Steven Spielberg: Directing dreams and deals

11:21Zing Tsjeng:Well worth a watch though. It's brilliant. What is it about? It's about a truck which develops a monstrous personality so this guy is driving along in his car and he just overtakes this truck and they kind of honk at each other and he doesn't think any more of it and this truck then begins to hunt him down, trying to kill him basically and it's gripping and here's an interesting fact. At the end the truck goes off the edge of a cliff and it makes this horrible noise and you kind of see this kind of spirit coming out of the truck like it's been possessed by something they used exactly the same noise when jaws the

11:56Simon Jack:shark is killed at the end of jaws and now that is another great pup quiz fact i'm gonna remember that one well the success of dole convinced two producers richard zanuck and david brown to let steven direct his first theatrical feature film at the age of just 24 the sugarland express starring Goldie Hawn. Now, the film didn't do that well, but more importantly, he impressed its producers. And Richard said, the first shot, it was the most elaborate thing I've ever seen in my life. I knew right then and there that this guy probably knew more at that age about the mechanics of working out a shot than anybody alive at the time.

12:31Simon Jack:High praise. So Richard and David immediately hired Stephen to direct another film, this time about a shark.

12:38Zing Tsjeng:This film, of course, was Jaws. It was incredibly difficult to make. Stephen was 26 at this time. He described it as a living nightmare. Two of the lead actors in it, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss, had a massive feud. And of course the biggest issue was the ocean, which was nearly impossible to film on. They had three mechanical sharks. They cost a quarter of a million dollars to build. And they were nicknamed Bruce. But they hadn't been tested in salt water, so in the sea they broke down constantly. This caused huge delays. The production ran way behind schedule. It went massively over the original $4 million budget and cost$12 million.

13:13Simon Jack:During filming, Stephen thought Jaws would be the end of his career. Universal Sid Sheidenberg sat him down and said, look, this is a disaster. I don't know what to do except we could pull the plug right now. We could take our losses. I'm going to let you make the call. But, and this is a very crucial but, Stephen decided to continue.

13:31Zing Tsjeng:This feels like one of those sliding doors moments that really determined the entire future of our billionaires. And also the movie industry in a way. Yeah, I mean, necessity, often the mother of invention, because the mechanical sharks really worked, he was forced to turn the shark into something like an unseen presence, like a bit like, you know, the alien in Alien. Instead, he used clever camera angles. And there's a legendary editor called Werner Fields, who basically was tasked with kind of keeping the, you know, rather unconvincing mechanical shark out of the shot. And it was that and John Williams' amazing score that made it this kind of really menacing unseen presence.

14:09Zing Tsjeng:Jaws is not just a sort of shark film. I think Jaws is one of the top five films of any kind ever made.

14:15Simon Jack:Of all time?

14:15Zing Tsjeng:Of all time.

14:16Simon Jack:What makes it so good in your opinion?

14:18Zing Tsjeng:Because it's so taut. The finished film was not the monster movie he'd intended. Instead, it became a suspense-driven thriller, more like a kind of Hitchcock-type film, and it became an unimaginable success. It was released in 1975, became the highest-grossing film of all time up to that point ever. It brought in$480 million at the box office. Stephen's earnings, though, a little more modest. His fee for directing would probably have only been in the tens of thousands of dollars.

14:44Simon Jack:But more importantly, Stephen's agent renegotiated his deal just before the film opened and got Stephen 5 % of the profits known in the business as points. Now, points are usually shares of net profit rather than gross revenue. And often they're paid only after investors get back their costs. Remember this because it will become important later. So Stephen was only able to collect about$3 million. But this is what made him a millionaire. And for a 28-year-old in 1975, this made him Hollywood rich.

15:16Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, we're going to come back to that gross net on movies. Massively important for this industry a little bit later. But let us go from a million to a billion.

