Episode 100: Steven Spielberg Falls in Love with Cinema and Changes the World

Profiles in Positivity!

This Week-

Steven Spielberg - Falls in Love with Cinema and Changes the World

It's easy, when someone who is as well known and as successful as Steven Spielberg, to assume that things just kinda came together for him throughout life.

But Steven had his ups and downs to endure and rise above.

And we are certainly glad that he did!!!

#WomenEmpowerment, #WomenSupportingWomen,#WomenOver40, #FemaleEntrepreneur, #PerimenopausalWomen

Thanks for joining me!

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See You Next Week!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Welcome to the broadcast. It's always great to see you. So this week where we've been talking about overcoming adversity, especially with the suffragettes and um women's rights and how they open doors for persons of color and diff different ethnicities. I thought we'd talk about someone that you probably know really well, and he overcame some adversities that could have held him back, but he didn't. And I'm glad that he didn't, and I'm sure you are too. The person I'm talking about is Steven Spielberg. Yes, you know who he is. And I am getting my information from Wikipedia. I do not get any kind of uh commission from Wikipedia, but I do like to give credit where it's due. So, Steven Spielberg. Right now, Mr. Spielberg is 79 years old, and I found some aspects of his story very compelling, and we may not always think about it because right now, according to Wikipedia, he is one of the world's wealthiest celebrities, according to Forbes. Uh he's worth at least five billion. And also he has the egot, uh an Emmy, a Grammy, a Tony, and an Oscar. There's 22 people, and he is one of them. Uh the list of accolades is very long, three Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, uh, 12 Emmys, Tony Award, Grammy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award. It goes on and on and on and on. And I'm sure you're familiar with at least some of it. He is uh regarded widely as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. And he is the highest grossing film director of all time. And you and I would know uh his most popular works for those of us of a certain age uh Jaws, Close Encounters of a Third Kind, E.T., the Indiana Jones trilogy, the color purple, it goes on and on Jurassic Park, uh Saving Private Ryan. I'm just picking out a few here. Um it goes on and on and on. So what about Stephen's personal life? Well, he was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the eldest of four kids. He has three younger sisters. Uh his mother was, pardon me, a concert pianist, and for a while she ran a kosher dairy restaurant. His dad was uh an electrical engineer, and he worked with computers. His grandparents were Jews from Ukraine, and his grandmother taught English to Holocaust uh survivors. He said that when he was young, there was a gentleman who came in and he had the numbers tattooed on his arm, and of course, Stephen was young and had didn't understand. Uh, and the gentleman talked about the numbers on his arm, and of course, it had a huge impact later. And of course, we know he uh filmed and created Schindler's list, which if you haven't seen that, it's important that you do uh to understand um someone else's viewpoint. If you're not Jewish, and maybe uh look at pieces of history that uh are indelibly marked, and we should all learn something from that. Now, uh he lived in New Jersey for several years. He attended a Hebrew school, and uh they were of course surrounded by persons of the same faith. But then they moved to Arizona, not that that's bad, but uh it was not as friendly uh if for persons his experience was for persons uh of Jewish practice. And uh he said he got beat up a few times and uh it was not good. It was uh and he said that he was embarrassed of his faith, which he regrets to this day. He was young. Also, if you see on YouTube, of course, one of my favorite places to get information, on YouTube there's uh several uh documentaries about Steven Spielberg, but uh they show some family videos on them. And he was talking about how he was very uncomfortable with his body because he was very, very thin and he had a prominent nose and he had very large ears. Now, as time went by, many years as he became a man, uh he grew into these features and uh turned out to be a nice looking fellow. But like a lot of us, uh, when you're going through those changes, um, not always uh real handsome or real beautiful. And so between not liking the way he looked and being aware of being gawky and thin, and then finding adversity uh because of his faith, it was tough. It was really tough. Now, instead of becoming bitter and angry, um, he did find his way into the world of cinema. And he used the example when he was, he said he's probably about seven years old. It was the first time that he had seen a movie. His dad took him to a Cecil B. DeMille