Before The Blockbusters: The Wild True Stories Behind Spielberg's Rise

He Basically Bluffed His Way Into Hollywood As A Teenager

As a high schooler visiting cousins in LA, Spielberg took the Universal Studios tour and <cite index="2-6,2-7,2-8,2-9">took advantage of the midday bathroom break, hiding in a stall until everyone had left so he could walk the lot on his own.</cite> A chance conversation with an editorial department exec turned into an actual pass onto the lot the next day, because <cite index="1-6,1-7">the man he'd met, Chuck Silvers, head of the editorial department, wanted to see some of his little films and gave him a pass to get on the lot.</cite>

A Killer Truck TV Movie Is What Actually Got Him Noticed

Before Jaws, Spielberg directed Duel, a 1971 ABC movie-of-the-week about a man terrorized by a faceless truck driver — and <cite index="55-4">it brought Spielberg more attention than any other director working in television at the time.</cite> The film's reception was strong enough that <cite index="72-8">Universal gave Spielberg the go-ahead to direct his first theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express, off the strength of it.</cite>

Bruce The Shark Broke Down So Much It Accidentally Made Jaws Scarier

The mechanical shark nicknamed Bruce was a nightmare to operate — <cite index="13-1,13-2,13-3">on its first day on the job it sank straight to the bottom of Nantucket Sound, and within a week saltwater had eroded its electric motor.</cite> Forced to shoot around a shark that barely worked, Spielberg later admitted <cite index="14-7">it was just good fortune that the shark kept breaking, calling it good luck for him and the audience because the movie became scarier without seeing so much of the shark.</cite>

Universal Basically Wrote Jaws Off As A Cheap B-Movie

While Spielberg was drowning in shooting delays, <cite index="26-17,26-18,26-19,26-20">the studio itself treated the film as just another B movie, with production designer Joe Alves recalling that people at Universal were much more excited about a George C. Scott film called The Hindenburg.</cite> As cost overruns leaked to the trades, <cite index="26-21,26-22,26-23">there was a growing sense the film had all the makings of a disaster, with producer David Brown recalling people treated them with sympathy, like they had some kind of illness.</cite>

The Close Encounters Effects Budget Alone Could've Made An Entire Second Movie

Douglas Trumbull's visual effects work on Close Encounters ballooned so far past estimates that <cite index="41-9">Trumbull joked the visual effects budget of $3.3 million could have been used to produce an additional film.</cite> The whole production spiraled from there — <cite index="49-13">initially budgeted at a lean $7 million, the investment soon swelled to $10 million, and finally to $19.4 million.</cite>

The Studio That Passed On E.T. Called It A 'Wimpy Walt Disney Movie'

Columbia Pictures had first dibs on Spielberg's gentle alien story, but executives balked — <cite index="31-1,31-2">Columbia's John Veitch felt the script wasn't scary enough to be financially viable, and CEO Frank Price was calling it a wimpy Walt Disney movie.</cite> Columbia put it in turnaround, Spielberg took it to Universal instead, and <cite index="28-11">the passing studio retained just 5% of the profits, which was still enough to make E.T. Columbia's most profitable film of the year.</cite>

He Refused To Take A Single Dollar From Schindler's List

Despite the film's massive box office haul, Spielberg wouldn't touch the profits, later explaining <cite index="36-5,36-6">he considered it blood money, saying he didn't take a single dollar from the profits he received from Schindler's List because he did consider it blood money.</cite> Instead, <cite index="39-3">he used the film's profits to found the USC Shoah Foundation in 1994, established to collect personal recollections and audiovisual interviews of Holocaust survivors.</cite>