Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch Jaws, the American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg.
The Grandma loves this film and this director, and she remembers when she assisted to the premiere on a day like today in 1975.
Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name.
In the film, a man-eating great white shark attacks beach goers at a summer resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it with the help of a marine biologist (RichardDreyfuss) and a professional shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Murray Hamilton plays the mayor, and Lorraine Gary portrays Brody's wife. The screenplay is credited to Benchley, who wrote the first drafts, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb,who rewrote the script during principal photography.
Shot mostly on location on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, Jaws was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and resultantly had a troubled production, going over budget and past schedule.
As the art department's mechanical sharks often malfunctioned, Spielberg decided mostly to suggest the shark's presence, employing an ominous and minimalist theme created by composer John Williams to indicate its impending appearances.
Spielberg and others have compared this suggestive approach to that of director Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures gave the film what was then an exceptionally wide release for a major studio picture, on over 450 screens, accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign with a heavy emphasis on television spots and tie-in merchandise.
Jaws was the prototypical summer blockbuster, regarded as a watershed moment in motion picture history, and it won several awards for its music and editing. It was the highest-grossing film until the release of Star Wars in 1977. Both films were pivotal in establishing the modern Hollywood business model, which pursues high box-office returns from action and adventure films with simple high-concept premises, released during the summer in thousands of theatres and advertised heavily.
Jaws was followed by three sequels (without the involvement of Spielberg or Benchley) and many imitative thrillers.
In 2001, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Principal photography began May 2, 1974, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, selected after consideration was given to eastern Long Island. Brown explained later that the production needed a vacation area that was lower middle class enough so that an appearance of a shark would destroy the tourist business.
Martha's Vineyard was also chosen
because the surrounding ocean had a sandy bottom that never dropped
below 11 m for 19 km out from shore, which allowed the mechanical sharks
to operate while also beyond sight of land.
As Spielberg wanted to film the aquatic sequences relatively close-up to resemble what people see while swimming, cinematographer Bill Butler devised new equipment to facilitate marine and underwater shooting, including a rig to keep the camera stable regardless of tide and a sealed submersible camera box.
Spielberg asked the art department to avoid red in both scenery and wardrobe, so that the blood from the attacks would be the only red element and cause a bigger shock.
John Williams composed the film's score, which earned him an AcademyAward and was later ranked the sixth-greatest score by the American Film Institute. The main shark theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes -variously identified as E and F or F and F sharp- became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger.
Williams described the theme as grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable. The piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound a little more threatening.
When Williams first demonstrated his idea to Spielberg, playing just the two notes on a piano, Spielberg was said to have laughed, thinking that it was a joke. As Williams saw similarities between Jaws and pirate movies, at other points in the score he evoked pirate music, which he called primal, but fun and entertaining. Calling for rapid, percussive string playing, the score contains echoes of La mer by Claude Debussy as well as Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is the most notable artistic antecedent to Jaws. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale.
Quint's monologue reveals a similar obsession with sharks; even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of the white shark. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to the death of Ahab in Melville's novel.
A direct reference to these similarities may be found in Spielberg's draft of the screenplay, which introduces Quint watching the film version of Moby-Dick; his continuous laughter prompts other audience members to get up and leave the theatre.
However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from the film's star, Gregory Peck, its copyright holder. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb also drew comparisons to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Jaws is... a titanic struggle, like Melville or Hemingway.
The underwater scenes shot from the shark's point of view have been compared with passages in two 1950s horror films, Creature from the Black Lagoon and TheMonster That Challenged the World.
Gottlieb named two science fiction productions from the same era as influences on how the shark was depicted, or not: The Thing from Another World, which Gottlieb described as a great horror film where you only see the monster in the last reel; and It Came From Outer Space, where the suspense was built up because the creature was always off-camera.
Jaws opened in 409 theatres with a record $7 million weekend and grossed a record $21,116,354 in its first 10 days, recouping its production costs. It grossed $100 million in its first 59 days from 954 play dates.
In just 78 days, it overtook The Godfather as the highest-grossing film at the North American box office, sailing past that picture's earnings of $86 million and became the first film to earn $100 million in US theatrical rentals.
Its initial release ultimately brought in $123.1 million in rentals. Theatrical re-releases in 1976 and Summer 1979 brought its total rentals to $133.4 million.
Jaws received mostly positive reviews upon release.
Jaws won three Academy Awards, those being for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery, and John Carter). It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to OneFlew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Spielberg greatly resented the fact that he was not nominated for Best Director. Along with the Oscar, John Williams's score won the Grammy Award, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, and the Golden Globe Award.
To her Academy Award, Verna Fields added the American Cinema Editors' Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film. Jaws was chosen Favorite Movie at the People's Choice Awards.
'Jaws' was the first A-list picture that was released like an exploitation picture. They made a lot of money with that picture because they could save a lot of money on advertising. Instead of having a full-page ad in 'The New York Times' for one theater, they had it for 100 theaters.
