Steven Spielberg

Speaker 30:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is Steven Spielberg. Over the past eight decades, Desert Island Discs has cast away Hollywood icons like James Stewart, Sophia Loren and Tom Hanks, and pioneering directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Steve McQueen. Today's Castaway has reached more people than any of them. His releases don't just spark trends, they spawn phenomena. Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, Westside Story. It's impossible to pin him down to one style. Wherever his creative travels take him, he brings along the questions which have illuminated his work since the beginning, about families, particularly fathers and sons, innocence, separation, the David and Goliath struggles we face every day, and most importantly of all, the impulse to, as a certain extraterrestrial put it, be good. They are present too in his own story, which after fifty years of filmmaking, he finally told this year. The Fabelman's is a deeply personal tribute to the family and the family fractures that shaped him.

Presenter1:51

He says I'm the Freadycat who makes a picture and immediately assumes that nobody is going to show up the first day and it will be reviled around the world. When it doesn't turn out that way, I'm relieved. I don't celebrate. I don't have victory parties. I simply feel relief. Stephen Spielberg, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Steven Spielberg2:11

Thank you. I love being here. I'm relieved being here. We'll see how long the relief lasts, but right now I'm relieved to be on your show.

Presenter2:14

Doubt.

Presenter2:18

Well, me too. Relieved to have you. Loud and clear. So Stephen, the Fablemans is based on your own coming of age, both personally and cinematically. You are perhaps more invested in this film than any other that you've made throughout your long career. What does that do to your fear levels?

Steven Spielberg2:34

It shoots them through the roof, of course, because I'm a private person that's going public about, and I can't hide behind somebody else's authorship or a book or a genre or American history. I can't get into any of those really convenient bomb shelters anymore. I'm just stuck with myself right here talking to you.

Presenter2:56

And what was it like for you recreating those experiences that you had as as a young boy? I mean, watching Paul Dano and Michelle Williams bringing your parents back to life in a in a painstakingly reconstructed replica of the family home. It must have been extraordinary.

Steven Spielberg3:12

When I first saw my house being rebuilt, my childhood home being rebuilt on a soundstage.

Steven Spielberg3:17

My first thought was, is this going to be the most self-indulgent thing I've ever asked people to accompany me through? Is this $40 million of therapy?

Steven Spielberg3:31

I didn't know really what I was doing except.

Steven Spielberg3:36

I was answering a need I had.

Steven Spielberg3:40

Being an orphan or recently orphaned by the loss of both parents, to recapture some of those memories in some way that wouldn't seem too indulgent to actors I really respected, like Michelle Williams and like Paul Dano and Judd Hirsch. So it was a tightrope for a while.

Steven Spielberg3:58

Did you get emotional?

Steven Spielberg4:01

Yeah, yes, I did. I did. Oh my god, I did.

Steven Spielberg4:04

Probably the biggest struggle I had making the film was not to get emotional.

Steven Spielberg4:08

But there were times where it just it was out of my control.

Presenter4:13

It's time for your first disc. What is it and why are you taking it with you today?

Steven Spielberg4:17

I think why I've taken the Gene Pitney song

Steven Spielberg4:21

The man who shot Liberty Balance is because it was a seminal movie in my life.

Steven Spielberg4:27

And it was one of the first times that a song led me to the theater, not the other way around, where you see a movie, hear the song, and then buy the song, and then see the movie again. This was something that was getting a lot of radio play, but I didn't know John Ford that well, and I wasn't even aware he directed it. I just knew that the song outlined a story that I could not wait to see. And it was one of my favorite Westerns of all time.

Speaker 44:51

The kind of a man the West would need to tame a troubled land?

Speaker 44:57

Cause the point of a gun was the only law that Liberty understood When it came to shooting straight and fast, he was mighty good

Steven Spielberg5:09

But then the verse comes in like you put it.

Speaker 45:09

Yeah.

Speaker 45:11

Yeah.

Steven Spielberg5:11

Uh

Speaker 45:11

His gun and many a man would fall. The man who shot Liberty Balance, he shot Liberty Balance, he was the bravest of them all.

Presenter5:24

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, performed by Gene Pitney. Steven Spielberg, you were born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in nineteen forty six. Your mother, Leah, was a concert pianist. How do you remember her?

