YouTube Obsession Theatre: A Spielberg Celebration

Like many millennials, I occasionally have a tendency to let emotions, anxiety or mania get the better of me, and I often numb the best way I know how: distracting myself on the Internet. Over the last few decades I've cultivated a bank of videos that often get me out of a spiral or fascinate me to no end; they're inspiring, humorous or just plain interesting. I'm going to share them with you under the heading I call "YouTube Obsession Theatre," and you can put them on if you ever need to feel similarly.

Hey, did you know a new Steven Spielberg film is coming out? The legendary director's new film Disclosure Day opens in theaters this week, and if you're a fan of the man, you are, as they say, "eatin' good." For the first time in over a decade, a confluence of events—the crowd-pleasing, blockbuster sci-fi trappings of the picture (with constant reminders that, yes, this is the man who directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial); the content-industrial complex (Spielberg has gone on several podcasts, one of the last episodes of Late Show with Stephen Colbert and even the TikTok offices to promote this movie, most of which he did not do for The Fabelmans); and the boundless ambition of the post-COVID theatrical exhibition industry (which was still figuring itself out when the excellent West Side Story and prestige-minded The Fabelmans tanked at the box office)—have made the Spielberg brand its most ubiquitous since E.T. and Elliott became a corporate logo in the '80s.

There's also been some tremendous writing on the guy: Slate commissioned a batch of great pieces in a "Spielberg Week" package, and New York published tens of thousands of words of stories, memories and reflections of the director's career from friends and collaborators in an illuminating oral history. I do wish the latter piece, available online through the magazine's Vulture vertical, dove into Steven's superb early '00s—A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report and War of the Worlds get shorter shrift than I'd like. And I am bemused at how much early collaborators Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, who wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's theatrical debut The Sugarland Express, generously credit themselves for additional uncredited writing or contributions on JAWS, Close Encounters and E.T., claims I'd never heard until this article.

As someone who has made his Spielberg fixation your problem for not only as long as you've read my work but probably as long as you've known me, there's not much I can add to the pile. I haven't seen Disclosure Day as of this writing, though I am set to see it on Thursday, June 11 (that's today; a significant date in Spielbergdom as the release dates of E.T. and Jurassic Park). But I can show you a comfort watch of mine that I only recently (re)discovered that serves as a wonderful (if now incomplete) tribute to the man. On May 27, 1995, NBC aired a special hourlong presentation taped that March in which Spielberg was honored with the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. With Tom Hanks, fresh off his back-to-back Oscar wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, serving as emcee, the special blended clips from his films with heartfelt speeches from friends and collaborators—plus a speech from the director himself, the youngest recipient of the award at the time (ironically, Hanks beat him out for this qualification in 2002).

The original show is a rich text for Spielberg fandom at the close of his imperial phase, transitioning into living legend status. (It was even nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special.) But the above Dutch-subtitled version, uploaded by someone on YouTube in 2021, offers virtually no commercial breaks and, at 81 minutes, a lot more than what was shown on American television! (It may have been released on VHS at some point, per research.) In honor of a director who's entertained, influenced and touched my life for as long as I've been living, I present this to you, with a timecoded list of interesting moments that didn't make the version I taped more than 30 years ago, backed on VHS with an episode of Spielberg on Larry King Live later that year. (Are you surprised I can remember all this? You shouldn't be.)

