Artist & Populist Both: HBO’s Spielberg Goes Deep on a Living Hollywood Legend

Is Steven Spielberg a populist or an artist? Like his exemplar, the iconic director Alfred Hitchcock, critics have often pointed to Spielberg’s fame to detract from or overlook his artistic accomplishments. At what many consider the height of Spielberg’s career in the 1970s and 80s, the director was one of the best-known filmmakers in the world, as well as one of the highest-grossing, with movies like Jaws, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark smashing box office records.