15:37Zing Tsjeng:Basically, Jaws changed Hollywood. It was the first ever summer blockbuster. From then on, studios wanted these big budget films every summer so they could spend a ton of money marketing them, wide distribution, rather than tens of millions at the box office. They now were hoping to take hundreds of millions. And importantly for Stephen, Jaws' success established him as Hollywood's most valuable young director. Universal Studios offered him Jaws 2, but he turned it down. A wise move, in my view.

16:03Simon Jack:Instead, he made his next movie with Columbia Pictures. And I have to confess, I haven't actually watched Stephen's second film, which was Close Encounters of a Third Kind. What?

16:14Zing Tsjeng:You haven't seen it?

16:15Simon Jack:No, and it's... It's absolutely amazing. And it's funny because I love all the films and TV shows that came after it, X-Files, you know, things like that that were clearly inspired by this alien film.

16:26Zing Tsjeng:Funny story, because Richard Dreyfuss kind of knew that Stephen Spielberg was going to be a big deal. He kind of felt it. And so during the filming of Jaws, he basically spent the entire time trying to persuade Steven Spielberg to cast him in the next movie, which he duly did.

16:42Simon Jack:Dreyfus clearly had a good intuition about him. Again, he made a massive hit. On a 20 million budget, the film grossed over 300 million dollars worldwide. That is huge. He'd negotiated 17.5 % of the net profit. But this only worked out at around 5 million after the studio recouped their costs. and it actually saved Columbia, who had been deep in debt and were facing bankruptcy.

17:06Zing Tsjeng:This is a fascinating story. George Lucas, director of Star Wars, but by the way, we've covered him on Good Bad Billionaire, actually took some of his profits from that film. George had visited Stephen while he was filming Close Encounters and as I say, George was making a little film called Star Wars at the time. He was nervous it wasn't going to be a hit and on the Close Encounters set, comparing the movies, George felt even more concerned. I don't like the look of what this guy's doing. He's too good. So George asked to trade points with Stephen. George would give him 2.5 % of Star Wars if Stephen gave him 2.5 % of Close Encounters.

17:41Zing Tsjeng:And Stephen said, sure, I'll gamble with that. Great. And even though Close Encounters were a hit, it was nothing like the monster that was Star Wars, which grossed$775 million. So Stephen did pretty well off that little bet.

17:54Simon Jack:I can't imagine the conversation that Stephen, George, and their lawyers and agents must have had. And these two guys call their teams up to be like, hey, we made a little gamble. We made a bet. It's pretty fun. Exactly. Lots of hand wringing, I think.

18:08Zing Tsjeng:Well, I guess no one cared until it became a monster hit, right? This is very true.

18:12Simon Jack:And if you listen to the episode about George Lucas, you'll know that the idea of a space opera was not exactly one that went down particularly well in Hollywood when it was first mooted. Well, we're back to Stephen. And after a brief dud, the film 1941, he has two more ginormous creative and commercial hits. First of all, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones, of course. This is the collaboration he did with George Lucas, which grossed$354 million. And that film was made with Paramount, where Stephen's directing fee was a million dollars. But crucially, the deal guaranteed him gross points. Now, another little explainer, net points means you're paid from the money left after all the costs are detected.

18:54Simon Jack:So studios can deduct production costs, it can deduct marketing, distribution, internal costs, etc, etc. The list goes on. So getting net points often produces very little income for a director.

19:05Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, it's very interesting this because often for lots of reasons, including tax, lots of films don't end up making much of a net profit. Whereas gross points means you're paid from the gross revenue, i.e. the total money earned before most deductions. It's very hard to manipulate. You earn money as soon as the film starts making money. Gross points are incredibly valuable and they're not given away easily by the studios. Stephen was one of the first directors to get gross points. According to George, all the other studios got very upset with Paramount for making that deal.

19:39Simon Jack:If you want a good insight into how Hollywood studios work, there's a very fun television show called The Studio starring Seth Rogen as a sort of hapless movie executive that is actually quite a good insight into the way that studios try and exert control and power over filmmakers to lesser and greater degrees. While Stephen, in real life, is actually an infamously hard negotiator, the editor-in-chief of Variety has said, it's as tough to make a deal with him as anyone in history. The New Yorkers described him as an unusually tough businessman, a ferocious, canny, obsessively secret negotiator, and not a terribly generous one.

