Lester D. Friedman, "Citizen Spielberg" (U of Illinois Press, 2022)

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in Film Studies
Host: Nathan Abrams
Guest: Lester D. Friedman
Book Discussed: Citizen Spielberg (2nd Edition, University of Illinois Press, 2022)
Date: November 17, 2025

This episode features an in-depth interview with film scholar Lester D. Friedman about his acclaimed study of Steven Spielberg. The discussion spans Friedman’s intellectual journey, the evolution of Spielberg's career, the writing and restructuring of Citizen Spielberg, and an exploration of Spielberg’s recurring themes, his handling of genre, questions around his “intellectualism”, groundbreaking films like Schindler’s List, and the filmmaker's strengths and weaknesses.

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Guest Background and Journey to Film Studies

[02:36 – 05:23]

• Lester D. Friedman describes his "idiosyncratic" academic career, beginning with a PhD in 19th-century British literature (Percy Shelley), and how he pivoted from teaching literature to film studies after being inspired by influential directors and critics.
  • Notable quote:

    “I grew up in the era where my mother would deposit me Saturday morning in the movies...I always loved movies and I never thought you could deal with them in the same way you could deal with literature.” (04:10 – Friedman)

• His early writing moved between literature and film, noting that even doctoral work on Shelley led “full circle” back to film via Frankenstein (Mary Shelley).

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Conception and Evolution of Citizen Spielberg

[05:23 – 08:41]

• The idea for the book stemmed from student interest and a surprising lack of serious critical studies on Spielberg at the time.
• Friedman was not initially a devoted Spielberg fan, but grew interested as the director's output diversified post-70s.
• Early critical consensus on Spielberg as "a simple-minded, P.T. Barnum-esque figure" struck Friedman as incomplete:
  • Notable quote:

    “He was sort of being painted as this simple minded, P.T. Barnum-esque figure...and nothing more. And I thought to myself, there's something more here. There's something more even in a film like Jaws, which I think is still a great film.” (06:26 – Friedman)

• After the first edition (2006), 10–11 more Spielberg films prompted a substantially revised second edition.

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Spielberg’s West Side Story and Auteurial Eye

[08:41 – 11:29]

• Friedman discusses his initial trepidation and eventual admiration for Spielberg’s West Side Story, highlighting Spielberg’s visual innovations and the subtle socioeconomic commentary about the gentrification of neighborhoods:
  • Notable quote:

    “Let's just take this moment, and it's such a Spielbergian moment...Their neighborhood is being demolished. What is it being demolished for? It's being demolished for Lincoln Center, a playground for rich people who can afford to go to the arts...that’s a subtle socioeconomic comment.” (09:21 – Friedman)

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Approach to Structuring the Book and Understanding Spielberg

[12:03 – 14:52]

• The book shifted from a chronological to a genre-based analysis, at the suggestion of a peer reviewer. This approach illuminated how Spielberg’s recurring themes—broken families, the reconstitution of communities, threats, masculinity—recur across genres.
  • Notable quote:

    “Spielberg is quintessentially an American genre filmmaker.... you can see in the first Spielberg film...the same themes you see in West Side Story, you see it in film after film after film.” (12:48 – Friedman)

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Spielberg as Genre Filmmaker and Intellectual

[14:52 – 18:32]

• Friedman argues Spielberg’s mastery lies in his ability to refresh genre conventions and make us care about characters, balancing personal obsessions with broader, often "culturally expansive" themes.
  • Notable quote:

    “We actually do care about them. So Spielberg is… managing a trick that I think good and great artists manage...to take their personal obsessions...turn them into, if not universal, at least culturally expansive themes...” (15:45 – Friedman)

• Spielberg’s growth: starting with The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, tackling grand historical subjects (Schindler's List, Lincoln), and literally spanning American cultural history via genre.

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Is Spielberg an Intellectual Filmmaker?

[18:19 – 21:54]

• Friedman challenges the notion that Spielberg is not an intellectual director, offering a reading of films like Jurassic Park as critiques of technology, power, and commerce—paralleling Frankenstein’s themes:
  • Notable quote:

    “Just because we can do something, should we do it? ... There’s a commercial technological union here that I think Spielberg is questioning because it results in disaster.” (20:03 – Friedman)

• He admits Jurassic Park succeeds both as a “rollercoaster movie” and a sophisticated morality tale, enriched by irony—in order to critique technology, the film must showcase technological advances.

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Evolution from Jaws to Jurassic Park, and on Munich’s Complexity

[22:04 – 25:15]

• The distinction: Jaws is about human responses, while Jurassic Park contemplates the consequences of technological hubris.
• Friedman praises Munich as “very interesting” for openly questioning Israeli policy, noting that Spielberg’s willingness to critique both American and Israeli actions makes him controversial even among his own communities.

