I come from a working class family.

My mother and father weren't well educated.

I was second generation, I guess, Italian-American.

And there was no tradition of reading in the house, no books.

Of course I read in school, et cetera. Books in school and that sort of thing.

But it was more of a visual tradition, more if I was taken to movie theaters a lot.

Also being a sickly child with a very severe asthma, I couldn't play sports.

So again, the movie theater, the movie theater and the church, the church and. And so, along with the films, there was also the advent of television,

1948, 49, and the heyday of really the best, some of the best programming in American

television, in the history of American television up to this point with the 50s, 1950s.

And so I saw a lot of television shows, but also films on television.

Being working class family, too, they didn't have enough money to go to the theater.

So theater wasn't an option. Live stage shows. So it was mainly, mainly visual literacy,

what was what was happening at that time to me.

I did not understand that that was happening.

What it made me realize was that there was an intelligence, another kind of intelligence

that was trying to tell a story through where the director, the writer, and the cinematographer, where they were focusing your eyes,

you know, whether the camera may be on an extremely low angle

looking up at you.

The use of the lens, the size of the lens,

and began to understand certain lenses

did interpreted the story differently.

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