Steven Spielberg: The Unauthorized Biography

Prolific film biographer and historian Baxter (Fellini) bases this unauthorized biography of the superstar filmmaker largely on press accounts and other people's interviews. This isn't a major handicap, for, he says, Spielberg is ""almost obsessive about revealing himself to the public"" in interviews and his films. So while there are no startling revelations in this book, it remains a comprehensive account of Spielberg's well-known story: his lonely, fatherless suburban childhood; his early career directing TV; his breathtaking arrival on the national scene with features like The Sugarland Express and Jaws; his marriages to Amy Irving and Kate Capshaw; his ascension from hot young director to ""icon of the mass market."" This is a critical biography, informed by the author's wide knowledge of the history of film as an art and a business. Spielberg is depicted as a brilliant craftsman with acute commercial instincts and as a complicated man who is never one to put friendship before career. Under Baxter's gimlet-eyed gaze, the young hustler who bluffed his way on to the Universal lot with an empty briefcase becomes the sometimes heedlessly powerful business titan. Baxter's judgments of Spielberg's films, especially his ""serious films"" like The Color Purple and Schindler's List, are shrewd and on target, crediting their technical brilliance while casting a bright light on Spielberg's mixed motives for making them and on the sensibility that defines his films, which, Baxter makes clear, is rooted in comic books and old Hollywood adventure stories. This volume is liable to be the definitive account of Spielberg for some time, with its brisk pace and its often sardonic take on a very talented boy wonder who is-still-growing up in public. Photos. (Mar.)