The one director Steven Spielberg knew he would “never be as good as”
Boasting the title of being the most commercially successful director in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is simply big business. Sneer as cinephiles might, there is a real skill in being able to gather the villagers of the world around a cinematic fire and tell a story worth listening to.
Spielberg is the best there ever was at being able to do so. It might not always be the ‘cool’ thing to do, but Spielberg has always seen great value in being able to move from one genre to another, telling stories that appeal to the populace rather than a few intelligent minds. The pioneer of the modern blockbuster has delivered time and time again when it comes to providing some of the most captivating box office smashes of all time.
From his first big success in 1975 with Jaws, Spielberg believed in his vision of bringing mass audiences to the cinema and with iconic movies such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report, the Ohio-born filmmaker has written his name into the very fabric of the cinematic medium.
So many budding filmmakers (and even those who have managed to make feature-length movies) would give an arm and a leg to have had even ten per cent of the career that Spielberg has achieved. But even Spielberg himself has his heroes and has previously admitted that he could never match up to one of them in particular.
Discussing one of his most cherished fellow filmmakers, Spielberg once told The Herald-Times, “But look, among my favourite directors is William Wyler, who never came out of the same hole twice. I’ve always admired those directors who were able to so totally reinvent themselves stylistically.”
Wyler was one of the greatest directors to ever sit in the chair and won the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’ three times for Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives and Ben-Hur, which all also won ‘Best Picture’. In fact, Wyler was nominated for the ‘Best Director’ Oscar a record 12 times.
The reason for Spielberg’s admiration for Wyler comes down to his ability to adapt to different kinds of movies, which Spielberg himself is arguably capable of doing. “To be able to go from Mrs. Miniver to Ben-Hur, to go from The Big Country to Funny Girl — those were the directors I admired,” he said.
Ever the cinematic devotee, nobody knows movies quite like Spielberg does. And while genre directors certainly have their place in the pantheon of filmmakers, the Schindler’s List director saw real value in being able to tell any story in the right way. For him, those were the directors who really shaped cinema and showed him the way forward. Spielberg added: “I basically lit candles to the directors that I couldn’t pigeonhole”.
Given Spielberg’s varied works, from science fiction to drama to war to everything in between, he’s another director who’s never been pigeonholed. Looking back at his resume, if the director ever does decide to hang up his chair, there’s a good chance he will be pleased with the variety he brought both to his own work and the lives of cinemagoers everywhere. But still, there’s an element of humility in the filmmaking icon’s following words.
“I’ll never be as good a director as William Wyler, but to be eclectic like he was — that was always something I wanted,” he said. Evidently, Spielberg just has huge admiration for his predecessor and would never want to compare himself to one of his heroes, even if he might have been justified in doing so.
