Spielberg Starts DreamWorks & Bonus Review: 13 Assassins

Eli (00:03.084)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography's I am your host Eli price here with you on episode 71 of the podcast we

Eli (00:26.114)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives and two directors and their filmography I am your host Eli price and we are here on episode 71 of the podcast We covered Steven Spielberg's Amistad last week into our Spielberg series and in the 90s his movies of the 90s and We're gonna move forward with that next week covering his movie

Saving Private Ryan from 1998. But this week we have a couple of things we're doing in between those two episodes. In a bit what we're going to do is I'm going to just kind of give like a brief overview of DreamWorks. you know Spielberg started DreamWorks in 1994. Amistad was his first picture that he made under his DreamWorks Studio label. And so

like some of my resources talk about him starting dream works and kind of the, like a summarized history of dream work. So I figured I'd cover that on the podcast. We're going to do that a little later, but first we have something that should be fun. I, I have opportunities for you as the listener to support the show. I, I am a self produced podcast. So.

I really need some support to keep the podcast going. You can support monthly starting at $5 a month. you can find out how to do that on the website, establishing shop pod.com. would greatly appreciate you checking that out and supporting the podcast. If you enjoy listening, in through these series with, with me, I really enjoy doing it. So, I'm going to keep doing it, but I would also appreciate your support. It helps me to.

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Eli (02:50.036)
One of my perks that I do for people that support the podcast is you get to pick a movie that I have to review. And so, yeah, I had a supporter. he's a long time friend, Joe, he picked a movie for me to watch. And this is actually a movie that, for a while he's been telling me about ever so often. he'll bring it up. and, it is the movie.

13 assassins it is a 2010 remake of Eiichi Kudo's 1963 film of the same name And this one is directed by Takashi Miike He is probably most known for his thriller horror thriller called audition from 1999 but he has like over a hundred films and his filmography from with everything from like horror movies to

Westerns to dramas to some even some like avant-garde kind of stuff and some samurai movies and that's what this is 13 assassins so Joe requested that I watch this movie and review it on the podcast and so I am doing that this week We're gonna jump into that now Takashi Miike is No stranger to brutality and you get plenty of that in this movie but a little bit of background the the movie is set

in 1844 near the end of the Edo period with some true samurai warriors. And true samurai warriors at this time are growing more and more rare. And the Shogunate, the kind of leading group, is becoming more corrupt and more nepotistic, as we see in the movie. This movie follows a group of 13 assassins comprised of 11 samurai, one ronin, and one hunter that they pick up along the way.

And they are plotting to secretly kill Lord Narutsugo, played by Goro Enagaki. He is a murderous leader of the Akashi clan. And Narutsugo is the half-brother of the Shogun, who is the leader of the Shogunate Council.

Eli (05:15.154)
leading group, the legislative group of this area, and he's the half-brother of the shogun, and he is in line to be appointed to the shogunate council. The problem is he is murderous, he is killing people at a whim and raping women and just kind of doing what he wants, and since his half-brother is the shogun, he kind of gets away with it, and he's even in line to go

take over as a seat on the council. And so a member of the shogunate, from what I can understand, it seems like he's a member or at least really important. His name is Sir Doi, played by Mikijiro Hira. He assigns a respected samurai, Shimada, played by Koji Yakusho, to assemble a team of assassins to thwart Narutsugo's

rise to power and try to avoid civil war because obviously if you have a guy going around raping women and killing people at whim then you're gonna make some people upset and you appoint them to a council a leading governing council and there's gonna be some people that are not gonna be happy and so sir doi assigns shamada to to assassinate him to avoid all this to try to preserve

the samurai way, the shogunate way, as those things seem to be waning. And so that's kind of what the movie is about. That's kind of a little bit of a look into the plot. I'm going to try not to spoil a whole lot. Although I don't think there's really a whole lot to spoil for the movie. Even if I, even if I explained the whole plot to you, you would probably still get the same enjoyment out of watching it.

