Of all of Steven Spielberg’s doubles, and there have been plenty – from Richard Dreyfuss in the 70s to the young hero of Ready Player One – Gabriel LaBelle has inherited the delicate mission of truly embodying the director this time, without any other protective filter than that of the cinema. This 20-year-old Canadian actor, of whom this is one of the first important roles (we also saw him in the series American Gigolo), approaches the role with lightness and mischievousness, drawing a few traits chosen from his model without letting himself be crushed by imitation. Questioned via Zoom, he returns to a creative process that he is not about to forget.
It all started with a meeting on Zoom…
I live in Vancouver so everything was done remotely. During the very first audition, I did not know for which film, and for which director. I didn’t hear from her for about three months. I was finally called back for a new audition with a scene to be prepared in two days. At the time of the appointment, I piled piles of books and dictionaries on the dining room table to be able to put my laptop at the right height, and my iPhone on a tripod in order to film myself at the same time, because they wanted to be able to see my performance again…
The next day I was called back: “Steven Spielberg would like to meet you now.” Rebelote: two scenes to work on in a very short time. Books, dictionaries, tripod, iPhone. When I exported the video, I realized that my two scenes were five minutes each, but the date was an hour long. An hour during which we simply talked, got to know each other, hung out, like two friends… The next day I was told that I had the part.
How did Steven Spielberg introduce you to the project?
After discovering the scenario, I thought he was going to take me between four eyes to tell me: “This is what it means to be me, to incarnate me.” That he was going to give me his great ideas about life. He didn’t do any of that. It was more like me to harass him. I wanted to know what part of the script was really inspired by his own life. He simply replied: everything. From there, I said to myself that I had to get to know him thoroughly. He became my subject, my subject of study.
How did you do it?
We have zoomed in a lot! I bombarded him with questions for a month. And also, since as a child and teenager he spent his time filming his family, documenting their lives, I was given access to all these tapes! I could see how the Spielbergs lived, behaved with each other. His father also filmed him, so I was able to observe Steven himself moving, moving in space, evolving physically, his favorite postures. On the one hand, I had his emotional feelings, through everything he told me, and on the other, I could see him living at that time. It’s up to me to put it all together: he left me total freedom for that. I was able to create my Sammy Fabelman: there is a sort of triangle between Steven and me, and Sammy who is somewhere in the middle. I just wanted to make sure he saw his own experience through me. That he recognized her.
There are, at the turn of a few shots, certain fleeting moments of resemblance between you and him.
I tried to imitate his way of standing and moving a bit, but what seemed most important to me was his smile: he has a very particular smile because when he smiles, his upper teeth are covered, so than me when I smile all my teeth bare. And also this look that sparkles when he is behind the camera, which is exactly the same today as when he was shooting his little amateur films at 16.
What was your relationship to Spielberg’s films before being catapulted into his childhood, which is the crucible of many of his films?
I knew almost all of his films before being involved in the project. And while waiting to receive the script, I immersed myself in all his filmography. I also watched all the filmed interviews of him that I could find. I discovered empire of the sun, which I didn’t know, and which impressed me enormously: it’s a mind-blowing film, carried by a really brilliant 13-year-old Christian Bale. Then, I asked Steven to tell me about the films that had marked him in his youth, and he gave me a list… quite substantial (laughs)! I watched most of it there too. At some point, I thought to myself that I really watched too many movies instead of working.
Given that this is autobiographical material, did you experience any emotionally charged moments during filming, where you felt that cinema and life overlapped?
After getting to know Steven through Zoom for a month, I understood that he is very sensitive and intuitive, and also that he can be quite nervous when starting a new film. On the first day of shooting, I asked him:
– Are you stressed?
– How so ?
“Well, when Michelle (Williams) and Paul (Dano), who play your young parents, arrive on set, how do you think that will affect you?
– Oh you know, I cried so much during the writing, that now I think I’m immune. From now on I will be able to approach it like any of my films. No worries !
But when he saw them arrive, together, in costumes, with hairstyles and makeup, he was gripped with emotion. He explained to me later that he had forgotten, for a moment, that Paul and Michelle were actors, that he had really seen his parents. Like some kind of hallucination… He lost his mother five years before this shoot, and his father only two years before, so there was something therapeutic and cathartic about the experience. It is at the same time a mourning and a resurrection. To experience that alongside anyone would be strong, but alongside Steven Spielberg, it’s pretty incredible.