Fabelmans: A great director is hidden in a Steven Spielberg film, did you know him?

Warning – The article below contains some spoilers for the plot of “The Fabelmans” as it revisits one of its final scenes. Please continue if you haven’t seen it. Or I don’t know the anecdote it’s based on.

Released in our theaters on Wednesday, March 22, just weeks before the 95th Academy Awards, of which it is one of the favorites, The Fabelmans is undoubtedly the most personal of Steven Spielberg’s films. Because it directly confronts the childhood, according to which films he used several elements.

This is especially true of his parents’ divorce, which links feature films such as ET, Rencontres du trois type, Hook, Munich, Minority Report, La Guerre des mondes or Jurassic Park to the concept or figure of parenthood. An absent or failing father.

But it was his love for cinema that fueled his calling and sheltered him from the harsh reality he refused to face. And so The Fabelmans opens and ends with Sam (Steven Spielberg’s alter ego, played by Matteo Zorion Francis-Deford, then Gabrielle LaBelle) meeting the great director of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

First Cecil B. DeMille, whom he does not meet personally. But finding himself under the world’s biggest marquee, for his first film session, changed his life (and ours, too), sparking a passion that made him one of history’s greatest directors. of the 7th art. After trying to reproduce what was seen on the screen.

A few years later, when he was taking his first steps in the industry, Sammy Fabelman met John Ford, a director famous for westerns (The Fantastic Ride, The Prisoner of Desert, The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance) but we also owe him such classics as The Grapes of Wrath or My The valley was green. Based on Steven Spielberg’s memoirs, this somewhat lunar scene actually happened, and the filmmaker recreates it in his new opus.

The director is played by another director who is not immediately recognizable: David Lynch. This is not the first time the latter has appeared on screen, but with the exception of John Carroll Lynch’s “Luck”, he is already used to directing himself. His presence at Fabelmans is all the more charged, beyond the figure he embodies. And we owe it as much to co-screenwriter Tony Kushner’s husband as we do to Laura Dern.

“We were talking after we did Munich, and when we really started to bring it to life, Stephen and I agreed on this: this should be the end of the movie.”– says Tony Kushner Movie scene. “When we go into the casting phase, we often ask ourselves: Who can play this person? Sometimes we already know that, but most of the four films we’ve made together haven’t been defined yet.”

It will never happen because he will never agree to do it, but it has to be David Lynch

“We thought we’d find someone. We started thinking about a lot of great actors who looked a little bit alike, but were a little too young—nothing really exciting. My husband is the one who, when I came in, said, ‘Steven Spielberg asked me to rewrite West Side Story, what Am I going to?’, he answered: ‘Yes. And most importantly, what are you going to do with Doc?’ The only character in West Side Story that none of us liked.”

“I didn’t know, and he told me to turn Doc into a Puerto Rican woman and ask Rita Moreno to play. It was he who already offered employment Lee Pace in Lincoln and Lynn Cohen in Munich. He really has an eye (laughs) (…) I had a Ford candidate that I was passionate about, but I didn’t really know what we were going to do. Mark then said to me, “I have an idea.” He went up to his office and asked me for a few minutes, and then he came back.”

“I think he wanted to make sure he got physical. And he said, ‘I have a great idea. But it’s never going to happen because he’ll never agree to do it, but it’s got to be David Lynch.” I said to myself, “Oh my God!” and I called Stephen, who said, “Oh my God…but he’ll never do it.” Then Laura Dernze He thought. He called and then he called David. And it happened.”

And so David Lynch found himself in John Ford’s place for a day. “It was a crazy day on set”– says Tony Kushner. “It was the most meta and difficult thing: Steven Spielberg directing Gabriel LaBelle, who plays Steven Spielberg, meeting John Ford, played by David Lynch.” The scene seen from this angle is more dizzying. And it wraps up The Fabelmans in the best of ways, leading up to its perfect final plan.