if I, as if I didn't, in my opinion, that's just me. But, yeah, I wanted to mention too Koji Yakusho. he is, the, the main samurai Shimada, the kind of the leader of the group. He's a, also the lead actor in, my favorite movie of the year so far. Some people had it on their list for last year for 2023. it, it really had its limited and

Eli (07:42.812)
Release here in the US in 2024. So I'm counting it for this year when vendors perfect days Which is set in Japan? That's my favorite movie of the year so far and I didn't even realize when I was watching 13 assassins that it was Koji Akusho 14 years ago playing the lead role in that movie and he's the lead in this movie, which is Probably my favorite of the year so far really really enjoyed perfect days. So

recommend going to watch that for some more Koji Akusho. But yeah, so 13 assassins for the first hour and 20 minutes or so, maybe even first hour and a half, it's kind of this slow burn build up. It's trying to introduce the characters and I think it does that in various degrees of depth.

You get a little bit more about some characters than others Probably the person you get the most look into is actually Narasugo the the evil Neolistic Lord That is the villain of the movie. You kind of see some of his brutal acts How flippant he is about it? You get it one thing I was surprised about is Shimada who is you know the leader

You really, you really don't know much about him other than that. Like he's well respected and, people want to work with work for him. They respect him. They're willing to follow him. And, you know, he has, he has a past, kind of friendship, I guess, with, the it's, it's kind of not it's who goes right hand man. he's.

He's his leader and he is loyal to him, even though he's evil. and so you get some of that, some of that kind of, don't want to fight my friend, but if I must, I must, yeah, you get, have him, you have a nephew of him, his nephew with kind of something to prove leaves his wife or girlfriend to go, follow, you know, assist with this. have,

Eli (10:08.338)
One of the samurai seems like he's a previous student of Shimada who's maybe even surpassed him in skills with the sword. You have kind of one of them is kind of just his loyal friend. You know, it and really like I don't really even know who the rest of the guys are. The only other standout is the guy that plays the hunter that they pick up along the way.

They at one point there is kind of sidetracked and they're in the woods and they run into this hunter And he kind of leads them and eventually they let him fight with them He's he's wanting to get revenge on not at sugo and his men as well because of something that they've done to a woman he loves so You have you have him he he stands out a good bit. You don't get like a whole lot of

Backstory for him, but you kind of get a really good idea of who he is. He's frustrated with the evil Lord Naretsugo, but he's also frustrated with the samurai. hates their kind of He sees their codes as kind of arbitrary and useless So you get some of him? And he's a pretty enjoyable character But yeah, I really feel like they lack

the depth and characterization of something like, you know, you think of the greats. mean, Seven Samurai is probably the samurai movie, right? And you now given it's only seven instead of 13. And then it's also a whole hour longer than this movie. I think it's like over three hours and 20 minutes long, nearly three and a half hours long Seven Samurai is by

Akira Kurosawa and you really really understand those characters in that movie and in this movie I really don't understand the characters. I never felt fully connected with them. I mean I understand like the brutal simplicity of evil of the antagonist and that's that's okay I think it's okay to especially in a genre movie like a samurai movie I think it's okay to just have

Eli (12:36.512)
a guy that you're like, yeah, he's evil and we're going to root against him. He doesn't have to be complex. he can just be pure evil. That's fine. I'm completely okay with that. And it does set that up well for him. but most of these guys, I just don't even know what their real motivation is. You kind of know what the bird's eye view motivation is, which is they're trying to for this evil Lord so that

It doesn't cause repercussions down the line. but I mean, that's kind of a bird's eye view. Like I understand their, their cause, as a group, but when you have a movie like this, that seems to want to slowly introduce you to the characters so that you, and so that they, really like means something to you when they die. I just feel like this misses the mark now.