It is another day in Brussels for The Grandma and a newopportunitytodiscoveramazing things about the city and its citizens.
Today, The Grandma has visited the Musée Hergé to homage GeorgesProsperRemi, also known as Hergé,father of Tintin one of the most fantastic comics of the history of this wonderful art. The Grandma loves Belgian comics, especially Tintin and Eric Castel and she has enjoyed a lot this visit.
Georges Prosper Remi (22 May 1907-3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating TheAdventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. He was also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick & Flupke (1930–1940) and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko (1936–1957). His works were executed in his distinct ligne claire drawing style.
Born to a lower-middle-class family in Etterbeek, Brussels, Hergé began his career by contributing illustrations to Scouting magazines, developing his first comic series, The Adventures of Totor, for Le Boy-Scout Belge in 1926. Working for the conservative Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, he created TheAdventures of Tintin in 1929 on the advice of its editor Norbert Wallez.
Revolving around the actions of boy reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy,the series' early installments -Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin in America- were designed as conservative propaganda for children. Domestically successful, after serialisation the stories were published in book form, with Hergé continuing the series and also developing both the Quick & Flupke and Jo, Zette and Jocko series for Le Vingtième Siècle.
Influenced by his friend Zhang Chongren, from 1934 Hergé placed far greater emphasis on conducting background research for his stories, resulting in increased realism from The Blue Lotus onward. Following the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, Le Vingtième Siècle was closed, but Hergé continued his series in Le Soir, a popular newspaper controlled by the Nazi administration.
After the Allied liberation of Belgium in 1944, Le Soir was shut down and its staff-including Hergé- accused of having been collaborators. An official investigation was launched, and while no charges were brought against Hergé,in subsequent years he repeatedly faced accusations of having been a traitor and collaborator. With Raymond Leblanc he established Tintin magazine in 1946, through which he serialised new Adventures of Tintin stories.
Tintin and his French covers
As the magazine's artistic director, he also oversaw the publication of other successful comics series, such as Edgar P. Jacobs' Blake and Mortimer.
In 1950 he established StudiosHergé as a team to aid him in his ongoing projects; prominent staff members Jacques Martin and Bob de Moor greatly contributed to subsequent volumes of TheAdventures of Tintin. Amid personal turmoil following the collapse of his first marriage, he produced Tintin in Tibet, his personal favourite of his works. In later years he became less prolific, and unsuccessfully attempted to establish himself as an abstract artist.
Hergé's works have been widely acclaimed for their clarity of draughtsmanship and meticulous, well-researched plots. They have been the source of a wide range of adaptations, in theatre, radio, television, cinema, and computer gaming. He remains a strong influence on the comic book medium, particularly in Europe. He is widely celebrated in Belgium: a Hergé Museum was established in Louvain-la-Neuve in 2009.
Georges Prosper Remi was born on 22 May 1907 in his parental home in Etterbeek, Brussels, a central suburb in the capital city of Belgium. His was a lower-middle-class family. His Walloon father, Alexis Remi, worked in a confectionery factory, whilst his Flemish mother, Elisabeth Dufour, was a housewife.
Married on 18 January 1905, they moved into a house at 25 rue Cranz, now 33 rue Philippe Baucq, where Hergé was born, although a year later they moved to a house at 34 rue de Theux.
His primary language was his father's French, but growing up in the bilingual Brussels, he also learned Dutch, developing a Marollien accent from his maternal grandmother.
Hergé developed a character named Tintin as a Belgian boy reporter who could travel the world with his fox terrier, Snowy -Milou in the original French- basing him in large part on his earlier character of Totor and also on his own brother, Paul. Degrelle later falsely claimed that Tintin had been based on him, while he and Hergé fell out when Degrelle used one of his designs without permission; they settled out-of-court.
English covers
Although Hergé wanted to send his character to the United States, Wallez instead ordered him to set his adventure in the Soviet Union, acting as a work of anti-socialist propaganda for children.
The result, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, began serialisation in Le Petit Vingtième on 10 January 1929, and ran until 8 May 1930. Popular in Francophone Belgium, Wallez organized a publicity stunt at the Gare de Nord station, following which he organized the publication of the story in book form. The popularity of the story led to an increase in sales, and so Wallez granted Hergé two assistants, Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul "Jam" Jamin.
In January 1930, Hergé introduced Quick & Flupke, a new comic strip about two street kids from Brussels, in the pages of Le Petit Vingtième. At Wallez's direction, in June he began serialisation of the second Tintin adventure, Tintinin the Congo, designed to encourage colonial sentiment towards the Belgian Congo. Authored in a paternalistic style that depicted the Congolese as childlike idiots, in later decades it would be accused of racism; however, at the time it was un-controversial and popular, with further publicity stunts held to increase sales.