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Schindler’s List as Spielberg’s Masterwork

[27:08 – 34:48]

• The book devotes a full chapter to Schindler’s List, seeing it as Spielberg’s signature achievement.
• Friedman addresses persistent criticisms—about narrative structure, character focus, and depictions of trauma and victimization:
  • Notable quote:

    “Who else would have had the chutzpah to make a three hour film in black and white that had subtitles through much of it? I don’t think anybody else could have made that film.” (27:56 – Friedman)

• He interprets Stern (not Schindler) as key to the film’s moral shift:
  • Notable quote:

    “Stern manages to save X amount of people with Schindler's help, as it were. So, I mean, I think reading the film that way, you know...He begins to see them as individual human beings, as we begin to see them as individual human beings. And that's Stern's doing.” (31:44 – Friedman)

• On criticism for sexualization, narrative conventions, and imagery, Friedman defends Spielberg’s choices as authentic attempts to convey helplessness, trauma, and humanity within impossibly fraught context.

[34:48 – 36:43]

• Ultimately, Friedman names Schindler’s List "his greatest achievement," with Jaws as number two, reflecting the full arc of Spielberg’s career:
  • Notable quote:

    “That's the perfect understanding of Spielberg's career. When you put those two films up. I mean, how does this guy feel...that one of his greatest films was when he was 26 years old?” (34:57 – Friedman)

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Strengths, Weaknesses, and Recurring Themes in Spielberg’s Oeuvre

[37:38 – 42:16]

• Friedman gives a candid critique: weakest films include 1941, Always, and selected Indiana Jones sequels.
• Praises Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, Lincoln, and sees a major, under-analyzed throughline: the formation of families (especially non-biological) and broken-home dynamics.
  • Notable quote:

    “One of the Spielberg fixations is... How many orphans or broken families are in Spielberg films? They're all over the place... but the Spielberg ethos is to try to form a family, to try to...create a family unit.” (40:41 – Friedman)

• On women, Friedman is forthright: Spielberg consistently sidelines or underwrites female characters, with rare exceptions.
  • Notable quote:

    “I wish he were better about his women characters, for example. I wish he could let an ending not be happy, though. West Side Story is not all that happy, is it?” (11:31 – Friedman) “I do think he has trouble with women characters... they're not there in any sort of complicated or mostly interesting way…” (43:16 – Friedman)

• Insists Spielberg remains attached to the “happy ending,” both as a commercial necessity and out of personal storytelling inclination.

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Spielberg’s Identity, Fear, and Outsider Status

[42:32 – 46:16]

• Friedman's psychoanalytic portrait traces Spielberg’s obsessions to childhood traumas—divorce, Jewish outsider status—suggesting these fuel both the emotional power and limitations of his work.
  • Notable quote:

    "In the new preface...the title of the preface is 'Fear is My Fuel.' Well, you stop and think to yourself, what the hell does this guy have to fear about? He can make any movie he wants, and yet there is that sense of him, and I applaud this, challenging himself." (44:15 – Friedman)

• Spielberg’s Jewishness—discussed only briefly—remains an undercurrent, as does his outsider sensibility.

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What’s Next for Lester D. Friedman?

[46:16 – 47:49]

• He's working on two projects:
  1. Editing a collection on "health and media" (medical humanities)
  2. A chronological study of director-composer collaborations in film (from the 1930s to present).
  • Notable quote:

    "One of the great pleasures of being an academic, my friend, is you can let your passions take you where they want to go." (47:43 – Friedman)

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Final Thoughts & Future Conversations

[48:29 – End]

• Both host and guest suggest a future conversation on the Jewish roots of Hollywood—particularly in light of new museums omitting such history.
  • Notable quote:

    “The new Hollywood Museum that's opened in LA without mentioning that the founders of all the studios were Jewish. I mean, what is that all about?...Jews in film. I haven't done that in a long time.” (48:29 – Friedman)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “I always loved movies and I never thought you could deal with them in the same way you could deal with literature.”
  (04:10 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “He was being painted as this simple-minded, P.T. Barnum-esque figure...and nothing more. And I thought...there's something more here.”
  (06:26 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “Spielberg is quintessentially an American genre filmmaker.”
  (12:48 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “Just because we can do something, should we do it?” (on Jurassic Park)
  (20:03 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “Who else would have had the chutzpah to make a three hour film in black and white that had subtitles through much of it? I don’t think anybody else could have made that film.”
  (27:56 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “I think it is, you know, one of the great films ever made. I really would make that argument for all its issues. I really think you see all of Spielberg's power on display.”
  (33:38 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “One of the Spielberg fixations is...How many orphans or broken families are in Spielberg films? They're all over the place...”
  (40:41 – Lester D. Friedman)

• “Fear is my fuel.”
  (44:15 – Lester D. Friedman)

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Key Timestamps – Segment Overview

• 02:36 – 05:23: Friedman's career journey and shift into film studies
• 05:23 – 08:41: Conception and redevelopment of Citizen Spielberg
• 08:43 – 11:29: Spielberg’s West Side Story and compositional approach
• 12:03 – 14:52: Structuring by genre and thematic preoccupations
• 14:52 – 18:32: Spielberg’s growth as a genre and cultural filmmaker
• 18:32 – 21:54: Spielberg as intellectual: the technology parable in Jurassic Park
• 22:04 – 25:15: Comparing Jaws and Jurassic Park, and Munich’s political critique
• 27:08 – 34:48: In-depth on Schindler’s List, its meaning and controversies
• 37:38 – 42:16: Spielberg’s weakest films and persistent themes
• 42:32 – 46:16: Why Spielberg stumbles with female characters and happy endings
• 46:31 – 47:49: Friedman’s future works
• 48:29 – close: The “Jewishness” of Hollywood as a future topic