Greatest Show on Earth, 1952 movie, and he said that that did it. He was just completely uh mesmerized, and that was what he wanted to do. So fortunately, his parents were very receptive to him making movies, home movies with nine millimeter, nine millimeter camera. And he actually, at the age of 13, he made a 40-minute war film, Escape to Nowhere, using a uh cast of his classmates, and he won a statewide competition. So at a young age, he he found out this was what he really wanted to do, and he was really good at it. He began having wins. Um he s actually snuck into Universal Studios, the back lot, when, let me see, he was a teenager. He took a bus tour, then he talked it up with an executive he happened to meet, and he got a three-day pass to the back lot, and uh the security guard got used to seeing him. So even though his pass was really only for three days, he ended up spending two months, and this is when they lived in California. So he wasn't in Arizona, they had moved to California, and he spent the summer kind of hiding away on the Universal Studios backlot, and he got to talk to a lot of people, he learned a lot of things. Um, he ended up going to the University of Southern California, he ended up signing on with Universal with Sidney Scheinberg, and he dropped out of school uh and started working for Universal. But when you see the interview with Steven, he was talking about how he was very, very good and his talent was recognized. But many of the stars that he started working with, they saw this young man who he looked like a kid. He was blessed with uh, which some of people don't we don't appreciate it when we're young, that we look really young. And even when he was in his 20s, he probably looked like he was about 12. And so there's some kind of funny stories about how he was um given the opportunity, and he did direct uh for Marcus Welby, the name of the game Columbo, um, and other episodes that uh for television, made for television shows. And it was difficult because these established stars were not too crazy about getting directions from a guy who looked like he was 12. Well, the good news was he he kept making wonderful, kept producing wonderful product, he began uh garnering more and more uh accolades and respect. But there were definitely some highs and lows, and of course, then with Jaws uh he basically um took over and people began to recognize his incredible ability. Pardon me. So what I'd like to focus on is Stephen's ability to shake off and get past the adversity, because at that tender age, and even though some of us may be a long way from that age, uh it's painful. We don't like our body, and we don't feel like we fit in. And when Stephen was in Arizona, not not that the problem was Arizona, but um just the setting and the circumstance, and he didn't like the way he looked, he was awkward. Even as adults, we may have those times where we feel like we don't fit in. Maybe there's something going on at work, maybe there's a change in our life. Um, for those of us who are going through midlife, we go through perimenopausal, menopause. These are very challenging, and our body keeps changing. As we are getting older, it's exciting, though puberty most certainly is very challenging at times. It's exciting because uh everything is new and our future is bright. But it can be tough when we're middle-aged because we realize we're not as young as we used to be, and then we have kids at home, or sometimes we have an emptiness situation, and the dynamic in our personal life is changing. So, what we need to remember, much like Steven Spielberg, is that we are valuable, and everything we do can be a thing of great contribution, even if it's as simple as making dinner, keeping the house clean, bringing in um income to help support our family, to be that person people can depend on. We may find ourselves in some pretty challenging situations. Please remember that you are valuable. I'm very grateful that Mr. Spielberg kept going, even though he felt awkward and he got apparently beat up in high school and felt less than he kept going. And today I get to enjoy his fabulous movies, his talents, and his contribution. And you are as precious and as valuable, if not more so. So remember, my friend, you are valuable and what you give is worthwhile, and it's certainly important to rise above any misgivings that you have about yourself. So from the Hey That's Funny file, the uh comic of infamy, Rodney Dangerfield, who is always poking fun at himself, he said, I was so ugly as a child, my mother fed me with a slingshot. Oh, Rodney. So if you don't know anything about Rodney Dangerfield, you might look him up because he was uh very funny. And it was a a time when those little one-offs were were funny and brought uh a smile to people's face. So remember, you are precious, you are valuable, and what you do matters. So keep building a life that you live because you deserve it. And I'll look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.