Spielberg: The Man, the Movies, the Mythology (1996)

We've heard it before: The nerdy Jewish outcast, who spends an untold number of weekends at the neighborhood movie house to evade persecution at the hands of his gentile peers, grows up to become a phenomenally successful movie director, leaving his tormentors in the dust. It's not unauthorized biographer Frank Sanello's fault that Spielberg's story is such a familiar one in movie iconography. But did he have to tell it so choppily? And for that matter, couldn't he have waited a bit longer — like maybe until after the filmmaker hits 50? In Spielberg: The Man, the Movies, the Mythology, Schindler's List serves not only as a premature bookend of the director's obviously thriving career but as a melodramatic vindication of his childhood ostracism. Sanello is like the dazzled kids in E.T. — he's mostly just gaping at an alien entity.