thank you very much
a are George how young we were
like the students here watching us tonight
arm and and I think that
and I i like George at the last moment I was told to come up here and say a few
words so I I didn't really prepare
anything um at home the night before so let me just talk a little bit about
about something I said you know when
a journalist asked me years ago a question I really couldn't answer
a you know they said what do you what do you do why do you do this
and and I don't know where it came from but I swear to turn the journalist in
the flip
what kind of way I said I dream for a living and
and and it years later I realize well that's exactly what I do I dream for a
living this is what I've
done all my life this is what I wanted to do with my life
and yet I never really had a career plan
we all have plans we all make planted some
sometimes starts when you have to declare major and I a course was the
at a college that didn't have the major that I would have declared
which was film and television so I was none declared major
I on I majored in English because my father
told me I needed a fallback career
in case the movie directing thing didn't work out
and and he said if you major in English you can teach
and and teaching as a noble profession on something that I'd
have come to understand is maybe
the nobles profession in the world today
teachers per perhaps are also the most underpaid heroes
in the world today
but as noble as it seem to be I wanted to be a movie director
and I thought I'd share with you how it all started
up everything about to tell you happen completely
on buy it by accident and I think it all started out when I was
maybe six or seven years old and my father came over to me and said
I'm gonna take you to see the greatest show on earth
and when you promise to six seven eight year old
young boy that you're about to see the greatest show on earth
I couldn't have been more excited my father explained that we're gonna be
lying to gamers and
circus acts they were gonna be clowns and Trapez artists
and I was absolutely delighted my look for this for a week
up on the weekend we got in the car we drove to philadelphia we lived in New
Jersey
in a I hadn't hadn't Township New Jersey we drove in philadelphia it was
very very cold it was winter time around the holiday season
and we stood in a very long line I remember against a solid
red brick wall for what seemed like hours I think we acted in line for about
two and a half hours
the line just inched forward I didn't quite understand I was waiting to see
the tent in there was not a tenth it was ok brick wall
we walked into some rather large doors and we walked into a very kind of a
dimly lit room
I remember the room had a lot of pink and purple lights
and the ceiling look like a church
it was it was lot over coke 0
carvings there what their work there wasn't any kind from
iconic you know you know some biology in the room but
it felt like a place of worship a little bit like her synagogue actually
E and and I i and I still didn't quite understand about the greatest show on
earth
and i sat down and some seats and they're all facing forward
not bleachers but seats was a large red Curtner forget this
and the curtain open the lights went down
and they dimly lit
image came on the screen and it was flickering
and it was cut grainy cuz we were sitting way way in front
and suddenly I realized that
my father had lied to me and had betrayed me
and had taken the me to some it had taken me to a circus that wasn't a
circus
it was a movie about a circus and I had never seen a movie before
that was the first movie I ever saw cecil B demille the greatest show on
earth they had never seen a motion picture for
I'd seen well television cuz my dad was not require engineer and a spare time
when he was working for RCA he was repairing the early television set serve
the early fifties
so I knew television but I didn't know movies that was my first movie
experience
and I think the feeling a disappointment and regret betrayal lasted only about 10
minutes
and then I became just one more victim of this tremendous drug called cinema
and I was no longer in the theater
I was no longer in the CDA was no where the surroundings
it was no longer a church it was a place
love equal devotion and worship however
I became part of an experience
and I became part of the lives of a lot of people
the ride never would meet and I would only get to know in this one story but
that became my life now in the center of this movie
any view remember the Cecil B DeMille from Gersh owner is a tremendous train
wreck
were a train speeding along the tracks
is encountered by a car
a person trying to stop a Trane flags on the train and the train hit the car
the car flips over the top of the engine
and the train goes off the tracks and is a tremendous disaster all the cars
pile-up
it was it was a special effects sequence later I learned it was a miniature
train but it was as real as I've ever seen anything
in my life it was the greatest disaster I ever be held and
and for me it began my interest not a making movies
but in asking my dad to get me a wino electric train
so I went from wanting to become part of this
incredible experience to morning to on my first light retrain
and their holiday season my dad got me my first line:
engine and will call karna Cup caboose in a few passenger cars