a critic that I respect a whole heck of a lot, in Roger Ebert's felt differently. He thought that they were, he, he felt like when they died, you really felt it. He felt like that first hour and a half or so really set up these characters and their depth. Well, and I don't really, I feel like we were watching maybe a different movie. I don't know how he got that. and even, you know, my friend Joe that,

selected this movie for me to review. He really enjoyed the setup of the characters and everything. And so maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I was distracted. I don't know. But I just did not, wasn't able to connect it. It felt a little bit laborious. And at times that first hour and a half or so. And so really, just, all I have to say, if you're looking for really great characters with a lot of depth, would

say just go watch a Kurosawa movie, go watch Seven Samurai, go watch Yojimbo, go watch Ran, all great movies. And I need to watch some more Kurosawa myself, honestly. He has more samurai movies that I haven't seen. I would even say a movie like...

Eli (15:00.204)
I don't know if Ashes of Time by... shoot, my mind is completely blank on the director of Ashes of Time. He's one of my favorite directors. So I feel really crazy right now. Wong Kar Wai, my goodness. Which it's Chinese. So I'm not sure if you would say this is...

This might not even be samurai. It might be... It's in that same vein of movies. I feel like it's a samurai movie, but I'm just... I'm not sure, I guess. I don't want to get something culturally wrong and call that a samurai movie when it's not, since it's a Chinese... Chinese story. But anyway... Yeah, just go watch Kurosawa instead, if you want that. But...

I will say this, that final like 45 minutes is the main attraction and it's the main reason to watch this movie. And it's the reason that I can ultimately say I did kind of like the movie. yeah, the first hour and 20 minutes and so is, is a bit laborious. It's not like terrible. It, I didn't, I wasn't sitting through it like, this is so boring. I w I wish I didn't have to watch this movie. It wasn't like that.

It was just, I wanted more from it, I guess is, is the best way to say that. But that last 45 minutes to an hour is honestly like really, really great. so the setup needs tightening, but once you hit the action, you kind of forget all about it. it, once they get to this town, they're trying to, they know, okay, not at Sugo. has like 70 men with him.

We're just 13 men. we need to figure out a way to cut them off. We've got to use strategy. And so they, they head them off and get to this town. that turns him that kind of blocks his passage. it's somebody that he's messed with in the past, their family. so, you know, he, the Shimada and his other assassins, his, they were like a baker's dozen of assassins.

Eli (17:26.404)
They work with the townspeople to kind of like booby trap this town. They like build all these Walls and these set up explosives and all this kind of stuff And then when not at sugo comes back he has like 200 men and so it's 13 against like 200 and because One thing that I think that Takashi Miike maybe does do to kind of

I guess like up end the typical samurai film and do something like surprising with it. because up to this point, it's really like a traditional samurai movie, a slow, slow build to, a final encounter kind of thing. But once this, once Naretsugo comes back and, and the fight begins, it's like,

bombastic and kind of crazy. mean that there's like these flaming bull. Are they bulls or are they like boars? I can't remember. there's basically these flaming animals that he sends running through the town to mall, not at Sugo's men. and, it's just wild. And so I think in that way, he maybe does upend that the traditional samurai film a little bit, brings a little bit of his Takashi Miike flair.

to the action just there's buildings exploding and there's these really cool like the men will be like running down a street and all of sudden they'll set these like gears off with ropes and stuff and there's these like huge gates that will close in front of them made out of know logs and rope and whatnot

just like totally booby trap this town and it's really cool and really fascinating and fun like fun. It's fun. and so yeah, then you just get a ton of like all of these booby traps and you get, all this Baker's dozen of, of assassins, you know, fighting off all of these men. and so, I don't want to get too much into like how the movie

Eli (19:52.158)
ends where it goes from there. don't want to... typically I'm a spoiler podcast. I spoil movies because they're deep dives and we talk about everything. For a review like this, I'm going to avoid talking about the ending too much. I guess in a vague way I can say it does end how some samurai movies end. You get some justice

but also like it's bittersweet. And so, you know, really that's all I want to say about it. So, know, Takashi Miike, while he does do this bombastic final action set piece, really like set pieces, it's a lot going on. While he does do that, that's kind of different for a samurai film.