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Concluding Reflection

This episode offers much more than a perfunctory book plug. Friedman’s warmth, candor, and intellectual generosity clarify why Citizen Spielberg stands out: it is not hagiography, but a study that recognizes Spielberg's cultural impact, his technical brilliance, his flaws—and why, against all odds and critical dismissals, the world still “cares” about his films.

Transcript

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[Lester D. Friedman]

So good, so good, so good.

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[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

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[Lester D. Friedman]

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[Podcast Host (New Books Network Announcer)]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Hello everybody, and welcome back to New Books and Film Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm Nathan Abrams, the host of the channel. Today we'll be talking to Lester D. Friedman about his new book, Citizen Second Edition. Lester D. Friedman is an emeritus professor and former chair of the Median Society program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He's written books on film genres, American cinema of the 1970s, American Jewish cinema, British film of the 1980s, health and humanities, Peter Pan, Frankenstein, and Clint Eastwood. He is a recipient of the National Jewish Book Award and is very proud to say that he is also a Jeopardy.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Champion.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Lester, welcome to the show.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Thank you. And thank you for the invitation.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

My pleasure. Lester. Les, I wonder if you could begin the interview by telling us a bit about yourself.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Sure. I have had a perhaps strained and idiosyncratic career where I held double appointments in medical schools and and colleges of visual and performing arts. My PhD is English literature 19th century British, not cinema, but literature. Shelley, Percy Shelley. And so I've taught at Syracuse University. And then I went on to have a double appointment at Northwestern University in Chicago. And then I taught at American for a while and then I got tired of very, very big schools and classes of 200 students. So I came to a very nice small liberal arts school in upstate New York, Hobart, William Smith Colleges, where they kindly let me develop a program. And my writing is equally schizophrenic, as you just mentioned. It's all over the place. Frankenstein, Peter Pan, Jews, Bonnie and Clyde. And I just retired a couple years ago and am enjoying it, working on a lot of projects at the same time.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Well, congratulations on your retirement. Before we move on, I'm just intrigued. How did you leap from Shelley? I like that you had to qualify that, you know, because I was thinking Shelley Winters or Shelley Duvall. How did you, how did you go from Shelley to film studies?

[Lester D. Friedman]

Well, I don't. You know, I grew up in the era where my mother would deposit me Saturday morning in the movies, you know, and I would stay for hours, double feature, the whole business. I always loved movies and I never thought you could deal with them in the same way you could deal with literature. And then the 70s came along and then all of a sudden film was intellectual, film was hip. I saw the Seventh Seal just blew me away, Saw Fellini, blew me away. And then I started reading Robin Wood and David Bordwell and I thought, oh my God, goodness, you can actually have a career teaching this stuff that I love, not that I don't love literature. And it was not a hard jump. My PhD dissertation was Percy Shelley. My first article was Mary Shelley, so from Mary Shelley. And actually the book before the Spielberg book was on Frankenstein. So I sort of, I came full circle back to Mary Shelley in some ways. But I always wrote about literature at the same time as I was writing about film. Early on at least, you just went out of focus.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Well, that's very interesting. So, I mean, you've mentioned Citizen Spielberg, so could you tell me how you came to write that book and to update it?

[Lester D. Friedman]

Sure. Thank you. You know, it's interesting. I was not, I wasn't a Spielberg lover. I didn't sit there slack jawed when the kid came across on the bicycle, on the moon, or when E.T. went home. But it actually arose, as did almost all these books in one way or another from requests from students. My students at Syracuse many a year ago said, you ever think about doing a Spielberg class? I said, well, sure, that'd be great. I'd love to explore that a little more. And lo and behold, I could find no books. I mean, I found lots of books on Woody Allen, I found lots of books on obscure Japanese filmmakers. But I thought to myself, this is crazy. This is the most financially successful and perhaps influential filmmaker in. Since the 70s, and no books. And then Joe McBride's biography came out, which is a kind of scholarly biography in that he does critiques of the films as well. But I was halfway into writing by then, and the discovery was I didn't. Even when I looked at sort of the occasional article, I didn't agree with it much. He was sort of being painted as this simple minded, P.T. barnum esque figure, Spectacle, spectacle, you know, roller coaster ride, movie, and nothing more. And I thought to myself, there's something more here. There's something more even in a film like Jaws, which I think is still a great film. And then his career started to mature where he would do alternately sort of a prestige picture and a popcorn picture and a prestige picture and a popcorn picture. So I thought to myself, well, no one else has written about this much, not in a sustained way. And so I went into it and of course I've kept doing it. I've also added a book on his interviews in that Mississippi series. So I got to see what he said about his own Films from 1974, 73, all the way to west side Story.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Yeah, I'll come back to some of those. When was your original book? When you said.

