Much has been made of the fact that Steven Spielberg has finally confronted the grown-up side of himself. In his latest movie, "Hook," he details the life of Peter Banning (formerly Peter Pan), a hard-driving takeover lawyer who struggles with the conflicts between creativity and ambition, between fatherhood and the pursuit of power.
Through Banning, Mr. Spielberg speaks to a side of himself he has long tried to obscure. The man who directed such wondrously childlike films as "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in the late '70s and early '80s has also almost single-handedly built an entertainment empire that many compare to Walt Disney's.
Though Mr. Spielberg is most famous as a director, he has been far more prolific as a producer of other directors' movies and of television shows and animated films. He has made a tidy fortune from merchandising his films and from helping design theme park rides for Universal Studios.
During the last 15 years, Mr. Spielberg's work has generated more than $4 billion in revenues, if all the earnings of his films are added up. Forbes estimates that he made $27 million last year, making him the 10th-best-compensated entertainment figure on its list.
Mr. Spielberg's success, say friends who are top Hollywood executives, has been achieved in large part by workaholism, ambition and pragmatism. "There is no better businessman in Hollywood than Steven Spielberg," says Sidney Sheinberg, the president of MCA.
In "Hook," Peter Banning is deeply uncomfortable about facing the child within him. In a conversation from his vacation home in East Hampton, N.Y., shortly before "Hook" opened, Mr. Spielberg, 44, is uneasy talking about the man within, much less the businessman.
"Talk about the grown-up side of me?" he says, laughing. "Ooooo. That's the 'I don't know if I know the answer' side." His ambivalence is palpable.
"I don't see myself as a businessman," he says, shortly before expertly describing his merchandising strategy. At points, Mr. Spielberg even seems worried about what his achievements might say about him.
"People who don't know me think I'm just motivated by money or success," he says. "But I've never been motivated by that. I've never based a decision on money."
Associates remark on his confusion. "I do believe Steven does not like to make movies that don't make money," says David Brown, the producer. "Whereas some directors don't care, he is very conscious of that." Says another producer: "One part of Steven wants to say, 'Hey, kids, let's put on a show,' and the other part wants to build an empire."
The centerpiece of Mr. Spielberg's empire is his production company, Amblin Entertainment. Formed in 1984, Amblin is staffed by 65 people, including producers, marketing specialists and merchandising experts. It is one of Hollywood's largest independent production companies and considered the most productive by far. Located on the lot of Universal Studios, Amblin is housed in a two-story Santa Fe-style adobe mansion. Inside, there is a game room, a candy counter and a kitchen stocked with popcorn and ice cream.
Though it looks like a child's hideaway, Amblin represents the grown man's huge power. With its 45-seat screening room, Dolby sound system, three cutting rooms and top-of-the-line editing machines, Mr. Spielberg wields almost total control over his movies.
"Steven operates very uniquely in Hollywood, really as a sovereign state," says Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios.
Although Amblin is set up much like a mini-corporation -- divided into divisions and departments and administered by its president, Kathleen Kennedy -- nothing is done without Mr. Spielberg's involvement. Amblin has close to 30 projects in production or under development, and Mr. Spielberg oversees them all. At any point, he is deeply involved in two or three. Current ones include the animated feature "We're Back" and "Noises Off," a Peter Bogdanovich film that Mr. Spielberg is producing for Disney.
Mr. Spielberg describes himself as a restless man -- "always looking for things to do" -- who works to keep busy.
Says David Brown: "Here's a young man who could never spend all the money he's made, yet he works like he's paying the rent. He personifies work." While directing "Hook," Mr. Spielberg read every script of his Emmy Award-winning syndicated television series, "Tiny Toon Adventures," and attended marketing meetings for the show. He also supervised the final work on "American Tail II: Fievel Goes West," an animated film that was released in November to disappointing box-office returns, and on "Cape Fear," the Martin Scorsese thriller, which Amblin produced.
Part of being a successful businessman in a rough town like Hollywood is being as rough as the rest. People in Hollywood speak of Amblin's isolation and toughness but are reluctant to talk on the record. Lawyers and agents, in particular, say that Mr. Spielberg's people drive hard bargains, that even when negotiating small parts in movies they will not yield on fees.
Amblin -- jokingly referred to by some in Hollywood as "the Vatican" -- is also very private. Mr. Brown refers to it as "almost a bunker on the Universal lot. He may try to hide himself at Amblin, but he can't."
Within the protective confines of his company, Mr. Spielberg has probably nurtured more talent, and fiercely loyal talent, than any other director. But he is also a hard negotiator. In deal-making, he has long been regarded as a master, and that doesn't always make friends for him.
"He doesn't negotiate fees," says one film editor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You work with him because he's so powerful."
Mr. Spielberg's response: "I am a tough negotiator."
Studio executives, the predators in Hollywood's ecosystem, consider Mr. Spielberg their match. "He is extremely comfortable with the studio system," says the head of one studio. "He can manipulate it to get what he wants."
Most of the time, studio heads are thrilled to see Mr. Spielberg, but he can't always sell everything. In 1987 he urged Universal executives to back "Driving Miss Daisy," says Richard Zanuck, who co-produced the movie with his wife, Lili Fini Zanuck. Universal refused, and the movie went on to be a box-office hit and an Academy Award winner for Warner Brothers.
