When Steven Spielberg signed up for a Boy Scouts merit badge in moviemaking, his father bought him a Super-8 camera. According to his mother, from then on the decor in their house consisted of white walls, blue carpeting, and tripods. Their car back then was a 1950 army-surplus jeep. Steven's family would load it up and drive into the desert. And Steven would have the whole family dressed up in ridiculous costumes. He'd say, "Stand behind that cactus," and they did.

And Steven's mother was quite willing to go along with his outrageous moviemaking schemes. Once when he wanted to make a horror movie with something disgusting oozing out of her kitchen cabinets, she bought thirty cans of cherries, cooked them in a pressure cooker until they exploded all over the room, and then spent years gra…