20:16Simon Jack:If you remember his own sister, Anne, She's a filmmaker too. She said, he's a very tough bargainer. He's a hard man to deal with on those things. There are times I'd be tempted to take things other places where I know I would get a better deal. So he doesn't even go easy on his own sister.

20:31Zing Tsjeng:And it's quite interesting that because sometimes you think, oh, the creative, whatever, they don't care about the money side of it. He clearly does. And for his next film, E.T., gross points, which we just discussed, became incredibly lucrative because it became the highest grossing film ever, again at the time taking nearly 800 million dollars beating star wars and for et he was back with universal but this time he negotiated a new clause in his contract to control the release of the vhs version of the movie remember vhs's and split the profit when et went to video in 1988 the sales added an extra 70 million dollars to his earnings now et i'm sure you've seen the film was actually influenced by his parents divorce and the character was actually based on an imaginary friend he created.

21:16Zing Tsjeng:He said, this is a friend who could be the brother I never had and a father I didn't feel I had anymore.

21:21Simon Jack:Come on, I think you can do the E.T. voice. I bet you can do the E.T. voice. Oh, God, can I do it?

21:27Zing Tsjeng:Hang on.

21:29Simon Jack:Cast your mind back. To the home.

21:33Zing Tsjeng:E.T. phone home. I can't know.

21:36Simon Jack:That is good, although you've given E.T. a British accent.

21:38Zing Tsjeng:Have I?

21:39Simon Jack:Which I'm not sure it's strictly accurate.

21:40Zing Tsjeng:Okay, well, listen, I'm not, you know, I know that I'm going to be made fun of here, But, you know, I'm up for it. It's fine. I don't mind being...

21:46Simon Jack:Well, I think it's quite rare. I think it's quite sweet that he based E.T. on his parents' divorce. He's clearly quite a sensitive guy, too.

21:53Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, he's sensitive. There's a slight... I mean, if there's one criticism of him, something a little saccharine, some people would say about it.

22:00Simon Jack:And that's something that his films have also been criticised for by film critics, that they veer on sentimentality. They're very sweet, aren't they? So at this point, Stephen was also becoming more than just a director. Maybe he was inspired by his good friend George Lucas, but he also set up his own production company named Amblin after that short film we discussed. Stephen was now the boss with about 50 staff, and through Amblin he added the revenue stream of executive producer for major films, including Gremlins, Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which came out in 1988. An underrated classic in my eyes.

22:35Zing Tsjeng:Ah, yes. Jessica Rabbit was a big heartthrob to me in my youth.

22:39Simon Jack:Exactly. And also, you just don't get real people acting alongside animated cartoons that much anymore.

22:45Zing Tsjeng:It was Bob Hoskins, wasn't it, who played alongside all the different characters?

22:48Simon Jack:Yes, Bob Hoskins plays the private detective.

22:50Zing Tsjeng:That's right.

22:51Simon Jack:Well, Amblin also got Stephen into TV, which included cartoons and the incredibly successful drama E.R., which ran for 331 episodes. Another pub trivia question, I think.

23:03Zing Tsjeng:Yeah.

23:03Simon Jack:Well, by the mid-1980s, Stephen increasingly refused a traditional director's fee. Instead, he was betting on the success of his films by negotiating gross points. He said, I'm a gambler. I love gambling to see what's going to make it and what is not. According to Forbes, his typical movie deals worked something like this. The studio absorbs all costs. Once the movie starts to bring in revenue, he generally gets a 5 % cut if he produced the film and 15 % if he directed it. He makes money even if the film loses overall. His gross points often rise, say, to 30 % until the film breaks even. At that point, he and the studio split the profits 50-50.

