Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati Ohio on December 18, 1946. The birth of the greatest movie director in the history of film making however began when Arnold Spielberg took his young son to see his very first motion picture called "The Greatest Show on Earth." Steven Spielberg would later describe this experience as, "I became just one more victim of this tremendous drug called cinema." One scene that truly inspired Steven was a massive train wreck that occurred during the film.

A few years later, Spielberg was playing with his electric trains when he decided he'd like to recreate that scene from the movie he had seen a few years prior. So he set his trains up and crashed the two of them together. Breaking both trains, he explained to his father what had happened and why he had done it. His father repaired the trains but warned his son that if he crashed them again he would have to take the trains away from him. Still wanting to see the trains crash together like in "The Greatest Show on Earth" but of course not wanting to loose his train set, Steven borrowed his fathers 8mm Kodak film camera and filmed his two trains crashing into each other. Luckily his trains did not break during the crash and now with the event caught on film, Steven Spielberg directed his first movie. As they say, rest is history.

As a teenager, Steven Spielberg was on a tour of universal studio's movie lot when he veered off on his own away from the tour group. Spielberg spent the day on his own going in and out of sound stages and seeing first hand how major film productions were made. At the end of the day when he needed to call his cousin for a ride home, he borrowed the phone of the studio's film librarian who asked Spielberg how he got here. Seeing the passion and desire to work in movies, he gave Steven a pass to come back to the studio lot without having to sneak in. Later on in college, a short film Steven directed would catch the eye of the executives of the studio and he would officially become and employee of Universal Studios. Now in his early 20's and successfully directing his first two films "Duel" and "The Sugarland Express", he set his sights on directing a film about a killer shark that terrorizes a small New England town.

"Jaws" would prove to be a film that would push Spielberg to his limits as an artist and as a director. Upon arrival to Cape Cod Massachusetts, the film crew discovered that the mechanical shark they had named "Bruce" wasn't working. The very first time they tested Bruce, he shot from the water in a horrific burst of bubbles just as planned. The celebration was short lived however as only seconds later Spielberg and crew watched helplessly as Bruce sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

With a broken shark out of commission for several weeks, it was time for young Spielberg to develop plan B or admit defeat and cancel filming before it even began. Steven had always had a fear of the water, more directly the fear of what was beneath the water that he couldn't see. That fear would now become the idea behind the whole film and soon the fear of of every person who viewed the film. Using camera angles to represent the point of view from the shark swimming below it's victims only heightened the horror of the film. Spielberg would later say that the shock given when we finally get our first image of the giant shark next to Quint's boat wouldn't have been the same if he had shown any glimpse of the fish prior to that moment.

A world wide phenomenon now under his belt, Spielberg continued to direct hit after hit with films such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones, E.T., The Color Purple, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan." Winning the Oscar for best director for both "Schindler's list" and "Saving Private Ryan", Spielberg still remains the premier director in Hollywood and has produced countless films and Tv Series.

His latest film "Lincoln" has received praise from fans and critics and buzz for his third academy award as Best Director has already begun. Now 66 years old, Steven Spielberg still directs his films with the passion and excitement as the young boy in Arizona filming his toy trains crashing together. Steven Spielberg has shared his love and passion for films with millions of movie lovers, including me. Here is a wonderful video someone made that beautifully captures clips from the famous films of Steven Spielberg.