Steven Spielberg5:37

I remember her as more of a Isadora Duncan, a freely expressive mallerina.

Steven Spielberg5:46

That I do, even as a pianist, because she used to express herself with these sort of classic ballet moves and just dance, you know, in the headlights at a campfire on a camping trip or just around the house. And in that sense, the Peter Pan of my mother, the little boy who never grew up, she was the woman who never grew up. My sisters called her Lee. Leah was her name. My sisters called her by her first name. Even as four, five, six-year-olds that ever said, Mommy, mommy, this, that. It was Lee, Lee, Lee. I was the only person in the family called her mom. She had an Army Jeep, a Korean War-era Army Jeep. She drove all around Arizona, all around Phoenix. No seatbelts. We were in the back in an open Army Jeep, being taken to school, being taken to dinner, being taken on camping trips.

Steven Spielberg6:30

And she just was literally someone who loved to live life. She celebrated life. She lusted after life. And I know that sounds kind of general or generic,

Steven Spielberg6:43

But if you knew her, you would know that she would s throw her head back and just start singing for no reason because she was just so happy. And when she wasn't happy, she'd get into a fetal position.

Steven Spielberg6:53

and lie on the kitchen floor when we came home from school.

Steven Spielberg6:57

There was such a range, a spread of feelings from my mom.

Presenter7:04

It's time to go to the music, Steven Spielberg. What have you gone for, and why?

Steven Spielberg7:08

Well, John Sebastian Bach wrote a piece

Steven Spielberg7:12

called Little Fugue in G minor.

Steven Spielberg7:15

It's the song that identified my father to all of us because every time he came home from work and he pulled the car out of the driveway, he'd get out of the car, walk around to the front of the house, whistling box little fugue. He'd whistle it from the car. He'd open the front door. It would get louder and louder. We knew it was him. We knew it was home. We knew it was supper time. And he'd walk into the house and as he hung up his hat and his coat on the coat rack right in front of the front door, he would continue whistling it and he would only stop whistling it when we started talking to him. Hey, Dan, he'd stop whistling. How is school? Yada yada. So it's the piece of music I most identify with my father.

Presenter8:52

Bach's Little Fugue in G minor arranged by Leopold Stokovsky with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yanick Nase Sagan.

Presenter9:02

So Steven Spielberg, I want to find out more about well the relationship between your parents, but also your father, Arnold, himself. So that was the the tune that he would whistle when he came home from work. He was an electrical engineer. How did the two of you get on? How do you describe your relationship?

Steven Spielberg9:18

My dad always looked at the practical side of life. He had really solid values. He served the United States Army Air Corps. And then he was such a

Steven Spielberg9:32

Genius with radios. They grounded him, and he was in charge of all ground-to-air communication with the entire wing of the 490th Bomb Squadron in the China-Burma-India campaign. And all the veterans that my dad used to have reunions with every year would often come to our house. And I was a kid, and it was kind of strange. They'd come to our house, and suddenly you'd hear sobbing coming from the living room. And one or two of the guys would just be sobbing, and I would never understand what they were crying about. But these are grown men crying. Obviously, it's what happens in war and the PTSD you take through your life, and the fact that they had their band of brothers with them comforting each other was a profound growing aspect to my whole interest in World War II.

Steven Spielberg10:15

That kind of thing. But you know, my dad was also a genius with computers, and he was on the very first team at RCA that invented the very first data processing machine or computer that sold commercially. So he has been honored for that with his whole team over the years. And he went on to invent a computer. I think it was the 235 at General Electric.

Steven Spielberg10:35

And I got a call one day, my office did from Bill Gates inviting me and my dad up for lunch with Bill.

Steven Spielberg10:42

And we're talking, and Bill's only talking to my dad. I'm just listening. And then he said, You invented the 235 and GE. That was your machine. He said, Yeah, that was my machine. That was my program.

Steven Spielberg10:52

And he said, Well, I just want you to know the reason you're up here is I want to thank you because that computer, which was a multi-user machine.

Steven Spielberg11:01

And Paul Allen and I started getting the idea for developing Windows based on this machine you invented, a GE, and I just wanted to thank you for that.

Presenter11:08

Two.

Steven Spielberg11:10

And I sat there with my mouth hanging open and I looked at my dad who's who could be very stoic and his eyes are filling with tears and he's struggling to reach for a handkerchief in his pocket. And that was a day that my dad and I shared that I shall never forget.

