Steven Spielberg: A Biography, Second Edition / Edition 2

by Joseph McBride

Overview

Until the first edition of Steven Spielberg: A Biography was published in 1997, much about Spielberg's personality and the forces that shaped it had remained enigmatic, in large part because of his tendency to obscure and mythologize his own past. But in this first full-scale, in-depth biography of Spielberg, Joseph McBride reveals hidden dimensions of the filmmaker's personality and shows how deeply personal even his most commercial work has been.

This new edition adds four chapters to Spielberg's life story, chronicling his extraordinarily active and creative period from 1997 to the present, a period in which he has balanced his executive duties as one of the partners in the film studio DreamWorks SKG with a remarkable string of films as a director. Spielberg's ambitious recent work--including Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, A. I. Artifucial Intelligence, Minority Report, The Terminal and Munich--has continually expanded his range both stylistically and in terms of adventurous, often controversial, subject matter.

Steven Spielberg: A Biography brought about a reevaluation of the great filmmaker's life and work by those who viewed him as merely a facile entertainer. This new edition guides readers through the mature artistry of Spielberg's later period in which he manages, against considerable odds, to run a successful studio while maintaining and enlarging his high artistic standards as one of America's most thoughtful, sophisticated, and popular filmmakers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604738360
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	01/04/2011
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Joseph McBride, Berkeley, California, is a film historian and associate professor in the cinema department at San Francisco State University. His many books include Searching for John Ford, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success; Hawks on Hawks; and What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career.

Table of Contents

Prologue "Cecil B. DeSpielberg" 11

1 "How Wondrous are Thy Works" 16

2 "Mazik" 35

3 "Meshuggeneh" 50

4 "A Wimp in a World of Jocks" 66

5 "Big Spiel" 94

6 "Hell on Earth" 112

7 "A Hell of a Big Break" 135

8 "This Tremendous Meatgrinder" 167

9 "The Steven Spielberg Business" 199

10 "A Primal Scream Movie" 226

11 Watch the Skies 261

12 "Rehab" 293

13 "Ecstacy and Grief" 323

14 "Adult Truths" 359

15 "An Awfully Big Adventure" 379

16 Mensch 414

17 Mogul and Director 449

18 Mainstream Independent 469

19 Light in the Darkness 487

20 "400-Pound Gorilla" 505

Acknowledgments 533

Notes on Sources 539

Chapter Notes 547

Filmography and Videography 597

Index 608

Editorial Reviews

"Shrewd and unsentimental."

—Publishers Weekly




"Film history at its best: rich in information, often dazzling in perception."

—Kirkus Reviews




"Compulsively readable. . . . This will get us as close to Spielberg as we can without being Kate Capshaw."

—New Times (Los Angeles)

From the Publisher