Spielberg's Comedy Nightmare: The Film That Nearly Broke Him
The legendary director opens up about his most challenging project - a war comedy that pushed him to his limits and taught him a career-defining lesson about staying in his lane.
You'd think the guy who's made more box office gold than anyone else in Hollywood history would never back down from a challenge. Steven Spielberg has broken records three times over and collected Academy Awards like souvenirs, but even he met his match with one particular project that left him questioning everything.
When Comedy Became a Nightmare
Fresh off the massive successes of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg was riding high when he tackled 1941, a World War II comedy that would become his first real taste of failure. The movie didn't completely bomb at the box office, but it was a far cry from his previous hits. More importantly, it spiraled completely out of control during production, blew through its budget, and even managed to tick off John Wayne just based on its concept alone.
Looking back a year after the dust settled, Spielberg didn't mince words about what went wrong. He called comedy "an elusive, chameleon-like beast" and admitted it was "too fucking tough, panhandling for your supper. Reaching for laughs. Sometimes, stretching the credibility of the storyline beyond all recognizable shape for a simple yuk."
Playing Out of Position
The director knew he could sprinkle funny moments throughout his films, but building an entire movie around pure comedy was a different animal entirely. He described himself as "comically courageous when comedy isn't the home plate," explaining that he was "much better when I'm playing shortstop and I can add comedy, for instance, to Jaws."
With 1941, the pressure was different. As Spielberg put it, "There better not be a serious moment in the entire film or I'm in trouble." There were indeed some serious moments, and he was definitely in trouble - though that wasn't the only reason the project went sideways.
A Project Without Heart
Perhaps most telling was Spielberg's admission that this wasn't a passion project. "It wasn't a film from my heart," he revealed. "It wasn't a project that I initiated, dreamed about for ten years, although I have shed blood over it as if it were my own. Rather than a bastard adoption, I like to think of it at times as if it were a project I was forced to take because of my own state of mind."
The lesson stuck. In the nearly 45 years since 1941 hit theaters, Spielberg has made exactly zero straight comedies. Sometimes the best education comes from knowing what you're not meant to do, and this legendary filmmaker learned that lesson the hard way.