It would seem that, given the chance, few turn down an invitation to a Steven Spielberg tribute gala.
“I was supposed to be working, and I ended up here instead,” said Zoe Saldaña, who played the immigration officer Dolores Torres in Spielberg’s 2004 comedy-drama “The Terminal,” as she stood on the red carpet inside the Museum of Modern Art on Thursday night.
Saldaña was among about 300 actors, directors and artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Colbert, Drew Barrymore, Emily Blunt, Jeff Goldblum, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Cate Blanchett, Steve Martin and Martin Short, who trudged through the pouring rain to Midtown Manhattan to celebrate Spielberg’s career.
Throughout his more than five decades of filmmaking, Spielberg’s blockbuster dramas and sci-fi movies have become stalwarts of the film canon. Spielberg, 79, has directed more than 35 feature films ranging from heartwarming (“E.T.”) to moving (“Schindler’s List”) to musical (“West Side Story”). He has won three competitive Academy Awards, including for directing “Schindler’s List” (1993) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). As a producer, he holds the record for most best picture nominations with 14, including a win for “Schindler’s List.”
“I feel very blessed that I’ve had a Steven Spielberg my entire life to marvel at, to let my inner child out,” said Saldaña, 48, who spoke of being raised on “E.T.” and “Jaws.” “And I want that for my boys as well.”
Around 7:15 p.m., Spielberg himself made an entrance, looking dapper in a black Chanel suit with a custom “E.T. Phone Home” message printed inside the jacket. He was accompanied by his wife of 35 years, Kate Capshaw.
He’s currently developing a new western film, he said in an interview at the South by Southwest Festival in March, but he still makes time to watch other films, most recently Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s three-hour “You Can See Everything,” about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos who was convicted of fraud.
“It was one of the most extraordinary documentaries — if you can call it a documentary — that I’ve seen in a couple of decades,” he said. “It was really groundbreaking. I’m a big fan.”
The gala, sponsored by Chanel, which outfitted many of the high-profile guests, raises money for the museum’s film collection and exhibitions. Over the past 18 years, it has honored an esteemed group of movie stars and filmmakers including Tom Hanks, Penélope Cruz and Quentin Tarantino. (Organizers did not disclose how much the benefit had raised.)
Around 8:30 p.m., attendees took seats at long, candlelit tables inside the museum’s atrium, where they watched a highlight reel of Spielberg’s greatest hits while munching on pigs in a blanket.
Before and after a dinner of Wagyu beef, speakers toasted Spielberg’s career.
First: Tom Cruise.
“It’s been an absolute privilege to make two films with you, to experience your brilliance firsthand on a movie set,” said Cruise, 64, who acted in Spielberg’s “Minority Report” (2002) and “War of the Worlds” (2005), adding that he grew up taking jobs so he could see Spielberg’s movies in theaters.
“You’re that boy with that 8-millimeter camera, with this powerful imagination,” he continued. “And then you manifest that into a physical reality for audiences to experience.”
Emily Blunt, who starred in Spielberg’s most recent film, “Disclosure Day,” released in June, said that, when he’s happy with a take, “he’ll just come running out of the tent with his fists in the air, and he’s cheering.”
“It’s the greatest,” she said.
The director himself closed out the night by thanking his wife, Capshaw, for the confidence she had inspired in him.
“The stuff I put into any of my films is from the stuff of life, real life, that Kate and I have created through family and friends and conversation and being aware that there’s more to living than just what we do for a living,” he said.
He also noted that though his films often traffic in the fantastical, “Disclosure Day,” for instance, is much more about empathy than aliens.
“Empathy is the only real superpower that humanity possesses,” he told the room. “It’s the only form of magic I think exists in the world.”
After Spielberg finished speaking, there was one more surprise in store. Stephen Colbert took the stage to introduce “just a really good guy from New Jersey”: Bruce Springsteen.
Springsteen, whose friendship with Spielberg goes back 30 years, recalled seeing “Jaws” in June 1975, when he was 25, at “a small theater directly across from the Atlantic Ocean.” The film, he said, ruined one of the favorite pastimes for New Jersey’s young people.
“One of the great pleasures on the Jersey Shore in 1975 was night swimming, preferably naked,” he said.
But with the opening scene of “Jaws,” Spielberg had changed that, Springsteen said, using an expletive, to laughter and applause. Springsteen then launched into his 1984 hit “Dancing in the Dark,” and the director’s broad smile lit up the room.