Steven Spielberg names “the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a filmmaker”
Steven Spielberg has solidified his position as one of the most commercially successful filmmakers of all time. However, among his seemingly endless list of achievements, he has also encountered his share of challenges. While some directors stay within their comfort zones, Spielberg has consistently demonstrated his ability to overcome various hurdles throughout his career.
In 1993, Spielberg encountered what would quite possibly be his most difficult challenge yet. That year, Spielberg accomplished two of his greatest feats back-to-back, finishing his work on Jurassic Park before diving straight into the profound subject of the Holocaust with Schindler’s List. In this manner, he pushed the limits of what a director can accomplish in a single year.
“I was making Jurassic Park, and I had just finished shooting, and I had cut the film together when Steve Zaillian finally finished his draft, and he gave it to me to read,” Spielberg told Stephen Colbert. “I read it with my wife. We passed pages to each other, and I knew, when we got to Page 167 that I had to make the movie now. I had to make the movie because I didn’t want to miss the winter in Poland. I didn’t want to wait a whole year because it had to be shot in the snow.”
He added: “So I basically called the producer, my co-producer on Jurassic, Cathy Kennedy, and said, ‘I gotta jump ship. I gotta make Schindler’s List, and don’t ask me why. I have to make it right now…’ I had edited the whole film, and all that was left was mixing colour correction and sound effects editing.”
Jurassic Park undeniably elevated sci-fi entertainment to unprecedented heights, but Schindler’s List demanded Spielberg to navigate deeply complex and emotionally challenging terrain. While making the film, he realised the immense challenge of addressing such subject matter as a director. He shared his experience during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, shedding light on the emotional complexities of the behind-the-scenes.
“The hard days were beyond my imagination, and the easy days were never easy,” he said. “Everything we shot at Auschwitz with the women, when the women’s train was reassigned to Auschwitz, that was the toughest,” adding, “Often I was a basket case, just a wreck, and Kate always sat with me, let me get it out and talked me through it, or just let me be quiet and she would be quiet. We’d sit there and look at each other. Emotionally, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a filmmaker.”
To help him through, he enlisted help from his friend Robin Williams to lighten the mood every Friday by calling him up on the phone and telling jokes. “Robin knew how hard it was for me on the movie,” he recalled, “And once a week, every Friday, he’d call me on the phone and do comedy for me. Whether it was after 10 minutes or 20 minutes, when he heard me give the biggest laugh, he’d hang up on me.”
