“A terrible experience”: the crew that was really hostile to Steven Spielberg
Any person looking to make it big in the movie industry, whether an actor, a grip or a makeup artist, would do well to be involved in a Steven Spielberg production, although early into his career, Spielberg found that without a reputation of excellence, he could not convince everyone of his genius.
Eventually, Spielberg would establish himself as one of the most revered and respected movie directors of all time and handled some of the greatest films in living memory, including Jaws, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can, each of which saw him command his cast and crew.
However, while only a fool would reject the opportunity to work with Spielberg in the last five decades or so, it invariably occurred that early into his career, Spielberg found that he couldn’t impress everyone as the new kid on the block, as he well learned when making his directing debut for segments of the pilot episode of Night Gallery.
The 1969 TV anthology horror film was written by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling. It was directed by Boris Sagal and Barry Shear, and starred Joan Crawford, Roddy McDowall and Richard Kiley, featuring three supernatural stories that set up the future anthology series of the same name by Serling.
When speaking with fellow director Edgar Wright for Empire, Spielberg admitted that he found an issue with a number of members of the Night Gallery crew. “Night Gallery was a terrible experience for me because the cast accepted me, including Joan Crawford,” Spielberg explained. “Well, Joan didn’t accept me at first. But once I began directing her, she treated me like King Vidor. She treated me like a Hollywood veteran. All the cast were lovely with me on Night Gallery.”
So far, so good for Spielberg, and he must have thought that directing a cast and crew for the first time would be an easy job. However, the atmosphere on the set quickly changed. “The crew rebelled and slowed down, and I think consciously huddled to try to get me fired,” the director noted. “Now I think that’s just probably the way I saw it. It may not be the way it actually happened, but the crew really was hostile in every regard to everything I did on that show.”
Before long, Spielberg had fallen a day behind his schedule mostly because the crew were moving at “literally a snail’s pace”. Eventually, a producer for the show came down to the set to “reprimand” Spielberg, who was still in his early twenties at the time, for making the production grind to a halt, even though it wasn’t really his fault.
Thankfully, one of the show’s actors, Barry Sullivan, stepped in. After asking Spielberg to take a break from the soundstage with his second assistant director, Sullivan had a stern word with the crew. When Spielberg returned to the set 20 minutes later, “everybody’s eyes were cast to the ground. But they were moving a hell of a lot faster.”
When he asked Sullivan exactly what he had said to the crew, Sullivan replied, “I have never in my entire career worked with such an unprofessional crew, with such hostility towards the director. I told the crew that the actors would all rebel and walk off if the crew continued to behave this way.” So that was the moment Spielberg’s awful early experience was saved.
