Gabriel LaBelle spent weeks immersing himself in Steven Spielberg’s childhood 8-millimeter films and his formative creative influences, particularly the work of director John Ford, to prepare for his role in 'The Fablemans.'
The director looks back at his early years — and his life-changing love affair with the movies — in this marvelous new film starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano and Gabriel LaBelle.
“‘Indiana Jones,’ ‘Jurassic Park’ — I had the toys, video games, DVDs,” LaBelle says. “Then as I got older, I started diving into ‘Close Encounters,’ ‘Empire of the Sun,’ ‘Schindler’s List,’ the list goes on and on. I wasn’t around to experience the effect he had on the culture in real time. But I still realize what a big deal it is.”
Over a series of Zoom conversations before shooting began, LaBelle probed Spielberg about what in the script had really happened and what was fiction, trying to understand what made him tick. Essentially everything in “The Fabelmans,” he came to learn, was drawn from the director’s life, from the marital infidelity that tore his family apart to his mother’s pet monkey.
“There are a lot of similarities I could understand,” he says. “We’re both Jewish; we’re both kids of divorce; we both love films. Throughout the film, Sammy is going through a lot of firsts that I’m not so far ahead of. The perspective change of seeing your parents as people for the first time — that’s something I was new to as well.”Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Fabelmans’ and Alejandro Iñárritu’s ‘Bardo’ are among an unexpected rush of self-reflexive films due for release this year.
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a better calling card for a young actor than playing a version of Spielberg in a Spielberg film. But while LaBelle has set aside his earlier plans of going to college, he’s trying to stay sane and grounded.
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