The 1996 movie Steven Spielberg wishes he made: “We dined out on that for months”
Steven Spielberg defines Hollywood like no other director. He is Hollywood, really.
From the moment he crafted the concept of the summer blockbuster with Jaws in 1975, he has retained a tight grip over the industry as a leading filmmaker, possessing the ability to make hit after hit.
Two years after he made Jaws, which was actually his third film, Spielberg continued to pioneer new ideas with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Coinciding with the release of George Lucas’ Star Wars (Spielberg had actually offered to direct second-unit footage for Lucas when the project was starting to take its toll on him), the late ‘70s saw a sci-fi boom. Spielberg seemed to know exactly how to profit on this new phenomenon, and within a few years, he’d made the hit ET the Extra-Terrestrial.
Over the coming years, Spielberg would crank out successful movies like it was second nature. It was as though he’d been given the cheat code to making movies that would be undoubtedly popular with the mainstream from some invisible cinema god that only a select few had access to.
Of course, saying that slightly diminishes the skill that Spielberg himself possesses, although you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty terrific that one person has been capable of scoring so many blockbuster successes time and time again.
In the ‘90s, one of Spielberg’s most unbelievable achievements came when he somehow made Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park in one year. While one tackled the Holocaust and the other giant dinosaurs, both movies were huge undertakings, and it’s hard to fathom that the director was able to make the two films in such a short space of time.
If that’s not enough, he also managed to direct four other movies that decade, including the incredibly successful Saving Private Ryan, a propaganda-heavy tale of American heroism, as well as The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Hook, and Amistad. Still, when Spielberg looks back on the decade, there’s one movie that he wishes he’d made – not that he would’ve had any time to.
In 1996, Scott Hicks released Shine, which chronicled the life of pianist David Helfgott, who struggled with his mental health to the point of spending much of his time in institutions. With Alex Rafalowicz playing him as a child, Noah Taylor taking on his teenage years, and then Geoffrey Rush portraying him as an adult, the film was a mighty biography, and it was a great success, too.
Rush took home the ‘Best Actor’ award at the Oscars, where the movie was also nominated in several other big categories, such as ‘Best Picture’. You’d think that with all the success that Spielberg accumulated that decade, he’d not wish to have directed anything else, but according to Rush, “Spielberg is quoted as saying that. When he saw Shine, he said, ‘I wish I had made that film.’”
That was a big thing for him to hear, because who else other than Spielberg has such authority over what makes a good Hollywood movie?
“We dined out on that for months,” Rush concluded.
