But, for me at least, what displays the range of his mind is his fascination, not only with where we can go rocketing into the future, but where we ve been in canvassing our painful past. And here we point to Amistad, The Color Purple, and Schindler s List. And it s his respect for our history the articulate, audible, and visual voice that he gives to our experience at a time when so much of its substance is being erased by the PC s delete key that illuminates his soul. And when the last of the credits rolled and the lights came up, almost everybody in the theater that evening had tears in their eyes. Others were so stunned they could not speak.
Most wouldn t make eye contact with one another.
All we could hear were the sounds of silence. Everyone simply wanted to leave the theater so we could go home and reflect on the meaning and on the power of that film. Then, some weeks later, when the Army paid tribute to Steven, the eloquence of his words there only added to the force of his message. He spoke very movingly about how he wanted to make this movie as a way of saying thank you. Thank you to his father, who had served aboard a B-25 during World War II, and thank you to his father s generation for their service and sacrifice during that war.