You know, the general, like, how it ends, where it ends up is pretty... still feels like a samurai movie. What I loved about... What I loved about it is one thing that people don't realize a lot of time is how actually really difficult it is to make big action set pieces with a lot of moving parts look good and...

not just look good, but be comprehensible. When you watch this movie, it is totally comprehensible. All the action. You kind of understand where people are for the most part. Who's where? What's going on? Who's fighting who? There's some kind of artsy shots that he does, but it's still...

You still get, like there's this shot where one of the warriors is starting to, starting to die. One of the assassins and he kind of lays over and he's hanging over this pole. And, you get this kind of like almost sideways, upside down shot of one of his, fellow assassins still fighting, not at Sugo's men off. And it's like this point of view shot that's, you know, it's fun and interesting, I guess. but.

Eli (22:15.746)
There's minimal CGI used. Obviously there's some, it's 2010, but a lot of it is very practical. The choreography is really well done, the sword fighting and everything. You get some comedy with, I can't remember his name, but the hunter guy who's not a samurai, he's using this like sling to throw rocks with.

To like knock people with rocks and so you get him like tossing rocks around and knocking people out with it and that's really fun and it's just brilliantly staged action set pieces and really wonderfully shot and choreographed battles and that's that that kind of makes it all worth it because at the end of the day like when you watch a samurai film at some point you want to see some action right and

Takashi Miike really gives it to you and so Did I think this movie was great not really I thought it was at the end of the day that last like 45 minutes of the movie made it worth it for me and So I can say I did like the film. I didn't love it. I didn't think it was great I felt like it had potential for me to love it if it would have done better with that first

hour and 20 minutes or so. but yeah, I, I really did enjoy it. would, I would recommend it. It's, I thought it was good. I appreciate the recommendation from Joe and, yeah, if you want to recommend a movie for me to watch that I have to watch and review, on an episode, then go support the podcast and, and I'll hit you up and figure out what you want me to watch. So, you can find again, find out more about that.

at EstablishingShopPod.com and that will be linked in the episode description so go check that out.

Eli (00:02.648)
So let's get into DreamWorks. yeah, well basically I'm just gonna give like an overview of DreamWorks. I thought it would be interesting and some more context to Spielberg's career. So we're gonna just kind of run through and I'm really like, I know I use resources for a lot of the information.

for all of my episodes. So I have those at the bottom of every Spielberg episode. have make sure to have my resources that I've used at the bottom so you can find those there. But and then a lot of it is just like my own thoughts and my own takeaways too. But in this for this I really, really am following through this book that you can see if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify. I have the videos up on Spotify now too.

Right here over my head. It is the book Steven Spielberg all the films You can find it at I've seen it out of my local Barnes & Noble. You can buy it on Amazon It's a big a big huge book about that covers all of Spielberg's films and so Yeah, I recommend it. It's a cool little book and it's been really helpful for my research, but I'm basically pulling all of this straight

going through that book. I wanted to make sure I stated that explicitly because even more so than usual, this is informing like all of what I'm about to say. I want to make sure to cite my source as well. So yeah, so DreamWorks. Spielberg follows Francis Ford Coppola and Lucas, George Lucas, and starting his own studio.

Coppola of course started the studio American Zoetrope and Lucas of course Lucasfilm. So Spielberg is following his two colleagues and friends and he gets together with two other guys to make DreamWorks SKG in October 1994 it launches. SKG has since been dropped from the name but

Eli (02:27.008)
It originally was in their Streamworks SKG, which is the names of the three people that started it. It's the product of three moguls in their own industries. Spielberg, of course, being one of those. He was 46 years old at the time. You also have two other guys, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who's a name that I've heard before. I've known his name. And you might too. He was 43 years old at the time.

and he had just left his presidency at Walt Disney Pictures. There were some power struggles and he was kind of pushed out. So he leaves Disney and joins Spielberg to start DreamWorks. And the other guy is David Geffen, who I didn't recognize quite as strongly as Katzenberg, but his name seemed familiar. He was 51 years old at the time.

