The remorse of a cult director.
In the process of promoting his latest feature film
The Fabelman
, which traces his childhood and his awakening to the cinema, Steven Spielberg made an astonishing confession at the microphone of the BBC.
The filmmaker
"really regrets"
that the sharks were
"decimated"
after the success of his film
Jaws
, released in 1975.
The classic, which laid down the concept of a blockbuster, tells the story of a man-eating great white shark, which preys on bathers at a beach resort on the US East Coast.
The local police chief goes hunting for the animal with the help of a marine biologist and a shark hunter.
Asked how he would feel on a desert island surrounded by sharks, he replied, "
It's one of the things I always fear"
.
“Not to be eaten by a shark, but that the sharks kind of resent me for the crazy sportfisherman feeding frenzy that happened after 1975.”
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According to a study published in the journal
Nature
last year, the global shark population has declined by 71% since the 1970s due to overfishing.
The Shark Conservation Fund, meanwhile, says that 36% of the 1,250 species of sharks and rays recorded in the world are currently threatened with extinction.
Researchers have pointed to Jaws
,
which was a huge success and terrorized generations of swimmers.
Very “anxious” to tell his story
Interviewed on the radio show Desert Island Discs in which guests tell what music, what book and what luxury item they would take to a desert island, Steven Spielberg finally replied that he would take with him “
his camera and a copy of his favorite book
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
".
The filmmaker also returned to
Les Fabelman
.
Leaving the Toronto Festival with the audience award, this semi-autobiographical story, in which Michelle Williams and Paul Dano shine, is in pole position for the awards season.
The director of
Jurassic Park
and
ET
said he was very "
anxious
" about the reception that the public will reserve for this
"40 million dollar therapy".
And to underline “
I am a modest person who makes public a whole part of my life and that of my family.
I can't hide behind someone else's story, behind a book, a film genre, or a moment in American history, like in my previous works
.