Join renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg as he takes you on a guided tour of the legendary Universal Studios (Hollywood) lot in Universal City, Los Angeles, California (91608).

Steven Spielberg is gonna need a boat. Not a bigger boat. Same-sized boat, preferably.

Actually, the closer they can replicate the Orca fishing vessel from Jaws, the better.

We are sitting in a golf cart beside the lagoon at Universal Studios in Hollywood (Universal City), where — ever since 1976, the year after Jaws debuted — a mechanical great white has breached these depths to menace tourists on the famed tram (Studio) tour. (It works better than the prop shark on the movie ever did.)

This faux harbor, located just up the hill from Spielberg’s hacienda-style Amblin Entertainment offices, was once the mooring spot of the actual Orca fishing boat used in the movie.

Until, one day, it wasn’t.

“I used to come out for a couple of years after I made the movie to get over my PTSD,” Spielberg says, gesturing across the water. “I would work through my own trauma because it was traumatic. I would just sit in that boat alone for hours, just working through, and I would shake. My hands would shake.”

A psychiatrist might call this “exposure therapy” — confronting the thing that scares you. In Spielberg’s case: an out-of-control, over-budget, possibly career-ending nightmare production that nearly ruined him as a 27-year-old director just as he was getting started.

The troubles on that movie drove him, fueled him, made him tougher as he went on to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln, and countless others, including the new family fable The BFG. Forcing himself to sit on the Jaws boat in the middle of a fake lake on a dusty hillside in Los Angeles was how Spielberg reminded himself that whatever went wrong, he could handle it. He could fix it. He could make things work.

“Then I was fine,” he says. Time passed. “I hadn’t seen the boat in five years and decided to just come back and revisit it. And it was gone.” He shakes his head and throws up his hands. “They said there was dry rot, there were termites. Of course, there were termites and dry rot! It was an old boat!”

All that remains of the Orca now are the wheel, one propeller, and the flag. “I’m going to actually ask them to rebuild it and put it back here,” Spielberg says. “Because the tourists would love to see the Orca here.” So would he. The aches and pains of the Jaws shoot are exactly what Spielberg wants to face again, kind of like Robert Shaw’s Quint and Richard Dreyfuss’ Hooper showing off their healed-over scars.

Spielberg has made movies at studios all over Hollywood, but Universal has always been his home base. Not only is it the location of Amblin, it’s also where a baby-faced, teenage Steve Spielberg sneaked through the gates over the course of one long summer in the early 1960s, hoping to learn everything he could about moviemaking.

The BFG is Spielberg’s first movie released under the Walt Disney Studios banner, but its story of a little orphan girl and her adventures with a big friendly giant (played by Bridge of Spies Oscar-winner Mark Rylance) seemed like a good opportunity to revisit Spielberg’s own original stomping grounds.

While we’re gazing across the water, a tram rolls by and the 69-year-old transforms from legendary director…to theme-park attraction.

Spielberg grins and waves as the tourists try to get over their surprise in time to snap a few pictures."

More of this article can be found here:
http://ew.com/article/2016/06/24/stev...
https://ew.com/movies/2016/12/18/stev...

Special Thanks:
Anthony Breznican, Senior Staff Writer
Entertainment Weekly
https://www.anthonybreznican.com/
June 24, 2016

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Keywords:
The Everett Collection
ORCA Boat
James Stewart Ave.
Getty Images
Julie Andrews, Actress
Alfred Hitchcock, Film Director
Walt Disney Studios
Universal Pictures
Amblin Entertainment
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Bates Motel
Psycho (1960)
War of the Worlds (2005)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Lucasfilm
Indiana Jones, Fictional Universe
Ready Player One (2018)
Random House

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