2024-11-24
36 分钟Steven Spielberg is the most successful director of his generation and the highest-grossing director of all time: his films have taken more than $10 billion worldwide. From Jaws to E.T. and Jurassic Park to Schindler’s List, his storytelling has captivated audiences around the world. Steven grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, where he started making films as a young boy. In 1958 he made a short Western which won him a Boy Scout merit badge. He screened it to his entire Scout troop and their laughter and applause got him hooked on film making. In 1971 he directed a television movie called Duel about a motorist who is pursued by a murderous truck driver. The film attracted good reviews from critics, and before the age of 30, Steven had directed his first global hit: Jaws grossed $471 million worldwide and is credited as heralding the arrival of the blockbuster era. He now says Jaws was ‘a free pass into my future.’ He has won three Academy Awards, and has received eight nominations for best director. The Fabelmans, his most recent film, is a semi-fictionalised account of his own coming of age, drawing on his film-making experiences as a child. Steven is married to the actor Kate Capshaw, who starred in his film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and they have seven children. DISC ONE: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by Gene Pitney DISC TWO: Fugue in G minor, BMW 578 – “The Little” arranged by Leopold Stokowski, composed by J.S Bach, performed by Philadelphia Orchestra and conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin DISC THREE: Michelle by The Beatles DISC FOUR: What the World Needs Now Is Love by Jackie DeShannon DISC FIVE: Come Fly with Me by Frank Sinatra DISC SIX: The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen DISC SEVEN: Somewhere, composed by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, performed by Reri Grist DISC EIGHT: Coolhand by Buzzy Lee BOOK CHOICE: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck LUXURY ITEM: H-8 Bolex camera CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Coolhand by Buzzy Lee Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
I hope you enjoy listening.
My castaway this week is Steven Spielberg.
Over the past eight decades, Desert Island Discs has cast away Hollywood icons like James Stewart, Sophia Loren and Tom Hanks, and pioneering directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Steve McQueen.
Today's Castaway has reached more people than any of them.
His releases don't just spark trends, they spawn phenomena.
Jaws, et, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, west side Story.
It's impossible to pin him down to one style.
Wherever his creative travels take him, he brings along the questions which have illuminated his work since the beginning.
About families, particularly fathers and sons, innocence, separation, the David and Goliath struggles we face every day.
And most importantly of all, the impulse to, as a certain extraterrestrial put it, be good.
They are present too.
In his own story, which after 50 years of filmmaking, he finally told this year.
The Fabelmans is a deeply personal tribute to the family and the family fractures that shaped him.
He says, I'm the fraidy cat who makes a picture and immediately assumes that nobody is going to show up the first day and it will be reviled around the world when it doesn't turn out that way.
I'm relieved.
I don't celebrate.
I don't have victory parties.