Word: spielbergisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most magical moments of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, scientists stare in unashamed wonder at the first appearance of a little space creature. In the 1981 television version, they just stared: the space creature was cut out of the picture. "It was a disaster," Spielberg recalls. "It looked worse than the super-8 movies I make myself." Says Stanley Kubrick, whose 2001 lost the introduction of the star child in its wondrous last sequence to some bad panning and scanning in 1977: "It's a very unsatisfactory technique. It destroyed the compositional elements...
...have more than a few manufacturers of pre-recorded video cassettes provided a masked version of a film. The supposition seems to be that the viewer neither cares nor notices; but the viewer has never been presented with an alternative. During preparations for the network showing of Close Encounters, Spielberg inquired about showing the movie masked. He says an ABC executive told him flat out that this was impossible, that FCC regulations did not permit...
...again to be shot in the original format that was the standard before CinemaScope." Director Martin Scorsese is launching a film-preservation committee that will attempt to ensure, among other things, that "if film makers make a picture in 'Scope, it gets shown that way on television." And Spielberg, who says that Manhattan looked "wonderful" masked, is going to "insist" that the next network showing of Close Encounters be masked as well. "Maybe I've got no contractual right," he says, "and it should be a friendly thing. But I am going to fight...
What accounts for the show's resurgent popularity? The Cleaver household is quintessentially suburban, the prime-time equivalent of John Cheever's sunlit lawns and the immediate ancestor of Steven Spielberg's split-levels. June forever emerges from the kitchen flawlessly coiffed and groomed, carrying a tray of freshly baked cookies. Ward, like all TV dads, disappears between 9 and 5 to a nameless job, but his real occupation is mowing the lawn and having heart-to-hearts with the boys. Wally, earnest and rather thick, is a slightly more amiable and less somnambulant Rick Nelson...
...Blade Runner share a common message: Spielberg and Scott are warning us not to lose track of our humanity in our struggle for progress. It's an old theme, but one that bears repeating--particularly in a world so obsessed with technology and escapism...