For the third adventure, Tintin in America, serialised from September 1931 to October 1932, Hergé finally got to deal with a scenario of his own choice, although he used the work to push an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist agenda in keeping with the paper's ultra-conservative ideology. Although the Adventures of Tintin had been serialised in the French Catholic Cœurs Vaillants since 1930, he was soon receiving syndication requests from Swiss and Portuguese newspapers too. Though wealthier than most Belgians at his age, and despite increasing success, he remained an unfazed conservative young man dedicated to his work.
Hergé sought work elsewhere too, creating The Lovable Mr. Mops cartoon for the Bon Marché department store, and The Adventures of Tim the Squirrel Out West for the rival L'Innovation department store.
In November 1932 Hergé announced that the following month he would send Tintin on an adventure to Asia. Although initially titled The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in the Orient, it would later be renamed Cigars of the Pharaoh. A mystery story, the plot began in Egypt before proceeding to Arabia and India, during which the recurring characters of Thomson and Thompson and Rastapopoulos were introduced.
Milou & Tintin
Through his friend Charles Lesne, Hergé was hired to produce illustrations for the company Casterman, and in late 1933 they proposed taking over the publication of both The Adventures of Tintin and Quick and Flupke in book form, to which Hergé agreed; the first Casterman book was the collected volume of Cigars. Continuing to subsidise his comic work with commercial advertising, in January 1934 he also founded the Atelier Hergé advertising company with two partners, but it was liquidated after six months.
From August 1934 to October 1935, Le Petit Vingtième serialised Tintin's next adventure, TheBlue Lotus, which was set in China and dealt with the recent Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Hergé hadbeen greatly influenced in the production of the work by his friend Zhang Chongren, a Catholic Chinese student studying at Brussels' Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, to whom he had been introduced in May 1934. For The Blue Lotus, Hergé devoted far more attention to accuracy, resulting in a largely realistic portrayal of China. As a result, The Blue Lotus has been widely hailed as Hergé's first masterpiece and a benchmark in the series' development. Casterman published it in book form, also insisting that Hergé include colour plates in both the volume and in reprints of America and Cigars.
In 1936, they also began production of Tintin merchandise, something Hergé supported, having ideas of an entire shop devoted to The Adventures of Tintin,something that would come to fruition 50 years later. Nevertheless, while his serialised comics proved lucrative, the collected volumes sold less well, something Hergé blamed on Casterman, urging them to do more to market his books.
Hergé's next Tintin story, The Broken Ear (1935–1937), was the first for which the plot synopsis had been outlined from the start, being a detective story that took Tintin to South America.
The next Tintin adventure was The Black Island (1937–1938), which saw the character travel to Britain to battle counterfeiters and introduced a new antagonist, the German Dr. Müller. Hergé followed this with King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938–1939), in which Tintin saves the fictional Eastern European country of Syldavia from being invaded by its expansionist neighbour, Borduria; the event was an anti-fascist satire of Nazi Germany's expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia.
In May 1939, Hergé moved to a new house in Watermael-Boitsfort, although following the German invasion of Poland, he was conscripted into the Belgian army and temporarily stationed in Herenthout. Demobbed within the month, he returned to Brussels and adopted a more explicit anti-German stance when beginning his next Tintin adventure, Land of Black Gold, which was set in the Middle East and featured Dr. Müller sabotaging oil lines.
Captain Haddock
As the Belgian Army clashed with the invading Germans, Hergé and his wife fled by car to France along with tens of thousands of other Belgians, first staying in Paris and then heading south to Puy-de-Dôme, where they remained for six weeks.
On 28 May, King Leopold III of the Belgians surrendered the country to the German army to prevent further killing; a move that Hergé supported. He followed the king's request that all of those Belgians who had fled the country return, arriving back in Brussels on 30 June. There, he found that his house had been occupied as an office for the German army's Propagandastaffel, and also faced financial trouble, as he owed back taxes yet was unable to access his financial reserves.
All Belgian publications were now under the control of the German occupying force, who refused Le Petit Vingtième permission to continue publication. Instead, Hergé was offered employment as a cartoonist for Le Pays Réel by its editor, the Rexist Victor Matthys; however, Hergé perceived Le Pays Réel as an explicitly political publication, and thus declined the position.
Instead, he took up a position with Le Soir, Belgium's largest Francophone daily newspaper. Confiscated from its original owners, the German authorities had permitted Le Soir to be re-opened under the directorship of De Doncker, although it remained firmly under Nazi control, supporting the German war effort and espousing anti-Semitism. After joining the Le Soir team on 15 October, Hergé was involved in the creation of a children's supplement, Soir-Jeunesse, aided by Jamin and Jacques Van Melkebeke.
