OWN Raiders; they would control the copyright and the negative, and the studio would only get a share of the action. This meant that, according to Spielberg, the picture would have to gross over $60 million before the studio would see any substantial money. It was a crappy deal, and Paramount took it anyway. Unbelievably, Shone manages to completely ignore this massive upheaval in the way the studios did business with creatives so that he can pitch the turning-down of Raiders as a result of Spielberg being at the helm. Nice one.
And so the article goes, taking the bond between two massively successful filmmakers and painting it as a petty rivalry for the all-time top slot at the box office. And why does this stick in my craw to such a degree?
Well, because I've always found that friendship fascinating, a sign of the pinnacle of success: to not only be at the top of your game in your chosen profession, but to have a mate who's right there with you. The image of these two guys who have just dominated the movie world sitting on a beach in Hawaii talking about movies and building sand castles, well, it's GREAT, it makes my mind reel with possibilities. How cool it would be to be so successful. How cool to do it with a friend. But everyone's heard that story, there's no twist to it, no conflict, and we need conflict in our entertainment. So Tom Shone comes along and turns it into "the Worst Best Friendship in Hollywood." And two friends enjoying each other's success and helping each other along becomes two rivals making public niceties while bitterly envying their others successes in their fight to hold on to the ultimately meaningless position of Box Office Top Dog. Because you HAVE to be bitter and envious if someone does better than you, even if you've done better than everyone else. Because you can't possibly want someone else to succeed. Especially a good friend. Not that. Never that.
If your idea of success is to always be gunning for the other guy while watching your back for the guy gunning for you, to be stung by friends' accomplishments rather than to enjoy them for what they are, and to trample those friendships in the dust in your race for a prize that doesn't exist, well, Tom, have a fun and rewarding career.