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