Playing young ‘Spielberg’ in director’s new movie
RISING star Gabriel LaBelle, who plays a character based on Steven Spielberg in the 76-year-old director’s new film, The Fabelmans, recalls asking Spielberg: ‘How much of this script really happened to you?’ And he said ‘All of it’.
“So I just tried to get to know him to the best of my abilities, ask him as many questions about his childhood, his relationships, what it was like for him growing up, the people around him, his perspectives on the world and how he felt about himself.
“Because then I could understand this character, and what story he really wanted to tell.
“This movie is his life. You don’t want to ruin Steven Spielberg’s life!” the 20-year-old laughs.
TheFabelmans, a coming-of-age drama co-written by Spielberg and Angels In America playwright Tony Kushner, explores the filmmaker’s childhood and seminal years through a fictionalised lens.
LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman, a young aspiring filmmaker who stuns his parents and peers with his innate directorial talent. Over the years, he becomes the documentarian of his family’s life – the good times and the bad – and creates his own increasingly elaborate productions starring his friends and sisters.
“I looked for somebody who was much more handsome than me,” laughs Spielberg, 76, talking about casting Sammy.
“I cast somebody who had insatiable curiosity, which I know I’ve always possessed. And, as a person, Gabe has insatiable curiosity.”
The Fabelman family move around the country, chasing patriarch Burt’s computer design career from New Jersey to Arizona to California.
Paul Dano’s Burt contrasts with mother Mitzi, played by Michelle Williams, an accomplished musician who gave up her artistic career to raise her family. Spielberg based Burt and Mitzi on his own parents, Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg, to whose memory the film is dedicated. Mitzi loves her family and husband to the ends of the earth, but it’s evident how much she has had to sacrifice to meet society’s expectations of motherhood.
Williams, inset, whohas been nominated for an Oscar for the role, along with the film and Spielberg, says she loved Mitzi’s “energy, her passion, her ability to fill up a room”.
“I think it’s really why he made this movie,” she adds. “Because her presence, his father’s presence, continues to be so strong that he wanted to make something to honour them, and to bring them back for a short period of time… and then also forever.”
Honorary Fabelman Bennie – Burt’s best friend, played by Seth Rogen – is also along for the ride and is endearingly known as ‘Uncle Bennie’ to the kids.
As Sammy grows up, however, he notices an emotional connection between Bennie and Mitzi, one that eventually becomes impossible to ignore.
Williams, 42, said: “It was a very personal film for him. And, as a result, it became a very personal film for all of us. Because he really opened up his heart and asked us to come in and shared so many stories and experiences and recollections of his childhood.
"We knew that we were making something really special… We knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime job.”
Tasked with portraying a representation of one of the world’s most famous directors, LaBelle did all he could to get under Spielberg’s skin and really understand the film-maker.
“I don’t want him to be disappointed in what I do,” he says. “So I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what he was looking for with this story, and what he wanted out of this character, and just get to know him as a person.”
LaBelle and Spielberg had lengthy phone calls before shooting started.
“It would basically be Gabriel interviewing me, about my mom and my dad and who I grew up with,” says Spielberg.
“He was doing his research – he wanted to find out what he could by drawing it from his subject.
“He controlled all the phone calls, which I thought was really interesting, because I’m also kind of a control freak! And when I realised that he is one, too, I thought ‘He’s going to do really well, and maybe get to know me a little better than I ever knew myself’.”
The Fabelmans (12A) is in cinemas now.