• 6:27-7:00: in a very funny opening speech, Hanks shares an anecdote about both he and Steven being A/V nerds in school, complete with projector impression!
• 9:37-10:11: the "early years" package has a slightly longer sequence of footage from early films Fighter Squad and Escape to Nowhere, both immortalized in The Fabelmans.
• 15:42-17:24: a climactic scene from 1974's The Sugarland Express is shown ahead of the terrific "first barrel" sequence from JAWS (which was broadcast).
• 18:50-21:30: following that JAWS scene, the dialogue scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• 21:31-22:37: Richard Dreyfuss, who gave a speech before that three-clip package, throws to Sugarland star Goldie Hawn, who says a few nice words in tribute of the director. (Side note: is Wyatt Russell, son of Hawn and Kurt Russell and co-star of Disclosure Day, the first second-generation Spielberg star?)
• 22:38-24:24: next to speak is Duel star Dennis Weaver, who jokes that he "may have been the only actor who ever 'okayed' Steven Spielberg," much to the director's delight.
• 24:25-26:48: Hanks sets up a clip of the dinosaur revelation in Jurassic Park, a piece likely omitted because the film had only just premiered on NBC earlier that month.
• 26:49-29:33: an unaired sequence from The Color Purple of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) reading letters from her sister. Goldberg will later give a tremendous speech in all broadcast versions.
• 29:34-34:05: one of my favorite scenes in the underrated Empire of the Sun, of Jim (Christian Bale)'s joy at seeing the P-51 Mustang attack the Japanese base he's imprisoned on, followed by the horror of realizing he can't remember his parents' faces. This is followed by a recollection of shooting Empire from the 21-year-old Bale, and it's shocking to see him in between his time as a winning child actor and a star of blockbuster and prestige pictures.
• 34:06-34:49: a brief recollection from Always co-star/highlight John Goodman, describing Steven's joy at the "controlled chaos" of a movie set.
• 34:50-35:54: more brief but intriguing remarks from The Color Purple producer Quincy Jones. He notes that they vowed to become "teachers" for each other, which led to Steven showing Q some camera operations during shooting E.T. and Jones demonstrating a synthesizer during the sessions for Michael Jackson's Thriller. (It is not a matter of public record that the former actually happened—E.T.'s only filming in early '82 was pickups and exteriors, and I've never seen evidence of Q visiting the set in the fall of '81—but Steven was indeed present at Westlake Studios, because he and Jones co-produced a nearly-forgotten but endlessly fascinating, Jackson-narrated E.T. storybook album that I will one day write about at length if it kills me.)
• 35:55-37:02: considering his brief supporting role in Jurassic Park presaged his breakthrough as an actor, it's a surprise that Samuel L. Jackson doesn't talk more about working with Steven. He pays a lovely tribute to the director's honoring of "the human spirit."
• 39:18-41:40: George Lucas' speech kicks off a selection of clips from the Indiana Jones films, but the second Raiders clip (in the Well of Souls) and the Temple of Doom bridge-cutting sequence didn't air in the American broadcast.
• 42:49-44:05: the Indy package is bookended by a memory from Karen Allen of Spielberg asking her "How well can you spit?" during her audition as Marion Ravenwood.
• 44:06-44:53: another brief accolade from Sam Neill, who recalls the enjoyment of shooting Jurassic Park.
• 47:25-48:41: this moving speech from a grown-up Henry Thomas on E.T. and Steven's uncanny knack for compassionately filming child actors was heavily truncated in the U.S. broadcast.
• 52:12-54:27: as cutting as it is, it's very clear why this segment of Dustin Hoffman sardonically promoting the impending release of Outbreak and reading e.e. cummings' "Doveglion" was excised.
• 54:28-55:40: Danny Glover's praise of Spielberg's encouragement of actors in rehearsals for The Color Purple reminds me how absolutely underrated Glover is.
• 58:40-59:06: a brief set-up from Hanks of a clip from Schindler's List.
• 1:03:32-1:09:21: former MCA/Universal president/CEO Sidney Sheinberg, credited as one of Spielberg's great discoverers/mentors back when Sheinberg headed the studio's television division and signed the director to a contract, gives an extended speech followed by the stirring finale of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which was replaced in the U.S. broadcast (more on that in a minute).
• 1:10:39-1:17:52: Spielberg's speech is greatly extended from its U.S. broadcast, which the AFI nicely put up on their YouTube channel as well. (If you've never seen this, I will not spoil the final performance, which in America had to share screen time with NBC's annoying split-screen end credits. It features a musician you'll almost certainly guess and a vocalist you may not—really terrific stuff, and that cheeky quote at the end gets me good.)

Addendum: Intriguingly, the U.S. broadcast includes a few things not included in the above version. Luckily, someone has preserved that edit on YouTube as well (complete with original commercials!), so I can point you to them. They're quite funny, and incidentally, two of them are right next to each other!

• 21:51-23:19: Hanks, having told the story up top of "meeting" Steven through the "Eyes" segment of Rod Serling's Night Gallery (his first professional directorial credit!), tells the story of the first time Steven met him, at a script meeting for the Amblin comedy The Money Pit. Hanks' summation of his input into that meeting never fails to make me laugh.
• 23:20-24:30: a very funny anecdote from Laura Dern about Steven's film-geek humor while the Jurassic Park cast and crew battened down on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i—the intended final day of principal photography, cancelled by the landfall of Hurricane Iniki.
• 46:00-47:30: instead of the finale of E.T. preceding Spielberg's speech, the U.S. broadcast offered a brief montage of clips from various films, scored by E.T.'s unforgettable theme.