Steven Spielberg On The Legacy Of 'Schindler's List' 25 Years Later | NBC Nightly News

list is an absolute good it was a box-office hits I was the only one that wasn't issued the picture in pleasure right no but the studio did a powerful film about the Holocaust that for so many was so much more than a movie they say that no one dies here they say your victory is a haven it inspired survivors to share their stories they stripped him from everything educating the world it wouldn't have happened without Schindler's List the short foundation wouldn't existed now the Academy award-winning film is coming back to the big screen I think this is maybe the most important time to really reduce this further our sit-down with Steven Spielberg 25 years after his groundbreaking movie Schindler's List the true story of a Nazi businessman saving the lives of Polish Jews during the Holocaust was not one director Steven Spielberg expected to be a commercial success I couldn't imagine based on the story that we told that an audience would tolerate the just just the amount of violence you know human against human were inhuman against you and and and I just couldn't imagine that audiences would allow themselves to go through a motion-picture recreation of the Oskar Schindler story I was very surprised but as you're telling the story you can't pull your punches because history is history history is history and and if you're making you know I felt that if I were going to make you know a story that represents the survivors and represents the six million that you know who were murdered I have to be as close to the reality of the people that we had interviewed that told us what it was like for them yet Schindler's List became both a box-office hit earning Spielberg his very first Best Director Oscar but also a historical touchstone man to riot women to laugh what took so long to finally do it I didn't think I was ready to tell the story for a long time Sid Sheinberg they had a universal had read a review in the New York Times Review of Books on Thomaston Keneally's book Schindler's Ark as it's called in Europe and was list as it was titled for America and et had just been released and we were all very you know happy about the results and he called me in a Sunday and he said I want to send you a review of a book I just read and he had a messenger come over to my house with this review of Schindler's List and I read it and I thought found it very compelling but he had gone beyond the review he went negative to follow week and he bought the book for me and yet I wasn't really ready in my own life because that was making movies about extraterrestrials and movies about you know Indiana Jones and sharks and I was into kind of mass popular entertainment concepts and I wasn't ready to go personal like that and and I received the book before I ever made the two personal movies that allowed me to mission was list the first was color purple and the second was Empire of the Sun and those for me with the stepping stones that it gave me the courage to take on a story of the Shoah shot in Poland were the real Oskar Shindler first employed Jews to run his factory sparing them from death camps I can't imagine what it was like to shoot this film you're in you're in Krakow you were in some of the places where this actually happened I know there's cameras around and all the trappings of movie but the scenes had to have taken a personal toll on you your crew your cast yeah well I think everybody felt that we were memorializing something and it felt to all of us as if we were shooting in a cemetery so there was a kind of amazing I guess you just called a equanimity of respect and it was quiet on the set and everybody just did their work no one was laughing no one was telling jokes no one was talking about you know um you know football scores back home it was really really one of the most only had this experience twice one was shooting chivalrous listen the second time it was very reverential with shooting Lincoln the two times that I think the entire company came together to pay their respects and how quietly they dedicated their work but you met Schindler's survivors along the West a lot of them that's a lot of pressure on a director you're telling their story telling their story and you after you have to make it for an audience and I think it her audience but also you want to be true to them right yeah but God bless the one Schindler survivor that came over to me it was believed her name was nuit sadness bomb and she it was the little girl that Schindler kists that said Schiller to prison for kissing a Jew a bit of an act of sedition I guess they called it and and she was we invited her which might a lot of the survivors to watch their scenes being reenacted and she came over to watch a shoot and she came over to me and she said I want to tell you my story and I said well I'm telling your story she said oh that's nothing that was a tiny part of my life I want to tell you my entire story of what my life was like Who I am I want you to see me and I want to be able to you tell my story so that story can inform everybody about what happened to me and others like me and she was the one to put into my mind an idea that maybe when this film was finished I can tell many stories like hers and and send people all over the world to find the survivors and allow all of them to become teachers and and that's how the Shoah foundation began the film pulled no punches remaining bound to a brutal history the emotion of the movie itself shooting and I mean that the scene when the women are led into the shower and they look at those nozzles I felt that I was feeling their fear that moment of uncertainty about what's about to happen how difficult was that scene to shoot well let me just say this no one acted that day you know professional actors a lot of them were brought in from Israel to play the the Jewish characters there was no acting I mean I mean they took off their clothes and we we were very quiet and we led them toward the showers and there was a massive kind of you know traumatic reaction that was almost it's just one reaction inspired the next reaction and there was kind of a virtual panic that really happened in that very dark space and it was just frightening and we did it over and over and over again the entire day and that was one of the one of the moments on the entire film were nobody had to be an actor nobody had to practice their their art their craft they they existed in that reality and they showed all of us who they really were and how they really felt and you know violence is a part of so many movies now and suspense and fear this movie takes you did a different level of fear and and looks at violence through a different lens if you will was that was that an important leap for you to make you know I never thought about the degree of violence I was willing or able to to interpret and show an audience I probably shot this movie more intuitively that I've ever shot any movie in my life and when I was not using my my