"Midget" is simply not in Zelda's vocabulary. "It divides you from others, like calling a gay man a fag. I prefer little person," she says. Her activism started with her first screen role in last year's Under the Rainbow, a Chevy Chase farce that used little people as comic relief."It was absolutely despicable," she snaps. "You're not an actor if you're just a person that fits into a cute costume. You're a prop."

 

 

 

 

The Washington Post
July 4, 1982, Sunday, Final Edition
Growing Up Macabre With Steven Spielberg

BYLINE: By Gary Arnold


"ALL BROTHERS torment their sisters," Sue Spielberg reflected, "but my brother did it creatively." So creatively, in fact, that this particular brother eventually transformed his fondness for teasing three youngesister into an artistic vocation. Already celebrated as the director of "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Sue Spielberg's big brother Steven has made a double impact on the current moviegoing season: director and coproducer of the preeminent summer hit, "E. T."; and cowriter, coproducer and evidently ghost-director of the horror thriller "Poltergeist." Representing a combined production cost of $21.3 million, these Spielberg bonanzas have already accumulated combined gross receipts of more than $100 million. "E. T." and "Poltergeist" have a special significance for Sue Spielberg, who fondly recalls the unique family movie-making history that prepared the way for her brother's phenomenal career. Manager of a Georgetown University publications office, she lives in the Washington area with her husband Jerry, a lawyer.

Steven, now 34, is the oldest of four children born to Arnold and Leah Spielberg. The three girls--Ann, Sue and Nancy--are 32, 28 and 26, respectively. Steven began making home movies with an 8 mm camera when he was about 12 and the family was residing in suburban Scottsdale, Ariz. He drafted his sisters as performers, collaborators and guinea pigs in these amateur film-making efforts.

Spielberg found his sisters an ideal test audience. "Steven used to try to scare Nancy and me with horror stories or stunts that were very similar to the kinds of things you see in 'Poltergeist,' " his sister recollected. "The scene where the man hallucinates his face decomposing is one I'll never forget. He tried that out on us when we were kids. He took a batch of dampened, colored toilet paper and plastered it on his face. Then he crept into our bedroom and began peeling the stuff off in layers. Yuck!

"There was also a monster in the closet. He got a skull and covered it in red wax and put a football helmet on it--I don't know why that touch didn't backfire, but it was still a scary creation. He'd usher us into the darkened closet and then turn the lights on and off, on and off, as fast as he could.

"Please don't get the wrong idea about any of this. Steven's sort of teasing never seemed cruel. He was just an amazing character to have in your family because he had such imagination. He terrified us, but it was fun to be terrified the way he did it. Anyway, he seemed to know that there were certain limits--he was a little leery of subjecting Nancy to every trick he'd try on me or Annie. He also knew that I'd run and tell Mom if he went too far. I think it became part of the game for him to discover how far he could go at provoking us, while we were discovering how much nerve we had. One night he drew a hideous skull on our blackboard and said, 'See if you can sleep with this and not tell Mom.' I don't think we could sleep a wink, but we didn't tell Mom.

"It's easier to remember us making movies than going to the movies," she added. "They were our summer projects. We stayed home and made movies with Steven. I remember that my sister Annie died in one, and I was a monster in another. I don't have too many snapshots from that period, but I found one where Steven and some of his friends were dressed up in Nazi uniforms. I think that was something called 'Escape to Nowhere,' some kind of war story. That was one of the bigger productions, and I remember everybody dunking costumes in buckets of dye to get the uniforms the right color and the collection of helmets. It's amazing to think that Steven could have gotten ahold of all that stuff--in Arizona!

"He started by creating little scenes and filming them. As he got more practice, the films got more ambitious and sophisticated, but there was always something extremely imaginative about him. For instance, he'd start out by borrowing our dolls and arranging them in macabre ways--Barbie and Ken as victims of a car crash, say. He had a huge collection of movie soundtrack albums, and I remember one time he took my Barbie and marched her to the scaffold in time to a piece of film music--I think a 'Death March' from 'Spartacus.' Those were waist-high shots, so that he could walk her along while the camera was turning. Then he didn't just film her hanging; he got her shadow as Barbie swung from the gallows.

"He began doing a lot of trick effects. For one of the films he built a model high-rise out of cardboard and then filmed it burning. It was amazing on film--it appeared to be a real building on fire. He also built himself a dolly. At that time I didn't have the slightest idea what a 'dolly shot' was, but it was very important to Steven, so he mounted a platform on a wagon or something and the movies got even more movement.

"There was a lot of science-fiction. My father was a great sci-fi fan and had an enormous collection of stories and novels. I even remember Steven doing stick figures in the corners of some of those books--you know, you'd flip the corners and the figures would seem to move. His most ambitious project was a science-fiction story called 'Firelight,' which got a special showing at a theater in Phoenix. Ann did the makeup for that one, and I got to be the 'moosher.' There was a special effect for the firelight, which came from outer space and ate the humans attracted to it. There were two kinds of firelight, as a matter of fact--blue and red. We got the effect by spreading vaseline between layers of colored cellophane and then sort of 'mooshing' it around. Then Steve would place the mooshy cell over the camera lens to get 'firelight.'

