CHANEL and MoMA Honor Steven Spielberg With Surprise Guests Bruce Springsteen and Tom Cruise

How do you surprise the man who invented the summer blockbuster? You send in Tom Cruise unannounced — and you save Bruce Springsteen for after dinner. That was the running order in Manhattan on Thursday night, November 12, as CHANEL presented the Museum of Modern Art’s 18th annual Film Benefit — officially, The Museum of Modern Art Film Benefit Presented by CHANEL, A Tribute to Steven Spielberg — a night that pulled Emily Blunt, Martin Scorsese, Cate Blanchett, Robert De Niro and roughly half of Hollywood’s speed dial into one room to toast the director behind E.T., Jaws and West Side Story.

Photo Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Cruise kicked things off (no stunt rigging required, though frankly I wouldn’t have put it past him), then handed the floor to a tribute trio of Blunt, Steve Martin and Scorsese — a lineup most awards shows would sell a kidney for. MoMA’s David Rockefeller Director Christophe Cherix and Chief Curator of Film Rajendra Roy also spoke, because it was, after all, their party.

Just before dinner, Ariana DeBose sang “Somewhere” from West Side Story, and it landed exactly the way you’d want it to: the woman Spielberg cast as Anita, singing for the man who cast her. Lovely. Genuinely lovely. The kind of moment that makes the cynics at the back of the room (hi) quietly reach for a napkin.

Photo Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

And just when you might reasonably assume the surprises were over — plates cleared, speeches done, everyone mentally summoning their drivers — Stephen Colbert stepped up to introduce the evening’s final act.

The Boss was in the building. And he hadn’t come to wave.

Photo Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Bruce Springsteen, performing live. At a film benefit. For Steven Spielberg. I don’t know who had that on their bingo card, but I’d very much like to buy them a drink.

The guest list came with a few Spielberg plot twists of its own. Drew Barrymore, who was all of seven when E.T. hit theaters (and, let’s be honest, stole every scene she was in), was there. So was Kate Capshaw, who starred in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and — in what remains the single best casting decision of Spielberg’s career — went on to marry its director. Their daughter Jessica Capshaw came too, as did Frank Marshall, Spielberg’s producing partner since the Raiders days, which is to say the man who’s been in the room for most of the magic.

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

The rest of the room read like a very expensive game of Who’s Who: Cate Blanchett, Robert De Niro and Tiffany Chen, Jeff Goldblum (being Jeff Goldblum, presumably), Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, Riley Keough, Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley, Zoe Saldaña, Martin Short, Christopher Walken, and Michelle Williams and Thomas Kail. Christy Turlington Burns and Ed Burns turned up, as did John Krasinski, Katie Couric, Marcello Hernández, Eve Hewson, Sam Waterston, Lorne and Alice Michaels, Dame Donna Langley, Lauren Santo Domingo and Francesca Scorsese (who, I’d imagine, has heard a few Spielberg stories over the years). MoMA’s top brass were out in force too: Board of Trustees President Sarah Arison, Chair Marie-Josée Kravis and Film Committee Chair Michael Ovitz. Not a bad dinner party, all things considered.

Underneath the wattage, there’s a point to all this: the benefit raises money to bring more films into MoMA’s film collection. CHANEL has sponsored the evening since 2011 and has served as the museum’s lead film sponsor since 2021, backing the preservation of cinema’s legacy worldwide and restoring some of the industry’s most treasured works so future audiences can actually see them — which, if you care about cinema even a little, is the least glamorous and most important thing in this entire story.

Spielberg now joins a roster of past honorees that reads like a film-school syllabus: Sofia Coppola, Samuel L. Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Penélope Cruz, George Clooney, Laura Dern, Julianne Moore, Tom Hanks, Alfonso Cuarón, Tilda Swinton, Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodóvar, Kathryn Bigelow, Tim Burton and Baz Luhrmann — plus two who were in the room cheering him on, Blanchett and (full circle) Scorsese himself. Excellent company. Though I’d wager none of them got Springsteen.

See additional images from the night below!

Photo Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

Photo Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for The Museum of Modern Art

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