For those who want to be in the entertainment industry, being the son or daughter of a celebrity can be both a blessing and a curse. And if your father is a genius, the latter is even more important than the former. For Destry Allyn Spielberg (yes his little girl) spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw) On the other hand, it was not easy to step into film directing, a profession he discovered late. He saw himself in equestrianism and had Olympic dreams in this regard, but a terrible accident took him away from the sport. “And it was a very strange time,” he explains to several media at a roundtable at the Sitges festival. “I didn’t know what to do. In short, I had an identity crisis. I started studying acting and because I didn’t have any homework, I wrote a short film with a friend. [‘Rosie’] I will play the leading role myself. Since we didn’t have money for a director, I thought of directing it myself. As soon as I got to this position everything fell into place.“.
After ‘Rosie’ came the second short film, ‘Let me go the right way’, although not many people saw it, there were a lot of comments. Producer Franklin Leonard, founder of The Black List (a platform for previously unproduced screenplays), was outraged when he learned who was the protagonist and screenwriter of this short film written by one of Spielberg’s daughters: son- Sean Penn (Hopper Penn) and one of his sons Stephen King (Owen King). “Hollywood is a meritocracy, right?” he wrote on Twitter about news of the shooting. he wrote. Presented (tenth) online discussion on nepotism. If Destry thought only about horses for a while, it was partly because he was afraid of it all. “I was always afraid of going into movies because I didn’t want my last name to be associated with it. At first, the idea of using my last name scared me a lot. I try to avoid comparisons with my father because I didn’t want to be remembered by my last name. We are very different.”
Under the influence of… Kubrick
Destry Allyn Spielberg came to the festival to make a presentation ‘Please do not give food to children’ (Sitges Collection), his first feature in the horror genre, is framed like his father’s (“The Devil on Wheels”). On a planet where adults have been decimated by a cannibalistic virus, a group of young orphans cross the United States in search of something they can call life. Unfortunately, what they encounter is a psychotic woman (Michelle DockeryLady Mary Crawley in ‘Downton Abbey’) with a house full of dark secrets. “This house is a character in itself, with a life of its own, just like in ‘Monster House,’” explains this great animation lover. Miyazaki, especially ‘Spirited Away’, was an important reference.
When choosing his first feature project, the budding filmmaker opted for a (pure and gritty) horror project because of “how creative this genre allows you to be,” and above all else, he likes “movies without easy scares.” . My all-time favorite is ‘The Shining’ by Stanley Kubrick, whose widow Christiane Kubrick appears in the acknowledgments.
Horror is considered easier to finance than other genres, but Spielberg shot his film in eighteen days. Some will say this is too much: his father expertly filmed the movie ‘Devil on wheels’ in two days less. Sillier or more harmful comparisons seem inevitable. “I feel a lot of pressure in that sense,” says the director. “But the whole point of making a movie is to be talked about. I’m very happy with what we’ve achieved, especially given the limitations we’re working under. Some people are going to love it, some people are going to hate it.” All opinions sound good to me. I want to hear the reviews, I want to know if you liked it, if there are any continuity errors… This is my first movie. “I don’t expect everyone to love it as much as I do.”
shadow of your father
As much as he wants to move away, it’s inevitable to see Steven’s shadow in the ‘Please don’t feed the children’ sections, particularly in some of the subtle crane shots and the ‘tracking shots’ or tracking shots. “I’m aware of the similarities now, but I wasn’t aware of them when I was directing or editing. I only started noticing it when people started telling me about it. I think I grew up watching it directly, and that’s something too.” It feels natural to me.”
He also grew up studying at the Spielberg Home Film School: “When we were kids, my father showed us many movies. Especially black and white. We didn’t like the black and white ones either. My name is Destry, from the movie ‘Destry rides again’ [en España más conocida como ‘Arizona’]; “My dad spent the summer watching old Westerns, and that was his favorite thing.”