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" T H I S T R E M E H D O U S M E A T G R I N D E R " I'VE ALWAYS RESENTED THE TELEVISION MEDIUM, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS THROUGH TV THAT I FOUND AN INROAD TO THEATRICAL FILMS. — S T E V E N S P I E L B E R G , 1 9 7 4 E Y just signed me and told me to imagine up something, which to me is proof that the old Hollywood way of doing things is breaking up a bit," Spielberg said in a December 1968 interview with the Los Angeles Times. His studio contract felt "like a dream come true," he later recalled. "At last I had the means to show what I could do. But it was not something I wanted to do for the benefit of others. No, I wanted to do it for myself, for everything I had believed in since I was a child. I could finally bring to life all those stories I had in my head." But his elation was tempered by the anxiety he felt as a young amateur filmmaker suddenly thrust into a professional director's chair. Even before he started directing his first television program at Universal, he told The Hollywood Reporter, "Now I'm caught up in this tremendous meatgrinder. Amblin'is the only film I will ever make with so much freedom." A M B£/ N ' had its world premiere on December 18, 1968, in a oneweek Academy Award-qualifying engagement at Loew's Crest Theater in Westwood. Spielberg's short was ill-matched with Otto Preminger's misfired comedy about hippies and gangsters, Skidoo. The newspaper ads barely EIGHT 1 H T 1 6 8 S T E V E N $ P I E L B E R G squeezed in a minuscule mention of Amblin': "It Packs the Wallop of a Rock Concert!" But Los Angeles Times feature writer Wayne Warga called it "a splendid film to watch." On the night of the premiere, producer Denis Hoffman threw a party at a screening room on Sunset Boulevard, and Spielberg showed up looking self-consciously hip in a Nehru jacket. By a happy coincidence, it was also Spielberg's birthday. His twenty-second birthday, even though thcTimes reported the following day that he was twenty-one. As part of the Oscar campaign conducted by publicist Jerry Pam, Hoffman held another screening party for Amblin'that month at the Directors Guild of America Theater and took out ads in the trade papers. Spielberg also was invited to screen Amblin' before a USC directing class taught by Jerry Lewis, who told his students, "That's what filmmaking is all about." Despite all the ballyhoo, Amblin' proved a difficult sell to theaters. "The problem was it was too long," Hoffman recalled. "The theater people didn't like it, because it caused them to give up one screening per day. They would play a seven-minute short, but this was twenty-six minutes. Wehad a terrible time trying to get them to play it." The first distributor Hoffman approached, in the fall of 1968, was Universal , a logical choice since it was in the process of signing not only Spielberg but also Pamela McMyler to a contract.* But the studio seemed to regard Amblin'itself as an afterthought, making an offer of only $2,000for the world rights, which Hoffman indignantly refused. After being rejected by United Artists, Hoffman made a temporary releasing deal with Sigma III to split the proceeds from the Crest engagement, but the distributor chose not to exercise its right of first refusal for a national release. Hoffman contracted instead on June 15, 1970, with Four Star Excelsior Releasing Co., which found the filmoccasional playdates around the country for about a year (Four Star later released the film in the United Kingdom as well). Although Hoffman said in 1994 that Amblin'barely returned its costs overall, it did better in its nontheatrical release by UPA, which rented and sold 16mm prints for several years to such outlets as schools, libraries,and military bases. Spielberg also managed to place Amblin' in the June 1969 Atlanta and Venice Film Festivals. When Hoffman wasn't able to pay Spielberg's way to Atlanta, Spielberg persuaded Universal to pick up his travel expenses. Amblin 'was chosen best live-actionshort subject by the festival, whose program described it as "a solid contender for an Academy Award nomination...

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