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Watch the Trailer for HBO's Steven Spielberg Documentary

"Every time I start a new scene I'm nervous. When that verges on panic, I get great ideas."

On Monday, HBO released the first trailer for its upcoming documentary about director Steven Spielberg, and everyone from Leonardo Dicaprio to Martin Scorsese pops in to sing the seminal filmmaker's praises.

The doc, appropriately titled Spielberg, traces the director's life from his childhood as an obsessive film buff to his early years as a 70s "movie brat" to his first summer blockbuster, Jaws, and the zillion other blockbusters that followed and shaped the course of 20th-century filmmaking.

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"You think of that young kid one day sneaking into a studio and manifesting his own destiny," Dicaprio says in the trailer. "It's a pretty fantastic Hollywood story."

The doc is directed by American Masters creator Susan Lacy, who stitched together extensive interviews with Spielberg's contemporaries, as well as around 30 hours of conversations with the filmmaker himself. Along with Dicaprio and Scorsese, Harrison Ford, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, and Oprah are just a few of the many stars who sit down to weigh in on Spielberg's work, Collider reports.

"Every actor I interview—and I interviewed everybody—they were most impressed with how much he understands the process of filmmaking and how he sees ahead when he's shooting," Lacy said during a press event last July. "Very few filmmakers have that skill. I did so much research."

According to Spielberg, though, that skill is driven mostly by his own nerves. "Every time I start a new scene I'm nervous," he says in the trailer's opening moments. "When that verges on panic, I get great ideas."

The two and a half hour documentary will premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5, before dropping on HBO October 7. Give the trailer a watch above.