Presenter11:26

When you were seventeen, your parents divorced and your mother left the family home. She'd actually fallen in love with your father's best friend, Bernie. After the divorce, you became estranged from your dad and you didn't speak for fifteen years. What happened?

Steven Spielberg11:40

I was upset because even though I knew where my mother's heart was residing,

Steven Spielberg11:47

I also didn't understand why it was my father that fell on the sword and said to all of us when the separation was announced in our home in Northern California that it was my dad's idea to separate from my mom, that he was leaving her. And I had.

Steven Spielberg12:04

I had real problems with that.

Presenter12:06

And why did your dad do it? Why did he say this is my idea when you knew what you knew about your your mother's relationship with with his best friend?

Steven Spielberg12:14

I think well, he my dad my dad didn't know that.

Steven Spielberg12:17

My mom knew that, but my dad had no idea what I knew, no idea. That was a secret I kept only with my mother.

Steven Spielberg12:24

You know my mom could be as fragile as she was adventurous.

Steven Spielberg12:28

And when she hit a low point.

Steven Spielberg12:31

She really could collapse, could crumble. My dad knew that about her. And I think he loved her so desperately.

Steven Spielberg12:38

That he wanted to make a new life for her and his business partner possible by actually I know it sounds like a movie in terms of the grand sacrifice somebody might make for someone else's happiness, but that's who my dad was. And I think that's what he did it. But I did not understand that.

Presenter12:55

We need to take a minute for the music. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Steven Spielberg13:01

Well, you're going to hear Paul McCartney's Michelle.

Steven Spielberg13:05

The reason I picked that song is it's just a silly little story. I was a freshman in college, and there was a girl I liked a lot, and she would agree to let me take her out to dinner or to a jazz club or out to a movie, but she would never, ever, ever let me kiss her. And we were driving back from someplace, and we pulled into the big parking lot by the dorms on the college campus at Long Beach, and Michelle came on, and I think we heard her for the first time together on the radio, and the melody is just heartachingly beautiful. And I look over at her, she's got tears in her eyes, and just before the song is over, she jumps over on my side of the car and starts kissing me.

Steven Spielberg13:44

And when I got to know Paul a number of years ago and Paul and I met and became friends, that was one of the first stories I ever told him. I had a chance to tell Paul McCartney that story.

Speaker 413:58

A bell, son de Mo quivon, fles bien en song, les bien en song.

Speaker 414:07

I need to, I need to, I need to I need to make you see

Speaker 414:16

Oh, what you mean to me Until I do I'm hoping you will know what I'm

Steven Spielberg14:27

It might be a little bit of French that did it. Tribiano Sa might have been the inflection point for the kiss.

Speaker 414:30

Yeah.

Presenter14:30

Maybe I don't saw might have

Steven Spielberg14:34

I'm just saying.

Presenter14:34

I'm Michelle. When in doubt, drop some French. Michelle by the Beatles. Steven Spielberg, many years after their divorce, your parents actually became close again. I wonder how that was for you and your sisters.

Steven Spielberg14:48

It was something we can't believe happened. It's the stuff that only usually happens in Frank Caper movies. And we truly loved Uncle Benny in our movie, Bernie in real life. We loved him despite what happened. My mom married him, was married longer to him than she was to my father.

Steven Spielberg15:06

But sadly, after he passed away, my mom was alone, but my father had remarried a really good person named Bernice. And my dad and my mom and Bernice started hanging out together every bar mitzvah, every birthday party, every premiere of one of my movies. And in a way, my sisters and I, not in a way, we used to look at each other and say, how often do kids get their parents back after a divorce? And we really felt spiritually and in the flesh, we got mom and dad back for the remaining years of their lives.

Presenter15:45

You started making films when you were just ten. One of your first was a Three Minute Western. Tell me how you shot it.

Steven Spielberg15:52

Well, it was for a Boy Scout merit badge. The manual said, tell a story with pictures. And so I made this little western. I had no editing equipment at home, so I did the whole thing. We call it cutting in the camera, where I would shoot a cowboy in one direction, then shoot a stagecoach robbery in another direction, and then go back and shoot the people getting robbed in the stagecoach. And then I'd cut and walk over to a little room, and we'd have a kid playing the sheriff, and then they'd come in and tell the sheriff, we just got robbed. What are you going to do about it? It was all done inside the camera. And I only had one roll of film, so I had to make the whole thing three minutes long. That was all I had. And when I brought it into the Boy Scout troop, the Scout Master suggested I bring the projectory in to show it to everybody. So I showed that movie, which I entitled Gunsmog, because Gunsmoke was a big popular television show at the time.

