A nifty tidbit from the NYT’s long profile of George Lucas and his passion project on the Tuskegee Airmen, “Red Tails.” In it, Brian Curtis outlines the long path that led Lucas to self-fund the action flick where no one else would and his subsequent reflections on life as big-name Hollywood director. There is one aside that caught my eye:

I mentioned to Lucas that his pal Spielberg, who released ” The Adventures of Tintin” and “War Horse” in December, was directing movies as if he were raging against the dying of the light. “Steven is a born director, which is why he’s such a genius,” Lucas said of the 65-year-old Spielberg. “He’s truly a cinematic genius. But he’s like a kid with a video game. It’s like: ‘C’mon, we’re going. We’re leaving now.’ Death comes… . And then Steven goes: ‘I got one more game! I got one more game!’ ”

“One day,” Lucas says, “they’re just going to unplug it and say, ‘You’ve got to go home now.’ ”

I’m always on the lookout for game-as-life metaphors, but this one of Spielberg in a scene cut from The Seventh Seal is both telling and intense!  Thank goodness life doesn’t come with a Mario-eque ticker.

-Jamin Warren