The one movie “too fucking tough” for Steven Spielberg to handle: “I’m in big trouble”
Conventional wisdom would dictate that the director whose movies have earned more money than anyone else, helmed the highest-grossing film in cinema history on three separate occasions, and won three Academy Awards, could never meet a challenge they couldn’t handle, but Steven Spielberg had his concerns.
They were rightly founded, too, since he admitted in the aftermath that the production he always knew could backfire spectacularly did just that. Every picture brings pressure, but for someone operating on Spielberg’s level, it increases exponentially because whenever there’s a flop or a failure, somebody already has their knives sharpened to herald the beginning of the end.
It hasn’t happened yet, but the first time it looked as though it might came hot on the heels of his ascension into the elite category. Making Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind back-to-back will do that to a career, but 1941 was less of a misstep and more of a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen.
The war comedy didn’t flop, but it was nowhere near as lucrative as the filmmaker’s previous two features. It also went wildly over budget, spiralled out of control when the wunderkind failed to wrestle control of an increasingly chaotic shoot, and made an enemy of John Wayne based on its premise alone.
In an interview the year after 1941 had given Spielberg his first full-fledged disappointment, he knew exactly what went wrong. “A comedy is an elusive, chameleon-like beast,” he pondered. “It’s really an area of film that I’m not going to make a habit of. It’s too fucking tough, panhandling for your supper. Reaching for laughs. Sometimes, stretching the credibility of the storyline beyond all recognisable shape for a simple yuk.”
While he was aware that he could successfully weave comedic moments into his work, he also knew that making an entire movie based on rib-tickling and side-splitting wasn’t his forte. Acknowledging that he’s “comically courageous when comedy isn’t the home plate,” Spielberg suggested that he’s “much better when I’m playing shortstop and I can add comedy, for instance, to Jaws.”
In the case of 1941, “There better not be a serious moment in the entire film or I’m in trouble.” There were a couple of serious moments, and he was in trouble, just not for that reason alone. It was the first time he’d felt out of his depth, and nobody should be surprised that he wasn’t anywhere near as emotionally invested as he had been on Jaws and Close Encounters.
“It wasn’t a film from my heart,” he revealed. “It wasn’t a project that I initiated, dreamed about for ten years, although I have shed blood over it as if it were my own. Rather than a bastard adoption, I like to think of it at times as if it were a project I was forced to take because of my own state of mind.”
It’s been almost 45 years since 1941 premiered, and how many out-and-out comedies has Spielberg made since then? Zero, so it’s safe to say the lesson has been well and truly learned.