Steven Spielberg16:42

And they went crazy. They were laughing. And not at the movie, but they were laughing with the film because it was pretty silly stuff. I even recognized it being pretty silly. I was laughing, they were laughing. At the end, they applauded like crazy. And I got bitten by this bug, and that was it.

Presenter16:42

And

Steven Spielberg16:59

Yeah.

Presenter16:59

You once said that the words action and cut allowed you to get control of your life. Tell me more about that. What did you mean by it?

Steven Spielberg17:08

I wasn't popular, and I couldn't throw a football. And the only thing that really was my ticket to some sort of limited.

Steven Spielberg17:16

Popularity was the fact that I made these little movies when I was 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, right up through college.

Steven Spielberg17:22

And I was able to get the most handsome captain of the football team, who probably wouldn't give me the time of day at school, to give me.

Steven Spielberg17:32

All his entire Saturday to star in a movie. And in a way, it was being able to say action.

Steven Spielberg17:41

To somebody that wouldn't talk to me at school, but would obey the word action.

Steven Spielberg17:47

Was uh Kind of uh

Presenter17:49

Uh empowering.

Presenter17:50

It's time for some music, Steven Spielberg. Disc number four, what have you got for us?

Steven Spielberg17:55

Jackie Deshannon and What the World Needs Now is Love.

Steven Spielberg17:59

And I remember hearing the song when I went out to see a movie by Paul Mazurski called Bob and Carol and Ted Miles, and it had that song in it, and I just never forgot the impact it had on me. And also because it's exactly what the world needs today. It's what the world needed yesterday. It's what the world needed 78 years ago. I mean, it is sort of a wishful song.

Speaker 418:22

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

Speaker 418:30

It's the only thing.

Speaker 418:33

That is just

Speaker 418:35

Too little of

Speaker 418:37

What?

Speaker 418:38

It's not.

Speaker 418:40

Is love, sweet love?

Speaker 418:44

No, not just the song.

Speaker 418:46

But for everyone

Steven Spielberg18:50

That song makes me want to hug a Republican. That's the kind of thing that I'd love to see I'd love to see a progressive and a more of an extreme Republican hear that song and like hug each other. That would make me very happy right now. And that's what the world needs right now, too.

Speaker 418:54

Thank you.

Presenter19:05

Jackie DeShannon, and what the world needs now is love. So, Stephen Spielberg, while you were still at high school you got well, let's just call it an unofficial internship at Universal Studios. How did you manage that?

Steven Spielberg19:18

I heard that there was a tour at Universal. You could get on a bus. So I took the tour.

Steven Spielberg19:25

On the bus, and we had a bathroom break, and everybody was allowed to get out, stretch their legs, and go to the restroom. And I hid in the stall of one of the restrooms. I didn't come out until I was sure everybody had gotten back on the bus, and the bus drove away. And I spent the rest of my day literally walking around the lot, going into sound stages and watching some television being shot. And there happened to be a very nice man there named Chuck Silvers, who ran the library at Universal, where all the films were kept. And when I said I jumped off the bus because I wanted to be a movie director, he thought that was really original and kind of novel and thought that was terrific. And he said, What kind of movies do you make? And I told him about my little Westerns and war movies back in Phoenix. He said, Look, if you can come back tomorrow, bring some of those films with you. And I'd like to see them. And I'll write you out a pass. And Chuck loved these little movies and he gave me a three-day pass. He said, After three days, I was on my own. But I had had four days where I passed by the guard at the gate. His name was Scotty. He was Scottish, by the way. And I took a chance. I had a little sports jacket on, a little string tie, and I walked past Scotty with no pass on that next day. And I waved to him, and he didn't ask me to show him my papers. He waved back at me. And I basically spent the next two months at Universal Studios. And that was how I kind of became an unofficial apprentice for that summer.

Presenter20:44

And you showed the same kind of ingenuity when you were making your first blockbuster, Jaws. You were just twenty seven. It was a very difficult shoot, working on small boats in a cold sea with a mechanical shark that kept malfunctioning.