mind and I wasn't intellectualizing or I wasn't you know wrestling with should I do it this way or that way but the ideas were coming to me so naturally and and and and there was no effort in for me to know what I wanted to do next during a shooting day it just seemed to happen every every shot just seemed to be the only shot that was possible to really tell the truth about that dramatic moment and so it's one of the few times I've made a movie where I can look back on it and say I didn't plan anything it just came out of me and it came out of everybody ray Fiennes you know you know Liam Neeson Ben Kingsley I think all of us you know that story allowed all of us to tap into our intuitive you know selves to be the best we could be in that in those moments Spielberg insisted the film be shot black-and-whites you shoot it in black and white yes what was the thinking about that I was the only one there wasn't a shoot the picture in black and white no but the studio didn't Syd was fine with it but everybody understood was saying how do we sell cassettes no one thought the film was going to make any money and they were going to go ahead and give me 19 20 million dollars to go to Poland to tell the story which I knew is going to be over three hours long and they were doing it knowing that there was more of a public service message less of a commercial enterprise but they were hoping they would make some money when they sold the cassettes because it was a huge sort of you know ancillary market for movies in those days no sir not anymore and but they didn't think they could sell a cassette if it was in black and white and at one point that they were negotiating with me they said shoot it in color we'll release it from a black and white but then were released the cassette in colour and I said no this is I don't know the Holocaust in colour I wasn't around then but I've seen documentaries in the Holocaust and anybody who's seen any documentaries they're all shot in black and white it's my only reference point and you wanted this to feel I wanted to feel real and the only reference point we had the only cut it was contextualized in black and white for anybody that watched documentary dot on it so there were a few moments of colour and you know one of things as I watched it the the little girl in red what was the symbol symbolism there well you know in the book Oskar Schindler and to all the interviews of all the people that have survived the Thomas Keneally interview before he wrote his book Schindler couldn't get over the fact that a little girl was walking during the during the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto and everyone was being put on trucks a shot in the street and wonderful girl and a red red coat was big ignored by the SS the SS were taking everybody but somehow they were ignoring this six year old child walking down the street wearing the brightest color and yet she wasn't big she wasn't being seen and to me that meant that the people you know Roosevelt and Eisenhower and probably Stalin Churchill knew the Holocaust it was a it was a well-kept secret and did nothing to stop it it was almost the Holocaust itself was wearing red and yet we did nothing to bomb the AH spawn the German rail lines would did nothing to bomb the crematoria where there would be many casualties but would slow down the industrialized process of murder for perhaps as long as three to six months would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and we did nothing about it and for me it was like a glaring red flag that anybody if they were really watching could have seen and Schindler it caught his eye and that was it caught his attention that's the other reason that was very important it caught his attention because he'd looked at that and it it changed something in him that moment in his life changed him the real Schindler was a complicated character a scoundrel he's a Nazi war profiteer yet he does this amazing thing was it was it it was a difficult character to encompass well he was he was a grand enigma because he was a character who you know he was a bon vivant for one thing he liked a good party he'd liked he'd liked women he'd liked just the high life and and he was charismatic and he loved sort of manipulating people into thinking that that that they were getting the better deal when in fact he was and he was he was a great manipulator but there was something about him that he didn't to share with very very many people and that was he had empathy in a world at a time where and where empathy didn't factor in in terms of an industrialized genocide such as the Holocaust was that here was a man who had a great deal of respect and understanding and empathy which he hid from his cohorts his collabora his Nazi collaborators but he shared with his workers who were all Schindler Jews this is one of those unfair questions like who's your favorite child but but your your body of work we're all familiar with with you know how many places you've taken us how does this rank Schindler this is the most important experience I had big a film director and a storyteller because I don't think I'll ever do something anything as you know it's important in my team to my life the way the way the way this so affected personally affected me and my family and Kate my wife and my kids who were very young and in Krakow when we made the movie and so this for me is you know something that I will always be proud of stuff it was an education for you I assume oh yeah this was a that although I grew up with the Holocaust being mentioned my family you know wasn't shy about talking about it they didn't call it the Holocaust in those days they called it you know the great murders and and so I didn't lose direct family we'd lost my parents lost second third cousins in Eastern Europe but this was something that was that was openly talked about in my home did you grow was that a huge leap for you as a director yeah it was hugely by the biggest yeah their first leap for me the first step I really took as a director and telling a personal story I think was et that's a very personal story for me and maybe what I have kids which I didn't want to have before I made et it could have gone two ways I could have made et and never wanted to have kids ever after that but these kids were so wonderful I wanted to be a dad after I made that movie so that was a huge growth spurt for me personally and the second one was Schindler's List very different movies but I understand Nursultan personal for him and the actual survivors what kind of reactions did you get from the actual survivors when they saw in the film a lot of the survivors wouldn't allow themselves to see the film because they had already they'd already seen Madonna canned Treblinka and ash wits and and Sobibor and so a lot of the survivors you know truly loved and respected the fact that film was made and the film was getting such a profound response but they didn't have to endure it but some of the survivors who were able to find the strength to sit through the