"Tornados were a big thing with us, too. All those enormous storm clouds you see rolling across the sky in 'Close Encounters' and 'Poltergeist' came straight out of our childhood in Arizona. We used to sit at the window and watch these tremendous storm clouds coming toward us. We were children of the weather. 'Look at that tornado,' Steven would whisper to us. 'It's coming right to Sue and Nancy's house.' We never could watch the first part of 'The Wizard of Oz' without getting hysterical.

"What else? Oh, the dead canary in 'Poltergeist.' That was Nancy's pet lizard in real life. Mom didn't try to get rid of it, though. What happened was that the poor lizard began to deteriorate, and Nancy decided that the kindest thing would be to restore him to a desert habitat. We had an old Army jeep which Mom got around in. That played a role in 'Escape to Nowhere,' as a matter of fact. Anyway, we drove out into the desert, and Nancy shooed this half-dead lizard back to nature. Or tried too--he wasn't moving much by that time. We watched him for a while in the proper mournful mood, and then all of a sudden Nancy brightened up: 'Can we go get ice cream now?' she asked."

The Spielbergs separated and then divorced shortly after Steven graduated from high school. His father took a job in Los Angeles, and Steven entered college at the California State campus in Long Beach. His mother returned to the Phoenix area with the three girls and eventually remarried. From that point on, Steven usually spent vacations with his mother and sisters, but it was no longer appropriate or necessary to enlist their services in film-making projects. The little sisters were too grown-up, and the brother was on the verge of a professional film-making career. Sue Spielberg found herself frequently going to the movies with her brother and then enjoying advance looks at the scripts for television shows and feature films that he was actually in a position to direct.

"I'm glad he found an outlet," she concluded. "All that teasing and mooshing and experimenting certainly paid off. It's just strange to think of how personal it all is--all these things that have such a public impact because they're in his movies. Nobody could say no to this kid--not just the family. It seemed natural that everyone become caught up in his activities. During 'Firelight' he had access to a hospital and an airport. I don't know how he did it, but it's wonderful that he did. I hope my kids have as weird an upbringing as I did, with the fairy tales and the craziness and the constant teasing. It really hit me when I was watching 'E. T.' That's my brother, and I feel . . . I feel so proud of him."

 

The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Some Straight talk about parapsychology

BYLINE: LAWRENCE O'TOOLE; GAM

DATELINE: New York NY

 

 

The New York Times
June 6, 1982, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
PAPERBACK TALK;
The Summer of '82

BYLINE: By Ray Walters



This is a most anxious time in the world of paperback publishing. Traditionally, the 13 weeks from now until Labor Day are the industry's highest season, the time when sales records are set as millions of Americans grab books out of the racks to help pass the time at the beach or beside the pool. The publishers hope that, despite the recession, high unemployment and prices of $3.95 or more for many paperbacks, readers will find their offerings irresistible. Herewith a rundown on some of the titles on which they're pinning their hopes.

''Good Reads.'' Most summer readers choose fiction, the work of authors whose specialty is entertainment. Two in the racks later this month are M.M. Kaye's ''Trade Wind'' (Bantam), Paul Erdman's ''The Last Days of America'' (Pocket), Irwin Shaw's ''Bread Upon the Waters'' (Dell) and Rosemary Rodgers's ''Surrender to Love'' (Avon).

Coming in late July are Lawrence Sanders' ''The Third Deadly Sin'' (Berkley) and Stephen King's ''Cujo'' (NAL/Signet). Jackie Collins, a newcomer in the Sidney Sheldon tradition, will offer ''Chances'' (Warner).

In late August, there will be John Irving's ''The Hotel New Hampshire'' (Pocket) and a first novel that's done very well in hardcover, Bette Bao Lord's ''Spring Moon'' (Avon).

Movie Tie-Ins. During some summers past, the young people who keep Hollywood solvent were so enthusiastic about certain films that they bought millions of copies of the novels from which the movies were derived or of novelizations based on scripts. But publishers have learned that the movie tie-in is a gamble, and this year they are playing it cautious. Of the twoscore major films being released this summer, fewer than half will have tie-ins.

Two of the most promising tie-ins of the year were inspired by Steven Spielberg, who directed ''Jaws.'' Mr. Spielberg's ''Poltergeist,'' a movie about a force from another world that kidnaps a small girl from her bedroom, was previewed at the convention of the American Booksellers Association in Anaheim, Calif., last weekend because Warner books is issuing a novelization of it written by James Kahn. Another Spielberg film, ''E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial,'' about a creature from outer space who finds himself lost and frightened on earth, is being called ''the summer's best movie'' by some critics. The fine novelization of it that William Kotzwinkle has done for Berkley may turn out to be this summer's best-selling tie-in, some book distributors tell us.

