The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [79]
In one high school, Spielberg was beaten up because he was Jewish. “I got smacked and kicked to the ground during PE, in the locker room, in the showers,” he said. “Pennies were thrown at me in the study hall in a very quiet room of one hundred students. People coughed the word ‘Jew’ in their hand as they passed me in the hallway.”
In another high school, students mocked him because they thought he was “weird” and “independent-minded,” said a classmate who played in the school band with Spielberg. At that time in his life, Spielberg was already preoccupied with filming, constantly snapping photographs with the camera he carried around school. His mother recalled, “He always saw things differently than anybody else.” Described by classmates as shy, introverted, and ostracized, he “formed his own tight little social circle in response to his exclusion from the jockocracy of Arcadia High School,” according to biographer Joseph McBride. “Steve’s friends were mostly creative oddballs like him, and the things they were doing were not mainstream interests at Arcadia. When he became part of the drama group, it was the first time he ‘realized there were options besides being a jock or a wimp.’ But he still could not help regarding that group as ‘my leper colony.’ ”
Outside of school, Spielberg concentrated on filmmaking, creating impressive special effects and shooting movies in his backyard. For one of those movies, he cast his most intimidating bully as a fighter squadron leader. “He was my nemesis; I dreamed about him,” Spielberg said. “Even when he was in one of my movies, I was afraid of him. But I was able to bring him over to a place where I felt safer: in front of my camera. I didn’t use words. I used a camera, and I discovered what a tool and a weapon, what an instrument of self-inspection and self-expression it is. . . . I had learned that film was power.” The film won first place in a statewide amateur film competition. Spielberg was fourteen. He would go on to become what the New York Times called “the most bankable director in the business,” and to win countless awards, among them Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Schindler’s List, the first major Hollywood film to portray the Holocaust.
FREETHINKING, VISION
“Big ideas come from big thinkers: the eccentric genius, the inspired founder, the visionary CEO,” Fast Company’s William Taylor wrote. “Business history is filled with heroic tales of breakthroughs fueled by unique imagination and individual determination. Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone. Henry Ford and the assembly line. Edward Land and instant photography.” Innovation of thought is just as important as creativity of expression. We wouldn’t have progress—cures for diseases, ways to harness new energy sources—without the foresight of people who devise or are willing to operate under different philosophies and points of view.
In 1896, French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre developed an interest in processionary caterpillars, which move in long, head-to-tail lines. Fabre observed the caterpillars circling the rim of a flowerpot in a continuous loop. He placed the caterpillars’ favorite food “not a hands’ breadth away.” For seven days, the caterpillars instinctively followed each other around the rim until they died of hunger and exhaustion. They were so focused on the trail in front of them that they could not see that a simple six-inch deviation from the line would save their lives.
As opposed to the habitual human equivalents of these followers, freethinkers are people who are able and willing to look beyond the rim of the flowerpot. Fortune magazine’s Manager of the Century, Jack Welch, who, during his tenure as CEO of General Electric turned it into the world’s most valuable corporation, addressed the importance of this trait in his book Winning. He sought in a senior-level leader “the ability to