film you know all felt that no movie no film could ever equal what they experienced and yet they were very very happy that we were putting the holocaust back into conversation again but but but but I'd never heard a survivor say to me your film was worse than what we went through everybody said your film is gets us get what people are now talking about they're not forgetting our stories we must never forget but if the Holocaust happened and that's why we're happy you made the picture but your film doesn't compare to what my experience was my personal experience was losing everybody I loved and ever knew in my life and being the sole survivor nothing can replace that yeah I can imagine is there is there anything that you wish that you know today that you wish you knew that when you did this film no no I just what uh grateful for and thankful for is the support I got from Kate and my wife I couldn't have gotten through the film emotionally without her support every day for almost five months in Krakow she was there every second she was there my kids were all there - were they on the on the center and there's not not during the violent parts but during parts they came to the set to visit but Kate was there all the time but she understood the emotions when I was going through and I understood what what it felt like for her to see all to experience what her private hell was watching those scenes being shot so I could have done it without her telling the stories of survivors didn't stop with Schindler's List it was life-changing for Spielberg he founded USC Shoah foundation creating an indelible history of a Holocaust and other genocides including a visual history Archive featuring more than 55,000 testimonies I'm at an age where I don't know how much long I'll be here I felt it's important that it's not forgotten it's an educational component that is uniquely attached to this film it is it is it it wouldn't have happened without Schindler's List the Shoah foundation would have existed and now we're in an era that you know anti-semitism is on the rise xenophobia we all know what race doesn't happen in Pittsburgh is it possible that but somehow we're forgetting we're losing the impact of that era well I think it's just that you know hate has become a less of HP and feta cult 8 is more a headline and and to show a foundation you know does its best to counter hate you know you know through you know you know through basically reaching out and trying to teach people about empathy and respect and understanding through testimony which is why we have 55,000 survivors of the the Holocaust as well as other genocides in our database and that gets disseminated all over the world this is a history that might otherwise be lost this was going to become lost history yes what do you want I mean this is a movie that you never admit they've imagined that this ability movie they'd be showing in classrooms in 2018 what do you want people to take away from this film who may not they know about the Holocaust but may not have really focused on it well just that individual hate is a terrible thing but when collective hate organizes and gets industrialized then genocide follows and that that hate is not something that is not to be taken seriously and we have to take it more seriously today than I think we have had to take it in a generation today the archive Spielberg helped create our part of school curriculums Oskar Shindler there what else does it say about him they say you have gone and so is Schindler's List it's important to know what it was like during World War two and what it was like for the Jew the Jewish people during World War two and what they were what they went through and it's also important to know that there were good people in Germany during this time it's good to talk about these types of things like these points in history because history in the past the past never gonna change it is what it is but it's really good to talk about it so that you can really get a sense of what it was like for people in those times always can happen again like I said like a lot of stuff still goes on and like you know people being afraid to be who they are and you know other people feel like they need to take action and guess those people aren't what they think is acceptable yeah I I feel like it just it helped us as a society to I said those people more than we do now have you ever heard of righteous among nations grace Monahan has been using the film as a teaching tool in her classroom for years I feel that you know anytime a group is singled out a group is isolated it's going to affect everyone I think that everybody needs to be mindful of that one person can make a difference I mean Oskar Schindler he started out as a man who is an opportunist all he wanted to do was make money his goal was to be with women and drinking and spend money and before you know it when he saw what happened he changed and he realized that he needed to do something to help all these people who were real people they weren't just those people mr. Spielberg's goal in creating the film was to tell the story of the Holocaust and what it was like and to share that with the world as a result in establishing the Shaw foundation the goal was to bring those stories of survivors and other witnesses to the world as well and to capture them in perpetuity now 25 years later [Music] Schindler's List is being released including special free screenings for students after seeing that movie and seeing what a lot of people went through it makes me really really sad and it's heartbreaking to see what has happened to these people the fact that other people were willing to help other people even if that meant that they were gonna get hurt or killed which was nice to say because people nowadays don't tend to really do that how did the idea come about to re-release it and to remaster it well what happened was it just you know we had a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival asked could we on the you know at the on the occasion of the 25th anniversary could the Tribeca Film Festival show the picture and so we went to this the I guess that was called Beekman and like 2500 seats and they filled the theater up and I sat I hadn't seen the was list with an audience in many many years and I sat with my wife and we listened and we experienced something I hadn't heard in a long time which was you can hear a pin drop in that theatre and and it just felt that that audience said to me that we should do something more than just acknowledge 25 years of gunfight is this an important time to rerelease this film I think this is baby the most important time to really release this form possibly now is even a more important time to rerelease Schindler's List than 19 you know 93 94 when it was initially released I think there's more at stake today than even back then hey NBC News fans thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching

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Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018