He had sold Geffen Records, which was a big record company with artists like Cher, Joni Mitchell, Guns N' Roses, Aerosmith, and more. He had sold Geffen Records in 1990 to MCA, and he'd been producing films since the 80s through the Geffen Film Company, kind of like a production company like Amblin Entertainment, Spielberg's production company. Some of those...

Two of the big ones were Risky Business with Tom Cruise and Beetlejuice starring Michael Keaton, of course. yeah, so Geffen had, he did have some film experience as well. So those three guys, Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen, SKG, get together in 1994 to start DreamWorks. Their goals, if when they were doing their press, were to have strong subjects for their films,

to have high aesthetic standards and to herald prestigious filmmakers and those destined to be prestigious filmmakers. And when I was reading about it, really, and just listening to other things that have talked about them starting DreamWorks, they really like were all about bringing the artist back to the center of the filmmaking industry. That was what they wanted to do.

Eli (04:50.414)
And they, you know, it was funny because there's these three guys, they do all this press, they... I really like they didn't have a solid plan yet. They were just kind of like vision casting. And so they started, it's not even, it's like three years before they finally put out a movie, which I don't know if that's normal. You start a studio and it takes three years.

It seems a little long to me, to be honest. yeah, so they are based out of the offices at Universal, just like Amblin Entertainment was. They had the goal to film more on location. But yeah, they did utilize the studios at Universal some. And even at one point, they had this big plan to buy out this big property. They were supposed to have a bunch of studios.

And yeah, I'll get to that later. Sorry, but yeah, so DreamWorks SKG was the parent company. They were doing more than film though. They had DreamWorks interactive with video games. It started with a game called Director's Chair with Steven Spielberg in 1996. And then, you know, they also had film adaptations like a Jurassic Park game.

Multiple that they kind of flopped as far as I can understand really the only Game of notes that dreamworks interactive put out was Medal of Honor in 1999 Really made its mark on the video game industry kind of came out of an idea that Spielberg had Coming off of save and private Ryan But the very next year they sold

They sold in the year 2000 DreamWorks Interactive to EA and so DreamWorks Interactive was no more. DreamWorks Records was also another subsidiary. was started with records, obviously music, but they started with the album Older by George Michael. It had success in Europe and not really in the US.

Eli (07:13.206)
They did gain some traction by signing bands like Eels, Elliot Smith and Randy Newman But again, it wasn't really working. So they sold Dreamworks records to Universal Records in 2003 And this is gonna be a trend That you're gonna see as we go through this as them really going swinging big and then eventually kind of like It doesn't really work out and it

goes back to the fact that these three guys seem like they're like big on vision but maybe didn't get the right people around them and resources to really like make their vision into a reality. They kind of got a little bit ahead of themselves maybe. But not to say that they weren't successful and didn't make a lot of money still, I'm sure they did.

Film was always where they were expected to shine. It took three years for the first film, which was The Peacemaker, directed by Mimi Leder in 1997. It was a post-Cold War film starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. And it inaugurates the famous DreamWorks logo created by painter Robert Hunt with music by John Williams of the little boy on the crescent moon fishing into the clouds.

And yeah, there's the Peacemaker was it's their inaugural film, followed by a family comedy called Mouse Hunt, and then Alistair later that year. So those three movies came out in 1997. They were the first three movies under Dreamworks Pictures. Later on, Deep Impact had a big success in 1998.

Followed by Saving Private Ryan two and a half months later, which was really successful. and you know, Spielberg's, more political direction in the nineties fit really well with DreamWorks project to have, you know, strong subjects and prestigious films, high aesthetics, high aesthetic standards, as I said. but yeah, it goes on in 1999 is when they really, got moving.

