“Mark my words, they’ll break through”: Steven Spielberg’s scarily accurate prediction on the next crop of great directors
Hollywood produces plenty of one-hit wonders, flashes in the pan, and promising talents who fail to justify the early hype, but Steven Spielberg, in addition to being one of the wunderkinder who became an icon, displayed an eerie accuracy in predicting who would follow in his footsteps.
Of course, he would know, as Jaws was released when the filmmaker was only 28 years old. It went on to shake the industry to its very foundations, become the highest-grossing movie in cinema history, and forever change the way the biggest productions were packaged, marketed, and sold to the masses.
The expensive and self-indulgent wartime comedy 1941 was a rare misfire. Still, when Spielberg’s other five features post-Jaws extended to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Color Purple, the odd blip can be forgiven.
As well as being a prodigious talent in his own right, Spielberg also developed a sixth sense of spotting them. In fact, it’s downright spooky how things turned out after he made a bold proclamation and named who he believed was going to emerge as the industry’s next crop of elite-level directors.
While his batting average was far from 100%, it was high enough to anoint him as Tinseltown’s very own Nostradamus. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1982, Spielberg showcased an innate ability to foresee the future, singling out several directors who were relatively unknown, untried, or untested at the time, many of whom would go on to become era-defining heavyweights.
“Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Hal Barwood and Matt Robbins; mark my words, they’ll break through,” he offered. “Bob Towne, Ridley Scott, Hugh Hudson, John Carpenter will get there. De Palma certainly will, if he’s not already. John Milius will have his breakthrough film someday. Certainly, George Miller. I like this guy, Michael Mann, and Alan Parker.”
At the time Spielberg made his proclamation, Zemeckis had only helmed Beatles comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand and the satirical Used Cars, but he’d go on to take the reins on Romancing the Stone, the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Forrest Gump within a decade and a half, so he was right on the money.
Dragonslayer duo Robbins and Harwood didn’t quite get there, with the latter never writing a screenplay after 1985, while the former’s greatest success arguably came with the Spielberg-produced comedy Batteries Not Included, before he became a regular collaborator of Guillermo del Toro’s by scripting Mimic, Crimson Peak, and the Academy Award-winning Pinocchio.
Towne was already the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Chinatown, and while his directorial career didn’t amount to much, all things considered, Scott’s certainly did. His third feature, Blade Runner, hadn’t even been released at that point, and it would be an understatement to say he’s more than lived up to the potential greatness Spielberg saw in him when he only had The Duellists and Alien to his name.
Hudson’s career may have tapered off post-Chariots of Fire, but Carpenter went from strength to strength, with his first movie after Spielberg’s prediction being the horror classic The Thing. De Palma had yet to deliver Scarface, Body Double, The Intouchables, or Mission: Impossible, Milius’ cult classic Red Dawn hadn’t even been conceived, and Miller had yet to get around to Max Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Mann, meanwhile, only had the debut film Thief under his belt before becoming one of the most distinctive and prominent directors in the business through The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and The Insider, with Parker on the cusp of debuting Pink Floyd: The Wall but years removed from Birdy, Angel Heart, and Mississippi Burning when Spielberg made his call.
Barring a couple of exceptions, Spielberg made a mind-blowing fist of calling it as he saw it, with the majority of those directors becoming powerhouses who survived and thrived on a critical, commercial, and awards season level for a sustained number of years. Looking at what transpired, maybe asking him for the lottery numbers would have been the smarter question.
