My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.
From Bob Balaban
My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.
Maybe I was 7 - I probably am exaggerating a little - and immediately was plunged into the fact that there was an official place to put your fantasies. Up until then I didn't know what I would do with them all. It was very exciting for me, and I began very, very early on.
If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.
I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.
I think some of the special effects in Close Encounters hold up better than the new more expensive special effects is because they were better actually.
I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called 'The Last Good Time'. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.
I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting.
I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game.
God, I'd love to do a big commercial movie that made a lot of money and whose plot was interesting too.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives