“I was timid”: The movie that “embarrassed” Steven Spielberg
Despite being his eighth theatrically-released feature, by which point he was already renowned as one of the most important directors in the industry, The Colour Purple was a pivotal moment in the career of Steven Spielberg that foreshadowed what would soon become a recurring motif for his filmography.
Having previously helmed game-changing blockbuster Jaws, sci-fi favourite Close Encounters of the Third Kind, seminal adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the highest-grossing movie of all time, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel marked Spielberg’s first major drama, and set the template for his seamless ability to bounce between crowd-pleasers and prestige pictures at will.
Spielberg’s reputation had, until this point, been largely balanced on the sword of spectacle. It’s a difficult thing to pull off consistently as, eventually, the spectacle will fall off a cliff. Sure, his films could dazzle audiences, but they rarely occupied spaces for proper thought like Walker’s novel. The movie represented a serious shift for the director and allowed a new audience to engage.
Recouping its budget more than six times over at the global box office and earning ten Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ – although it infamously went home completely empty-handed – The Color Purple was nonetheless struck with the criticism that not only were several notable departures made from the source material, but Spielberg may not have been the right filmmaker for the job given his lack of a deeper connection to the story and personal preference for sentimentality.
In the book, there’s a love scene between two women that the director chose to avoid bringing to the screen, and in the documentary, Spielberg held his hands up and explained the reasons why: “I was timid,” he said. “I was just a little embarrassed.” The Color Purple on the page is gritty, realistic, and often uncomfortable in its methods of putting across the plight of its major players, all sentiments that weren’t regarded as among Spielberg’s hallmarks.
Expanding further on his decision to omit that particular exchange to Entertainment Weekly, Spielberg once again reiterated his cinematic shyness: “There were certain things in the relationship between Shug Avery and Celie that were finely detailed in Alice’s book, that I didn’t feel could get a [PG-13] rating. And I was shy about it,” he said.
He continues, “In that sense, perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Shug and Celie, because I did soften those. I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.”
Spielberg also reflected on the criticisms of directing a story written by a Black author that featured a largely Black cast, but he noted that he made the film with the full backing and support of its creator: “I made the movie I wanted to make from Alice Walker’s book. Alice was on the set a lot of the time and could have always stepped forward to say, ‘You know, this is too Disney. This is not the way I envisioned the scene going down’,” he continued. “She was very supportive during filmmaking, and so I felt that we were doing a good job adapting her novel.”
The debate surrounding the film ultimately became part of its legacy. For some viewers, Spielberg’s interpretation felt too gentle for a narrative defined by hardship and resilience. For others, the film’s accessibility helped bring Walker’s story to a far wider audience than it might otherwise have reached.
That being said, he did say that “the other criticism was that I had softened the book,” but not before holding his hands up and exclaiming that “I have always copped to that”.
Spielberg might be the most commercially successful director there’s ever been, then, but he still found himself too embarrassed to faithfully bring a love scene from page to screen.
