Sammy Fabelman

Sammy is the eldest son of the Fabelman family, which makes up of his mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams), father Burt (Paul Dano), and younger sisters Reggie (Julia Butters), Natalie (Keeley Karsten) and Lisa (Sophia Kopera). His grandmothers Hadassah Fabelman (Jeannie Berlin) and Tina Schildkraut (Robin Bartlett), usually visit the family for small dinners and special occasions. Like Spielberg, it is his first outing to the cinema in January 1952, when his parents took him at age 7 to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, where he discovers his passion and love of movies. This leads him to recreate the film's famous train wreck sequence with his model toy train set which he gets for Hanukkah that same year, and with that starts making films of his own as he grows up. Throughout the film, Sammy and his family move to different locations as a result of Burt receiving new jobs as a computer engineer, taking them from their hometown of Haddon Township, New Jersey to Phoenix, Arizona and finally, to Saratoga, California.

During his time in Arizona, Sammy, at age 16, becomes influenced by John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) while watching it with his boy scout troop, who then help him make an 8mm short film inspired by it called Gunsmog, which earns him a merit badge for photography. They also help him make a World War II short film called Escape to Nowhere, which results in an emotional response from his family and friends at the screening of it at an assembly. However, he discovers while editing footage he shot of a family camping trip that Mitzi has been having an affair with Burt's loyal friend and co-worker Bennie Loewy (Seth Rogen), who has often been seen as a surrogate uncle to Sammy and his sisters. This reveal brings his filmmaking to a standstill which continues in his family's move to Saratoga, California.

It is there when he starts attending Grand View High School and becomes the target of two jocks, Logan Hall (Sam Rechner) and Chad Thomas (Oakes Fegley), who levy antisemitic abuse towards him. He later ends up dating the devoutly Christian Monica Sherwood (Chloe East), who asks him to film the school's Senior Ditch Day, an offer which he eventually accepts when she mentions that her father will lend him his 16mm Arriflex camera. After moving from a rental to their new house, Mitzi and Burt announce their divorce, which leaves the family, particularly Sammy, heartbroken. At prom, he and Monica break up after the latter reveals she can't put aside her plans to attend Texas A&M University to join him in Hollywood. Sammy's "Ditch Day" film is shown and receives a rapturous response from his peers, but later, Logan, not happy with the way it positively portrayed him, confronts Sammy over the matter. The two ultimately come to an understanding when Logan fights Chad off when he tries to attack Sammy. They promise to keep his reaction a secret, with Sammy jokingly replying "Unless I make a movie about it...which I'm never, ever going to do."

A year later, Sammy now lives with Burt in Hollywood, where he struggles to find work and considers dropping out of college, until receiving an offer from CBS to work on Hogan's Heroes. Burt finally accepts his son's passion after seeing a photograph of Mitzi and Bennie together in their new life. Bernard Fein, the show's co-creator, sees Sammy's aspirations and invites him to meet John Ford himself, who gives Sammy a lesson on framing. Changed by the experience, Sammy happily continues forward with following his dream.[1]

The character of Sammy Fabelman is loosely based on Steven Spielberg himself, with some fictional elements created to make him look and feel more original. His parents and sisters are based on Spielberg's mother Leah Adler, father Arnold Spielberg and sisters Anne, Sue and Nancy, while his granduncle Boris Podgorny (Judd Hirsch), who gives a pivotal monologue to him about compromising his family with art and how the two aspects will continue to be at complete odds, was based on Spielberg's own granduncle of the same name. In a scene that was deleted from the film, Sammy was also supposed to have a grandfather (played by Jonathan Hadary) who died before the story began.[2] On the meaning behind the family name "Fabelman", Kushner (who came up with that name) said, "Spielberg means play-mountain; 'spieler' is an actor in Yiddish, and a 'spiel' can be speech or can be a play ... I wanted to have some of that meaning, and I've always liked the German word 'fabel,' which means fable. And because the movie is autobiographical for Steven but it isn't an autobiography, it's not a documentary, so there's a fictional element as well. So I thought that 'Fabelman' was a nod to that."[3]

