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Now 51, Spielberg has made what he calls his second true war movie, Saving Private Ryan. (He says emphatically that Schindler's List is not a war film: "I consider the Holocaust to be apart and separate from the second world war.")
Saving Private Ryan is the blistering, bloody story of American soldiers who land at Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day and become embroiled in a carnage that Spielberg says has never before been accurately filmed.
This World War II drama starring Tom Hanks and Matt Damon contains some of the most harrowing, most violent and perhaps most realistic war footage ever put on film, even though Spielberg still held back because absolute reality would be unwatchable. The film opens Friday.
"I think there are people who will submit to it," Spielberg says, using the word "submit" to respond to a question I ask him about the willingness of audiences to watch movies which show the true horror of war. "I think it's a very potent cocktail. I think that people will be both shaken and stirred by it. I think that, of people who give it a chance, there will be people who say it is too real. There are others who will say, 'I think it is a very honest re-creation.' "
That said, Spielberg will still leave town this week, making sure he is not anywhere near Hollywood when Saving Private Ryan opens. "Every movie I've left town. I'm leaving town for this one too. I haven't been in town for a movie in my life, except when I'm a captured audience. Sometimes I'm shooting a picture when a movie is released. When Raiders Of The Lost Ark was released in theatres, I was shooting E.T. in Los Angeles, so I was trapped here."
It is part of Hollywood legend, too, that when Spielberg presented E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial at the Cannes Film Festival, he was so terrified he thought he had made a career-ending, soul-destroying flop. It seems laughable now.
"I never feel confident," he says now. "I really think that it's my lack of confidence that keeps me going. I think audiences are very quixotic and I never know what they're going to think of a picture. When you put a lot of love and attention in a film, it's like a child and you want it to succeed and graduate with honors. So, I'll tell ya, it gets tougher every time."
The 'child' that is Saving Private Ryan grew out of a profound need to make an epic film about World War II. "I've seen all the World War II movies," Spielberg reflects, firing off words in dense, enthusiastic clusters that suggest his legendary story-telling talents fire up without effort. "I've never felt, or rarely felt with very few exceptions, that any of them were anything more than propaganda tools, recruitment tools to get more enlistments. Or that World War II was a kind of backdrop for adventure and glory."
Spielberg is not being hyper-critical. He loved the genre, which is why his teen efforts included Escape To Nowhere. "Most of the World War II movies I grew up with were very exciting film, films that made me want to be a soldier. They were very useful in their time. They sold war bonds."
There were exceptions Spielberg came to appreciate as an adult, films such as Battleground (a 1949 drama about the Battle of the Bulge), A Walk In The Sun (a 1945 film set in Italy) and They Were Expendable (John Ford's Philippines sea drama).
"Those are three of my favorite war films, the ones that broke away from the conventions.
"I'm a big fan of films like The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape but, to me, those are entertainment adventure films and World War II was a kind of backdrop for telling a good yarn. My dad is 81 years old. He fought World War II (in Burma) and I've been talking to him for years about wanting to make a picture about his war, the war he always told me was the difference between freedom and the loss of freedom. I always thought that was what dads were supposed to tell their kids."
His research and the maturation of Hollywood's Peter Pan convinced him otherwise. Saving Private Ryan explores that fight for freedom but chronicles in detail the enormous cost and the soul-shattering experiences each man portrayed in the movie endures.
"Very few films about the second world war ever held a mirror up to the way it was," Spielberg says. "And many of the veterans I talked to before embarking on this journey said to me: 'Look, let us tell you our stories, but if you're just talking to us to make another gung ho, over-the-top World War II movie, then we're less interested in talking to you. But, if you're really going to hold a mirror up and show what it was really like on Omaha Beach and (during the next few days of the invasion) going through Normandy, then we'd really like to tell you, if you'll listen, what it was like for us.' "
Spielberg listened, working with screenwriter Robert Rodat to refine the story and give it a raw energy and personality that would let viewers feel involved. Listening is a quality Spielberg cherishes, in his business dealings, in his creative life and at home with his extended family, which includes seven children, including two he adopted with actress Kate Capshaw, his wife for the past seven years.
"There are many important qualities," Spielberg says of being a good director. "One is that you have to know a good story when someone tells you a story. You have to be a good listener to be a good director and you have to be able to recognize a real good story. And then you have to be able to know how to tell it back to somebody else in your own way.
"I've always told my kids, who love me to tell them stories, that I could put them to sleep if I'm not compelled. If I just kind of 'phone it in,' then they're asleep in my arms before I get to the end of the book. But, if I'm caught up, if they can hear I'm excited, then they get excited. I think how excited you can get when telling a story makes a filmmaker an interesting one."
Part of the excitement generated by telling the Saving Private Ryan saga came from his realization that his sense of history was limited, and colored by propaganda. "I learned from the people who were there," he says of the D-Day invasion. "I thought Omaha Beach was a victory. I thought Normandy was a victory. We got everybody on shore, after all, and we started to push in the next day."
What he really learned was that the landing at Omaha Beach "was a chaotic strategic disaster." His movie shows how and why, with devastating scenes of the carnage.
The violence is necessary, especially for a society that he believes is now desensitized to real-life violence. "Here's a problem with society today, and I'm a part of this. I've made these contributions, so please don't think that I'm this holier-than-thou, above-it-all person who can look down and lecture about this, because I'm right in the middle of the culpability. I have been a part of the desensitizing of audiences through violence that is both entertaining and creative."
He cites his own Indiana Jones series and Jaws as examples. He blames video games, including the Sega world with which he is commercially involved in a partnership with Universal Studios and Sega Enterprises.
"In a sense, I feel that Schindler's List and now Saving Private Ryan resensitizes people to the realities of war."
It is a visceral physical experience, he says. "It's not just saying you're going to be safe voyeurs in that movie theatre. I'm kind of asking a lot of the audience. I'm asking them to participate in the experiences of those soldiers."
THE FILE
BORN: In 1946, a post-war baby boomer, in Cincinnati. Raised in Ohio, New Jersey, Arizona and then California.
FIRST FILM: At 11, he made The Last Train Wreck on his dad's 8mm camera. He shot his own electric train set.
SUCCESS: Staggering. Spielberg worth a reported $2 billion and now runs his own movie studio, DreamWorks, although he remains casually dressed and low-key humble. "I just like to think of myself as a sort of 'suit' who wears T-shirts."