He relaunched The Adventures of Tintin with a new story, The Crab with the Golden Claws, in which Tintin pursued drug smugglers in North Africa; the story was a turning point in the series for its introduction of Captain Haddock, who would become a major character in the rest of the Adventures. This story, like the subsequent Adventures of Tintin published in Le Soir, would reject the political themes present in earlier stories, instead remaining firmly neutral. Hergé also included new Quick & Flupke gags in the supplement, as well as illustrations for serialised stories by Edgar Allan Poe and the Brothers Grimm.
While some Belgians were upset that Hergé was willing to work for a newspaper controlled by the occupying Nazi administration, he was heavily enticed by the size of Le Soir's readership, which reached 600,000. With Van Melkebeke, Hergé put together two Tintin plays. The first, Tintin in the Indies, appeared at Brussels' Theatre des Galeries in April 1941, while the second, Mr Boullock's Disappearance, was performed there in December. From October 1941 to May 1942, Le Soir serialised Hergé's next Tintin adventure, The Shooting Star,followed by publication as a single volume by Casterman.
Tintin's characters
Casterman felt that the black-and-white volumes of The Adventures of Tintinwere not selling as well as colour comic books, and thus that the series should be produced in colour. Hergé adapted most of his previous Adventures of Tintin into 62-page colour versions.
Hergé's next Adventure of Tintinwould be The Secret of the Unicorn,serialised in Le Soir from June 1942. The Secret of the Unicornmarked the first half of a story arc that was completed in Red Rackham's Treasure, serialised in Le Soir from February 1943; in this story, Tintin and Haddock search for the pirate's treasure in the Caribbean, with the character of Professor Calculus being introduced to the series. Following Red Rackham's Treasure, Hergé drew illustrations for a serialised story titled Dupont et Dupond, détectives, authored by the newspaper's crime editor, Paul Kinnet.
In September 1943, De Becker was removed as editor of Le Soir. In autumn 1943, Hergé had decided that he wanted Jacobs to collaborate with him on The Adventures of Tintin. Although initially hesitant, Jacobs eventually agreed, adopting the paid position in January 1944. Jacobs and Hergé became close collaborators and greatly influenced each other, while together they developed the plot for the next Adventure of Tintin, The Seven Crystal Balls, which began serialisation in Le Soir in December 1943.
As the Allied troops liberated Brussels from German occupation, Le Soir ceased publication on 2 September 1944, partway through its serialisation of The Seven Crystal Balls. Hergé was arrested on 3 September, having been named as a collaborator in a Resistance document known as the Gallery of Traitors. This would be the first of four incidents in which Hergé was arrested -by the State Security, the Judiciary Police, the Belgian National Movement, and the Front for Independence respectively- during the course of which he spent one night in jail.
On 5 September the entire staff of Le Soir were fired and a new editorial team introduced, while on 8 September the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) issued a proclamation announcing that any journalist who had helped produce a newspaper during the occupation was for the time being barred from practising his profession.
Blacklisted, Hergé was now unemployed. Further, he was publicly lampooned as a collaborator by a newspaper closely associated with the Belgian Resistance, La Patrie, which issued a satirical strip titled The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Nazis.
Tintin on Brussels Airlines
Although unable to work for the press, Hergé continued to re-draw and colour the older Adventures of Tintinfor publication in book form by Casterman, completing the second version of Tintin in the Congo and starting on King Ottokar's Sceptre.
Casterman supported Hergé throughout his ordeal, for which he always remained grateful. In October 1945, Hergé was approached by Raymond Leblanc, a former member of a conservative Resistance group, the National Royalist Movement, and his associates André Sinave and Albert Debaty. The trio were planning on launching a weekly magazine for children, and Leblanc -who had fond childhood memories of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets- thought Hergé would be ideal for it. Hergé agreed, and Leblanc obtained clearance papers for him, allowing him to work.
Concerned about the judicial investigation into Hergé's wartime affiliations, Leblanc convinced William Ugeux, a leader of the Belgian Resistance who was now in charge of censorship and certificates of good citizenship, to look into the comic creator's file. Ugeux concluded that Hergé had been a blunderer rather than a traitor for his work at Le Soir.
The decision as to whether Hergé would stand trial belonged to the general auditor of the Military Tribunal, Walter Jean Ganshof van der Meersch. He closed the case on 22 December 1945, declaring that in regard to the particularly inoffensive character of the drawings published by Remi, bringing him before a war tribunal would be inappropriate and risky.
Now free from threat of prosecution, Hergé continued to support his colleagues at Le Soir who were being charged as collaborators; six of them were sentenced to death, and others to lengthy prison sentences. Among those sentenced to death was Hergé's friend, Jamin, although his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In May 1946, Hergé was issued a certificate of good citizenship, which became largely necessary to obtain employment in post-war Belgium.Celebrations were marred by his mother's death in April 1946; she was aged 60.
Hergé later described it as an experience of absolute intolerance. It was horrible, horrible! He considered the post-war trials of alleged collaborators a great injustice inflicted upon many innocent people, and never forgave Belgian society for the way that he had been treated, although he hid this from his public persona.
