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B I C S P I E 1 ONCE I COULD MAKE FILMS, I FOUND I COULD "CREATE" A GREAT DAY OR A GREAT WEEK JUST BY CREATING A STORY; I COULD SYNTHESIZE MY LIFE. IT'S JUST THE SAME REASON WRITERS GET STARTED, SO THAT THEY CAN IMPROVE THE WORLD OR FIX IT. I FOUND I COULD DO ANYTHING OR LIVE ANYWHERE VIA MY IMAGINATION, THROUGH FILM. — S T E V E N S P I E L I E R G C A U S E o f i t sspaceage design, students in Spielberg's day called Arcadia High School "Disneyland ." Campus life centered around "The Flying Saucer," a circular library building raised up on stilts—today the building is often referred to as "E.T.'s spaceship." Affluent and bustling, the two-year-old Phoenix high school already had a strong reputation in both academics and athletics when Steve entered as a freshman in September 1961. He was one of 1,539 students, and by the time he moved to California in his junior year, the enrollment had increased to 2,200. In those days, Arcadiawas "a typical suburban middle-toupper -class white school [aside from its two familiesof Asian descent], where the kids had too much money, too many cars," says fellow student Craig Tenney. "But it was large enough that you could find a circle in which you were comfortable." Steve's boyhood friend and classmate Del Merrill remembers him being "a lot more popular in grade school than he was in high school. In grade school he was outgoing, smart, always working, ready to tell his story—'I got an idea.' Everybody was listening to him. He was relatively popular. I think he had a lot of confidence until he got to high school. Then he got quiet. When he hit Arcadia High School, something happened. The first FIVE B " " " B I G S PI E L " 9 5 couple years of high school I think was a gloomy, quiet time for him. He did a withdrawal from us. We had a lot of bullies at that age, among the jock crowd. Steve was one of the skinnier little runts. He got pushed around a bit in freshman and sophomore years, [when] everybody [else] had a growth spurt. / never turned on him, even though I was part of the jock crowd, but I've seen it—he was taking some knocks, being bumped into and laughed at or put down." One of Steve's closest friends at Arcadia, Clark (Lucky)Lohr, suggests that he developed "a skill blending in and not being high-profile, maybe because he was afraid of attracting unwanted attention." "Big Spiel," as he came to call himself, formed his own tight little social circle in response to his exclusion from the jockocracy of Arcadia High School. "He had a social life going," recalls Karen Hayden, who played in the school band with him. "He had friends and was going places and doing things. He was weird but good weird, independent-minded." A notoriously indifferent student throughout his years at Arcadia, Steve was "very much preoccupied with filming—he carried around a camera all the time and he was always taking pictures," says his driver's education teacher, Howard Amerson. "I was impressed with his determination to do what he wanted to do. So many kids don't know what they're interested in." Not everyone was so impressed with Steve's monomania. "The neighborhood was all upper-middle-class and up, and the kids came in with the assumption that they were going to college," says English teacher George Cowie. "That was fine, unless you happened to be a Steve Spielberg and were not interested in going to college." Because of his frequent absences from school when he was faking illness to stay home and edit his movies, Steve "spent a lot of time being disciplined," says his Drama Club adviser Phil Deppe. "He definitely did his own thing and went his own way, and that was fine for those of us who were going our own way as well. But the administration, oh, they didn't like that." Arnold Spielberg had frequent clashes with his son while trying to steer him into becoming an electrical engineer or a doctor. Steve remembered his father being "very strict with me regarding all the high school courses that would lead me in those directions, such as math or chemistry, which I...

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