Steven Spielberg. Humility is not an essential trait, but the 62-year-old blockbusterian came off unexpectedly pompous during his acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award. In recalling the story of how DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth inspired his desire to recreate and film the climactic train crash with his own model set (and thus, launching his love for moviemaking), he said: "I think what was on my mind when I was risking losing my Lionel train set was me thinking, 'Am I going to get away with this?' That anxiety has been haunting me throughout my entire movie career. Whenever I've tried to tell a risky story, whether it's about sharks or dinosaurs or about aliens or about history, I'll always be thinking, 'Am I going to get away with this?'" My question is, and I say this having admired and enjoyed plenty of his output (A.I., Jaws, Duel, Raiders of the Lost Ark), could Spielberg really be called a risky storyteller? As a sensational craftsman alone he deserves the DeMille honor, but has Hollywood's most sacred cow really been "inventing and reinventing cinema with each new picture" as his peer and pal Martin Scorsese claims he has for 40 years? Perhaps it's a silly question on a night of hyperbolic back-patting.
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