Spielberg has been working towards making a musical for his entire career, so it shouldn't be a surprise that when he finally got to make an all-out musical he brought not only his A-game, but also his deep love and understanding of Old Hollywood musicals with him.

This resulted in 2021's West Side Story, an incredibly smart and charming reinterpretation of the Robert Wise film and the Stephen Sondheim original stage play starring Rachel Zegler, Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, and the original's Rita Moreno.

Joining us for this discussion is none other than Bill S. Preston Esq. himself, Mr. Alex Winter. He's a bonafide cinephile, a writer and director himself, and brings all that insight into this conversation about Spielberg's legacy and how West Side Story shows that the master is still at the top of his game.

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This week's topic: 1985's Amazing Stories, an NBC anthology series overseen by Steven Spielberg himself. Not only did he produce the whole thing, but he also directed two episodes.

Those two episodes are the focus of the show as we welcome director Josh Ruben (this weekend's rom-com slasher HEART EYES). We talk a bit about marrying those two radically different genres into one super fun movie before we dive into Spielberg's episodes of Amazing Stories.

The episodes are titled Ghost Train and The Mission, the former about a spectral locomotive with a schedule to keep even if a nice family has built their farmhouse in its path, and the latter a WW2 tale about the poor ball joint gunner trapped in his position as his friends and crew try to figure out a way to free him before they crash land back on base.

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It's a heavy topic, but we somehow found the perfect guest to balance a serious topic with a little humor in noted critic, pop culture journalist, and author Jordan Hoffman (Vanity Fair, New York Daily News, The Times of Israel).

Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German Industrialist who worked from within the Nazi party to save over 1100 Jews from the concentration camps under the guise of needing their labor. Spielberg's movie was a massive hit, won tons of Oscars, and remains a crucial piece in the preservation of documentation of the Holocaust. It also led to the Shoah Foundation, which works as a living testament to the atrocities that happened during WW2 and beyond.

This episode covers the movie itself, the impact it has had on the world, and how it is potentially received by today's kids.

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The one and only Ariana Richards, Lex Murphy from Jurassic Park, joins Vespe and JRT to talk dinosaurs, Graboids, Martians, and even her ludicrous haircut in 1989's Prancer. This is Ariana's very first podcast appearance and she comes loaded for bear, y'all. She has stories about working on all her big movies including Jurassic Park.

Hear about how she got noticed by Spielberg in the first place, what it was that set her apart from the other girls who auditioned to play Lex, how Spielberg treated her on set, how scary the animatronics were to work with, and even if she can fill in a couple of big plot holes, like where the hell did that giant drop in the T-Rex paddock sequence come from.

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Today's guest is the self-described World's Smallest Stuntman who has doubled everybody from Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings to Christopher Reeve's Superman and James Cameron's Aliens. Kiran Shah is also a poet and an actor who played a not so small part in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark before going on to double Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Kiran looks back on his time working with Spielberg, how he had to lie to get his job on Raiders, as well as stories from all over his career, including being a bad influence on Christopher Reeve, working on Legend with director Ridley Scott and the great VFX legend Rob Botin, and the scariest stunt he ever did that had him doubling a small girl being blown into the River Siene.

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Today we have a conversation with Ian Malcolm's Daughter, Kelly, herself, Ms. Vanessa Chester. Despite being plagued by tech issues, this deep-dive interview about Vanessa's experience working with Spielberg, Goldblum, Vaughn, and Moore while making The Lost World: Jurassic Park is funny, illuminating, and is guaranteed to brighten your day.

Chester most recently appeared in a cameo for the currently out Spielberg parody film THE INVISIBLE RAPTOR. We talk about that, and just about everything you could want to hear about from the making of The Lost World.

Happy Holidays from us here at The Spiel!

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Steve Agee (Peacemaker, The Sarah Silverman Program, Superstore) joins the Spiel boys to talk about the very festive, very zany, and incredibly dark family film Gremlins, produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Joe Dante, and starring Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates.

The trio discuss the film's reception upon release, why it still holds up today, how it helped usher in the PG-13 rating, how devastatingly gorgeous Phoebe Cates is, and how Gremlins grew out of the famous unmade Spielberg evil aliens movie titled Night Skies.

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The very talented actor, comedian, and voice performer John Mariano has played a part in a lot of your favorites, from Married with Children and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to Fallout 4 and Baldur's Gate. But one of his most recognizable performances is as Bobby the pigeon in Steven Spielberg's oddly raunchy '90s cartoon series Animaniacs.

Bobby was the leader of the Goodfeathers, a trio of birds who sound a lot like the lead characters of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

John joins us to talk about working on Animaniacs, meeting Spielberg, and hearing what Martin Scorsese himself thought of the recurring bits on Animaniacs.

John is also a talented artist who illustrated a ton of the original Garbage Pail Kids cards all us '80s kids loved even if our parents hated them. We talk about that, his youth in New York and experiences seeing grindhouse movies firsthand, and the impact Spielberg had on him long before he got to creatively collaborate with him on Animaniacs.

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We're forcing author, comedian, and actor DC Pierson to cover all the Transformers films with us here at The Spiel and he finally returns for the second film in the franchise: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film that is inexplicably nearly 3 hours long, is even more incoherent than the first, and filled with giant robot testicles.

Still, this film has its fans and at least one of them is in on this chat. Listen to us go over the weird politics of the movie, try to make sense of the varying locations used throughout, question how much involvement executive producer Steven Spielberg had on this one, and marvel at a truly unhinged Michael Bay flick.

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Is the Back to the Future Trilogy the culmination of what we think of as the Amblin Experience? Did you know that the original thought was to have Doc and Marty travel back to the groovy '60s? And what exactly happened with all that Crispin Glover stuff?

All those questions and more are discussed as Vespe is joined by his Ain't It Cool compatriot and incredibly film writer Drew McWeeny as we dive into Back to the Future Part 2, a film that set the template that's still being followed to this day (looking at you, Avengers: Endgame).

We bring up lots of behind the scenes stories and take a close look at Spielberg's relationship with Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis. It's a ripper, this one.

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