Wanted to spotlight something from A.O. Scott’s interview with Steven Spielberg, where he talks about collaborating with screenwriter Tony Kushner on The Fabelmans:

It’s hard to hold someone’s hand over Zoom, but Tony did a good job in giving me the kind of comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life, secrets between myself and my mother that I was never ever, ever going to talk about. Neither in a written autobiography, which I’ve never done, or on film. But we got into those tender trenches.

As far as I can tell “tender trenches” isn’t an existing idiom or common phrase, so I’m assuming that remarkably evocative phrase must have come from Spielberg himself.

Someone oughta use it in a song or poem or something…