23:43Zing Tsjeng:That's a hell of a deal. Deeply unconventional for Hollywood. Now, we're going to skip over the next few films, although we should pause briefly maybe on the second Indiana Jones movie because it got him his second wife. His first wife, Amy Irving, was an actress he met in 1976 during an audition for Close Encounters. Their relationship has been described as tempestuous and troubled over the next decade. They broke up, got back together, eventually married in 1985 and had a son together.

24:08Simon Jack:But in 1989, the couple divorced and their settlement is one of the most expensive in history estimated at$100 million. His second wife, Kate Capshaw, was the actress in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, if you ever wondered what happened to her. They married in 1991 after she converted to Judaism for him and they'd go on to have five children together, two of whom were African-American and adopted. In an interview, she said, we were watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the other night on television. I turned to Stephen and I said, what happened to my career after that movie? He said, you weren't supposed to have a career.

24:42Simon Jack:You were supposed to be with me. And it's true. My focus was on Stephen and a large family. I'm not sure I would personally react that well if that's what my husband told me about my own career. But, you know, clearly they're very happy together.

24:55Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. Well, Stephen credits Kate's conversion to Judaism as bringing himself back to Judaism. And soon after, he connected creatively with his faith by directing the Holocaust film 1993's Schindler's List. While filming Schindler's List, Stephen said he cried all the time. It was, in his words, the most personal film I have ever made because it was something I was so ashamed of. It's a three-hour black-and-white movie about the Holocaust. It's a hard watch. Stephen was convinced it would lose money. Even the budget was just$22 million. But he needn't have worried. the film grossed over$320 million worldwide.

25:29Simon Jack:However, he actually gave away his profits for the movie, saying, I was unwilling to keep it because it was blood money. In fact, Schindler's List was the film that got him into philanthropy. After the film, he set up two foundations. One gives grants to Holocaust and Jewish continuity projects, and the other records testimonies from Holocaust survivors. However, he said he mostly gives anonymously because of his faith. He said, a rabbi sat me down and told me, you know if you put your name on everything it goes unrecognized by god i said really so 80 of what i give is anonymous and the other 20 is only where my name can help attract other monies which

26:07Zing Tsjeng:is a really interesting approach to philanthropy no obviously he can be a mustering point for other donors can't he if he discloses that he's one um well shinder's list won steven his first oscar awards for best director and best picture and that brought him a new kind of credibility he was a he was a hit maker but hadn't been really recognized creatively but of course he wasn't done with blockbusters quite yet the same year that Schindler's List came out something quite different Jurassic Park now Jurassic Park became the highest grossing film ever at the time seem to be saying

26:39Simon Jack:that quite a lot as we go through this it's a common refrain in this episode he keeps breaking

26:44Zing Tsjeng:his own records and it grossed over 914 million dollars worldwide Stephen and Universal were essentially 50-50 partners on this film. So he was getting money as both a director and as a producer through Amblin. Altogether, he made about$250 million from the film, by far the most an individual had ever made from a movie or any other unit of entertainment that we can find at that time.

27:07Simon Jack:Well, Jurassic Park also made him money long after the popcorn had been swept off the cinema floors and people had been ushered out. Before the film, Universal had been worried about Stephen being poached by Time Warner, another studio. So to keep Stephen sweet, his old mentor Sid Sheinberg devised one of the most unusual deals in Hollywood. Stephen has a habit of racking these up. He would become, and this is so fun, creative consultant for Universal Studios theme parks. And his job was helping to design elements of the parks as well as the rides. I mean, I'm sorry, this sounds like a dream job.

27:40Simon Jack:In exchange, he would get 2 % of all park ticket revenue plus a portion of park concession receipts. And now this, this really is a phenomenal deal. Stephen takes home about$30 million every single year and he signed that deal in perpetuity. So he gets it forever.

27:58Zing Tsjeng:I wish someone would offer me a deal where I get$30 million a year for the rest of my life.