[Lester D. Friedman]

2000. Six.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Sorry, 2000.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, and six. You mean the original Spielberg book?

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Yeah, the first.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, six. So he's made 10 or 11 films since then. I don't know how this guy does it. He's my age. I can barely lace up my sneakers. This guy's making a film and sometimes two films a year. He's. He's got a film coming out in the spring. Of course, west side Story, you know, was delayed its delivery because of COVID But, you know, the guy is not stopping and why should he?

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

What did you think of west side Story?

[Lester D. Friedman]

You know, I loved it. And I have to say I went with great trepidation and the trepidation and question, why the hell west side Story? I mean, that's a lot of chutzpah just to start off with. I mean, you take a great play, a great Robert Wise movie, you know, well lauded in its own time, and I went with great trepidation. I knew the score, literally. I mean, I could sing pieces of it and have done that after a martini or two. And I was very wary. And have you seen it?

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Oh, yes, yes.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah. So let's just take this moment, and it's such a Spielbergian moment, subtle in its own way, until you see. And then it hammers you over the head so you understand why these kids are pissed off. Their neighborhood is being demolished. What is it being demolished for? It's being demolished for Lincoln Center, a playground for rich people who can afford to go to the arts. Right. So he takes a. He takes an iconic song. When you're a jet, you're a Jet all the way. And he ends it with the jet singing on tops of piles of rubbish of their neighborhood. I mean, that's something. Robert Wise, for all his genius and all the greatness of the first west side Story film, that's a. That's a subtle socioeconomic comment that works throughout the film. In terms of what Spielberg's adding to what Jerome Robbins and Sondheim and Robert Wise put into west side Story, Spielberg, I think, deepens it. And, you know, I mean, it seems simplistic to say the guy is a great, great eye. The guy's visual consciousness. It's just fabulous. And it is a pleasure to watch that film, to see. See what he did with Rita Moreno, to give her the song somewhere and where he puts it in the film after all the tragedies. I mean, I think it's just very, very smart stuff. He's always wanted to direct a musical. You know, he said it in, I think, 1980, and he's had little musical pieces. 1941, he has a set piece. He has the beginning of India. The second Indiana Jones film is a Holly. Is a, you know, a dance hall number. But it. It. I'm waiting for him to make a Western, Nathan, not snap. I'm sure it's next. No, I know what's next, but it's not that.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

So you're clearly a fan then, right?

[Lester D. Friedman]

I am by now a fan. It isn't that I don't recognize his faults. I wish he were better about his women characters, for example. I wish he could let an ending not be happy, though. West side Story is not all that happy, is it?

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

That's true. That's true. So before I digress too much from the book, let's. Let's go back to that. Can you tell us. Well, tell us about the book, how you structured it.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, the book. You know, it's interesting. We were talking earlier about how a good reader for a press can help a book and when the book was originally proposed, it was proposed chronologically in terms of his films. And what I found as I was writing it that way. This is the first edition. When I was writing it that way, I was just repeating myself again and again. Here's this theme. Oh, you can see it here. Oh, you can see it here. See it in every film. And I sent it in and I got a really nice review. And the reviewer said, you know, you should think about doing this by genre instead of chronologically. And I thought, wow, that's a great idea. I mean, Spielberg is quintessentially an American genre filmmaker. And so the book looks at Spielberg's genre war films, science fiction, fantasy, action adventure movies, and. And goes on and on and on like that. And so one of the things I argue is that you can see in the first Spielberg film, so it's not really the first one, but you can go all the way back to Duel, and you can see the same thing. Themes you see in west side Story. You see it in film after film after film. Broken family, reconstitution of the broken family. External threat to the community. Normal everyday guys with no particular superpowers get together to save the community. Issues of masculinity. What does it mean to be a husband? What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be a lover? How do you have a relationship when you're obsessed with something else, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? So you can see that in Duel, you can see it in Jaws, you can see it in west side Story, and you can see it in whatever the next film is going to be. I could almost write a critique without seeing it. Not. But. But the trick is. The trick is he does it again and again and again and again. He must be aware of it if I'm aware of it. And yet we go, and yet we're engaged. So maybe the obsessions that he has are our obsessions as well.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

I suppose that's always the struggle of writing a book about. Well, any film book is genre versus chronology or theme. Theme versus chronology. I mean, on that note, how would you characterize his intellectual, artistic development? Because by doing it the thematic way.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

