THE FABELMANS follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), a young man who dreams of becoming a filmmaker. In fact, Sammy is a thinly-fictionalized version of Steven Spielberg, who co-wrote and directed THE FABELMANS. The movie draws heavily on his own life experiences and details his youthful evolution as a movie-maker.
We talked to Gabriel LaBelle and to Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who play Sammy's parents, and Seth Rogen, who plays Sammy's surrogate uncle, Burt.
So what's it like to play Steven Spielberg while being directed by Steven Spielberg? "It's weird!" says Gabriel Labelle. "It hasn't happened to anyone. It feels like you're being thrown into the deep end. Which, you are, but you're thrown into this environment, this set surrounded by masters. These giants of this industry and this art form. And so you want to do your best to keep up!"
"What's great about this character is that everything that happens to him happened to Steven. So I could talk to him about his life and his relationships and his perspectives and what he felt at that time. He didn't always tell me, but I could still talk to him about what it was like growing up and just get a sense of who he is as a person and do my best to articulate that into the character."
Anyone who has seen even a few Spielberg movies knows that the filmmaker is particularly good at working with younger actors. We asked Seth Rogen what he observed during THE FABELMANS.
"What's funny," Rogen says, "is that he was actually a lot less gentle with the younger actors than I thought he would be in some ways, and I commented on it. I was like, 'you're pretty directive with them,' and he's like 'yeah! I kind of am.' It's like your teacher — you do better work for the teacher that pretty much is telling you what to do. It was actually a funny lesson, where he's not trying to be their friend, he's trying to be their director and treating them like adults in a lot of ways, which was really interesting and not necessarily how I thought that would be."
Watch our full interview with the cast of THE FABELMANS below:
THE FABELMANS opens limited on November 11 and expands on November 23.
All images courtesy of Universal Pictures.