Steven Spielberg: Directing dreams and deals

**Simon Jack** (0:08)
A 26-year-old man crouches on a small fishing boat in the middle of the ocean. It's 1974 He's wearing denim cutoffs, long hair, and aviator shades.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:18)
He's peering through a camera, but the swell is bobbing them up and down, so it won't stay still for a moment. Cue Bruce, he shouts.

**Simon Jack** (0:25)
From beneath the water, a ginormous shark's mouth appears with hundreds of sharp teeth. But just as the shark is launching out of the water, it stops, crashing down awkwardly.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:35)
It's broken again. The blood drains from our young director's face. That's another day's shoot ruined. He whispers under his breath, I'm never going to work again.

**Simon Jack** (0:46)
But he needn't have worried. When it's released, his film will be the highest grossing film ever, and no one will want to go in the water again.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:56)
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

**Simon Jack** (1:02)
We take them from zero to their first million, and then from a million on to a billion.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:07)
My name is Zing Tsjeng, and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

**Simon Jack** (1:10)
And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:13)
And you probably live under a rock if you haven't seen one of these guys' films.

**Simon Jack** (1:18)
Yeah, the early years of this are very much my era. So I feel very comfortable with this and very excited about it, because we're talking about Steven Spielberg, the most commercially successful movie director in history.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:30)
That's right. He is currently worth a cool seven billion dollars. And he turns 80 this year. Congratulations, Steven. And over a 50 year career, he's made some of the world's most beloved movies. ET, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park. That's just to name a few.

**Simon Jack** (1:46)
I've got to say, my parents took me to see Jaws when I was six years old.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:51)
That strikes me as too early. Too young.

**Simon Jack** (1:54)
I think basically they couldn't get a babysitter, so they just hoped that I'd fall asleep. But I watched the whole thing. Terrified. The bit where the head comes out of the hole in the bottom of the boat. The whole place freaked out. It was quite a moment.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:05)
Were you scared to go into the water after that?

**Simon Jack** (2:07)
I think we all were. Tell me somebody who doesn't go, mm-hmm.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:11)
It really did give Sharps a bad rep.

**Simon Jack** (2:13)
Before that, this idea of a summer blockbuster didn't really exist. It redefined. Now, as to some people, they'll say he ruined cinema with this blockbuster idea.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:23)
He's actually got a new film coming out this year called Disclosure Day. Have you heard anything about that?

**Simon Jack** (2:27)
I have heard nothing about it.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:29)
It's going to be about aliens, but this is a business podcast and we have to talk about business. Actually, I was really surprised to learn Steven Spielberg, despite the fact he pleases so many people in the cinemas, is not a people pleaser. He's actually one of the toughest negotiators in Hollywood.

**Simon Jack** (2:44)
So we're going to find out who is the man behind some of our favorite films. So let's start. Roll the opening credits.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:54)
Steven, Alan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, the eldest child with three younger sisters. His mother, Leah, was a former concert pianist, a free spirit who never said no to Steven, but his father, Arnold, was a very different kind of man. He was one of the first computer engineers. He was stoic, he was a workaholic, and his job meant that the family moved around quite a lot. So by three, he was in New Jersey. By age 10, he was in the newly built suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.

**Simon Jack** (3:24)
And Steven Spielberg described himself as a fearful kid, and the first film he ever saw was the greatest show on earth. He was terrified by the movie's train crash. So at age 12, he recreated it repeatedly with his own model trains. Then he got the idea to film it with his dad's little 8mm movie camera so he could watch the film over and over again. He said, I was able to, I think, intuitively, rest back control of my fear. It would calm me down. That's super interesting.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:53)
That's a really interesting insight into a director's psychology, because I think you do have to be a bit of a control freak to be a movie director. Well, around the same time he became a Boy Scout, he made it to Eagle Scout. That's the highest rank attainable.