You kind of possibly overlook that.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah. I would say, first of all, we have to contextualize just a little to say how difficult it is to do good genre movies. I mean, genre movies are a very tricky balance. On the one hand, you have to use enough of the typical genre conventions and tropes to make people feel warm and fuzzy. Because they know what's in the genre. Right. And they're comfortable. Yet you have to have enough new stuff so that you don't just become Michael Bay. You don't just go over the same stuff over and over and don't add much, just slam bang. And Spielberg manages that nicely, I think. And the other trick he does in a genre film while dealing with all these personal obsessions is that we actually care about his characters. We actually are concerned with his sometimes child characters, sometimes men who act like boys characters, sometimes mythic characters like Indiana Jones. We. We actually do care about them. So Spielberg is. Is managing A trick that I think good and great artists manage is that to take their personal obsessions, fixations, you want to call it, neuroses, I'm okay with that. Turn them into, if not universal, at least culturally expansive themes that seem to speak to a lot of us. And, you know, his intellectual development, I think, is clear. And it starts with Color Purple, where he begins to try to expand himself. Not. Not that the earlier stuff is not interesting, like Close Encounters, but it starts with Color Purple, it moves to Empire, the Sun. He's now dealing with bigger stuff. By the time he gets to Minority Report and AI, he's dealing with pretty big themes of technology, of how do we deal with criminals, and. And the role of technology in policing. Then he hits his stride when he hits the Holocaust, of course. I mean, there is no bigger theme. And he deals with Schindler and he moves on from that. And he's still alternating. He's doing Indiana Jones four and he's doing Lincoln. I mean, what bigger archetypal American cultural figure is there than Lincoln? He's doing history. I mean, think about what he covers in history. I mean, he does the Civil War, he does World War I, he does World War II, he does the Cold War, he does Future Wars, a really expansive move through major points in American cultural and physical history. So he. He is becoming essentially American, an American historian. I think now we could get an argument his history is not real. And, you know, we could go through that whole shtick, if you like. But a lot of people see his films.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

You know, they're interesting. I mean, you've given me a lot to ask about. I think the thing I want to go back is that you mentioned his intellectual development. Would you care to elaborate on that? Because many people might not consider Spielberg an intellectual filmmaker.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Well, then they haven't thought deeply enough about his films. Some of it's hard to think about. I mean, I could go through a Whole thing with Jaws and talk about that. But I do think that in some cases it's obvious and I'll take a film like Jurassic Park. Now, on the, on the surface of things, Jurassic park is, is a jaw story, right? It's, it's basically. And Jaws is a dual story, basically sort of motiveless malignancies attacking human beings. I mean, we don't know why the shark attacks. It's just the nature of the shark. We don't know why the dinosaurs attract. Just the nature of the dinosaurs. But let's look a little deeper in there. Even though it is a great roller coaster film, no question about it, but let's look at a little deeper. How did the dinosaurs get here? This is not a natural evolution. This is technology. I'm thinking of Malcolm's term bursting raping into the normal evolutionary process. Technology disturbing. What would be a normal evolutionary development. And that would be. Dinosaurs are extinct. So now we bring them back and we have to ask ourselves, it's also a Frankenstein film, by the way, in all sorts of ways with Hammond as the kindly Dr. Frankenstein. So you have to ask yourself, what is going on here about the role of technology in our culture? And is, I mean, the ultimate ethical question. Just because we can do something, should we do it? And, you know, Crichton asked the book, asked that question, and Malcolm, the character, the doubting Malcolm in the film asked that question also. What have you done? Why have you done it? And in this case, and there's another Spielberg theme, why has Hammond done it? Well, number one, he's done it because he could do it. But number two, he did it to make money. So there's a commercial technological union here that I think Spielberg is questioning because it results in disaster. Now, ironically, in order to critique technology, Spielberg had to employ the most advanced technology possible to create the dinosaurs. Ironically, when Spielberg is critiquing the symbiotic relationship between technology and commerce, he's making a movie that uses technology and generates billions of dollars. So, you know, there's a kind of schizophrenia in that movie, which I think once you start peeling it back just a little bit, you see it's much more than a roller coaster movie that he is being accused of. And you don't have to see it with that intellectual, you know, depth. You can see it as a roller coaster movie and it can be perfectly fine.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

So just to go back to this question of development and linking the two movies you've linked and, you know, Jaws and Jurassic park, and he basically said Jurassic park is Jaws.

[Lester D. Friedman]

On land.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

What development do you see between those two?

[Lester D. Friedman]

Because I don't think that Spielberg asks anything of the shark or cares anything about the shark in Jaws. His concern is these three guys he's put together. And let me just digress. Let me just digress for a moment about Jaws and look at those three characters. What do those three characters represent? Well, on one hand you have the young Richard Dreyfuss character. Technology, modernism, you know, he's got all the little gadgets and the tools. On the other hand you have Quint, who represents an old kind of rugged, individualist culture. And in the middle you have what? Well, you got, first of all, a sheriff harkens back to the western. But you have this everyday kind of fellow who really hates the water. And how does Brody kill the shark? Well, he combines the rifle of Quint and the canister that explodes of Hooper so that he puts them together and moves forward. But there's nothing interesting about the shark in Jaws. There's a lot to say about the dinosaurs. And I've tried to articulate them and how that comes into being in Jurassic Park. Or if you want a really intellectual film, one that's a roller coaster ride, one that isn't Minority Report or take Munich. Now Munich's very interesting because Spielberg is already. He's already visited his Jewish roots in Schindler and it's been an acclaim film, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now he makes a film questioning essentially Israeli policy in Munich. And suddenly, suddenly he's the Antichrist. You know, suddenly the Israelis attack him. And what's ironic about that, what's at the center of that film that's being attacked? That you send out a squad to kill people who have murdered your people? Well, that's, that's everyday politics. Now we send drones, you know, to kill Arab terrorists. Not Arab terrorists, I guess. Fundamentalists. So you look at a film like Munich, Munich raises some profound questions, I think, particularly if you're Jewish. And it's a different set of questions than Schindler raises about Jewish identity and about the Holocaust as well. Of course, he, he also had detractors about the Holocaust. You know, you've written about Jews in the cinema. You can't make a movie about the Holocaust without a chorus of detractors coming along to tell you what you've done wrong, what you've left out, what's incorrect.

