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An actor’s account of a pivotal incident: “The first day of filming something happened, and I've even talked about it when the DGA investigated it... it was the scene with the special effects with the small teapot again. That first day, Tobe would whisper something in our ear and then he would shout action and we would do the scene. Then Steven would shout “Cut” and Steven approached and would whisper something else in our ear. And that continued for about six minutes and Beatrice Straight said: "One director, please. This has to end." And it literally continued for about six or seven minutes, you know, half an hour at most, and she just said, “That's not how we do this. We have one director around here.” And after that, Tobe did everything. Steven had a lot to contribute. As Oliver said, it was his script. I mean, yes... it was Tobe." I’d venture that this made many people upset, people who wanted to work with Spielberg, not a nobody like Hooper. Thus, they’d spin their stories and ignore everything that pointed to Hooper’s influence. All actors assert not only was Hooper always directing, but that Spielberg’s presence dwindled to nil by the end of the shoot. There’s a much larger story behind <i>Poltergeist</i> than the urban legends of Spielberg’s command over the project. In reality, Hooper’s formative role in conceiving and then directing the picture was outwardly buried. Hooper goes into detail about this here: “When I started shooting Funhouse, Steven called me in Florida, and asked me to come back - there was something that he wanted me to do. I came back, and he wanted me to do a follow-up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the film that eventually came to be ET, though what he described to me was very different. I explained to him that it really wasn't my kind of thing, but I'd always wanted to do a film about ghosts and poltergeists. He said, “Fantastic,” and at that point we set about creating Poltergeist. We worked on it in London while he was shooting Raiders. So I have literally been on this project for eight years… I didn't have a conclusion originally, it was a matter of wrapping up the ideas, finishing it. The idea of the girl kidnapped by the dead came late in development, and that was Steven's and mine… Steven did write the screenplay and there are other credits on there, but it came down to Steven and myself sitting at his house. He wrote the screenplay, and we gathered around a poltergeist textbook for the research, which was actually Robert Wise's research book that he had on The Haunting.” Why the round denial of this? Well, for the probability of branding, for one. Then there’s what happened on set… Spielberg was rightly reprimanded for being too obtrusive on the set (the same thing happened on his previous producing effort, Robert Zemeckis’s USED CARS) and this incident likely informed a resentment against Hooper for daring to control the set. Yeah, he was literally on the set for all of them. Only in Hooper’s case, though, was Spielberg literally humbled on the set (crazy story)!: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GasCcNsW0AAgBvc?format=jpg&name=900x900 Except for the fact Hooper literally said, “No, this is not your baby, your baby would be cheesy and lame! I know how to make this movie good, I am a 50% conceiver of it after all!” and nixed these Spielberg-written scenes: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F-NnpuZbMAA719t?format=jpg&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKr-u7sbMAA1E8_?format=jpg&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GasCcNsW0AAgBvc?format=jpg&name=900x900 Here's an excerpt to show how Spielberg's "kid's fantasy' inclinations could have reared their head: ROBBIE Rub-a-dub-dub. Thanks for the grub. Yeah God! Everybody LAUGHS. Diane, with an enormous amount of gray in her hair, reaches into her purse, almost as an afterthought and takes out an envelope addressed to the Freeling family. DIANE This came in the mail this morning from Tangina. She's in Acapulco. Diane passes a color Polaroid around the table. CAROL ANNE Who's that with Aunt Tangie? INSERT CLOSE ON SNAPSHOT Tangina is standing against the sun and surf in a muu muu. Beside her is a good-looking, normal-sized man in his early thirties. If you didn't know Tangina was a midget you'd think the man was nine feet tall. There is writing accompanying the photo which Diane reads. INT. DINING ROOM - FREELING FAMILY - DUSK DIANE This photograph just goes on to prove that we grow things bigger in Texas than anywhere else in the world. The film was really two things, in reality: an experiment and a rush job. Hooper and Spielberg came up with the theme of ghosts invading a development, but rather than pursue this on their own, Spielberg - a novice producer, wanting to make something commercial and Hooper totally on board - gave it to the two screenwriters, Grais and Victor. While they tried their best to incorporate their themes and then make it into a summer tentpole - they added all the beasties (clown, closet, tree) in this phase - Spielberg and Hooper were not entirely happy with it. This was a mere three months before the film was supposed to shoot (a possible director's strike made it necessary to push it through pre-production)! So in a week-long flurry, Spielberg and Hooper dashed out a new draft, which is essentially the film we got. In other words, this film was an experiment/collaboration <i>and</i> compromise from day 1, Hooper giving it to Spielberg to hire two novice writers, then their quick drafting of a film merely to have ready for the shoot day (which, regardless of the final film's success, they were happy enough with). As for the "Casper" element (which Spielberg's company produced), the script did have those cutesy moments, but Hooper did a lot to temper it. But Hooper was attached to direct from before “E.T.” was even conceived. Spielberg never imagined this as part of his filmography. This was before, of course, he sat down to write the entire movie from scratch (with Hooper), so things get a little muddier from there, but the bottom line seems to be that Hooper was not willing to let go of the film simply due to Spielberg’s intense involvement, and Spielberg himself considered the