The first issue of Tintin magazine was published on 26 September 1946. In 1947 a Belgian film adaptation of The Crab with the Golden Claws was produced, and believing that cinematic adaptations were a good way to proceed, Hergé contacted Disney Studios in the United States; they declined his offer to adapt The Adventures of Tintin for the silver screen.
Tintin visits the Palais Royal, Brussels
Many Belgians were highly critical of the magazine due to its connections with Hergé,who was still deemed a collaborator and traitor by many.
On 6 April 1950 Hergé established Studios Hergé as a public company. The Studios were based in his Avenue Delleur house in Brussels, with Hergé making a newly purchased country house in Céroux-Mousty. The Studios would provide both personal support to Hergé and technical support for his ongoing work.
During the early 1950s, a number of those convicted for collaborating with the Nazi occupiers were freed from prison. Sympathetic to their plight, Hergé lent money to some and aided others in getting jobs at Tintin magazine, much to Leblanc's annoyance.
Hergé had developed the idea of setting an Adventure of Tintin on the moon while producing Prisoners of the Sun. He began serialisation of DestinationMoon, the first of a two part arc followed by Explorers on the Moon, in Tintin magazine in March 1950.
In September 1950, Hergé
broke off the story, feeling the need for a break from work, having
fallen back into clinical depression. He and Germaine went on holiday to
Gland before returning to Brussels in late September. Many readers sent
letters to Tintin asking why Explorers on the Moon was no longer being
serialised, with a rumour emerging that Hergé had died. Explorers of the
Moon would resume after an eighteen-month hiatus, returning in April
1952. Alongside his work on the new stories, Hergé also made use of the
Studios in revising more of his early works.
In September 1958, Tintin magazine moved its headquarters to a newly constructed building near the Gare du Midi. Hergé continued to feud with Leblanc over the direction of the magazine; his constant absences had led to him being replaced as artistic director, and he demanded that he be reinstated.
Hergé's book sales were higher than ever, and translations were being produced for the British, Spanish, and Scandinavian markets. He was receiving international press attention, with articles on his work appearing in France-Observateur, The Listener, and The Times Literary Supplement.
Radio adaptations of The Adventures of Tintin were produced, as was an animated cartoon series produced by Belvision Studios, Hergé's Adventuresof Tintin. Two live-action films were also produced, Tintin and the GoldenFleece (1961) and Tintin and the Blue Oranges (1964), the former of which Hergé had been closely involved with.
Tintin by Steven Spielberg, 2011
In 1962, Hergé decided he wanted to paint. He chose Louis Van Lint, one of the most respected Belgian abstract painters at the time, whose work he liked a lot, to be his private teacher.
Hergé took up painting as a hobby, producing abstract art works which were influenced by the styles of Joan Miró and Serge Poliakoff. Spending less time on new Adventures of Tintin, from June to December 1965 Tintin magazineserialised a redrawn and newly coloured version of The Black Island prepared by staff at Studios Hergé. Supported by his studio, Hergé produced TheCalculus Affair between 1954 until 1956 which was followed by The Red Sea Sharks in 1956 to 1957.
In the 1960s, Hergé became increasingly annoyed at the success of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's Asterix comic book series, which various commentators had described as eclipsing The Adventures of Tintin as the foremost comic in the Franco-Belgian tradition.
Hoping to imitate the success of the recent animated films Asterix the Gaul (1967) and Asterix and Cleopatra (1968), Hergé agreed to the production of two animated Belvision films based on the Adventures of Tintin. The first, Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969), was based on pre-existing comics, whereas the second, Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) was an original story written by Greg.
In 1982 the American filmmaker Steven Spielberg requested the film rights for a live-action adaptation of one of The Adventures of Tintin, a prospect that excited Hergé, but the project never came to fruition until 2011.
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of The Adventures of Tintin in 1979, a celebratory event was held at Brussels' Hilton hotel, while an exhibit on LeMusée imaginaire de Tintin was held at the Palais de Beaux-Arts.
In April 1971 Hergé visited the United States for the first time, primarily to visit a liver specialist in Rochester, Minnesota; however, on the trip he also visited a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, but was shocked at the conditions in which their inhabitants lived. On this visit he also spent time in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Kansas City.
In April 1972 he travelled to New York City for an international conference on the strip cartoon, and there presented Mayor John Lindsay with a cartoon of Tintin visiting the city and also met with the pop artist Andy Warhol. Several years later, in 1977, Warhol visited Europe, where he produced a pop art portrait of Hergé. In April 1973, Hergé took up an invite to visit Taiwan by the nation's government, in recognition of his promotion of Chinese culture in The Blue Lotus.During the visit he also spent time in Thailand and Bali.