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[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

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[Lester D. Friedman]

That's right, ma'. Am. You have rooms 201 and 709.

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[Lester D. Friedman]

The doors have double locks. They'll be fine.

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[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Yeah, well, we'll come on to that. I thought Munich was interesting because I thought it was very clear about its critique of both Israeli and US policy in the war on terror and its critique of targeted assassinations and that sort of shot on the Twin Towers sort of made the link for those who hadn't.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, gotten it. You get it, you get it, you get it.

[Podcast Host (New Books Network Announcer)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

It's that kind of hit over the head moment. Yeah. I mean, inevitably we. We'll come now to Schindler's List because, you know, interestingly, you devote, you know, so, so for people who want to read the book, you know, the, the other chapters deal with genres and, and, and multiple films just, just to go through it. We have fantasy and science fiction, action adventure, melodramas, monster movies, war films, the social problem, ethnic minority films, and then chapter six, Imagining the Holocaust, which is devoted entirely to Shinda's list. So would you like to explain that decision?

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, it was an interesting decision. I felt over the course of the book, I make again and again and again an argument for what I think is great in his film, what I think is problematic, and why he should be looked at as an artist as well as an entertainer. And I thought, well, I have to finally culminate in something and watch the great film. And I think the great film is Schindler. Now, the first critique that immediately Arose was people said, well, you know, he took the one happy story about the Holocaust. Well, any survivor story to some extent is a happy story about the Holocaust. Happy and I guess not happy, but, you know, a story of survivor. And this story did appeal to Spielberg, I think, on numerous levels. And then the second, I mean, but you have to ask yourself several things. Who else would have had the chutzpah to make a three hour film in black and white that had subtitles through much of it? I don't think anybody else could have made that film. And you may know, and I say it in the chapter that originally he gave the script to Scorsese. So it could well have been Schindler's List, a film by Martin Scorsese. But he took it back and he gave him Cape Fear instead. And, you know, would have been amazing almost, if one can think of macabre humor, to think what a Scorsese Schindler list would have looked like. Maybe he'd have mafia guys in the camp. I don't know. All right, so you get all sorts of criticism and then you get the criticism, and I think this is a valid criticism of any Holocaust film, that to make it into the traditional Hollywood three act structure is to do some real, perhaps uncomfortable shoehorning of the actual events, because the actual events don't fall into that three part structure because they're both incidents of chance, not cause and effect. You have to be standing here, you get shot, you have to be standing here, you live. I mean, that's just chance, not dramatic structure. And I think that, you know, Wiesel made that criticism and I think that's okay. That's a good criticism of any, any Holocaust film. Balance that off perhaps with how many see Schindler's List as opposed to read about the Holocaust or see other films about the Holocaust. Okay, so now, now you go into the film itself. And what did he decide to do? Well, other than the two central characters, the Stern character and the Schindler character, we don't recognize any of those actors and actresses yet. If you look at the film carefully, you can follow a set of actors and I do with the rabbi, I follow him through the course of the film and you can see that you do it. I think the other misreading, if that's the right word, is to see Schindler as the central character, as the hero. He's charming, he's wealthy, he is the one that arranges to get the Jews out because he can. But everyone says, what changes Schindler's mind. How does Schindler go from a crass industrialist to humanitarian? And the answer is Stern. And what does Stern do? Because he has no power. Stern, right. He has no money. He has no power. The one thing he has is his intellect. And he begins to make Schindler see the Jews as people, individuals, not as a group. The Jews. And that's the key to Schindler's conversion, if you will. He begins to see, not from afar, standing on top of a hill on his horse as the Warsaw Ghetto is liquidated, but he begins to see them as individual human beings, as we begin to see them as individual human beings. And that's Stern's doing. With no power whatsoever except his humanity and his intelligence. Stern manages to save X amount of people with Schindler's help, as it were. So, I mean, I think reading the film that way, you know, I got criticized too. And you read the criticism as well. If you remember the scene where goth almost rapes. I'm just blocking on her name, but you know who I mean, that character. So people said, well, Spielberg has sexualized this because you see her nipples. If you're identifying with goth in that scene, you got troubles. I mean, Spielberg is showing us what it's like to have to be totally powerless, to have our body able to be ravaged by someone and do nothing about it. And, you know, it's a. It's, you know, he's going to get criticized either way when the women come into the showers that end up to be showers when the train is rerouted. So people said, how could he show those women naked in the shower? That's the critique. Well, how couldn't he? If he didn't show them naked, they would say, ah, Spielberg once again sanitizing everything. So, you know, he's sort of caught in this, who Steven Spielberg is when he makes this film. But I think he. I think it's a brilliant film. I think it is, you know, one of the great films ever made. I really would make that argument for all its issues. I really think you see Spielberg's. All of Spielberg's power on display. People say it's too pretty to be a holocaust film. I don't know how you deal with that. What are you supposed to do at that point? Makes Nacht Reneeval. I mean, you know, it's a camera. It's a camera. So I don't know if that answers what you're asking me about the film.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

