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The Color Purple (1985)
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Directed by Steven Spielberg · Shot by Allen Daviau · Cut by Michael Kahn · Music by Quincy Jones · 154 min
How it was made
- Spielberg waived his usual $15 million salary for the Directors Guild of America minimum of $40,000 to direct the film.
- Whoopi Goldberg, whose only prior film credit was an avant-garde feature, was put forward by novelist Alice Walker after Walker heard her stand-up; Goldberg's audition, watched by Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson, included a routine about a stoned E.T. being arrested for drug possession.
- Sets were built at an antebellum-era plantation outside Wadesboro, North Carolina, and the town of Marshville had its paved roads covered in mud and clay to match the early-20th-century setting; winter scenes were shot in summer using fabricated snow.
- A real 60-year-old Baptist chapel was relocated piece by piece to the production for use as the film's church.
- Composer Quincy Jones, doubling as producer, delegated much of the scoring work to a team of eleven other musicians and arrangers, leading to a dispute when the Academy's Best Original Score nomination credited all twelve names.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Steven Spielberg
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