Spielberg as a contemporary director

Essay by Demented May 2004

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With a classic hit like E.T the Extra- Terrestrial (1982), Jaws (1975) and other box office smashes like the series Indian Jones with Harrison Ford (1981-1989), there is no doubt in my mind that Steven Spielberg is one of the most influential persons of today, and in Hollywood one of the most wealthiest and best know filmmakers in the world.(St. James Press)

Steven Allan Spielberg was born in Cincinnati to a Jewish family on December 18, 1946. Arnold his father and Leah his mother were anxiously awaiting his arrival. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother a classical pianist, due to his father's job they often moved around from Ohio to New Jersey and then to Scottsdale Arizona were they spent the next seven years. Spielberg attended college at Long Beach University, but soon dropped out to pursue his dream of making movies. He started work as an assistant on the classic western "Wagon Train", and soon directed "The Last Gun" (1959), "Battle Squad" (1961), and then "Escape From Nowhere," staring his sister Anne Spielberg (1961).

Through the next few years Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would be foretelling of his future career in filmmaking. A movie called "Firelight," came out in 1964 and it was aliens invading a small town, which some critics say is very similar to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977). There was also an unfinished movie entitled "Slipstream," but it was never completed. Many of Spielberg's early films take place in a desert or at least feature one at some point during the film.(Yevlar) A production company named Amblin hired Spielberg and he soon produced "Duel," (1971) a unique and classic TV series with Dennis Weaver. Today the series is still baffling many critics and that is why it's considered...