28:02Simon Jack:Imagine every single ticket you buy to Universal Studios, a tiny bit of that goes into Stephen Spielberg's pockets.

28:08Zing Tsjeng:Gosh, so, you know, given all of that, it's really not surprising that in 1994, Forbes declared Stephen a billionaire aged 46. This made him the first officially listed entertainment billionaire. And what's incredible about this compared to many of our billionaires is how much cash he had. Many of our billionaires get that status based on the value of their companies, what they own in stock and what is valued on the stock market. But it was estimated that Stephen had more than$600 million in sort of hard assets, cash basically. The remainder was the value of his wholly owned Amblin Entertainment.

28:42Simon Jack:It's a good thing Stephen had a lot of cash floating around because he's about to get into one of the most expensive businesses in the industry, owning his own studio. Thank you.

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32:36Simon Jack:So let's take Steven Spielberg beyond a billion. After Schindler's List came out, he took a three-year break from directing to found a company called DreamWorks SKG. The S stands for Spielberg, the K for X-Disney chair Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the G for music mogul David Geffen. And we've already covered some of this story, by the way, in our David Geffen episode. The three men put in their own money,$33.3 million each, plus two billion of other people's money, including half a billion from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

33:06Zing Tsjeng:I remember this being founded at the time. It was like a big, huge deal. It was kind of like money and the creative industries coming together. And of course, they had that really cool bit of imagery of the boy in the moon with the little fishing rod, which I thought summed up quite a lot of, felt very Spielberg-y, didn't it?

33:23Simon Jack:Exactly.

33:24Zing Tsjeng:But starting a studio is a much bigger gamble than a production company. This is the first new big studio in a generation. The other ones were all established before World War II, during that golden age of Hollywood, MGM, all those kind of people. Those studios had vast back catalogs, and the revenue from that keeps them afloat when they make inevitable multi-million dollar flops. All studios make flops. It's one of those weird businesses. You make 10 films, and you hope that the blockbuster that does really well kind of helps you pay for all the duds that you make. But if you've got this kind of revenue coming in from, you know, Your back catalogue.

33:59Zing Tsjeng:Your back catalogue. That can cushion all of that. So Stephen up to this point had been relatively flop free. He had a few duds, but he never really made a film that had lost money. Stephen said, I threw myself over the barbed wire with Geoffrey and David so we could have what we wanted.

34:13Simon Jack:The three founders took on different roles at DreamWorks. As an exec at another studio put it, Stephen is still the idea man, though no one ever says it. Geoffrey's doing all the grunt work, while Geffen sort of lurks in the wings and lobs a ball in or two when he's inspired to do so. quite scathing of David Geffen there. But with so much skin in the game, you'd assume that Stephen would make films exclusively for DreamWorks. But no, the first film he directed after setting up DreamWorks was the Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World, which was for Universal. It was another box office smash, although less well received by critics.

34:47Zing Tsjeng:I mean, the first Jurassic Park, there were some sort of jaw dropping moments. When you first saw the dinosaurs, it was kind of, wow. These days, it's kind of, meh, more dinosaurs.

34:56Simon Jack:Yeah, I know.

34:57Zing Tsjeng:What else are they

34:57Simon Jack:going to throw at us aliens?

34:59Zing Tsjeng:Yeah well two years after initially forming DreamWorks still had no live action films in production which was a serious concern for the people who backed them so DreamWorks pushed a film called The Peacemaker to be released in 1997. It wasn't directed by Stephen, wasn't well received by critics so Stephen I think in a way of remedial action immediately shot two films for DreamWorks meaning he shot three films in just 12 months including Jurassic Park remember so they released Stephen's historical drama Amistad. The critics didn't mind it, did okay with them, but it lost money. And Stephen explains, I kind of dried it out.

35:32Zing Tsjeng:It became too much of a history lesson. Not enough of his sugary sentimentality, maybe.