John Irving's ''The World According to Garp'' might become one of the books about which every paperback publisher dreams. When this critically acclaimed comic novel was published in soft cover by Pocket Books in 1979, it was on our mass-market best-seller list for 28 weeks and sold over three million copies. The film, in which Mr. Irving plays a role, was also previewed at Anaheim last weekend. If it is a box-office success, Pocket could well sell another million copies or more.

''Rocky III'' is expected to repeat the success of its two predecessors and become one of the summer's box-office smashes. The legend of the down-and-out boxer who triumphs over great odds, as conceived and acted by Sylvester Stallone, is the sort of stuff that fascinates youthful moviegoers and readers. Book tie-ins to the first two ''Rocky'' films sold well. The third, published by Ballantine, with Mr. Stallone himself listed as the author, will be in the racks shortly.

''Annie,'' the film based on the long-running Broadway musical that's based on the long-running comic strip, has become the subject of spirited debate in both the film and book worlds. Will enough grown-ups augment its natural audience of little girls to enable the producer to recoup the $40 million to $50 million he says he has invested in it? Will enough of those who see the film like it enough to make the novelization Leonore Fleischer has done for Ballantine a best seller? How many people are interested enough in ''Annie'' as a pop-culture figure to buy ''The History of Little Orphan Annie'' by Bruce Smith, which Ballantine is bringing out as a trade paperback? Well, as bookmen know, tie-ins are a very chancy form of publishing.

Markdowns. Would more people buy more paperbacks if they didn't cost so much? Two publishers are staging experiments to find out.NAL/Signet has just issued at $1.50 ''Minotaur'' by Benjamin Tammuz, the story of a strange romantic relationship that develops between a beautiful English girl and an aging Israeli intelligence agent. It received excellent critical notices when it was published in hard-cover last year. Its style reminded our reviewer of William Faulkner and Lawrence Durrell.

Bantam Books is reissuing at $1.95 each 11 best sellers from its backlist: ''Sleeping Murder'' by Agatha Christie, ''Once Is Not Enough'' by Jacqueline Susann, ''Hotel'' by Arthur Hailey, ''The Deep'' by Peter Benchley, ''The Great Train Robbery'' by Michael Crichton, ''Storm Warning'' by Jack Higgins, ''Vixen 03'' by Clive Cussler, ''The Cracker Factory'' by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt, ''Chantal'' by Claire Lorrimer, ''Proteus'' by Morris West and ''Till Death Us Do Part'' by Vincent Bugliosi with Ken Hurwitz. When the special printings of 185,000 copies are exhausted, the books will return to their regular prices, ranging from $2.75 to $3.50.

 

Time Magazine
May 31, 1982, U.S. Edition
BYLINE: John A. Meyers

SECTION: A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER; Pg. 3


TIME's story ideas usually originate at editorial meetings n New York, or at weekly conferences in its bureaus around the world. These proposals, breaking news aside, tend to be savored for weeks, even months, before coming anywhere close to appearing in print. But, by the very nature of its business, TIME must react as quick to the unexpected eruption of genius as to the demands of hard news. This can mean that the normal weeks of planning may be telescoped into a few days, with the whole meticulous preparation process taking on the look and feel of a speededup movie. Such was the case for this week's major story on Film Maker Steven Spielberg.

It was well known that two new Spielberg moviews -- E.T. and Poltergeist -- were due to be released, but on paper they did not at first look as if they were likely candidates for Hollywood immortality. Says Associate Editor Richard Corliss, who wrote the main story for this week's effort -- with contributions from John Skow and Reporter-Researcher Melissa Ludtke Lincoln: "Here were two movies with no stars. Both were small budget. Together they cost much less than Annie. How important could low-budget, horror or science-fiction films be?" The answer: so important that Corliss delayed a long-scheduled trip to the Cannes Film Festival in order to get started on the story. FOr two days he wrote, then flew to Cannes for three days, Then caught the Concorde back to New York to finish the project. Before Corliss returned to Cannes, he met Spielberg for the firs time -- after three screenings of E.T. -- at a luncheon organized by our editors in the Time-Life Building in Manhattan.

Also attending that luncheon last week was West Coast Show Business Correspondent Martha Smilgis, who last year interviewed Spielberg for TIME's story on Raiders of the Lost Ark. For this new project, Smilgis had a long afternoon of conversation with Spielberg at his beach house just north of Malibu. Says she: "Steven made me a great lunch. his mother sent ovr curried chicken, and he supplied salmon, tuna fish, fresh fruit salad and his own specialty, freshly baked pumpkin bread. Food is his hobby." Smilgis' assignments are not always so appealing. As part of covering her beat in Los Angeles, she screens an average of two films a week and is not moved by many of them. But after viewing E.T., she was moved to say: "This is a ten-handkerchief movie."