Mr. Spielberg's business acumen has made him possibly the most expensive talent in Hollywood today. He hasn't taken a flat fee for his work for 10 years. Instead, according to studio executives, he takes a top-drawer 10 percent to 15 percent of the worldwide gross on his movies.
Mr. Spielberg's track record of hit films has made him Hollywood's richest director. One studio executive estimates that Mr. Spielberg has made at least $150 million from his "Indiana Jones" series alone, excluding revenues from merchandising.
"Steven will pretend to be the world's worst businessman," says Steven J. Ross, chairman of Time Warner. "He'll listen and say he doesn't know what you're talking about, and then he'll come up with a wonderful idea that no one has thought about."
Mr. Spielberg has kept Amblin off the stock market, and he has no outside investors. It is therefore virtually impossible for analysts to evaluate Amblin's worth, and public estimates are based largely on guesses.
What is ascertainable, however, is how cleverly Mr. Spielberg has eliminated his financial risks by having other people pay for his ventures. "Maybe what makes me a good businessman," says Mr. Spielberg, half-laughing, "is that I always make other people pay for my movies. I never spend my own money." A chunk of Amblin's overhead, for example, is paid by Universal.
In exchange, Mr. Spielberg gives the studio creative advice on everything from movies to merchandising. The rest of Mr. Spielberg's bills are divided among the other major studios. Unlike many directors, who are bound by exclusive single-studio contracts, Mr. Spielberg retains the right to work with any studio.
"Amblin insulates me from Hollywood, and that's why I love it," Mr. Spielberg says. "I don't have to play the musical studios game. I don't have to go to people. They come to me."
In addition to the projects already on his plate, Mr. Spielberg has been trying to raise money to form yet another company, this time with the director Martin Scorsese. The two are seeking about $75 million to produce movies of fledgling directors and offbeat work of established directors.
Although negotiations with the Japanese trading company Marubeni have fallen through, Mr. Spielberg says that for the first time in his career, he wants to get money from outside the Hollywood system. This is necessary, he says, because "Marty and I want to take some risks."
People point to Amblin's huge productivity as proof that Mr. Spielberg is in it for the money. It is estimated, for example, that he got $20 million for producing "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," the 1988 part-animated, part-live-action hit. But the money-only theory ignores the extent to which he seems to need to institutionalize his creativity.
Two years ago, Mr. Spielberg set up Amblimation, a London-based company dedicated to animation and staffed with some of the best animators outside America. In the United States, Walt Disney Studios virtually owns the animation industry and its top artists.
After producing "Roger Rabbit" for Disney, Mr. Spielberg decided that if he was to make animated features on a significant scale, he would have to grab the top artists and set up his own company. "Forming Amblimation," he says, "was like the Americans and the Russians competing to get the rocket scientists out of Berlin after World War II."
With animation shaping up as Hollywood's newest profit center, Universal Studios quickly offered to finance Mr. Spielberg's movies. Tom Pollock, the chairman of Universal, recalls that from the outset Mr. Spielberg wanted money not just for movies but to build an institution: "He wanted to set up a facility that would have the best directors, the best conceptual designers, the best talent in the world."
As it turned out, Amblimation's first major feature, "Fievel Goes West," the sequel to "An American Tail," did not knock Disney off its feet. It was a financial flop, in part because it was released JTC merely 10 days after Disney's blockbuster animated film "Beauty and the Beast."
Mr. Spielberg and Universal continue to have high hopes. They plan to have Amblimation produce at least one animated feature a year, with a version of the Broadway musical "Cats" scheduled as this year's release.
Warner Brothers is also betting heavily on Mr. Spielberg. According to Terry Semel, the studio's president, Warner Brothers is hoping to create a new children's industry -- including theme park -- based on Mr. Spielberg's "Tiny Toons." His involvement in every aspect of Warners' plans is critical, says Mr. Semel, because Warners' research has shown that, in the field of family entertainment, only Mr. Spielberg's name carries as much marketing weight as Disney's.
Long before most directors knew what merchandising was, Mr. Spielberg was actively involved in it. Indiana Jones fedoras, E.T. dolls and leather jackets are only a few of the items of movie paraphernalia that have been licensed by Amblin's merchandising division. Fifteen years ago, he tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the producers of "Jaws" to license the now famous shark.
Mr. Spielberg is still stung by accusations of greed that were leveled at him 10 years ago over the "E.T." merchandising, which he did reluctantly. "With 'E.T.,' " he says, "I didn't think there'd be that much of an audience." As a businessman he miscalculated: Harold Vogel, an entertainment analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co., estimates that retail sales for "E.T." items -- everything from lunch boxes to pajamas -- have surpassed $1 billion.
Mr. Spielberg claims that many of the goods were pirated and that he finally stepped in to license "E.T." only to protect the quality of the toys and T-shirts.
He admits that he merchandises "to make money," but merchandising also shows the breadth of Mr. Spielberg's vision of his art.
Although his greatest love is making movies, Mr. Spielberg has been much more than a director. When viewed as a package, the T-shirts that Mr. Spielberg merchandises, the dolls, comic books and his theme park rides reflect an entrepreneur's acute instinct for what consumers want. "People like to take things from movies." he says simply. "It's like souvenirs."