On 25 February 1983, Hergé suffered cardiac arrest and was hospitalised in intensive care at Brussels' Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc. He died there on 3 March. His death received front page coverage in numerous francophone newspapers, including Libération and Le Monde. In his will, he had left Fanny as his sole heir.
In November 1986, Fanny closed Studios Hergé, replacing it with the HergéFoundation.
Today, The Grandma continuesrepairing her blog. She has received the wonderful visit of TinaPicotes,a closer friend, who is an expert in painting, music and cinema.
They have been talking about Steven Spielberg, one of the best directors of the history of cinema and an icon for generations thanks to great movies like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the saga of Indiana Jones, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan.
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the founding pioneers of the New Hollywood era and one of the most popular directors and producers in film history.
Spielberg started in Hollywood directing television and several minor theatrical releases. He became a household name as the director of Jaws (1975), which was critically and commercially successful and is considered the first summer blockbuster. His subsequent releases focused typically on science fiction/adventure films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and JurassicPark (1993), which became archetypes of modern Hollywood escapist filmmaking.
Spielberg transitioned into addressing serious issues in his later work with The Color Purple (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), Schindler's List (1993), Amistad (1997), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). He has largely adhered to this practice during the 21st century, with Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), and The Post (2017).
He co-founded Amblin
Entertainment and DreamWorks Studios, where he has also served as a
producer or executive producer for several successful film trilogies,
tetralogies and more including the Gremlins, Back to the Future, Menin
Black, and the Transformers series. He later transitioned into producing
several games within the video game industry.
Spielberg is one of the American film industry's most critically successful filmmakers, with praise for his directing talent and versatility, and he has wonthe Academy Award for Best Director twice. Some of his movies are also among the highest-grossing movies of all-time, while his total work makes him the highest-grossing film director in history. His net worth is estimated to be more than $3 billion.
Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother, Leah was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold Spielberg was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His family was Orthodox Jewish.
Harrison Ford & Steven Spielberg in Indiana Jones
Spielberg's paternal
grandparents were Jewish-Russian immigrants who settled in Cincinnati in
the 1900s; his grandmother was from Sudylkiv, while his grandfather was
from Kamianets-Podilskyi.
In 1950, his family moved to Haddon Township,
New Jersey, when his father took a job with RCA. Three years later, the
family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from
1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis.
As a child, Spielberg faced difficulty reconciling being an Orthodox Jew with the perception of him by other children he played with.
It isn't something I enjoy admitting, he once said, but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times. Spielberg also said he suffered from acts of anti-Semitic prejudice and bullying: In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.
At age 12, he made his first home movie: a train wreck involving his toy Lionel trains. Throughout his early teens, and after entering high school, Spielberg continued to make amateur, 8 mm, adventure films.
In 1958, he became a Boy
Scout and fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by
making a nine-minute, 8 mm film entitled The Last Gunfight. Years later,
Spielberg recalled to a magazine interviewer, My dad's still-camera
was broken, so I asked the scoutmaster if I could tell a story with my
father's movie camera. He said yes, and I got an idea to do a Western. I
made it and got my merit badge. That was how it all started."
At age 13, while living in Phoenix, Spielberg won a prize for a 40-minute, war film he titled Escape to Nowhere, using a cast composed of other high school friends. That motivated him to make 15 more amateur, 8 mm films.
Some of the films he cited as early influences that he grew up watching include the Godzilla kaiju film King of the Monsters (1956), which he called the most masterful of all the dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening, as well as titles such as Captains Courageous (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and particularly Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which he cited as the film that set me on my journey.
In
1963, at age 16, Spielberg wrote and directed his first independent
film, a 140-minute science fiction adventure called Firelight, which
would later inspire Close Encounters. The film was made for $500, most
of which came from his father, and was shown in a local cinema for one
evening, which earned back its cost.
ET & Steven Spielberg
After
attending Arcadia High School in Phoenix for three years, his family
next moved to Saratoga, California where he later graduated from
Saratoga High School in 1965. He attained the rank of Eagle Scout. His
parents divorced while he was still in school, and, soon after, he
graduated.
Spielberg moved to Los Angeles, staying initially with his father. His long-term goal was to become a film director. His three sisters and mother remained in Saratoga. In Los Angeles, he applied to the University of Southern California's film school but was turned down because of his C grade average. He then applied and was admitted to California State University, Long Beach where he became a brother of Theta Chi Fraternity. Spielberg attended Brookdale Community College for his undergrad.
While still a student,
he was offered a small, unpaid, intern job at Universal Studios with the
editing department. He was later given the opportunity to make a short
film for theatrical release, the 26-minute, 35 mm Amblin', which he
wrote and directed. Studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg was impressed
by the film, which had won a number of awards, and offered Spielberg a
seven-year directing contract. It made him the youngest director ever to
be signed for a long-term deal with a major Hollywood studio.
