Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Fabelmans.
The credits are rolling; you’ve just finished Steven Spielberg’s latest cinematic opus. The movie’s final shot has left a smile on your face at its cheekiness. As you stare down at the popcorn bits in your lap, euphoric in the light of the film, one question can’t help but nip at your mind. “Wait, who was that guy at the end?”
Going into The Fabelmans without at least a loose knowledge of Spielberg’s history might leave one a little confused. Perhaps the best companion piece to the film is Spielberg, the 2017 HBO movie on the filmmaker himself. While the main portion of the documentary charts his legendary filmography one movie at a time, the film takes breaks to paint a picture of Spielberg’s young life, including interviews where he and his relatives speak on his early fascination with film. When comparing these with the storyline of The Fabelmans, it’s clear that the script doesn’t simply take inspiration from the Spielberg family; it is the director’s cut of his childhood. Even the oddest parts of the movie, such as matriarch Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams) bringing home a monkey, are true stories that actually happened during young Steven’s time growing up in Phoenix.
The Final Scene With Legendary Director John Ford
Thus, it should come as no surprise that the last scenes of The Fabelmans is also based on true anecdotes that Spielberg has told before. Young Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) has the good fortune of encountering a man introduced to him as “the greatest filmmaker of all time.” Upon seeing the posters around him, Sammy realizes that this is indeed John Ford, an incredibly influential American auteur most well known for his work with John Wayne (The Quiet Man and Rio Grande, to name a couple). The Fabelmans has included several references to Ford building up to this, including a scene where Sammy watches the Ford picture The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Now in the filmmaker’s office, Spielberg uses a musical cue from another Ford classic, The Searchers, to showcase the reverence Sammy feels for him.
Immediately that emotion is cut off (along with the score) when Ford enters the room. His signature eye patch over one eye, the filmmaker is presented to us as a disheveled, grumpy old philanderer reaching the end of his cynical life. Perhaps this is Spielberg’s retrospective perception of the moviemaker rather than Sammy’s wide-eyed excitement. Or perhaps his off-kilter charm made him even cooler in the young fan’s eyes.
About That David Lynch Cameo...
The latter reading makes more sense with the bit of stunt casting Spielberg employs. Ford is played by another legendary filmmaker, David Lynch, who is most well known for his dreamy oddball pictures such as Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead, as well as his similarly dark work on the TV series Twin Peaks. Lynch’s fame extends to his unknowable but blunt brilliance on set, a persona he employs here to great effect when playing a fellow filmmaker. His weirdness even extended to the performance within the film itself; Lynch’s cameo reportedly required Spielberg to provide Cheetos on set.
Back in Ford’s office, the elder filmmaker insists that Sammy should look at the paintings on his wall and not so nicely encourages him to describe where the horizon is. In one painting it’s at the bottom of the frame while in another it’s at the top. “When the horizon is at the top, it's interesting. When it's on the bottom, it's interesting. When it's in the middle, it's boring as shit! Got it?” Sammy is then shouted out of his office and leaves with a spring in his step. The camera watches as he walks into the distance between the stages of a Hollywood backlot, ready to take on the world. Then, in a genius bit of cinematography, the camera jerks upward in a janky manner, as if someone behind it wanted to readjust, so the horizon is at the bottom of the frame.
Spielberg Was Heavily Influenced By John Ford
That final shot tells us how much young Sammy will take even the glibbest words from the filmmaker with him, in the form of Steven Spielberg. In truth, that encounter happened almost exactly as it appears in the film. In the Peter Bogdanovich documentary Directed By John Ford, Spielberg tells the story of meeting Ford with the same wondrous gaze that Sammy recreates in The Fabelmans, only the exact quote from the filmmaker varies slightly. Rather than the punchy half joke of a scene, what Ford said was just a little bit more profound than that. According to Spielberg, Ford actually said, “When you’re able to appreciate why [the horizon] is at the top, why it’s at the bottom, you might make a pretty good picture maker.” Here it is again, recounted in an interview for, of all things, the Spielberg produced movie Cowboys and Aliens.
John Ford’s influence on Spielberg is immeasurable. In Spielberg, the titular director even tells his audience that the World War II films he made as a child and teenager weren’t just inspired by Ford’s filmmaking; he would often intercut real aerial combat footage shot by his hero alongside his own shots of friends in the cockpits of retired planes. Even during a peak in his career, Spielberg would pay homage to Ford by putting a scene featuring The Quiet Man in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. And of course there are the Abraham Lincoln movies; Ford captured his early years practicing law in his film Young Mr. Lincoln, while Spielberg focused on the president’s last few months in Lincoln.
It's easy to think of Spielberg as born fully formed as the genius we know today, but the truth is that like everyone else he is indebted to his influences. The ending of The Fabelmans doesn’t directly relate to the film’s larger plot about the family’s drama, but rather gives it an epilogue. For as Steven…that is, as Sammy walks into the now bottom of the frame horizon, he is armed with absolutely everything that has made him turn brilliant, and the film tells us that, blessed with Ford’s advice, he has the absolutely brightest future ahead of him in the movies.