Gabriel LaBelle, who was picked from over 2,000 contenders to play the role, described that most of the events and situations Sammy faces in the film happened to Spielberg in real life, particularly the antisemitic bullying and his encounter with John Ford.[4] Newcomer Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord plays the character early in the film when he is a child. On casting the role, Spielberg revealed that it was the hardest, saying "The challenge of casting actors to play my parents was not as difficult as casting someone to represent myself ... I can be objective about my mom and dad, but no one can be really objective about themselves. Gabe was more the me of my imagination – so much cooler than I ever thought I was at that same age."[5]

In September 2022, during the film's world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, LaBelle revealed that he initially did not win the part of Sammy following his first audition but did upon receiving a callback three months afterward. On finally reading the script and learning the details about his character being a fictionalized version of Spielberg himself as a teenager for mostly the entire film, he recalled "When I was auditioning, the character's name was Teenage Sammy – I thought as opposed to Adult Sammy ... I get the script and you're reading it for 30 pages and he's 6 and 8 years old. Page 35 or so Teenage Sammy comes along. OK, good! Now this is my part. It's going to be a three-act movie, it's going to be a Moonlight or something. I kept waiting for my exit but it never came." Spielberg himself revealed that the role of Sammy was the hardest to cast, saying "As a kid growing up, I always had a lot of reasons why I was always in the corner, why I was always not the center of conversation ... I needed someone who wasn't going to bring too much self-awareness to Sammy."[6] Upon casting LaBelle, casting director Cindy Tolan said "With Gabe, there was a poignancy. He could convey the pathos that was needed and also the humor," while Spielberg added, "I wasn't looking for what I see in the mirror, I was looking for a young actor who could carry a lot of story by being curious and honest and engaging and unpredictable."[7]

Eric Langberg of /Film described Sammy as sympathetic, widely creative and one who strives to work his way from the ground up as a young filmmaker to achieve his aspirations.[8] Kole Lyndon Lee of ScreenCraft and Ronald Meyer of Collider noted the character's passion for filmmaking as his own way to escape his personal struggles at home and at school as similar to the on-screen depiction of con artist Frank Abagnale's use of his actions to escape his own reality following his own parents' break-up in Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002), reflecting the possible reasons why Spielberg may have been drawn to make that film.[9]

To look the part, LaBelle had his own hair cut and straightened, and attempted to copy Spielberg's own walk, hand movements and how he smiled to make the character look more like his inspiration while keeping him fresh and new.[10][11][12] He also learned how to film with the 8mm and 16mm camera props, which had real film inside them, on set, as well as how to cut and splice film stock using the film editing machines and projectors of the 1950s and 60s.[13]

The character of Sammy Fabelman was positively received, with Gabriel LaBelle's portrayal garnering widespread critical acclaim. Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood described LaBelle's performance as "sensational throughout, a young man with a love for movies, but tortured by growing pains and a family drifting apart." Ryan McQuade of Awards Watch called LaBelle's performance the stand-out among the cast and praised the character of Sammy as "someone we can trust and connect with as we are seeing his story unfold."[20] Brian Truitt of USA Today said that LaBelle "pulls on your heartstrings as his character's filmmaking, this endeavor he adores, becomes the lens into a secret that creates a rift among his loved ones," positively relating to how various scenes make viewers watching the film become Sammy's eye for the camera.[21]

The "hallway scene" of Sammy and Logan's confrontation and ultimate coming to an understanding, ending with Sammy reassuring Logan that he won't tell anyone about the latter's reaction to the "Ditch Day" film unless he turns it into a film, was cited by some critics as one of the character's best moments in the film, with Peter Volk of Polygon calling it "...a powerful moment in a movie filled with them, and it gets right to the heart of Spielberg's story of the undeniable power of images and the responsibility of those who wield them."[22][23] Joyce Carol Oates, the author of the Marilyn Monroe biography Blonde, which was adapted into a film in 2022, was not fond of the character despite him being based on Spielberg, writing "By making a blonde-Aryan-antisemite the pseudo hero of his high school movie the young Fabelman disarms enemies & wins a pseudo friend. Is this an acknowledgment of the superficial triteness of the director’s career as an entertainer?" Her comments received online backlash for showing disrespect to Spielberg's work and to viewers who felt connected to both the film and the character.[24]

For his performance, LaBelle was recognized as a 2022 TIFF Rising Star at the Toronto International Film Festival, and won the awards for Breakthrough Performance from the National Board of Review (tied with Danielle Deadwyler for Till) and Best Young Performer at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards.[25][26][27][28][29]