Courtesy of Nate Winslow:

This is a list that someone sent me during a conversation on Twitter. It’s unofficially referred to as “Steven Spielberg’s List of Movies You Have to See Before You Can Work With Him” aka “Steven Spielberg’s Curriculum.” Weirdly enough, I could only find ONE mention of it on Google. ONE. And it was a weird mention here: But it’s a list of 206 movies that Spielberg assembled as movies that should be required viewing for any aspiring filmmaker. And if you listen to the way Spielberg talks about cinema and the history of film, it’s quiiiiite clear he has seen more movies than anyone on earth other than Martin Scorcese. But just goes to show you how overlooked that part of your mantra is: watch. Movies. A lot of the great directors from Spielberg’s era have probably seen more than half of those movies. Maybe even 3/4. The younger filmmakers coming up now? I’d be shocked if they’d seen 30 of them. I haven’t seen anywhere NEAR half of them. Anyways. Pretty interesting list. I uploaded it as a Google document which I figure is probably easier for sharing than a Word document.

This on the heels of our own Deep Focus: The Go Into The Movies Project, the point of which is to provide free online resources to encourage you to immerse yourself in the world of cinema.

For Spielberg’s alleged list of must-see movies, go here.

Read scripts.

Watch movies.

Write pages.

You should do all three if you’re serious about becoming a screenwriter.

Many thanks to Nate for creating the Google doc. I’ve added that to our Deep Focus resource.



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