No, no, it does. I mean, the question I want to ask is, you know, I Suppose the obvious question is, do you think it's his greatest achievement?

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, I do. I do. And it's ironic in the preface. I don't know if you read the preface to the second edition, but I, you know, finally answer the question that people have been asking me since the book was written. What are your favorite films? And I say, these are my favorite films, and these are my ten favorite films. Number one is Schindler. Number two is Jaws. Well, that's the perfect understanding of Spielberg's career. When you put those two films up. I mean, how does this guy feel? Spielberg, that one of his greatest films was when he was 26 years old? I mean, it's ironic. I, you know, you think, what would Spielberg's career have been like if he didn't make Jaws? He didn't make Jaws. What would his career have been like? My guess is he would have been a great director of little dramas, you know, I mean, would have had. I don't know what would be the equivalent. But you stop. I mean, one thing you have to think about Spielberg to some extent is his survivability. I mean, think back to in the 70s when all there were those great filmmakers, you know, Scorsese, Lucas, Schrader, Coppola. I mean, just go through them. Who's still making great films? Scorsese, Spielberg. I think that's it. That's it. Opens dead. You know, some of them are dead. They just celebrated last night at the Academy Awards in between Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. That was an unbelievable moment. They just celebrated what I think is. Is probably the great American film, the Godfather, 50 Years Coppola. Is Coppola still making films? Nope, not great films.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

So it's funny you said earlier, what would Scorsese, his version of Shinners look like? I think we get a hint of it in Shutter Island.

[Lester D. Friedman]

I think we do. I think we do. You're absolutely right. That's a really good comment. We do. I mean, he's a great, you know, Scorsese is a great, great filmmaker. I mean, the surprise filmmaker. I mean, we're going to go off subject here for me. I mean, maybe it's not a surprise. Spielberg's great filmmaker. Maybe the surprise is that he keeps making great films. The surprise is the other person I've written about, Clint Eastwood. Who the hell would have thought? Clint Eastwood, auteur, you know, when. When he was rowdy. Yates and Rawhide. And yet, you know, mystic river is a great film. The Iwo Jima films, great films. And he's older than Spielberg.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

There's something to be learned from what we call soccer. What you call soccer we call football, which is that the, it's often the. I'm not saying that Clint Eastwood is mediocre, but you know, it's often the mediocre players that make the best coaches, not the best players.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, well, I think he is a mediocre actor, if that's what you're saying.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Yeah.

[Lester D. Friedman]

You know, I, I mean, I think there is something to be said first. Well, I wrote a book on his film, so I do think there's are edited a book. I do think there's something to be said for Clint Eastwood as a director.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

So what's your least favorite Spielberg movie then? Well, not his worst.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, well, I'll give you some of them. And let me preface this by saying every film I'm going to mention now has parts of it in it that are interesting, but as a whole they don't work. I think 1941 doesn't work. I think always doesn't work. Well, I think that the second and fourth Indiana Jones films are not very good. And I think the films he's made since the first edition, I think the best one is Lincoln. I think he did a really good job. I think the others have some interest in them. And once again he's now got Tom Hanks, you know, as his alter ego, Mr. Everyday Fella, you know, Dreyfus, and up to Harrison Ford, up to Hanks. But I think films like the Post are quite good. I even like the bfg. I don't like Tintin a whole lot. So those are some of my least favorite movies. I think there are films which are terribly underrated and I would put Minority Report in there. I think Catch me if you can is a really fun, interesting movie. Maybe not a great movie, but a really, really interesting movie about family and identity and the search for belonging. And you know, as I said this earlier, but it bears repeating. One of the Spielberg fixations is the. I mean, think about this for a moment. How many orphans or broken families are in Spielberg films? They're all over the place, E.T. you know, but the Spielberg ethos is to try to form a family, to try to. Whether it somehow create a family unit. And we're back to Jurassic park in this, right? I mean the guy starts out hating children and ends up to be a savior of children and forming essentially a non biological family. What the hell is west side Story about forming a non biological family, a gang, Whether you're, you know, identity politics, if you will. Jets and Sharks. All the racism and. And that's involved in the original west side Story. The connections to something like Bridge of Spies, the connection between the lawyer and the Rylance character, the lawyer and the spy. I mean, these bonds that people form between each other who seem on the surface to not have much in common, you know, and. And Band of Brothers. Right, Band of Brothers. By the way, it's not Band of Brothers and Sisters, you know, it's the brothers. It's really masculine, Spielberg banding together. There's always women there, but they disappear. War of the World. She shows up at the beginning, she shows up at the end. Close encounter. She can't. She can't go with them up in the spaceship. You know, they only. They're there. They represent home. That's another big issue for Spielberg. What is home? What does it represent for him? And often there's a woman at the center of it, and the man is fighting to protect her. And the woman shows up at the beginning and the woman shows up at the end, and the woman doesn't get to participate in the adventure. Not so true in Jurassic park with Laura Litney, but in a lot of the other films, no women on the orca in Jaws.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

So you said at the outset on that note that, you know, he's kind of terrible with female characters and, you know, he always puts happy endings. Why do you think this is the. This is the case with both of those issues?

