Steven Spielberg

The more we know about the Holocaust, the more unknowable it seems to become. Like the mythological fruit of Tantalus, always just out of reach, its essence eludes us, too awful to fully comprehend no matter how passionately we seek to know and understand it. One thing that does become clear, however, is that to approach the Holocaust from a dramatic point of view, detachment and self-control almost to the point of coldness are essential.

Silent and apparently inert, Stephen W. Hawking sits in the wheelchair to which he is confined, as members of a film crew buzz around him on a sound stage, shooting him from almost every conceivable angle. However you look at it, Hawking is not your average leading man. Yet here he sits, up on a pedestal in front of a blue screen, as the cameras bestow upon him all the attention usually reserved for a Redford, Eastwood or Costner.

"I can honestly say I've been making World War II movies all my life," Steven Spielberg reflects with a rueful grin. "I've been stuck in the 1940s for most of my career." In four decades of making films, though, it's fair to say Spielberg has never before tackled World War II in quite such depth as now. Along with Tom Hanks, he is executive producer of "Band of Brothers," a 10-part miniseries that debuts on HBO this weekend.

Everyone calls him Steven; within the busy catacombs of Hollywood, no further identification is necessary. His record as a popular culture taste-master speaks for itself; through the end of 1997, seven of the 20 highest-grossing films bear his mark as either director, producer or executive producer. And in 1998, Steven Spielberg did it again, re-creating World War II to both critical and box-office success in "Saving Private Ryan," the favorite for this year's best picture Oscar.

While Hollywood scampered around trying to get the Sony-Guber-Peters story right--trying to figure out how Sony hand-picked Jon Peters and Peter Guber to run Columbia Pictures--Steven Spielberg returned from Hawaii and put it all in Zen-like perspective: "Sony," he explained, "is simply giving the movie business another checking account." Spielberg knows something about checking accounts and he has an uncanny, possibly unmatched, understanding of the politics of Hollywood.

In the spring of 2011, Steven Spielberg received a hand-addressed package at his office on the Universal Studios lot, marked ominously with a skull and crossbones. The director, who was months from starting production on his next movie, "Lincoln," closed his door, opened the package and removed an old pocket cassette recorder. "I literally for 10 minutes was afraid to turn it on, because I expected that whatever I heard on that tape was going to be my film, my entire film," Spielberg said.

Steven Spielberg was reluctant about returning to Hawaii because the islands already served as a backdrop for his "Jurassic Park" series and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Yet following a worldwide search, Hawaii was cast again. This time as a South American rain forest in the fourth installment of "Indiana Jones." "We've had a lot of success shooting in the Hawaiian Islands," said Kathleen Kennedy, executive producer of the still-untitled film.

"Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists From Hitler," the major exhibition that opened Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, had a big price tag: more than $1 million. That presented the museum and curator Stephanie Barron with a daunting fund-raising challenge, but the show had a lot going for it.