The Steven Spielberg we know and revere today wouldn’t exist without Kathleen Kennedy. For more than 30 years, she was a producer on most of his directing efforts and the many successful films he supported under his Amblin banner, starting with “Poltergeist” and “ET the Extra-Terrestrial” in 1982 and continuing with “The BFG” in 2016. I probably don’t need to explain to you why she stopped around that time either, since everyone and their cactus company seem to have an opinion about the Kennedy era. overseeing “Star Wars” and other mega-properties at the helm of Lucasfilm after Disney purchased the company in 2012.
But it’s easy for ordinary people to underestimate Kennedy. the job of film producer is the most confusing in cinema and Steven Spielberg being, you know, Steven fucking Spielberg. But man himself knows better than that. As he reminded The Hollywood Reporter While promoting “The Post” in 2017 (put that film’s title in your pocket; we’ll get to that later), Kennedy started out as his secretary in 1978. Having come to really trust her by the time they made “ET” together a few years later, he listened when she chastised him for his inappropriate behavior during that production.
“Basically, I was a little hot-headed, impatient, and I would be hard on my crew – loving towards my actors but hard on my crew,” he explained. So, 15 days after filming of the now classic science fiction film began, Kennedy gave Spielberg “the bullshit of [his] life” in his office, telling him matter-of-factly that his “impatience” and “harshness” towards the film crew was “unacceptable” behavior.[That] was a big change in my life. I became aware because someone I trusted and respected called me,” he added.
The Post could be read as Steven Spielberg’s tribute to Kathleen Kennedy
Kathleen Kennedy didn’t produce “The Post,” but one could interpret this film as partly Steven Spielberg’s way of saluting her. Scripted by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, the Spielberg-directed film dramatizes the Washington Post’s struggle to decide whether to publish the Pentagon Papers — a collection of leaked classified documents detailing the sordid truth about the U.S. government’s involvement in the Vietnam War — in 1971. Far from having an easy choice, the Post’s owner, Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep), is informed that the publication could face nothing less than criminal charges of Richard’s part. the Nixon presidential administration, if it continues.
Besides the obvious message about the importance of journalistic integrity in the face of a corrupt and tyrannical government (there’s a reason why Spielberg was in a dead sprint to make “The Post”), there is an interesting subtext in the film when it concerns Spielberg and the women who contributed to his career. Tellingly, the director’s frequent on-screen avatar, Tom Hanks, stars in “The Post” as Ben Bradlee, the Post’s gruff editor and essentially the Spielberg to Graham’s Kennedy, that is, the storyteller who gets all the glory but couldn’t do what he does if the latter didn’t have his back – and wasn’t willing to call him out when he deserves it.
Just as “The Post” acknowledges the way Graham inspired other women around her, Spielberg’s longtime producer Kristie Macosko Krieger discussed Kennedy’s influence on her in that same THR interview. “Kathy taught me to work hard. She was always the first person on set, the last to leave. There was no job below her, no job above her,” Krieger remarked. This is something to think about the next time you watch a Spielberg film.