35:37Simon Jack:His Hollywood gloss. But by the next year, 1998, they really got into the swing of things. His DreamWorks film, Saving Private Ryan, was a commercial and critical hit. He said he made it for his dad, whom he'd reconnected with in the years before. But even Saving Private Ryan was a co-production with Paramount. And as Jeffrey Katzenberg put it, having half of something Steven's excited about is better than having none.

36:01Zing Tsjeng:That's a great quote. It's difficult to know how much time Spielberg could have dedicated to running a studio. In nine years, for example, he directed nine films. DreamWorks released a number of hits from other directors, but for every hit, there was at least one flop. In fact, DreamWorks was on the verge of bankruptcy several times and the studio began to sort of fall apart. Its animation division became a separate public company run by Jeffrey Katzenberg, for example.

36:25Simon Jack:And in 2006, Stephen and his partners sold DreamWorks to Viacom, the parent company of Paramount, for$1.6 billion, which included about 400 million of DreamWorks debt. Stephen stayed on as a key creative partner, but it wasn't a happy marriage. Reporting at the time noted simmering tensions, backbiting, and internal power plays between the co-founders and the new owner. In other words, just another day in Hollywood. But two years after the deal, Paramount released Stephen from his contract. With financing from the Indian conglomerate Reliance, owned by the Embamies, another one of our billionaires, he relaunched DreamWorks as an independent production company.

37:03Zing Tsjeng:So he continued directing high profile films, including Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, and The Fablemans, which was semi-autobiographical. And not much of a film, if you ask me. I'm allowed to be a critic here. I thought it was terrible. Anyway, to this day, Stephen remains the highest grossing director of all time. His films have grossed over$10 billion at the box office. But the industry has changed a lot in the 50 years since he started out. There is no longer a sure thing at the box office and even Stephen is forced to play by the new rules.

37:33Simon Jack:But don't worry about him too much because his bank balance is more than okay. For serving as executive producer on 2015's reboot Jurassic World, he's said to have made more money than Universal itself. The film grossed a billion dollars and there's been three sequels since. And in 2017, he had the opportunity to be bought out of his theme park deal for the huge lump sum of between half a billion and a billion dollars. But Stephen chose to keep that deal, leaving him with one of the most lucrative ongoing revenue streams in Hollywood and maybe the only one that involves roller coasters.

38:06Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, I'm just trying to do the numbers on that. So it's$30 million a year in perpetuity, probably inflation links. It goes up with inflation. so half a billion is 500 million so basically he thinks he's going to live at least 15 years on from then because otherwise the numbers wouldn't work out, he should have taken the money anyway if Steven Spielberg, if you're listening was that what went through your mind?

38:30Simon Jack:Or maybe he's got himself a nice little cryogenic chamber and he's planning to live forever Oh yes, of course or maybe it becomes part of his estate

38:38Zing Tsjeng:and therefore his family can keep owning it in perpetuity, right? So it's in perpetuity

38:43Simon Jack:I'm sure there are a lot of lawyers having very serious arguments about this as we speak.

38:47Zing Tsjeng:Anyway, enough of that. Back of the fag packet, financial calculations on Steven Spielberg's behalf. It's now time to score him on our billionaire categories, which are wealth, controversy, power and legacy. So we'll start with wealth.

39:02Simon Jack:Well, he's currently worth seven billion and that is a lot of money, but that only puts him at 540th in the billionaire stakes out of almost 4 ,000 billionaires in the world.

39:13Zing Tsjeng:And David Geffen said, like most very successful, very creative human beings, he likes the idea of getting paid a lot of money. But I wouldn't say it's the focus of his interests.

39:23Simon Jack:I agree with David Geffen. Obviously, he's a hard negotiator, but he probably works very hard as a director. I mean, he made those three films in a year. so I wonder if money's not the main interest that he has he just loves movies

39:36Zing Tsjeng:I think it's a bit more like I'm reminded of Warren Buffett money was a way of keeping score of how right he is and we heard from Spielberg earlier I like to gamble I like to see whether things pay off you know how his schoolmates loved his film back in class they applauded him so the money is a kind of proxy for approval love, approbation

39:57Simon Jack:validation some movie directors get it from film critics and reviews. I think Spielberg generally gets it from how well his films do at the box office.

40:06Zing Tsjeng:Certainly one of the richest people in entertainment of all time. So wealth, I'm going to give him a I'm going to give him a six.

40:14Simon Jack:Yeah, I think I would give him a six or seven out of ten. Maybe seven out of ten. Just because being a showbiz billionaire I mean there's something so glamorous about that right? You're not making your billions laying bricks, apologies to bricklayers but making movies that is real glitz and glamour.

40:30Zing Tsjeng:The controversy, all pretty minor.

40:32Simon Jack:Yeah, I mean, he's been described as a tough businessman and a ferocious, canny negotiator, not terribly generous when it comes to the boardroom. I mean, his own sister found him really hard to do deals with.

40:44Zing Tsjeng:There's a very interesting book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. And in that is about the history of Hollywood around this time, before and after the big blockbusters. And it kind of posits the idea that some critics have, which is that this creation of Hollywood's franchise driven blockbuster culture left little room for sort of creativity. The depth of Cineron of the 1970s before Jaws came along. If you remember, people talk about sort of Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico and French Connection, Taxi Driver and all those kind of really gritty creative films. And then it's like, wham, you've got the blockbuster and we've never kind of recovered from that.

41:20Zing Tsjeng:That's the criticism of him.

41:22Simon Jack:Sue me, but I love a good blockbuster. I know I should say that, you know, yes, I wish all cinema was art house cinema and everything should be more like Dog Day Afternoon. But God, when you go into a cinema and you watch something like, say, Jurassic Park or E.T. for the first time. I mean, I remember watching Jurassic Park on television off of VHS. And even then I found it terrifying and it completely changed me. Very few films get to do that. I'm not a blockbuster hater, I have to say.

41:50Zing Tsjeng:No, fair enough. But he has got some criticism for when you bring that kind of Hollywood treatment, the happy ending, you bring that approach to really tough issues. For example, Schindler's List, he received criticism because the hero was a redeemed Nazi. And also Amistad, David Geffen, even one of his business partners, said it was less about slavery than about white people saving black people. So white, you know, white savior complex. And in Indiana Jones, the baddies are, they are pretty cartoon characters. They are pretty bad.

42:21Simon Jack:Yeah. I mean, even when I was a kid and I remember watching Indiana Jones and I saw those baddies, I was like, something doesn't feel right here. But, you know, Steven Spielberg has also said, I've never made a movie that I consider immoral. I've never made a film that I could say, you know, I wish I hadn't made that picture because it led people astray. And I'm real proud of that. You know, he could have done much worse, I think.

42:42Zing Tsjeng:I think, you know, we've had ruthless business people on here. He doesn't seem to fit that category for me. If he puts a bit of sugar coating on some tough issues just to make a movie successful. Yes, I think culturally that can be actually much more in these days than it would have been in the 1970s. That can be a problem. But I think he scores low in controversy for me. I'm going to give him a two. Even a one.

43:03Simon Jack:I think I would give him a two out of ten. Okay.

43:06Zing Tsjeng:Two for you, one for me. So power. What kind of power do they wield, both in their industry and in the world?

43:13Simon Jack:Well, interestingly, Spielberg is close friends with President Bill Clinton. So he was even the co-producer of the big extravaganza to celebrate the millennium at the White House. But, you know, it's been a long time since Clinton was president.

43:26Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, I mean, he's still probably, in terms of movies, he's still the number one name in directing, I would say, in the world. If you were to call up the current resident in the White House and say, I'm thinking of making a little film. I wonder if you'd like a part in it. I think the answer would be yes.

43:40Simon Jack:Very true. I think most people in the White House would still say yes to Steven Spielberg on the line.

43:46Zing Tsjeng:Of this or any administration. I'm going to give him eight for power.

