“It’s one of the few movies I’ve made that I can actually look back at again and again.”
Steven Spielberg is obviously seen as one of the greatest ever directors. The 76-year-old has an incredibly rich back catalogue of movie classics that a lot of people see as perfect. Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park all come to mind when we think of Spielberg classics.
But, for the most part, the director isn’t a fan of looking back over his work. Speaking to Stephen Colbert on his talk show this week, the Fablemans director revealed that there’s only a handful of movies he can re-watch over and over again.
He said: “I’ve made like 34 films and – I’m not gonna name which ones they are beyond ET – there’s about five or six films that I can watch again, but I don’t usually do that.
“I don’t look a lot at my movies after I’ve made them. I don’t look back that often but every once in a while I’ll see a movie with my kids. I don’t want them to see ET without dad sitting there – especially with the scary parts at the beginning.”
“Sometimes I see things that I had intended to do that I didn’t do, and sometimes I see things that would have been a better idea than what I’m now seeing all these years later – but for the most part, ET is a pretty perfect movie. It’s one of the few movies I’ve made that I can actually look back at again and again.”
Steven Spielberg doesn’t usually like to rewatch his own films, but there is one movie even he agrees is pretty perfect. #Colbert pic.twitter.com/MMSbSfqp7a
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) March 3, 2023
Colbert noted that Spielberg once stated that before The Fabelmans, the director said that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was his most personal film.
He explained: “It was the first film I’d ever made about a family breaking up. I’d never made a picture of a family colliding with their values or with their obsessions. I wrote the script, so it was very evocative of my own life and the trauma that we all suffered.”
The Fabelmans is an even more personal story for Spielberg, which is loosely based on the director’s childhood and early years as a filmmaker. The film is nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, with Spielberg also receiving his seventh Best Director nomination, of which he has won twice.
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