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With NBC Universal still circling an acquisition of DreamWorks, today's NY Times wonders (with accompanying Photoshop whimsy, at left—why have we never put Jeffrey Katzenberg in a red hoodie? Well played, NYT.) what exactly the media behemoth will be getting from The 'Works' primary asset, Steven Spielberg, who has a well-established history of spreading his movie-making love all over town. Rob Marshall, director of the Spielberg-produced Memoirs of a Geisha, chooses to celebrate the value of The Maestro's artistry rather than poke the "million-pound gorilla" with a stick:

Such stickiness can pull the filmmaker deeply into projects that do not ultimately yield a full-blown Steven Spielberg movie. That happened recently with "Geisha." In that case, Mr. Spielberg was first scheduled to direct the movie in 1997, but complications ensued. [...]


Instead Rob Marshall, the director of "Chicago," was hired and Mr. Spielberg remained a producer. "I know he's the 100-pound gorilla, or, what do you say? The million-pound gorilla," Mr. Marshall said. "But here is where Steven is helpful. A lot of producers I work with work from fear. Steven is an artist as well as producer, and he thinks about whether you've served the story."

Perhaps Spielberg's real value, whether sitting in the director's chair or wielding the producer's cat-o-nine-tails, is in this signature commitment to story. He knows that the difference between overbudgeted flop and money-printing blockbuster lies in that crucial, final 10 minutes of screen time, when no matter how many untold millions of humans were vaporized by tripods in the preceding two hours, his hero, the ex-wife, the surly teenage son, the Dakota Fanning, and the smiling grandparents must not only survive, but be showered in a cleansing, happy-ending hail of Care Bears and cotton candy. You just can't put a price on that kind of feel for storytelling.