Tom Cruise Leads Toasts as MoMA Honors Steven Spielberg at Film Gala

Tom Cruise opened the toasts and Bruce Springsteen closed the night with "Dancing in the Dark" at the Museum of Modern Art's annual film gala, held Thursday in Midtown Manhattan to honor Steven Spielberg.

Roughly 300 actors, directors and artists walked through pouring rain to attend. The guest list ran from Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro to Cate Blanchett, Drew Barrymore, Jeff Goldblum, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Emily Blunt, Stephen Colbert and Springsteen. Few people, it turns out, decline a Spielberg tribute invitation.

"I was supposed to be working, and I ended up here instead," said Zoe Saldaña, who played immigration officer Dolores Torres in Spielberg's 2004 comedy-drama "The Terminal," on the red carpet.

Who showed up, and why

Saldaña, 48, framed the evening in generational terms. She grew up on "E.T." and "Jaws," and wants the same for her children.

"I feel very blessed that I've had a Steven Spielberg my entire life to marvel at, to let my inner child out," she said. "And I want that for my boys as well."

Spielberg, 79, arrived around 7:15 p.m. in a black Chanel suit with a custom "E.T. Phone Home" message printed inside the jacket. His wife of 35 years, Kate Capshaw, accompanied him.

The honoree's résumé needs little padding. Across more than five decades he has directed over 35 feature films, from "E.T." to "Schindler's List" to "West Side Story." He holds three competitive Academy Awards, including directing Oscars for "Schindler's List" (1993) and "Saving Private Ryan" (1998). As a producer, he holds the record for most best picture nominations, with 14, including a win for "Schindler's List."

What the gala actually funds

The benefit, sponsored by Chanel, raises money for the museum's film collection and exhibitions. Chanel also outfitted many of the high-profile guests. Over the past 18 years, the gala has honored names including Tom Hanks, Penélope Cruz and Quentin Tarantino. Organizers did not disclose how much the evening raised. Money talked; nobody said how much.

Around 8:30 p.m., attendees took seats at long, candlelit tables in the museum's atrium, watched a highlight reel of Spielberg's greatest hits and ate pigs in a blanket. Dinner was Wagyu beef. Speakers toasted before and after.

What did the speakers say?

Cruise, 64, went first. He acted in Spielberg's "Minority Report" (2002) and "War of the Worlds" (2005), and said he took jobs as a young man specifically so he could see Spielberg's films in theaters.

"It's been an absolute privilege to make two films with you, to experience your brilliance firsthand on a movie set," Cruise said. "You're that boy with that 8-millimeter camera, with this powerful imagination. And then you manifest that into a physical reality for audiences to experience."

Emily Blunt, who starred in Spielberg's most recent film, "Disclosure Day," released in June, described his on-set manner. When he's happy with a take, "he'll just come running out of the tent with his fists in the air, and he's cheering," she said.

"It's the greatest," she added. Verdict rendered.

Spielberg on documentaries, and on empathy

The director is currently developing a new western film, he said in an interview at the South by Southwest Festival in March. He still makes time for other people's work. Most recently he watched Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's three-hour "You Can See Everything," about Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud.

"It was one of the most extraordinary documentaries — if you can call it a documentary — that I've seen in a couple of decades," he said. "It was really groundbreaking. I'm a big fan."

Spielberg closed the night by thanking Capshaw for the confidence she inspired in him.

"The stuff I put into any of my films is from the stuff of life, real life, that Kate and I have created through family and friends and conversation and being aware that there's more to living than just what we do for a living," he said.

He noted that his films often traffic in the fantastical, but "Disclosure Day" is much more about empathy than aliens.

"Empathy is the only real superpower that humanity possesses," he told the room. "It's the only form of magic I think exists in the world."

How did Springsteen end the night?

Stephen Colbert took the stage to introduce "just a really good guy from New Jersey." Springsteen's friendship with Spielberg goes back 30 years. He recalled seeing "Jaws" in June 1975, when he was 25, at "a small theater directly across from the Atlantic Ocean." The film, he said, ruined a favorite pastime for New Jersey's youth.

"One of the great pleasures on the Jersey Shore in 1975 was night swimming, preferably naked," Springsteen said. Spielberg's opening scene changed that, he added, using an expletive, to laughter and applause.

Then he played his 1984 hit "Dancing in the Dark," and the director's broad smile lit up the room. A western in development, a Chanel suit lined with "E.T.," and a Boss serenade — Spielberg's 79th year is not easing off the gas.