“The Fabelmans” – Steven Spielberg’s latest masterpiece – is a phenomenal film that unlocks the legendary filmmaker’s entire career, a beautifully personal ode to messed-up parents, to creativity, to the love of cinema, but also a film about how much it can shake someone as big of a cinema prodigy as Spielberg is.
The film, a fictionalized account of Steven Spielberg’s upbringing, follows Sammy Fabelman, a boy growing up in Arizona who learns how the power of film can expose truths about his family he didn’t want to know, such as his parents’ crumbling marriage. Spielberg, unsurprisingly, assembled a strong ensemble of character actors, including Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as his parents, Mitzi and Burt. He also cast Seth Rogen as Bennie, the man who cut off his best friend, Burt, and had an affair with Mitzi.
Rogen, not necessarily an actor you’d associate with Spielberg, was surprised to be cast in the film, even though Spielberg appears to be a genuine fan of his work—which he doesn’t view as stoner films. In fact, Rogen was convinced he was going to be fired from the job, especially after a particular backlash from Spielberg.
“I didn’t know what kind of feedback he would give and how it would go,” Rogen said on The Late Night Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . “So the first day, we start shooting and we do a review and I go back to where he’s standing, and I’m looking for feedback.” Then, Rogen saw Spielberg “crying uncontrollably.”
“I thought, ‘Oh no, I’m so bad he’s crying and he’s going to fire me now,'” Rogen said. “But no, it’s such a deeply personal movie that he cried a lot, actually. When the scenes were happening, you’d come back and he’d be crying. I never thought it would be great to have Steven Spielberg cry all the time, but that happened—it was wonderful. It was really weird and emotional.”