and the next year I ask for the same thing I said I'd like another engine so
I had
two trains and as I got older I began to collect every year more more cars and
people once semaphores and
crossing signals I became a complete electric train
not and I had a rather largely out in our
in and by this time by the way we had moved from New Jersey to Phoenix Arizona
would which by the way
when you're about 12 years old there is nothing to do in Phoenix Arizona
nothing at all so I'll out romance
and and I was really interested in sweat see we would look like if I could
recreate that
memory now several years or the greatest show on earth and could I recreate the
train wreck and I actually took my two trains
and i'd is ram them into each other and and they broke and I told my dad the
train had broken he said how it happened I said I rammed into each other my dad
had a prepared
and the next week I I crashed my trains into each other again and the other
train broke
and my dad said look you know you I will take the train set a way to crash these
things into each other one more time you're not going to have trains anymore
but there was something about whatever the primal
center why destroy something because that movie
whatever got into me I needed to see those trains
crash into each other and and and and so
I do I also didn't wanna lose my train set my dad had sitting around the house
which I always to take it for granted
this little eight-millimeter kodak film movie camera with
a turret they had three lenses kinda wide medium in close-up lens
I never really bothered with the camera but I thought why I know what I can do
what if I from the trains crashing into each other I can just watch the film
over and over and over again
and that's how I made my first movie I shot one trainer just all the camera
didn't have an editing machine I just
but the camera loader the track the way we as children
like to put her eyes close to the toys were playing with for the scale seems
to be arm you know it is this the scale seems to be realistic
and I i just from one train going left to right I from the other train
cut the camer turn around the other train can you coming right to left
in a to Italy I figured out if I put the camera in the middle name it in the
middle
I have my train wreck with that's exactly where I did luck with the trains
in break
but I look at that film over and over and over again
and then I thought I wonder what else I could do with this camera
and that's not again and that so I became a director
and that first term I sensed
that an audience was kind of agreeing with my
choice a profession was when I was a boy scout
and I went out for the photography merit badge and I wanted
to in the end and the requirement in a merit badge simply said you have to tell
a picture was still photographs
our stock amor broke I want to the Scoutmaster a sacred tell
a story with are home movie camera he said yes
to fulfill the requirements for the merit badge and I made a western called
gun smog
a yeah I'm really getting myself because a question for nesting gunsmoke was all
the rage on television in those days
and I made it to the Western with mice but my sisters and my friends my next
door neighbors and Smith the Boy Scouts in
we just everybody had cowboy suit because we love never zone in my
goodness you know
and so we all brought our Cal boy suits out and I made this a western movie
and showed it to the Boy Scout Troop on a Friday night at when we had a meeting
and they went ballistic they were screaming and clapping and laughing
both within at the movie I didn't care it was a response
and the response set me on fire it absolutely set me on fire
and i'd never wanted to live without
some kind of love affirmations some kind of collective
feedback and maybe that's why my early movies were all about you
my early movies were all soliciting you make you my partner's thinking about you
behind the camera
thinking what would turn you on what would get you excited what would make
you laugh what would make you scream
how can I create suspense out of whole cloth when that during Shark never work
and you you were my partner's my audience
war you know we're all my I collaborated with you you clambered with me
and I think the beginning in my career I had is wonderful experience and
a and the thing I really one emphasizes I didn't have a choice
I didn't have a choice when you have a dream
and the dream isn't something you dream then it happens the dream is something
you never knew was going to come into your life
dreams always come from behind you not not right between your eyes and speaks
up on you
but when you have a dream it doesn't often come at you screaming
in your face this is who you are this is what you must be for the rest your life
sometimes a dream almost whispers and I've always said my kids
the hardest thing to listen to your instincts your
human personal intuition always whispers it never shouts
very hard to hear see you have to every day if your lives
be ready to hear what whispers in your ear it very rarely shelves
and if you can listen to the whisper and if it's
tickles your heart and it's something you think you want to do for the rest
your life
than that is going to be what you do for the rest your life
and we will benefit from everything you do thank you very much