film a “lark” and was far more invested in doing the childhood story “E.T.,” which was clearly close to his heart. There is far more evidence of Hooper outright contradicting any instructions Spielberg may have made and going off on his own tangents, often in regards to blocking and staging. I think that level of “renegade” energy is actually spurs a lot of what (a small subset of) people on the set perceived as “turmoil,” but what they saw as Spielberg’s involvement was actually working with Hooper’s constant unorthodox methods and ideas. Plus, those accounts are exaggerated and crank-like, while the most even handed always say Hooper directed, front to back, and that Spielberg was not present all the time, which is a clear marketing fib to foment interest on the part of the PR people. Or maybe it was simply as a writer or average producer. What even is an average producer? Producers flex their power all the time, to the point they fire directors. Only in this instance does a director take a stand that he was never fired. With the new information that comes out, it seems clear Hooper was a decisive creative force. Why are we trying to take that away from him? He likes his silly sell-out Hollywood film, he says he directed it. Let's give it to him. More decisive than "Tobe was mostly directing" is "Spielberg was no longer around that much." Casella has said on two different occasions, "Hooper held the reins" and "Spielberg was no longer in the picture." Two out of three of these allow no further interpretation, I'm sorry. So in the end, this is a normal director-producer relationship. Spielberg went further than required on "The Goonies," yet no one talks about that film's authorship. This boils down to plain rumor and disrespect, when the clear signs are right in front of us - Hooper did the work. Spielberg wrote and collaborated with his closest creative partner. It was an amicable situation until the studio and journalists decided to twist the information and for years, decades, no new information has come out because of this baggage despite it clearly favoring Hooper as a creative force. A sell-out, Hollywoodized force, but whatever. He says he made the movie, let's believe him. If Spielberg ruined it as a writer/producer, then fine. Hooper didn't need Spielberg to ruin his films with weird pacing issues and bad suspense, just look at Invaders from Mars. This movie also had special effects that had never been done before. Of course it was going to have multiple production heads and strong producers. Look at Marvel films. A director is not taking charge of every visual effect and extended action scene. Hooper knew going into this that it was going to be a team effort, and, as Hooper says, he as director was "at the center of it." What is Richard Donner's excuse? He hates kids? It's really that simple. The two worked closer than most other directors and producers, but that is because they wrote the film together and were the closest creative partners from before a word was ever written. There may have been creative disagreements and other such small frictions, but Hooper got to make the film, bottom line. The contradicting accounts are not really contradictory at all - it is simply a matter that they see what they want to see, but always, ALWAYS they never mention Hooper being absent, or derelict, or uninvolved. They simply choose to believe Spielberg's power was always assumed. Hooper could've been doing everything and they would believe he was simply doing what Spielberg told him to earlier. That is false. Hooper changed so much of the DNA of the script and previsual material, not to mention helping write the story and doing the bulk of storyboards. That is beside the fact that most of a director's work happens on set, and Hooper once again often seemed to disregard preparatory material, which he is known to do on all his sets. Hooper's "unusual" methods are probably part of the reason the set seemed so disorganized and that Spielberg had to "save" it, even though he was simply there to be told by Hooper and the actors: "What you wrote isn't working, please change it!": https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEUQhS4awAA2jaK?format=jpg&name=900x900 Perhaps Spielberg is to blame. But once again, it is as the writer and producer. He also developed and produced the 1999 THE HAUNTING remake and the 2020 THE TURNING (THE TURN OF THE SCREW adaptation) and look how those turned out. Maybe he just can't do supernatural horror. That's Hooper. He adds things that make no sense and do little to provide suspense. He is all over "Poltergeist"! Well, as said, Leonetti walked back his statement, and seemed to attribute producorial things as "directing" (like preparing the storyboards Leonetti makes such a big deal about, yet doesn't care to consider that Hooper actually was the one who did them). Zelda Rubinstein also walked back her statement. Her final statement on the matter was: "Tobe Hooper set up every shot, and then Steven came in and made final adjustments. So I think it was a split decision." Split decision =/= "Spielberg took over directing" or "Steven changed everything Hooper did." Well, the controversy is around who physically directed the movie. It was the focus of all the rumors from 1982, the lawsuit that emerged from it (Hooper sued the studio for spreading them), and all subsequent favoring of Spielberg as the real "vision" when in fact the film would not exist at all without Hooper giving Spielberg the concept (and all practical interpretations of the set which is "Hooper was there all the time, Spielberg was there only sometimes"). Thus, in regards to those rumors, they are false. Spielberg leaves his imprint because he wrote and produced. It is the same reason "The Goonies" has multiple scenes Spielberg directed outright as a second unit director and why "Gremlins" became a huge hit due to everyone thinking the main Mogwai creature Gizmo was cute (Joe Dante, the director, was all set on turning that character evil at the end, but Spielberg told him to do the rewrite). Agreed about Spielberg needing his collaborators when at his strongest. George Lucas was a major part of the Indiana Jones films as well. As for this film, I guess it was two people really bad at suspense coming together. View all replies >