The “intolerable” movie Steven Spielberg avoided at all costs: “I’ll be in my bomb shelter”
There’s no set rule for how a director should deal with finishing their latest movie, although Steven Spielberg hiding himself away from the world, sticking his fingers in his ears, and pretending it didn’t exist probably doesn’t come recommended.
If anyone should be confident in their work, it’s him. After all, he’s the single highest-grossing director in cinema history, the only person to have helmed the top-earning release of all time on three separate occasions, and as modest as he is, he’s self-aware enough to know he’s one of the greats.
And yet, after enduring a particularly troubling production, Spielberg decided that the best way to prepare himself for its impending theatrical release was to vanish off the face of the planet. Unusual? Yes. Justified? Perhaps. Necessary? Based on how he felt about the finished film, probably.
After a solid-if-unspectacular end to the 1980s, when he followed the high of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with the middling Always, Spielberg opted to begin the following decade with a bang by mounting one of his most expensive pictures yet: a lavish and star-studded take on the Peter Pan legend.
Viewers of a certain generation refuse to speak a bad word about Hook, and it was a success at the box office after clearing $300 million, but the extensive, effects-heavy, and exhausting shoot left Spielberg an emotional wreck, and behind-the-scenes disagreements didn’t make things easier. In an unusual move, the filmmaker barely promoted it and almost fell off the radar, which indicated his unhappiness.
He tried to avoid talking about Hook in public, but he did write a letter to its star, Robin Williams, explaining why he’d been skipping certain press duties and staying out of contact: “Right now, I’m in my I don’t want to know phase,” was how he succinctly put it, saying that he’d been actively ignoring reviews, news coverage, or printed articles about the movie.
It came at a cost, though, as he elaborated. “For one thing, it makes most of my friends mad at me, because they take my running for shelter very personally,” Spielberg wrote. “But it’s sometimes what I need to do to survive the experience. It’s how I take care of myself, as perverse or unusual as it might seem. The pressure that was on me for the last 18 months was at times intolerable.”
On the plus side, he ended with a promise to Williams: “I’ll be out of my bomb shelter very soon.” When Spielberg did eventually re-emerge into the world, he was generally apathetic towards Hook. His opinions on the film haven’t changed over time either, with the legendary director admitting that it might be his least favourite entry from his filmography, although anyone who was a child in the early ’90s would disagree.
It’s maintained a strong cult following and continues to win over new converts as the next generation of cinema-happy youngsters discovers it, but it’s hard to think of anyone who dislikes Hook as much as Spielberg. Since he’s the guy who made it, he’s allowed to, even if it’s nowhere near as bad as he thinks it is.