Eli (09:39.958)
with American Beauty. It won five Oscars. It launched Sam Mendes career. It's kind of solidifies the studio's prestige status and then followed the next year in 2000 by Gladiator. Another great, great success Ridley Scott directed. And in the midst of all this, they still are having financial problems. And so in spite of

all this success that they're having in the film. But these films, it's still like, you got to think, you spend a lot of money making films. These aren't the only films they're putting out each year. These are just the successful ones I'm mentioning. And really like there's

There's a lot of other films that maybe aren't doing as well. And then you also have these big projects like your video game branch, your music record branch. And these are not being all that successful. You're putting a lot of time and energy into those. yeah, their financial problems really prevented their ambitious studio project. They weren't.

able to they were had been at Universal in offices at Universal but they had plans to buy these this hundred acres of property it was gonna have 18 sound stages and It just didn't work financially for them Geffen even in 2005 revealed that they'd been close to bankruptcy twice during this this opening 10 years of their

Dreamworks and so The studio starts evolving You know your you start off and you're like we're gonna have prestigious filmmakers and we're gonna have these high standards and strong subjects but then you start to I mean so You're kind of like they kind of keep that going in the early 2000s and mid 2000s with dramas like castaway eyes and Mecca's in 2000

Eli (11:56.238)
We have some history film collaborations with Clint Eastwood, two in the same year actually, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima in 2006, but they start to kind of sell out on their initial art focus. Joe Dante film Small Soldiers gets this toy deal and then they start collaborating with Michael Bay, who they were kind of like...

Opposed to at first opposed to that sort of filmmaking But the they partner with Michael Bay the island was their first collaboration with him It's kind of this dystopian thriller about social issue that gives way to the typical Michael Bay explosions and stunts But even with that they Warner had to step in and give financial help to back the project

And in that deal they end up getting their rights and international distribution and lo and behold the movie doesn't do well in the US but does okay overseas and so but DreamWorks doesn't get any of that money Warner does it's kind of a critical and commercial bomb in that way and then on top of that they get this plagiarism lawsuit from the producers and writers of this movie the Clonus Horror from 1979 don't know anything about that movie don't know anything about the island either to be honest

Never seen it. yeah, so you've got all these problems. You're starting to kind of give in to your initial plans and goals and dreams but in going on they kind of recoup some of that money with two Transformers films in 2007 and 2009 and so you know it's it's kind of like

I guess they've got to make money somehow and you kind of have to in a way sometimes as a studio do that. Unfortunate really. yeah, during all this time too, this is probably another reason why they're not as successful as they want to be. also have a TV division in DreamWorks pictures.

Eli (14:17.646)
So you've got a lot of money and focus going into that. A lot of shows that didn't last a few in 96 like Ink, High Voltage, and Champs. There's a show, it's like, know, in 1999, really bad name. That doesn't last. Some did okay. There's the show Spin City in 96 and Rescue Me in 04. Probably the most successful one was in 2001.

Spielberg and Tom Hanks put out Band of Brothers about the team that's in World War II. It's actually really good. I've seen Band of Brothers. Really, really well done miniseries. But yeah, their TV division eventually merges with Amblin Television in 2013. So that, you know, another example of something

going and then them having to get rid of it. But in the midst of all this, they quickly realized that animation is kind of their sneaky, their sneaky in, I guess, their sneaky way to actually like break out as a studio. Katzenberg, obviously, who was the head of DreamWorks Animation.

coming out of Disney really trying to get his revenge on Disney with this animation project. And they really hoped to get like 40 to 50 % of their profits from their animated films. So their first animated film was Ants with a Z. In 1998, it was the first DreamWorks animated film. Crazily enough, Bugs Life 2 came out two months later.