[Lester D. Friedman]

You know, well, you can't. You know, I'm playing 50 cent psychologists here, but I think that every writer who writes About Spielberg, Joe McBride, include talk about the two most traumatic events in his life being the divorce of his parents and his own first divorce. And you see that and the other. We haven't talked much about his Jewishness, but his notion of being an outsider for much of his life and growing up as a Jew in a non Jewish area and growing up as someone who was always an outsider. I mean, that stuff sticks with you. He's the most successful filmmaker in the history of American cinema, and yet he feels like an outsider. You know, in the new preface to this edition of the book, the title of the preface is Fear is My Fuel. Well, you stop and think to yourself, what the hell does this guy have to fear about? He can make any movie he wants, and yet there is that sense of him, and I applaud this, challenging himself. I mean, when I said, who the heck makes west side Story? That's the answer. He knew if you and I knew it was a lot of chutzpah to take on west side Story. He sure as hell knew. And I think he gave himself a really important and significant challenge there purposely so. I do think that. I do think he has trouble with women characters. And I mean, there are some strong women as he goes along, certainly Color Purple. And then, you know, the post, when he gets to the post and he's got Meryl Streep, you know, you're doing okay when you got Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks as your leads. But if you look through his films, I mean, take the first. Take Raiders first Indiana Jones film. I mean, that character, Marion begins as a partner, right? She's fighting alongside him, hitting people on the head, you know, going on adventures with him. And then he slowly sort of turns her into a heroine in distress. She's wearing frilly little dresses. She has to be rescued. You know, it's. It just. They're not there in any sort of complicated or mostly interesting way. They're there because the situation puts them there. They're there to be rescued. He tries in all ways. And again, he's got a character who's just as brave and adventurous as the hero, the Dreyfus character. And he ends up putting her in a little dress and dancing around. And you think, come on, Steven, what are you doing? You know, why are you doing that? The happy ending, I think, you know, I think he. I think he gives you what the audience wants. And I think he's made films with unhappy endings. I mean, he couldn't end west side Story happily, I think. But, you know, even way back when he tried to end unhappily, it didn't go well in the box office. So I. You know, he's also a commercial artist at heart as well as an artist, so I think the happy ending is something he can't. Almost can't avoid.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Well, on the subject of endings.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Ah, nice transition.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Well, we've used up a lot of your time, but there's one thing I want to ask before we go. What are you working on now? Have you got any. What you're planning to produce next?

[Lester D. Friedman]

Yeah, I'm working on two very different projects. One is almost done and going to the printer, and one is just starting. The one that's almost done is I'm editing a collection in my medical life, my medical school life. I'm editing a collection with my friend Tess Jones on health and media. We have 35 original essays that cover all the genres. And then I'm just starting something that's quite fascinating for Me, with a colleague at Hobart, we're doing a called Hitting the Right Direct Film Directors and Composers in Sync. And we're taking 35. We're going chronologically from the 30s to the present. And we're taking 35 combinations of directors and composers and looking at specific scenes and specific films to illustrate how images and sound, how dialogue and music work together and have changed over the course of Hollywood history. So I'm. One of the great pleasures of being an academic, my friend, is you can let your passions take you where they want to go.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

Indeed. Indeed. And that sounds like a fascinating project. And can't wait to read it.

[Lester D. Friedman]

I can't wait to write it. I always say I hate to write, but I love to have written. So, you know, and I think that's about it. You must feel that way too, when you write.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

I. I quite enjoy the process.

[Lester D. Friedman]

It's lonely.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

It's the bit when you haven't got anything to write, when you're just waiting, you know, but that's another story, so. But when. When, when, when. Well, either those are out. That'd be great to speak to you again, but I just want to say thank you very much for being on the show today and I really enjoyed it and take care.

[Lester D. Friedman]

We should. We should talk about someday because we're both interested in Jewish culture, if that's interesting to your listeners. I think an interesting thing is, you know, the new Hollywood, Hollywood Museum that's opened in LA without mentioning that the founders of all the studios were Jewish. I mean, what. What is that all about? You know, that would be an interesting topic to talk about, Jews in film. I haven't done that in a long time.

[Nathan Abrams (Interviewer, Host of New Books and Film Studies)]

That would be, certainly. Anyway, once again, thank you very much and. And goodbye.

[Lester D. Friedman]

Goodbye.