The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
89
the story of how he’s my favorite director and how I had organized a trip for
the senior class to see Schindler’s List that year, and he was getting the story
all wrong, so I jumped in, and I said, “Hi, Steven, I took 381 kids to go see
Schindler’s List, and God, that is a flawless film and congratulations on winning
your Oscar. I firmly believe that you should have won an Oscar for E.T.
and Raiders . . .”
And he smiled and he goes, “Yeah, I do too, I do too.” And I gotta tell
you, he couldn’t have been nicer, and in a room filled with ten thousand
Navy midshipmen, who were waiting for Spielberg to start eating before
they ate, he talked to me for ten minutes, just he and I.
I told him, “I’m from South Jersey.” And he said, “I’m from South Jersey.”
He grew up in Haddonfield [or, according to other sources, nearby Haddon
Heights —ed.], and I grew up five minutes away from there. And I said, “My
goal is to come to Hollywood and work at Amblin. I’m going to film school
this fall, at Ithaca College, and I’m gonna make it out there.” And he goes,
“Well, I’ll see you at Amblin. I believe you will.” And then he signed my
picture, “To Brian, Make it—Steven Spielberg.”
Where is that picture now?
Herzlinger: It’s actually in my bedroom, framed. And here’s the best part:
Three years later, I got my internship at Amblin, and it took me a year of
phone calls from my dorm room in New York once a month to talk with Pat
from Human Resources to secure that internship. Got the internship, ran into
Spielberg in the hall—and when you get the internship, they say, “Listen, don’t
talk to Steven, don’t look him in the eye unless he talks to you first.”
And I’m like, “Come on, he’s a guy! He puts his pants on one leg at a time.”
And I was making a photocopy of this script and walking out of the Xerox
room and Spielberg was walking out of his office. And now he and I are walking
in the same direction, down the same hallway, side by side, just the two of
us. And I looked at him and I say, “How’s it going, Mr. Spielberg?”
And then he pats me on the shoulder, and he says, “Good, good. How are
you doing?” And I said, “I’m good. This is gonna sound really weird, you’re
not gonna remember this, but I met you three years ago at the U.S. Naval
Academy in Annapolis.”