Eagle interviews author of new Spielberg biography
Brooklyn BookBeat: Molly Haskell: Thank God, But First Thank Spielberg
Steven Spielberg’s 2015 film “Bridge of Spies,” an Academy Award-nominated Cold War thriller, was shot extensively in Brooklyn. During the October, 2014 location filming, if you lived in Brooklyn Heights, Ditmas Park or DUMBO, you might have spotted Spielberg, his cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and cast members Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance and Amy Ryan (who, in an instance of art imitating life, actually does live in Brooklyn) in many or all of those locations.
Now, as part of its “Jewish Lives” series, Yale University Press has published “Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films” by the eminent film scholar Molly Haskell. (Haskell’s previous books have included “Frankly, My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited,” “Love and Other Infectious Diseases” and her seminal 1974 “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies,” one of the first books to chronicle women’s images in film.) Haskell served as the long-running film critic at the Village Voice, and also at New York Magazine and Vogue. She has taught at Columbia, Barnard and Sarah Lawrence. She is a writer of exceptional perception and wit; she brings to her criticism uncommon breadth and erudition.
She is also gracious, welcoming and warm, as I discovered two weeks ago while interviewing her at her Upper East Side apartment. Haskell was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and was raised in Richmond, Virginia. She attended Sweet Briar College, then studied at the University of London and at the Sorbonne. Despite being so cosmopolitan and having lived in New York for almost half a century, she hasn’t lost her dulcet Southern accent. In fact, in transcribing the interview, I would often rewind and play back parts of our conversation just to savor the cadence and color of her voice. It was one of the rare times transcribing was a joy.