In 1975, the name “Steven” began to take on mythic proportions in Hollywood circles. A wunderkind director named Steven Spielberg helmed “Jaws” for Universal, and it has since been credited — and blamed — for ushering in the era of the blockbuster. Since then, studios have been seeking their profits in bulk. Ideas became high-concept. Summer fare became tentpole pics. If an audience-pleasing popcorn movie doesn’t set box-office records, it’s a bomb.
Of course, this particular Steven eventually parlayed his success with such mainstream fare into one of the most amazing and distinguished careers of anyone who has ever gazed through an eyepiece. One need only remember that Spielberg directed and released both “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List” in the same calendar year of 1992 to comprehend the depth and breadth of his talents.
With that in mind, Hollywood has another Stephen on the horizon — different spelling, shorter resumé, hardly a household name. Yet. But the start of Stephen Sommers’ career is eerily reminiscent of the master.
Could this Stephen be the new Steven?
Similar starting pointsBefore you choke on your morning coffee at the mere notion of putting Steven and Stephen in the same sentence, realize that everybody has to start somewhere. Before he became who he is, Spielberg was an eager kid with a rare gift, a unique imagination and a middle-class sensibility. Pictures like “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “ET: The Extra-Terrestrial” identified him as a director who could tell a story on a grand scale and use his visual genius to create spectacle for mass consumption.
Sommers is best known for creating “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns” at the same studio — Universal — that served as film school for Spielberg. This week, Sommers unveils “Van Helsing,” his modern interpretation of the horror movies made famous by Universal in the ’30s and ’40s. “Van Helsing,” about a monster hunter who goes to Eastern Europe to hunt down evil-doers, figures to be the first of this summer’s box-office behemoths, and it could also send Sommers into the stratosphere of the beyond-A-list directors who can name their price and their next projects.
Allen Daviau, one of the finest cinematographers in the business, has a unique perspective. He not only shot “ET,” “The Color Purple” and “Empire of the Sun,” but he also worked with Spielberg on the short, “Amblin’” in 1968, which helped launch the director’s career. And now here he is, working with the new Stephen as director of photography on “Van Helsing.”
“Stephen (Sommers) approaches a project and the whole scope of it is very much there,” Daviau explained. “ Everybody who works with him helps him serve that vision.
“But he’s also wide open to discovering things. So you have a very solid plan going in, but he’s always ready to react to something that is visually inspiring.”
With Spielberg, that same disciplined approach combined with an expansive imagination and a willingness to adjust to new ideas was apparent from the start, Daviau said.
“You always had a feeling with Spielberg,” Daviau said. “You knew from the very beginning. There was no doubt. Any of us who worked with him knew exactly what he would become. What an absolutely stunning mind that man has.
“Spielberg has a way of viewing things from many different directions. He previsualizes how he’s going to cut the picture. He knows exactly what he’s going to do with sound and music. He has complete knowledge of what he’ll do with his effects shots. He discovers things as he goes. The ability to discover things is the mark of a great director.”
Putting the ‘special’ in ‘special effects’Special effects are a common dominator in the early pictures of Steven and Stephen. But Spielberg, for instance, had to rely on a mechanical shark in “Jaws,” and hope audiences would buy it. Nowadays, of course, computers provide the magic, and Spielberg — a technical wizard in the ’70s before studio heads even grasped the value of such expertise — has mastered the new inventiveness, as evidenced most recently by the wondrous “Minority Report.”
Stephen Sommers cut his teeth in a different era. His scare tactics aren’t just a result of imagination, but sophistication as well. The “Mummy” movies relied more on computers than NASA does. The people at Industrial Light & Magic have jokingly established the Stephen Sommers Scale to determine the difficulty of creating a particular scene; the upper end of the scale is referred to as “What Stephen Sommers Wants,” and it comes right after “Oh, God, The Computer’s About To Crash!” And “Van Helsing” features hordes of monsters that are so vivid they would have laughed Bruce the Shark out of the water.
“Stephen Sommers is that rare individual who can tell a scary story but also has a terrific sense of humor doing it,” said Daviau, who shot “Van Helsing” on film, but then worked on the entire project in a digital intermediate format. “The combination is very, very rare. He’s very oriented toward visual effects.”
Spielberg, now 57, established his reputation more behind the camera than with the written word. Of the three feature-length films that sent him into orbit in the early ’70s, he did not get a writing credit on “Duel,” his breakthrough TV movie in 1971; he received story credit on his first theatrical release, “The Sugarland Express” in 1974; and he did not have a writing credit at all on “Jaws.” It was not until “Close Encounters” in 1977 that Spielberg received a primary screenplay credit.
The 42-year-old Sommers, on the other hand, began his career as a writer, and now pens all of his own movies. That is good and bad, depending on whether you think his interpretations of the “Mummy” movies and now “Van Helsing” are fresh and innovative, or the product of a formulaic mind.
Building box office
One undeniable thread that connects Steven and Stephen is cash. Spielberg’s box-office cache is the stuff of legend. “Jurassic Park” ranks No. 6 on the all-time money list with over $919 million in worldwide box office, and “ET” is still hanging in there at No. 14 with over $756 million. In fact, eight of Spielberg’s directorial efforts are among the top 100 all-time grossers.
But the other Stephen is hardly chopped liver. “The Mummy Returns” ranks No. 53 with over $418 million, and “The Mummy” is at No. 55 with over $413 million. Whether it’s well-reviewed or not, expect “Van Helsing” to take a crack at the top 100. Said Daviau: “I don’t think anybody’s going to be bored with this picture.”
Here’s another freaky oddity worth chewing on: both Steven and Stephen have directed a picture called “Catch Me If You Can.” Spielberg’s came out in 2002 and starred Leonardo DiCaprio in a tale of a young con man, while Sommers’ wrote and directed an action comedy in 1989 about high school students trying to raise money to save their school by staging car races.
Some artists go by one name. Madonna, Sting, Prince come to mind. In movie-making, there is only one Steven. But if Sommers continues to have commercial success and then segues into more serious fare, they may just have to make room for a Stephen.