It had been in the works. It was kind of one of those things where it's like a race to get out your movie first and John Lassinger and Andrew Stanton of Pixar they had it there was a lot of controversy because they claimed that Katzenberg had taken some ideas that they had talked about back when he was at Disney and And made ants from that and so that was a big controversy But they moved on they kept going and they came out with Prince of

Eli (16:37.416)
Egypt that year, which was a big success. Great movie. I would, I need to watch that. It's been a long time since I've seen the Prince of Egypt. So I need to throw that on sometime. It was a big gamble, big, big budget gamble on a traditional animation. They follow that up with Chicken Run in 2000 made by the creators of Wallace and Gromit. Another example of, you know, it's claymation stop motion.

Animated not CGI That's in 2000 and 2001 is when they really hit big with Shrek Shrek wins the best animated feature Oscar as a massive box office profits And yeah, they they really really hit it big with Shrek that they actually followed it up with a big failure in

This movie called Simbad, Legend of the Seven Seas in 2003. Never heard of it. And so that must mean it was a really big failure. But they also acquired Pacific Data Images, which is a computer animation company. And they really, after that Simbad movie, abandoned the traditional animation to focus on computer generated animation. And that really takes off with Shrek 2 in 2004.

Shrek the third in 2007 make keep making them all that money off of Shrek And then some other big successes were Madagascar in 2005 and how to train your dragon in 2010 And these movies do so well that dreamworks animation splits from the parent company and goes public and it's its own thing now and so So dreamworks pictures

its most successful piece splits off and is kind of on its own now. So now you have DreamWorks Pictures just kind of hanging there. And the dream for Independence for DreamWorks Pictures finally fades. its last years as an independent studio, there's an acquisition by Paramount, there's a distribution agreement they have with Walt Disney, and then they

Eli (19:01.162)
enter the fold of this India based company called Reliance. They have to get some joint ventures with Hasbro and Alibaba. By 2015, DreamWorks Pictures is ultimately just a brand name for films that Universal distributes. It's not actually like a fully functioning independent studio anymore. And you do get some good, you know, some big movies with that DreamWorks logo in it.

it's just a brand name now. Some examples, Green Book and First Man both in 2018 and then the movie the Sam Mendes movie 1917 and 2019. So they keep working with Sam Mendes after his breakout film that they really broke out with too. So you know it's

Eli (20:00.822)
It's, you know, it's kind of like a failure story, a kind of a sad story of this big dream to start your own studio, to put art at the center and ultimately fails. And I think it's just because, man, they just didn't have a solid plan. They just weren't prepared. They didn't, they were starting this all on hopes and dreams and big vision. and they had the know-how to do it.

But it seems like they were so stretched thin with all of these projects and all of this vision that they weren't really able to execute solidly with one thing. so you wish they would have just picked one thing and focused on it. And ultimately, the one thing that is a success that comes out of DreamWorks, which is the animation division, breaks off and becomes its own thing.

And that's probably for the best because it might have sunk with the ship too But yeah that that's kind of the history of Dreamworks thought it was interesting Give some insight into that stretch of Spielberg's career all the way from 1994 all the way to 2015 so You know he was involved in all of that for over 20 years of his career through the 90s through the the 20 teens

And so, yeah, so that's really all I have for that. you know, I thought it was interesting. I thought I'd share it with you on the podcast, some little bonus Spielberg content, I guess. and I hope you thought it was interesting too. we are going to pick back up with Spielberg next week with Saving Private Ryan. I'm really excited because this is a blind spot for me, a big Spielberg blind spot. I know I should have seen Saving Private Ryan by now.

But I haven't. So I'm excited to see it. Excited to see some Tom Hanks. This is his first movie with Tom Hanks. So that's exciting. But we're going to be covering that next week. But as you can see, I am wearing my Chargers shirt. It is currently the Monday where Chargers are playing Monday Night Football. And so I am going to go put on the Chargers game.

Eli (22:27.926)
and I'll meet you again next week for Safe and Private Ryan. But until then, I've been Eli Price and you've been listening to The Establishing Shot. See you next time.