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Steven Spielberg is an Academy Award winner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and one of the highest-grossing directors of all time.

He’s also a pretty good Pole Position player, which nobody talks about.

Nobody except Zach Galligan. The young actor had been cast by Spielberg for the 1984 Gremlins, one of the first films produced by Spielberg’s production company Amblin Entertainment. During a Gremlins spotlight panel at GalaxyCon Columbus 2024, Billy Peltzer actor Zach Galligan reminisced about what it was like having Spielberg on set, and how the famous director humiliated him with his arcade skills.

“It’s been very interesting the relationship that I’ve had with Mr. Spielberg, because I’ve only met him five or six times, being a New Yorker, and him being in Los Angeles all the time,” Galligan recalls. “He cast Phoebe [Cates] and myself. As executive producer, he had casting approval. And then promptly left for Sri Lanka to do Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

While Gremlins wasn’t Spielberg’s primary focus, he would stop by the set from time to time, and his presence always created a buzz.

“When he showed up, it was as if the king had an unannounced meeting at a village hamlet in the 1500s.”

Spielberg’s long absences meant that his office was usually vacant, and he was kind enough to let the young actors help themselves to the arcade machines in there.

“Mr. Spielberg was kind enough to let myself, and to a lesser extent Corey Feldman, who was 11 at the time, play video games in his Amblin office.”

“I was given full access anytime I wanted to, which happened a lot because Gizmo would break a lot. His ear would snap off, a dog stepped on his ear, ripped it off, that was a 6-hour delay, and I was like, ‘Yes.’ Missile Command, Millipede, Food Fight, and a Formula One game called Pole Position were all stand-up games in his office. Something happened with one of the Mogwais, and I strolled over to Spielberg’s office and started playing Pole Position.”

“I start playing it, and over my left shoulder, you know these video games had kind of a reflective service on it, in the reflection I see a very familiar looking bearded person with glasses, and it was in fact Mr. Spielberg standing over my shoulder.”

What do you do when one of the biggest directors in Hollywood is watching you play an arcade game? You challenge him. However, this led to a humbling moment for Galligan.

“He looks at me and goes, ‘I’ll play you.’ Remember, I’m 19 and a video game fanatic, and pretty cocky. He goes, ‘You want to go first.’ I go, ‘I’ll go first.’ I press 2-player, we start playing, it’s the greatest run of my life. I start going around this and that. I think I had something like half a million points. I can remember sweating. I was sweating at the end. Mopped by brow, stepped back, and said, ‘You’re up, sir.’”

Spielberg proceeded to effortlessly wipe the floor with Galligan.

“He got up and started playing. Ten minutes later, he’s still playing. He’s gone through everything I went through, now he’s into things I’ve never seen. Just decimating me. And he didn’t break a sweat at all. And I was thinking to myself, ‘Dumbass, of course he’s amazing at this game, he owns it.’ But I thought maybe four months in Sri Lanka he would be a little rusty. He stepped off and he was like, ‘Good game.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And then I looked at him and said, ‘You’ve played this a little bit.’ And he says, ‘A little bit.’”

Surprise, Steven Spielberg is a gamer! I wonder if his skills have increased in the decades since Gremlins hit theaters. Who knows, maybe one day he’ll do a Twitch stream. I know they don’t usually do arcade games on Twitch, but I would love to see a Pole Position rematch between Spielberg and Galligan.

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