Spielberg shared how directing 'The Color Purple' transformed his understanding of filmmaking. The story was filled with deep pain and deeper truths, and his gut told him that more people needed to meet those characters. He realized that his job is to create a world that lasts two hours, but the graduates' job was to create a world that lasts forever. He urged them to study the past — quoting Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton's favorite professor who said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything: 'You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.' Spielberg pushed back against social media's obsession with the here and now, saying he'd been fighting within his own family to get his kids to look behind them.