Destry Allyn Spielberg: ‘Of course I’m a ‘daughter of,’ but what do I do? Do I get reborn to stop being one?’

It’s an October afternoon; Destry Allyn Spielberg is stretching out in a huge hotel room, one arm above her head, with the Mediterranean Sea in the background. The location is Sitges, where the youngest daughter of Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw — who the Oscar-winning director has been married to since 1991 after they coincided on the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — has come to present her first film at the Fantastic Film Festival. It is a terrifying dystopia — in more than one sense — entitled Please Don’t Feed the Children. “I expect some terrible reviews,” she says, emphasizing the word “terrible.” She knows what she’s talking about: “I’m tired of being judged.”

Destry Allyn, whose name has cinematic overtones — it comes from the title of the James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich western Destry Rides Again (1939) — had no intention of carving out a career in film. “It wasn’t in my plans. My life was horse riding,” she confesses. “But then I had a really bad fall and I messed up my back. I spent a year feeling really low. What was I going to do with my life?” She stretches out one arm again, then the other. Maybe it’s an after-effect of the accident. “I was looking for something that would make me feel the same passion I felt for horses. I tried acting. I signed up for drama school, and I thought it was fun, I don’t know... What if I became an actor? I wasn’t really that excited about it, because I didn’t want to have to deal with the constant judgement that comes with it.”

What does she mean? “When you’re an actor, as a woman, you’re constantly judged by your physical appearance, whether you’re pretty enough, or thin enough, for a role. And I’m already judged enough for being Steven Spielberg’s daughter,” she answers. “It hurts. No matter how much you believe in yourself, it hurts that they only see that,” she adds. And yet, she says that she tried. She went to auditions, but it didn’t happen for her. “That’s why I’ve decided to give opportunities to actors who are just starting out. Because even being Spielberg’s daughter, I wasn’t able to get a role,” she says. The young protagonists of Please Don’t Feed the Children are all unknown actors. “We shot the film in 18 days. Almost all the cast were minors with no experience; it was a real miracle.”

There are two well-known names in the film, however. One is Giancarlo Esposito — Gus Fring from Breaking Bad, who has revolutionized this year’s Sitges Festival: he came to collect a Time Machine Award for his career in the genre — who has a small role. The other is Michelle Dockery, best-known for the series Downton Abbey. For Spielberg, Dockery’s role as an evil housewife, who prepares poisoned cookies and keeps children prisoner like a witch in a Grimm Brothers’ tale, has a lot to do with Coraline (2009), the animated film based on Neil Gaiman’s book. “My inspiration comes from animated cinema,” she admits, mentioning Japanese fantasy Spirited Away (2001). And from Stanley Kubrick. Her favorite film is The Shining.

“Every time I see it, it says something different to me. I like Kubrick’s films because they hide things. There are secrets everywhere that you only discover by watching them again. I love it when you watch a film again and suddenly everything you believed about it changes,” she explains. But she admits that she hasn’t seen too many films. Nor is she a great reader. “In fact, I’m not a reader at all,” she confesses. “But I’ve spent a lot of time on shoots. When I was little I remember being on shoots. I didn’t go to a regular school: I used to be home-schooled, and because I was the youngest of seven, well, the others already had their lives when I was still with my parents, so they took me with them. I think I know more about how movies are made than about movies,” she says. That’s why, she believes, she had the kind of revelation she did when she first got behind the camera.

“What if I direct it?”

What happened was “a friend and I decided to write our own script and star in our own film, because she wasn’t being called for any roles either. And when we had everything, since we couldn’t afford a director, I said to myself: ‘What if I direct it?’ And then I realized that I knew how it all worked. That, unconsciously, I had learned to be behind the camera, and I don’t want to be in front of it anymore,” she recalls. She’s not referring to the short film she directed later, Let Me Go (The Right Way), written by Owen King, Stephen King’s son, and starring Hopper Penn, Sean Penn’s son, for which she was accused of nepotism, but to something she did before that. “What do you expect? Of course I’m a ‘daughter of,’ but what do I do? Do I get reborn to stop being one? Do I ask the guy up there to make me the daughter of other people? Hey, Lord, can I start from scratch? No matter what I did, I would be judged, so what does it matter,” she says.

That’s why she has a mission, she says. “I know what it’s like to not be seen: when I wanted to be an actor and no one would hire me, not even being a Spielberg. I know what it’s like to believe that you’re worth something and no one is noticing. That’s why I want to boost careers, to work with people who haven’t done anything before. To discover new talents. I want the privilege and the curse of being seen as I am now to serve a purpose. Because cinema is not about oneself. Cinema is about creating a team. A small family,” she says. And speaking of family, have her parents seen the film? “My mother hasn’t yet. But my father has. He gave me a hug when it was over. I know he’s proud. But I know there are things he doesn’t like. He gave me advice, and I followed it. We did what we could with what we had. The next one will be better,” she says. It is already underway. The only thing she can reveal about it is that it will be a murder mystery film.

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