He subsequently dropped
out of college to begin professionally directing TV productions with
Universal. Spielberg later returned to California State University, Long
Beach and completed his BA degree in Film and Electronic Arts in 2002.
His first professional TV job came when he was hired to direct one of the segments for the 1969 pilot episode of Night Gallery, written by Rod Serling and starring Joan Crawford.
Studio producers Richard
D. Zanuck and David Brown offered Spielberg the director's chair for
Jaws, a thriller-horror film based on the Peter Benchley novel about an
enormous killer shark.
Spielberg and actor
Richard Dreyfuss re-convened to work on a film about UFOs, which became
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). One of the rare films both
written and directed by Spielberg, Close Encounters was a critical and
box office hit, giving Spielberg his first Best Director nomination from
the Academy as well as earning six other Academy Awards nominations.
Liam Neeson & Steven Spielberg in Schindler's List
Spielberg teamed with Star Wars creator and friend George Lucas on an action adventure film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first of the Indiana Jones films. The archaeologist and adventurer hero Indiana Jones was played by Harrison Ford (whom Lucas had previously cast in his Star Wars films as Han Solo). The film was considered an homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
It became the biggest film at the box office in 1981, and the recipient of numerous Oscar nominations including Best Director (Spielberg's second nomination) and Best Picture (the second Spielberg film to be nominated for Best Picture). Raiders is still considered a landmark example of the action-adventure genre. The film also led to Ford's casting in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
Spielberg returned to the science fiction genre with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. It was the story of a young boy and the alien he befriends, who was accidentally left behind by his companions and is attempting to return home. E.T. went on to become the top-grossing film of all time. It was also nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, winning 4 of them.
Between
1982 and 1985, Spielberg produced three high-grossing films:
Poltergeist (for which he also co-wrote the screenplay), a big-screen
adaptation of The Twilight Zone (for which he directed the segment Kick
The Can), and The Goonies (Spielberg, executive producer, also wrote
the story on which the screenplay was based). Spielberg appeared in a
cameo on Cyndi Lauper's music video for the movie's theme song, The
Goonies 'R' Good Enough.
His next directorial feature was the Raiders prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Teaming up once again with Lucas and Ford, the film was plagued with uncertainty for the material and script. This film and the Spielberg-produced Gremlins led to the creation of the PG-13 rating due to the high level of violence in films targeted at younger audiences.
In 1985, Spielberg released The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, about a generation of empowered African-American women during depression-era America.
In 1987, as China began
opening to Western capital investment, Spielberg shot the first American
film in Shanghai since the 1930s, an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's
autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, starring John Malkovich and a
young Christian Bale. After two forays into more serious dramatic films,
Spielberg then directed the third Indiana Jones film, 1989's Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade.
Steven Spielberg
In 1991, Spielberg directed Hook, about a middle-aged Peter Pan, played by Robin Williams, who returns to Neverland. Despite innumerable rewrites and creative changes coupled with mixed reviews, the film proved popular with audiences, making over $300 million worldwide from a $70 million budget.
In 1993, Spielberg returned to the adventure genre with the film version of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, about a theme park with genetically engineered dinosaurs.
Spielberg's next film, Schindler's List, was based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a man who risked his life to save 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust. Schindler's List earned Spielberg his first Academy Award for Best Director, it also won Best Picture. With the film a huge success at the box office, Spielberg used the profits to set up the Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization that archives filmed testimony of Holocaust survivors. In 1997, the American Film Institute listed it among the 10 Greatest American Films ever Made (#9) which moved up to (#8) when the list was remade in 2007.
His next film, Amistad, was based on a true story, like Schindler's List, specifically about an African slave rebellion.
His 1998 theatrical release was the World War II film Saving Private Ryan, about a group of U.S. soldiers led by Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks) sent to bring home a paratrooper whose three older brothers were killed in the same twenty-four hours, June 5–6, of the Normandy landing.
In 2001, Spielberg
filmed fellow director and friend Stanley Kubrick's final project, A.I.
Artificial Intelligence which Kubrick was unable to begin during his
lifetime.
Spielberg and actor Tom Cruise collaborated for the first time for the futuristic neo-noir Minority Report, based upon the science fiction short story written by Philip K. Dick about a Washington D.C. police captain in the year 2054 who has been foreseen to murder a man he has not yet met.
Also in 2005, Spielberg directed a modern adaptation of War of the Worlds, a co-production of Paramount and DreamWorks, based on the H. G. Wells book of the same name. Spielberg had been a huge fan of the book and the original 1953 film.
Spielberg's film Munich, about the events following the 1972 Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games, was his second film essaying Jewish relations in the world, the first being Schindler's List.
Spielberg directed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In early 2009, Spielberg shot the first film in a planned trilogy of motion capture films based on The Adventures of Tintin, written by Belgian artist Hergé, with Peter Jackson.
Steven Spielberg
Spielberg next directed the historical drama film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as United States President Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln.
