From Critics at Large: Steve Spielberg's Blockbusters
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard, one of the producers on the show, and we have a special treat just for you. The New Yorker's culture podcast, Critics at Large, is doing a deep dive into the extraordinary career of director Steven Spielberg. This month, Spielberg debuted his first feature film in four years, Disclosure Day, which is being hailed as a return to his sci-fi blockbuster roots, with a bit of social commentary thrown in, too. On this episode, hosts Vincent Cunningham, Alex Schwartz, and Naomi Frye all discuss their own personal blind spots in Spielberg's formidable filmography. Please enjoy their takes on arguably the most commercially successful filmmaker of all time.
This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Nomi Frye.
And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Let me paint you a picture.
Please.
It's June 1975. Colors are bright. The pants are bells at the bottom. School's out.
School's out for summer.
Damn right. It's hot. The height of summer. What are you going to do? You're going to go to the movies. And what are you going to see? What about a little film called Jaws?
You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July.
Jaws, in case you haven't heard of it, it was a big hit, okay? It's often said to be the first modern blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg, the most commercially successful director in history. After the success of Jaws, he goes on to make Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, the Indiana Jones movies. The list goes on, and friends, you know it. Guys, what are some of the hallmarks? If we're talking blockbuster, what are the hallmarks of the blockbuster as a genre? What does the term conjure in your minds?
Big action, posters everywhere, lines out the door, which I think was not a phenomenon until Jaws even.
Enormous promotion. Yeah. The promotion is perhaps as important as the movie itself. Huge box office take.
Fast pace. Maybe an explosion here or there.
Definitely. Definitely.
There's the blockbuster for you. It's been decades, though, since Spielberg had a big, new, summer, jazzy hit. And that's put a big question mark around his new release, Disclosure Day.
Do you think there could be others? People have a right to know the truth. What are you going to do? Full disclosure to the whole world, all at once.
The question is, can it excite audiences in the way his earlier films did? Now, we have a partial answer to this. It's already been named his first summer blockbuster since Minority Report 24 years ago, if you can believe it. But still, the question persists. What is the blockbuster today?
Yeah. Spielberg is reentering this field. And he's tried to get back there before. But as you say, Vincent, it's been 24 years. Not quite as long as the Knicks run since their last championship. But we're looking at a big pause between... A generation. A generation. Commercial, from a huge commercial summer hit to another huge commercial summer hit. And there's a lot riding for the movie business on this question. And then for the culture sense of itself as large. Are movies still important? Are people going to the... Is the cinema still a thing? Are the youth like we were? All of those questions, those big cultural questions are coming up through Disclosure Day.
How did Jaws create the modern summer blockbuster and change Hollywood promotion?
Big questions, big movies. So buckle up, because today we're talking blockbusters. The huge Spielberg hits that invented and then perfected this form. How Spielberg picks up on those in Disclosure Day. And, you know, we're hot off the huge success of films like Back Rooms and Obsession, a very different kind of movie that younger audiences especially are responding to. I'm wondering whether this old idea of the blockbuster still exists today, still matters, at least in the Spielberg mold. That's today on Critics at Large. Steven Spielberg's blockbusters.
You know what my first encounter with Steven Spielberg was? It was at Camp Ramah, my Jewish summer camp.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–3:59
2
How did Jaws create the modern summer blockbuster and change Hollywood promotion?
3:59–41:49
3
How does the theme of 'knowledge versus the public' run through Spielberg's films?
41:49–44:31
4
What production problems forced Spielberg to hide the shark in Jaws?
44:31–51:48
Speakers
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