“He’s not very intelligent”: the three legendary directors who can’t stand Steven Spielberg
Universal popularity is an incredibly difficult thing to come across in any line of work, but in cinema, Steven Spielberg is pretty close, even if a select few of his peers actively hated his guts.
A certain level of respect is granted, regardless of how any filmmaker feels about him personally, since Spielberg has achieved more than most. After all, he’s a three-time Academy Award winner, the highest-grossing director of all time, and has a back catalogue that’s overflowing with classics.
Alongside George Lucas, he also reinvented Hollywood several times over and played an instrumental role in helping to usher in the CGI revolution, he’s been cited as an influence and inspiration by dozens of names who tried to follow in his footsteps, and very few collaborators haven’t enjoyed working with him.
That doesn’t mean that others haven’t, as Shia LaBeouf can attest, but for the most part, Spielberg has naturally and very comfortably settled into his groove as a lauded elder statesman. However, he’s still made a few enemies, mostly by doing nothing except being himself, which was more than enough to piss off a trio of legendary auteurs.
Jean-Luc Godard maintained to Film Comment that Spielberg “was not capable” of making Schindler’s List, even though he did, and won plenty of acclaim and awards for his troubles. “He’s not very intelligent,” the ‘French New Wave’ icon added, before calling the finished feature “a phony result.”
Going one step further, Godard matter-of-factly declared that Spielberg is “not a genius,” negatively comparing him to William Wyler by saying that “if there was a race, William would do the 100 yards in 12 seconds; Spielberg would do it in two minutes.” He’s not a fan, then, and one of his fellow ‘French New Wave’ bedrocks fell into the same camp.
Jacques Rivette also came swinging the metaphorical steel chair in the direction of the Jurassic Park and Close Encounters mastermind’s cranium, wholeheartedly endorsing Godard’s opinion, doubling down by branding Spielberg an “asshole,” and then suggesting that “he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag.”
Of course, his mainstream, populist career wasn’t always going to endear him to the French, and to even things out, Chilean surrealist maestro Alejandro Jodorowsky, who admittedly has French citizenship, so he kind of counts, gave the Jaws director the harshest dressing down of the lot.
Refusing to fuck around, he made his feelings clear in three simple words: “I hate Spielberg.” Not only that, but he also confessed that if the opportunity to murder him presented itself, he’d happily take it, with Jodorowsky quite literally saying that “If I can kill Spielberg, I will kill Spielberg.” At least Godard and Rivette didn’t threaten his life, but the trio all despise him equally nonetheless.