Spielberg directed 2015's Bridge of Spies, a Cold War thriller based on the 1960 U-2 incident, and focusing on James B. Donovan's negotiations with the Soviets for the release of pilot Gary Powers after his aircraft was shot down over Soviet territory.
Spielberg directed Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in The Post, an account of The Washington Post's printing of the Pentagon Papers.
Spielberg grew up in a Jewish household, including having a bar mitzvah ceremony in Phoenix when he turned 13. He grew away from Judaism after his family moved to various cities during his high school years, where they became the only Jews in the neighborhood. Before those years, his family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends and nearby relatives.
He remembers his grandparents telling him about their life in Russia, where they were subjected to religious persecution, causing them to eventually flee to the United States. He was made aware of the Holocaust by his parents, who he says talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind. His father had lost between sixteen and twenty relatives during the Holocaust.
Spielbergrediscovered the honor of being a Jew, he says, before he made Schindler's List, when he married Kate Capshaw. Until then, having become a filmmaker, he only felt his connection to Judaism when he visited his parents. He says he made the film partly to create something that would confirm my Judaism to my family and myself.
Today, The Grandma has decided to stay at home watching George Lucas' films to homage him in his 75th anniversary.
The Grandma loves Star Wars, IndianaJones, Willow and ET, and it is always a great pleasure watching these films once and once again. Cinema is a beautiful art that explores the best and the worst of the human genre.
George Walton Lucas Jr., born May 14, 1944, is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. Lucas is known for creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic. He was the chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012.
After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), based on his earlier student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure.
Hamill, Lucas & Ford in Star Wars
His next work as a writer-director was the film American Graffiti(1973),inspired by his youth in early 1960s Modesto, California,andproduced through the newly founded Lucasfilm.
Lucas' next film, the epic space opera Star Wars(1977), had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and cowrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).
With director Steven Spielberg, he created the Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Temple of Doom (1984), and The Last Crusade (1989). He also produced and wrote a variety of films through Lucasfilm in the 1980s and 1990s and during this same period Lucas' LucasArts developed high-impact video games, including Maniac Mansion (1987), The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and Grim Fandango (1998) alongside many video games based on the Star Wars universe.
In 1997, Lucas rereleased the Star Wars trilogy as part of a Special Edition, featuring several alterations; home media versions with further changes were released in 2004 and 2011. He returned to directing with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, comprising The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005). He later collaborated on served as executive producer for the war film Red Tails (2012) and wrote the CGI film Strange Magic (2015).
George Lucas & Mark Hamill in Star Wars
Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successfulfilmmakers and has been nominated for four Academy Awards. His films are among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the North American box office, adjusted for ticket-price inflation.
Lucas is considered a significant figure in the New Hollywood era. Lucas then set his sights on adapting Flash Gordon, an adventure serial from his childhood that he fondly remembered. When he was unable to obtain the rights, he set out to write an original space adventure that would eventually become Star Wars.
Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. After the success of American Graffiti and prior to the beginning of filming on Star Wars, Lucas was encouraged to renegotiate for a higher fee for writing and directing Star Wars than the $150,000 agreed.
Following the release of the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and producer, including on the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, television, and other media.
Lucas acted as a writer and executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, commissioning Irvin Kershner to direct The Empire Strikes Back, and Richard Marquand to direct Return of the Jedi, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. He also acted as executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films, which his colleague and good friend Steven Spielberg directed.
The animation studio Pixar was founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, one third of the ComputerDivision of Lucasfilm.
Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer.
In 1997, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas returned to the original trilogy and made numerous modifications using newly available digital technology, releasing them in theaters as the Star Wars Special Edition.
The first Star Wars prequel was finished and released in 1999 as Episode I-The Phantom Menace, which would be the first film Lucas had directed in over two decades. Following the release of the first prequel, Lucas announced that he would also be directing the next two, and began working on Episode II.
The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. It was completed and released in 2002 as Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones.
The final prequel, Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith, began production in 2002 and was released in 2005.
Numerous fans and critics considered the prequels inferior to the original trilogy, though they were box office successes nonetheless.
Harrison Ford, George Lucas & Steven Spielberg
From 2003 to 2005, Lucas also served as an executive producer on Star Wars: Clone Wars, an animated microseries on Cartoon Network created by Genndy Tartakovsky, that bridged the events between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
Lucas collaborated with Jeff Nathanson as a writer of the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg.
In January 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from producing large blockbuster films and instead re-focusing his career on smaller, independently budgeted features.
Since 2014, Lucas is working as a creative consultant on the Star Wars sequel trilogy, including work on the first film, Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.
In 2016, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first film of a Star Wars anthology series was released. It told the story of the rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star featured in the original Star Wars film, and it was reported that Lucas liked it more than The Force Awakens.
In 2017, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was released, which Lucas described as beautifully made.
Lucas has had cursory involvement with Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