Steven Spielberg20:56

It's a much better movie that the shark kept breaking down because I had to be resourceful in figuring out how to create suspense and terror without seeing the shark itself. And Hitchcock did that. And I think Hitchcock was a tremendous guide for me in the way he was able to scare you without really seeing anything. It was just good fortune that the shark kept breaking. It was my good luck. And I think it's the audience's good luck too, because I think it's a scarier movie without seeing so much of the shark.

Presenter21:24

Now, the sea around your desert island could be inhabited by real sharks. How would you feel about that?

Steven Spielberg21:30

That's one of the things I still fear. Not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me.

Steven Spielberg21:38

For the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975, which I truly and to this day regret.

Steven Spielberg21:46

The decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really truly regret that.

Presenter21:52

It's uh time for your fifth disc today, Steven Spielberg. What are we going to hear and and why have you chosen it?

Steven Spielberg21:58

I'm a big Frank Sinatra fan, and one of my favorite signature Frank Sinatra songs has always been Come Fly With Me.

Steven Spielberg22:07

And I love the song so much that I was able to acquire the rights from.

Steven Spielberg22:12

Tina Sinatra, who I know, and she licensed that song for me to use in the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio called Catch Me If You Can.

Speaker 422:21

Come fly with me, let's float down to Peru.

Speaker 422:28

In Llama Land there's a one-man band and he'll tune his flute for you.

Speaker 422:35

Come fly with me, let's take off in the blue.

Speaker 422:41

Once I get you up there Where the air is rare

Presenter22:50

Frank Sinatra and Come Fly With Me as featured in your film, Steven Spielberg, Catch Me If You Can. I mean, you've made so many, we can't touch on them all today. But I do want to touch on one of the recurring themes, which comes up in many of your films: the way that a child's perspective so often steers the story. I mean, Close Encounters, E.T., Jurassic Park, the BFG, the Fablemans.

Presenter23:13

How does their take on the world influence you as a director?

Steven Spielberg23:17

Well, I think when you see things through a child's eyes

Steven Spielberg23:21

There's no room for cynicism.

Steven Spielberg23:23

E.T. would not be the same movie if a bunch of adults caught E.T. and brought him into a laboratory and maybe one adult scientist formed a rapport with the little squashy alien. It only worked through the innocence of young kids who are starting to assume responsibility for another living creature.

Presenter23:45

Now, you are sometimes accused of being sentimental. I wonder whether that's a criticism that bothers you or whether it's a badge of pride.

Steven Spielberg23:52

I think everybody who says I can tend toward the sentimental is absolutely right. I'm very nostalgic. I think nostalgic even more than sentimental, but I never bristle when I hear that at all, unless somebody says it ruined the movie for them. And then that's sad. I don't like that.

Presenter24:09

Is the role of a filmmaker to to manipulate the audience, do you think, to to make them feel?

Steven Spielberg24:13

A filmmaker must never manipulate the audience unless every single scene has a jack-in-the-box kind of scare. That's manipulation. I did that a couple times in Poltergeist, and I certainly did it once in Jaws when the head comes out of the hole in the bottom of the boat. That's manipulation. Okay, I confess that. But no, our job is not to manipulate. Our job is to guide an audience to really forming a better understanding of themselves through the stories.

Speaker 424:28

Yeah.

Presenter24:28

Yeah.

Presenter24:31

Manipulation, okay.

Presenter24:33

Yeah.

Presenter24:43

So we're

Steven Spielberg24:43

Uh Wing.

Presenter24:44

There is a moral core that that runs through all of your films, whether they're addressing war, dinosaurs, extraterrestrials, family. Why does that idea of a positive message and an outcome drive so much of your work, do you think?

Steven Spielberg24:57

I think that hope is better than despair.

Steven Spielberg25:00

And there could be despair in the body of the story. But if there is a solution or a promise of a choice we could all make collectively to lead better lives and live in a happier world, then I'm as a filmmaker, I'm going to make that choice.

Presenter25:14

It's time to go to the music Steven Spielberg Disc No. 6. What is it and why are you taking it with you to the desert island today?

