Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg
John Baxter

First published in 1996 and now available as an ebook. Please note that this edition does not include illustrations.Steven Spielberg dominated the cinema of the nineties. He is one of the screen's greatest enchanters, with a spellbinding capacity – and a box-office record – matched by very few.His power now exceeds that of the greatest moguls of Hollywood's golden era, and films like 'Jaws, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'Jurassic Park' have been seen by billions around the world, and have changed forever the way movies are made. How was it that this 'movie brat', from an unhappy and rootless adolescence on the fringes of American society, became one of the most formidable players on the global entertainment scene?.From 'Duel', which suggested the innate 'film sense' Spielberg would bring to movie-making, to the Oscar-winning 'Schindler's List 'and beyond…

The Unauthorised Biography

STEVEN SPIELBERG

JOHN BAXTER

Praise (#ulink_5901847c-74eb-5492-9b19-56ce764ee912)

Further reviews for Steven Spielberg:

‘Diligent, perceptive and with every available anecdote’

SIMON HATTENSTONE, Guardian

‘riveting… retains a healthy objectivity throughout his enthralling account’

PENELOPE DENING, Irish Times

‘… a film-lover’s book, a review of a remarkable era, an exhaustive filmography – a movie about the evolution of Hollywood, with Spielberg as the central character’

JEREMY LESTER, Jewish Chronicle

‘Baxter may have a blockbuster on his hands.’

RICHARD E. GRANT, Sunday Times

‘highly entertaining, packed with interesting information. If you want to know how a Spielberg film was made, what shenanigans went on during the making, or who fell out with whom, it is all here.’

WILLIAM RUSSELL, The Herald (Glasgow)

‘Its usefulness lies in Baxter’s shrewd assessment of Spielberg’s relationship with the wider context of the entertainment industry in general and Hollywood power-politics… the account of Spielberg’s unsettled early years… is illuminating in terms of his later preoccupations.’

HUGO DAVENPORT, Sunday Telegraph

‘Baxter is quietly professional… and makes good use of the copious interviews Spielberg has given throughout his career.’

ANTHONY QUINN, The Observer

‘A very valuable book… the thing that most impresses in his book is the calm, careful and nearly gentle way in which it builds up our disquiet that the movie kingdom and our society as a whole should be so ordered that Steven Spielberg is its Gatsby, its Kane, and such a shining young example… it is Baxter’s most intriguing point that Spielberg not only caters to youthfulness, but extends and preserves it… What is so clever, I think, is Baxter’s sense of a man too narrowly focused to amount to a villain… Baxter’s success is beyond question.’

DAVID THOMSON, Independent on Sunday

‘An impeccably professional film-biographer (he’s already done Buñuel, Fellini, Ford and is now working on Kubrick), Baxter leaves no document unrifled, no fact unchecked, no anecdote untold.’

Sight and Sound

‘… a full, frank and readable account of a man who the public regards as one of the greatest enchanters in the history of film.’

STUART GILLES, Manchester Evening News

Contents

Cover (#uf61d6071-ab09-5ce3-b6a8-4be613686884)

Title Page (#u483b24c5-7c3b-51f3-9ed1-eb25f7640427)

Praise (#ulink_97ee4113-5b0d-5799-bf30-5e0f805f3c95)

1 The Man who Fell to Earth (#ulink_caf441f1-391b-58fd-9b12-313bc28f3e53)

2 The Boy who Swallowed a Transistor (#ulink_db369efe-2578-5f4e-872c-41bf4eddc6d3)

3 Amblin’ Towards Bethlehem (#ulink_9d7fda32-2643-5ea7-964d-372fbd55dd29)

4 Universal Soldier (#ulink_3cd7eafb-f687-56f6-ae94-aad56cf1f51d)

5 Duel (#ulink_6de0c657-8735-574a-9ebe-f1bdc1e73393)

6 The Sugarland Express (#ulink_4229684e-cf2f-539e-9788-18f83ca9c69c)

7 Jaws (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (#litres_trial_promo)

9 1941 (#litres_trial_promo)

10 Raiders of the Lost Ark (#litres_trial_promo)

11 Poltergeist and E.T: The Extraterrestrial (#litres_trial_promo)

12 The Twilight Zone: The Movie (#litres_trial_promo)

13 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (#litres_trial_promo)

14 The Color Purple (#litres_trial_promo)

15 Empire of the Sun (#litres_trial_promo)

16 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (#litres_trial_promo)

17 Always and Hook (#litres_trial_promo)

18 Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List (#litres_trial_promo)

19 The Dream Team