The Art of Storytelling

     In 1969, a young Steven Spielberg walked into the office of director John Ford. Spielberg, a fan of Ford’s, asked the veteran filmmaker what it takes to be a talented filmmaker. Supposedly, Ford pointed to a series of paintings on the wall behind him and asked Spielberg to determine what it was that he saw; inevitably, the novice Spielberg pointed out the subjects in the center-frame. At this, John Ford shook his head and imparted upon Spielberg what he would later call some of the most valuable advice he’d ever been given: “When you’re able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the top and the bottom...able to appreciate why it’s [there], then you might make a good [motion] picture maker” (Favreau). In the subsequent forty years since that anecdotal meeting, Spielberg has undeniably cemented himself as one of the world’s most prolific filmmakers.     Spielberg’s films vary in subject matter, his works focusing upon stories of wonder and fantasy in ...

       On April 30th, 1975, the CBS evening news aired footage shot in Saigon, South Vietnam. The images depicted Vietnamese, and a handful of American, civilians and soldiers fleeing for their lives as Communist forces began their final assault upon the city. While American involvement in Vietnam had slowed dramatically since 1973, to many watching at home, this final defeat proved the ultimate humiliation to a country that had previously thought itself invincible. Less than four years later, Francis Ford Coppola released a film that threatened to re-open wounds that had barely begun to heal. The Vietnam War affected Americans of all walks of life -- transgressing race and party-lines, hawk and dove, alike, and changed the face American culture, popular and otherwise. In fewer ways did art replicate life than in the case of Apocalypse Now (1979), whose troubled production was every bit the quagmire as the conflict in which its set. Dogged by everything from casting...