Steven Spielberg25:21

If I could take anybody to the desert island with me, of course, I'd take my wife and then I'd take Bruce Springsteen and Patty Schiafia. I would take them to the island with me. Bruce's music has been a tremendous influence on my career, my life, my relationships. And The Ghost of Tom Jod is one of my favorite songs that Springsteen has ever, ever written. We share a love of Steinbeck, and he certainly was able to encapsulate and translate Steinbeck so well in this single song.

Speaker 425:58

Yeah

Steven Spielberg25:58

Uh

Speaker 425:58

Get out of his sleeping bag

Speaker 426:03

Creature lights up a button, takes the drag

Steven Spielberg26:04

But in

Speaker 426:07

Waiting for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

Speaker 426:13

Card moon box needing under pad

Speaker 426:18

Got a one-way ticket to the pontiness land

Speaker 426:23

He was holding your own belly.

Presenter26:25

Playing my gun in your hand

Presenter26:27

The Ghost of Tom Jod by Bruce Springsteen. Steven Spielberg 1993 saw the release of Schindler's List. It was based on the story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party who saved 1100 Jews from deportation to Auschwitz. Now you'd read the book by Thomas Keneally ten years earlier, before making the film. Was it a difficult decision to take on the subject?

Steven Spielberg26:51

Well, I didn't think I was emotionally or even in terms of my skill sets as a filmmaker ready in 1982 when Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal, first sent me the review of the book from the New York Times and later the book, and I read the book. But I wasn't ready yet. I had made a lot of popcorn movies, and I made a lot of films based on

Steven Spielberg27:15

relatively high concepts in terms of genre.

Steven Spielberg27:18

And I hadn't made any adult movies, and I only really understood how to make that movie once I had directed Color Purple and once I had directed Empire of the Sun.

Presenter27:29

You've been very open about the issues that you went through to come to terms with your own Jewish heritage as a young man. I wonder how long it took for you to feel proud of your identity?

Steven Spielberg27:40

Well, it took a while. I wasn't raised Orthodox. We were kind of Reformed Conservative Jews. We were only Orthodox when my grandparents moved in or came to visit us for a week, and then suddenly out went the lobsters and clams, and in came the, you know, we never mixed the milk and the meat, and everything became kosher. And the second they left, the lobsters came back.

Presenter28:01

So that was just the official story.

Steven Spielberg28:03

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But you know, I w I

Steven Spielberg28:07

There were not many Jewish people growing up alongside me in Phoenix, Arizona. So I was always felt a bit on the outside and a lot on the outside, actually.

Steven Spielberg28:18

And it wasn't that I was so much in denial that I was Jewish. It was just I didn't make an issue of it. I didn't bring it up in conversation. I didn't talk about the fact I'll be out of school next week and the week after because of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I never announced that ahead of time.

Presenter28:33

Making that film, did it change you and your attitude to your Jewish heritage? It was a phenomenon.

Steven Spielberg28:40

What came out of Schindler's list, which is more important than the film itself,

Steven Spielberg28:44

was the formation of the Shoah Foundation.

Steven Spielberg28:47

Or I was able to

Steven Spielberg28:49

Empower interviewers and videographers to go all around the world.

Steven Spielberg28:54

To gather personal first-person testimonies from Holocaust survivors who voluntarily would come and talk to our cameras.

Steven Spielberg29:02

To create an archive of remembrance?

Steven Spielberg29:05

That's what I'm proudest of is the now it's the USC Visual History Shoah Foundation.

Presenter29:11

It's time for your seventh choice today, Stephen, if you wouldn't mind.

Steven Spielberg29:15

When I was ten years old, we had only classical music in our house. There was nothing popular in our house. My parents went to record stores to buy. And then one day they came home with a record. It was an original Broadway cast album.

Steven Spielberg29:29

in nineteen fifty seven or fifty eight of West Side Story.

Steven Spielberg29:34

And I started playing it, and I'd never heard of Westside Story before, but I wore out the record. I mean, my parents actually physically had to buy a new record a month later because I had to scratch the hell about listening to it over and over again. And it's the reason, years and years later, I wanted to reimagine Westside Story for a whole new generation. And I just remember this one song that made me cry as a kid whenever I listened to it, and that was Somewhere.

Speaker 430:00

Some

Speaker 430:07

A new way of living.

Speaker 430:13

We'll find a way of forgiving someone.

