Chapter 2 of 10 · 3'20"
A father is headhunted from company to company, the family moves like Army brats, and a mother acts as a sibling instead of a parent. The wanted childhood never arrives. "I really wanted my childhood to be sort of the pie-in-the-sky, Norman Rockwell American Dream." What he can hold instead is the camera.
❝ Monologue · 10 lines The childhood that stayed out of reach
The camera takes his life back
Someone wanted a Norman Rockwell childhood. A headhunted father kept the family moving like Army brats, with formative years in Phoenix. A mother is a sibling, not a parent. A dying monkey comes home and the kids freak out. One line says he got bullied. A line in the first person calls the demons self-inflicted wounds. The camera is a pen: saying "action" and "cut" wrests control back.
The gap is the point. He names the childhood he wanted as "the pie-in-the-sky, Norman Rockwell American Dream," and the details that follow do not match it. A father works six days and comes home late. A mother is "Peter Pan," a best friend rather than a primary caregiver, getting into trouble the way the kids do. Someone drives home a monkey the shopkeeper calls dying, and the children freak out. In a normal household, one quoted line says, the mother would ask "Are you crazy?" Cs, bullying, not being "the muscle guy," and "self-inflicted wounds" sit beside "I just was a lonely guy." Someone else says making movies was a means of escape, not only a means of expression, and a way toward people he could not otherwise reach. Spielberg then says "The camera was my pen," and that calling "action" and "cut" was when he "wrested control of my life." The dream stays out of reach. The lens is what he can hold.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“Spielberg: I really wanted my childhood to be sort of the pie-in-the-sky, Norman Rockwell American Dream.”
He names the wish as a magazine dream, sweet and out of reach.
Informal
“And when I was able to say "action" and "cut," I wrested control of my life.”
Two set commands turn a lonely childhood into a claim of control.
Neutral
Spielberg: I really wanted my childhood to be sort of the pie-in-the-sky, Norman Rockwell American Dream. My dad was this computer genius that was on the team that invented the first commercial data processing machine at RCA back in 1950, and so my dad was headhunted a lot and went from company to company. Like Army brats, we moved from place to place. But most of my formative years took place in Phoenix, Arizona. My father was the American man who worked very hard. Sometimes worked six days a week and he came home late at night. His career demanded a lot of time away from the family. And my mom was Peter Pan. She was a sibling, not a parent, because she was a best friend, not a primary caregiver. And she got into trouble like we got into trouble.
Up next · 03hear a pin dropThe scene: Spielberg Gets His Universal ContractHe sets it beside the "Norman Rockwell American Dream." It is the childhood he wanted, pretty and out of reach. A headhunted father and a family moving "like Army brats" are named right after. The phrase is for a plan or promise too perfect to be real.
His father "was headhunted a lot and went from company to company." The next line says, "Like Army brats, we moved from place to place." Most of the formative years were still in Phoenix. The line borrows the moving, and it does not say the father was in the army.
The following lines spell out the job. She was a sibling, not a parent, a best friend rather than a primary caregiver, and she got into trouble the way the kids did. One speaker says Steve had a feeling that family should be like "Father Knows Best," and that this one was not the usual family.
The bullying line comes first: "You know, he got bullied a lot." Then "That was tough." After that, "Most of my demons were self-inflicted wounds," "They were things inside myself," "The way I saw myself," and "I didn't have a lot of high esteem for myself." The wounds here are how he saw himself.
A shopkeeper says the monkey is dying, "taken away from his mother" and depressed. Someone comes home "with a big cage in the back and a monkey in the cage." Then "the kids freaked out" and "They were so scared." It is a real scare, not a small startle.
