It was an all-star tribute when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) feted filmmaker and DreamWorks head Steven Spielberg at its annual America’s Democratic Legacy Award Gala at the Beverly Hilton on December 9. Since 1913, the ADL has been dedicated to fighting racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism. And, as the Legacy Award winner, Spielberg joined distinguished company, including former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman, Colin Powell, Eleanor Roosevelt, Saul Bellow, Henry Kissinger and Walter Annenberg. Spielberg, a longtime resident of Pacific Palisades, was preceded at the podium by his ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’ star Drew Barrymore (who emceed the evening), actor Richard Dreyfuss (‘Jaws’), and screen legend Kirk Douglas, who turned 93 and elicited a round of ‘Happy Birthday’ from the audience of 1,100. But what really roused everybody was a soul-searing rendition of the National Anthem by the singer whose name is seemingly on everyone’s lips this season: ‘American Idol’ star Adam Lambert. L.A.’s top law enforcement chiefs attended the banquet: Sheriff Lee Baca and the new LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck. Dressed in uniform, Beck told the Palisadian-Post that he came ‘to show my support for the ADL and make sure they understand that our department’s relationships with them in the past are intact.’ He cited ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’ as a favorite Spielberg film. ”E.T.’ at the time was really groundbreaking,’ Beck said, adding that his children were very young upon its 1982 release and ‘they made me watch it a thousand times. Of course, ‘Schindler’s List’ was, technically, a fantastic film.’ Baca, who identified ‘The Color Purple’ as his favorite Spielberg movie, praised the ADL’s accomplishments, as well as the community from which it sprang. ‘The Jewish community is a great contributor,’ Baca said, ‘not just to its own but to all. They contribute to entertainment, legal, government and the private sector. They are dedicated to the betterment of society.’ Also in attendance was Pacific Palisades filmmaker J.J. Abrams, the man behind the 2009 blockbuster ‘Star Trek,’ and his wife, Katie McGrath. ‘I’m a big fan [of the paper]!’ was Abrams’ reaction to meeting a Post reporter. He recalled that, in 2002, the paper ‘ran a photo of me and my son, who was three, on a scooter. The people writing the Two Cents column were outraged. ‘How could you put him on there like that [without a helmet]?!’ ‘We’re just here to support Steven and what he does,’ Abrams continued. When asked to name a favorite Spielberg feature, Abrams, as if eating a potato chip, could not stop at one. ”Jaws’ was undeniable,’ Abrams, a Palisades High grad, said. ‘Basically, I would list his entire resume of films.’ Admittedly not a Trekkie growing up, Abrams turned to Spielberg and ‘Superman’ director Richard Donner for inspiration for his sunny, upbeat blockbuster, which interrupted a darker trend spawned in the aftermath of such gothic hits as ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Blade.’ ’It was definitely an education doing it,’ Abrams said. ‘I got to see why the fans are fans.’ Other notables at the gala included singer Paula Abdul, directors Walter Hill and Jeff Nathanson, Spielberg’s DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Stacey Snider, and producers Walter Mirisch, Avi Lerner and Frank Marshall. Spielberg’s mentor, former Universal Pictures chief Sid Sheinberg, called Spielberg ‘a great father,’ and ‘a brave man. ‘Munich’ is a film I urged him not to make. I was worried for Steven.’ Actor Douglas noted that Spielberg established the Shoah Visual Foundation, which has documented the testimony of 52,000 Holocaust survivors on video since 1994. ‘It was a race against time,’ Douglas said. ’We are Jewish and we are proud of it,’ said Dreyfuss, who starred in Spielberg’s movies ‘Jaws’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’ ‘We are Americans, we are artists, and we have prevailed.’ Abramam Foxman, the ADL’s national director, praised Spielberg’s ‘extraordinary generosity and genius, which remains unmatched’ and singled out the director’s contributions to the victims of the 2005 Southeast Asia tsunami. While Abrams may have been more influenced by Spielberg’s fantasy output, the ADL gala emphasized the serious Spielberg: the filmmaker and/or producer behind ‘The Color Purple,’ ‘Amistad,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘Munich,’ ‘Band of Brothers’ and the Holocaust drama ‘Schindler’s List.’ ‘Our history includes chapters with many stories of Jewish pride, Jewish generosity, Jewish self-defense and Jewish curiosity,’ Spielberg said. Using as an anchor the Hanukkah holiday and its back story (in which the Maccabees triumphed over the Seleucid Empire at the Temple in Jerusalem and a day’s worth of olive oil somehow fueled the Temple’s eternal flame for eight days), Spielberg pointed out the importance of life’s simple moments, especially in our world of ever-increasing technological distractions. ‘It’s the smallness of this miracle that fascinates me,’ he said. ‘Hanukkah is meant to make us think about paying attention.’ Despite our advancements, ‘all of the old evils still exist,’ Spielberg continued, referring to radical extremists around the world and to neo-Nazi groups in America and Europe. ‘They have found a frightening new home in cyberspace.’ Despite it all, Spielberg said, he still believed in people and the good they can do. ‘The ADL’s principal tenet is that bigotry must not be tolerated.’ In spite of this humanitarian honor being bestowed on the most successful filmmaker of all time, Spielberg was well aware of reality. ‘What my kids will remember is that I met Adam Lambert this evening,’ he said.
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