Presenter30:29

Somewhere from West Side Story, performed by the original Broadway cast, composed by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Stephen Spielberg, are you optimistic about the future of cinema going in the age of T V streaming? Is the same magic possible on a laptop?

Steven Spielberg30:46

Yes, a great story can get you on your iPhone, but please don't watch your films on iPhones, folks. Don't do that. But a great story can still get you on a small screen and on a supersized screen. But I prefer a supersized screen because what you get with that experience leaving home to go out to the movies is you get basically to be with civilization, to sit with strangers who probably in real life don't agree with anything that you agree with, but it doesn't matter because you may agree on one thing, and that's what's coming off the screen, what's coming out of that soundtrack, the themes. There may be common ground found in movie theaters between people and ideologies that are so far apart in everyday life, but all come together to share one single experience. You can't get that at home on a television screen. You can in a movie theater.

Presenter31:40

There was a BBC interview in in nineteen ninety four, and you said then that your biggest fear was loneliness. Now obviously on this programme, I'm about to send you off to the island where you're going to be very much alone. How will you cope with the isolation of life as a castaway?

Steven Spielberg31:56

Well

Steven Spielberg31:57

I won't be able to.

Steven Spielberg32:00

I'm going to be one of the people that will confess to you that I will not be able to survive this island alone for very long.

Presenter32:06

Well, we're going to allow you one more track before we send you away to the desert island. What's it going to be, your final choice today?

Steven Spielberg32:13

The final choice today is a song called Cool Hand.

Steven Spielberg32:18

by an artist named Buzzy Lee.

Steven Spielberg32:21

who happens to be my daughter Sasha Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg32:24

And whenever I hear this song, it just reminds me of just the privilege of parenthood.

Speaker 432:31

Ooooooooooooooooooo band.

Speaker 432:34

Better to be wiser than a cool hand

Speaker 432:41

Title

Speaker 432:43

What a hell of a title with a loose hand

Speaker 432:48

Ooooooooooooooooooo better.

Speaker 432:52

Better to be wiser than a cool head

Speaker 432:58

Ta-da.

Presenter33:01

COOL HAND BY BUSSY LEE. So, Stephen Spielberg, the time has come. I'm going to send you away to your island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. You can also choose another book. What will that be?

Steven Spielberg33:14

It would be the grapes of wrath.

Steven Spielberg33:17

would be the book that I would take with me. It's my favorite book.

Steven Spielberg33:21

And Maude Jod is my favorite maternal figure in terms of a literary character, a literary figure. My mom is my most favorite maternal figure, but Maude Jod comes in pretty close.

Steven Spielberg33:32

And this book has just spoken to me ever since I first read it when I was very young.

Presenter33:38

You can also on your desert island, Steven Spielberg, have a luxury item. What will that be? What are you going to take with you?

Steven Spielberg33:44

Oh my goodness. I was going to say I was going to bring my H8 Bullets camera. I made my

Presenter33:48

Oh, that counts.

Steven Spielberg33:49

Because I would I would I would bring the camera made by Bolex and and if I had to stay on the island for a long time, I would wind the camera and put it up to my ear just to listen to the gears turning. That would be enough for me. That and the waves flopping in.

Presenter34:01

That would be enough for me.

Presenter34:05

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves if you had to choose just one?

Steven Spielberg34:12

Cool Hand by Buzzy Lee because it's of our DNA.

Presenter34:17

Steven Spielberg, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Steven Spielberg34:21

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you so much.

Presenter34:38

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Stephen. He'll clearly be very happy listening to the sound of gears turning in his camera. We've cast many film directors away, including Steve McQueen and Baz Luhrmann. Stephen's good friend Bruce Springsteen is in our archive too, and you can find those episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Michael Millam, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinney. Next time, my guest will be the broadcaster and former presenter of Desert Island Discs, Kirstie Young. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 335:25

Dance, it entertains us and it connects us.

Speaker 335:29

And in my second series of Otima Buse's Dancing Legends, I explore some more iconic dancers who have been doing just that. Join me, Otimabuse, as I delve into the lives of these trailblazers and pioneers who have changed the world of dance forever. The tap dancing duo who astounded audiences with their acrobatic skills. The Hollywood legend who showed her versatility across different dance styles on screen. We'll hear about it all, so let's celebrate the magic of dance together. Subscribe to Otimabuse's Dancing Legends on BBC Sounds.