43:49Simon Jack:I think it'll be really interesting to see what his new blockbuster Disclosure Day does and whether it's a success at the box office, because I think that will be a real test of his power. Will the Spielberg name still bring people out into cinemas?

44:01Zing Tsjeng:Has he still got the magic? Does he still muster that kind of excitement? So I'm going to give him eight for power.

44:06Simon Jack:I think I'm going to give him a seven, but he could add an eight depending on the box office for Disclosure Day.

44:11Zing Tsjeng:An extra point, gross point for us. Exactly. Okay. And then Legacy. I mean, he's a legend, isn't he? I mean, for example, if you were to say to someone who's got their camera phone out and they say, no, you stand over there, you would probably say, who do you think you are? Steven Spielberg? Do you know what I mean? That's true. It's got that kind of name recognition.

44:29Simon Jack:Whereas I don't think you would say, who do you think you are? George Lucas. I don't think you would, would you? No.

44:34Zing Tsjeng:Or you wouldn't say, who do you think you are? Paul Thomas Anderson. Great as he is, Spielberg is the name, isn't it?

44:40Simon Jack:I think it also helps that he's made such a huge variety of films. George Lucas will always be synonymous with Star Wars. Well, he only made six movies. Whereas Spielberg's filmography is massive and it does everything from historical epic to science fiction to essentially, I mean, E.T. is basically a kind of children's film, really. It's about a child and his imaginary friend.

45:01Zing Tsjeng:And arguably he shaped Hollywood, for better or worse, you know, some people would say, more than any other director. And this is important, I think. You can argue that he shaped the West's popular imagination. I mean, he basically, his movies are seen around the world and that is most of the world's version of America.

45:20Simon Jack:That's so true. And it's the reason why television shows like Stranger Things have this almost nostalgic appeal because they hark back to the Spielberg era.

45:30Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, they do. Yeah. Legacy, 10 out of 10.

45:33Simon Jack:There's a really interesting fact here. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was so successful that the number of alien sightings actually jumped after the film. So people went and watched the film and then they genuinely started thinking they saw UFOs in the sky.

45:46Zing Tsjeng:People started wanting to see UFOs in the sky. That's the thing. I mean, I remember I must have been nine years old, I think, when Close Encounters came out. I would go and sit in the garden and look out and say, pick me, pick me. That's a modern phenomenon, right? Pick me, pick me. That's what I wanted the aliens to do.

46:05Simon Jack:Well, as the X-Files put it, another series inspired by Spielberg, I want to believe. It's got to be 10 out of 10 for Spielberg.

46:12Zing Tsjeng:100%, 10 out of 10.

46:13Simon Jack:Well, is Steven Spielberg good, bad or just another billionaire? What do you think?

46:18Zing Tsjeng:Yes, email goodbadbillionaire, that's all one word, at bbc.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001 917 686 1176 and tell us what you think.

46:32Simon Jack:And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode.

46:36Zing Tsjeng:And we'd like to thank Keetan and Anya for recommending Steven Spielberg. They asked us to cover him in their email. It says, Dear Simon Zing and the whole team, I wanted to thank you for your excellent podcast. Thank you. I listened to it with my 16-year-old daughter and we love it. And each episode is so interesting and sometimes inspiring, depending on the billionaire.

46:55Simon Jack:As well as Steven Spielberg, they also recommended Alan Sugar. Well, you're in luck because we will be covering him later in the series. So keep listening. Will we?

47:03Zing Tsjeng:Is he a billionaire? Really?

47:09Zing Tsjeng:So what have we got next episode?

47:11Simon Jack:Well, we've got the first active footballer in history to make it to the Billionaires Club.

47:17Zing Tsjeng:Which is interesting. Probably the most populous, well, without doubt, the most populous sport on earth. And yet it has produced very few billionaires. But this one is well known for wearing number seven. He is none other than Cristiano Ronaldo, our next billionaire. Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production. For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning editor is John Manel.

48:16We'll be right back. impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bull spend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash broadcast.

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