The latest award-winning film from Steven Spielberg The Fabelmans (2022), which wholesomely chronicles his early life as an ambitious filmmaker, has since been making waves with its growing list of award nods and wins. The most notable among them include Judd Hirsch’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod, which makes him the second-oldest actor in film history to receive the honor at 87 years old, behind the late Christopher Plummer who received his for All the Money in the World (2018) at 88 years old. The other is composer John William’s newest nod for Best Score on the film, which also astoundingly broke his own record of the most nominated person alive.
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All in all, The Fabelmans is proving to leave historical marks, and audiences will get to relive Spielberg’s newest creation when the movie comes to Blu-ray on February 14th. The disc set will include a substantial amount of bonus features, among them inside looks on inspirations for the film’s characters. According to a new report, Entertainment Weekly has given a sneak peek at one of those featurettes, which will be a behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production, and how lead actors Paul Dano and Michelle Williams got into form to play their characters Burt and Mitzi Fabelman respectively. Director Spielberg goes into detail on how he provided the two actors with his own personal accounts and actual real-life footage for reference, giving them the best source content available to wrap their heads around the lives and emotions of the characters that represent Spielberg’s parents.
Paul Dano recounts how the real-life footage, which can also be viewed within the disc’s special features, especially helped him better understand the mind of Steven’s father Arnold Spielberg.
“I provided both actors with what I consider to be a treasure trove of personal memories for me, not knowing whether those memories would have any kind of personal connection with either Paul or Michelle…And histories of what my dad did as a computer scientist and what my mom did as a homemaker and a concert pianist.”
Williams shared a similar sentiment when embracing her character Mitzi, who particularly influenced her young son Sammy to keep practicing film. Along with her passion for the arts, Mitzi had an infectious laugh that Williams held on to while prepping the role.
“One of the first tapes I listened to of Arnold [Spielberg]— I’m going to paraphrase now — but he says something like, ‘Electronics was a way of life for me…And so right there, it was like, ‘Okay, this guy is an engineer to his core.’ He was a computer engineer. That’s in every fiber of him, since he was a kid building radios, so I immediately started to get in touch with that part of myself or that part of him.”
“It was one of my touchstones that I would use like right before we would shoot. I had so many beautiful home movies of her and just so much footage that was so dear to me that I just watched over and over and over again of her laughing at different ages in her life,”
The Fabelmans Shows Spielberg Keeps the Optimistic, Magic-Eyed Outlook on the Future of Film
The looming social discourse on the recent trends of film, and the ever-conflicting opinions on where the industry is headed in an era post-COVID and still dominated largely by Marvel is permeating all manner of conversation lately. Each side of the table has been forming their own perspective, whether it’s that Marvel is swallowing the industry whole, or that box office dips are proving theater-going is a dying pastime in favor of streaming, or that such glum outlooks are short-sighted and that the industry will rise stronger.
Regardless of the bicker, Spielberg, who’s been a figurehead and mentor in the business for decades and delivered some of the most timeless pieces of filmmaking, clearly believes that the magic of film has not gone anywhere. Unlike other recent films such as Babylon (2022), which gave a blissfully pessimistic view on the death of classic film, The Fabelmans does quite the opposite and reinvigorates the emotional spark of wonder and imagination film is meant to inherently create, the feelings that Spielberg has consistently kept in the DNA of each of his films. If he of all people believes that spark is here to stay, perhaps we should take heed and give the new era of film more of a chance to prove itself.
