“You want to live in my garage?” I said. I knew what the tyrannosaurus had said to me. I mean, I understood what he had said perfectly. But I still had to ask the question.
“Yes,” said the tyrannosaurus. “Thank you.”
Suddenly my thoughts cleared and I could talk again.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I stammered, waving my free hand. A strange image of a tyrannosaurus driving my brand-new truck arose in my mind. “You can’t live in my garage!”
“Why not?” said the tyrannosaurus. “I have thought about my problem carefully. I have no house. You have the biggest garage in the area. You have a very big door on your garage. If I duck, I can walk inside. I am sure of it. What is the problem?”
“The problem?” I said. “There are many problems! Not just one! Many!”
“For example?” said the tyrannosaurus. And he took another piece of caramel popcorn and ate it while watching me with one eye.
“My truck and my boat are in there,” I said. “There is no room for you.”
“Easily solved,” the tyrannosaurus said. “Just take the vehicles out. Look, your neighbors have their cars on the street. You can park them there, too. This popcorn is very good.”
And the tyrannosaurus somehow took a handful of popcorn (even though he only has two fingers on each hand). Somehow he managed to get the entire handful into his mouth without dropping one piece.
“I don’t want my vehicles parked on the street!” I said. I was upset. “And I don’t have a tyrannosaurus-sized toilet. I am not lending you my toilet. I don’t do that anymore.”
“I don’t want your toilet,” said the tyrannosaurus. “I can use the yard for that. Don’t worry, I will be discreet. I am a very civil tyrannosaurus.”
The popcorn was almost gone now, and for some reason that made me even more angry.
“No, you can’t!” I said. “I won’t clean up your mess in my lawn. I would need a dump truck. And anyway, most importantly, you can’t stay in my garage for one very important reason!”
The tyrannosaurus cocked his head.
“And what is that reason?” he asked.
The tyrannosaurus finished eating my popcorn with one incredible lick that cleaned out the bowl.
“Stop that!” I said. I got tyrannosaurus saliva on my arm, and it made me very uncomfortable.
By this time, many of the locals had gathered and they were watching us with curiosity. We were starting to make a scene, and I wanted to end this conversation as soon as possible. Like most people, I don’t like talking with unexpected visitors—even when they are extinct super predators.
“You can’t stay in my garage because it is my garage,” I said. “I own it, and I make the final decision. Please go away.”
The tyrannosaurus looked surprised.
“You don’t really have a choice,” the tyrannosaurus said. “After all, this isn’t really your land.”
“Huh?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” said the tyrannosaurus lazily. “The garage isn’t really yours. It’s mine. This land is mine, and so your house and your garage are really mine as well. I can prove it to you.”
It was at that moment that I realized this was going to be one of the worst days of my life.
This is chapter one of my dinosaur novel, A Tyrannosaurus on my Doorstep. I wrote this novel back in 2018 and 2019 originally, and have been trying to work out the best way to share it ever since. The novel has 98 short chapters, and I am hoping to post them here for free for anyone to read–and I hope to enjoy! Each chapter also has an accompanying illustration done by my friend Sam Messerly, and you can find much more of his work here. I am hoping to publish a couple chapters each week in two forms–one with just the chapter and art, but another with additional material designed to help Japanese readers of English study. My initial purpose for writing the book was that it could serve as enjoyable reading material for English learners in Japan, and I used the book in two of my reading classes years ago–to mostly positive results. Now I would like to make the novel available for any readers and teachers who might like to use it in their classes or for their own study–or just to enjoy. Thank you, and I hope you like the story!
Doesn’t this look like fun?
Chapter 1
One day I found a tyrannosaurus on my doorstep. I was very surprised. He knocked on my door when I was eating popcorn and watching a movie in my living room. I don’t remember the movie. You forget things like movies when you find a tyrannosaurus on your doorstep. Anyway, the knock was very quiet. I did not know a tyrannosaurus could knock on a door very quietly. Now I know. Be careful if you hear a quiet knock on your door.
I flopped around looking for my remote and almost knocked over a pile of broken cell phones I needed to fix yet.
After pausing my movie (Death Dancers and the Swing Thing—it’s really good if you haven’t seen it), I walked to my front door. I thought maybe it was my neighbor, Charlie. Charlie always wanted to borrow something from me. For example, one day he borrowed my truck. Another day he borrowed my best hat. Another day he borrowed my toilet. I mean he actually took my toilet to his house. “I will give it back to you tomorrow,” he said.
He still has my toilet.
I hate Charlie.
So, I opened the door. I expected to see Charlie. Instead, I saw two trees in my front lawn I had never seen before. I was surprised. I don’t expect to see new trees in my front lawn. I think it is very rare for a tree to visit your house. Have you ever seen a tree visit your front lawn? Of course not.
And then the trees moved. And I noticed that the trees were wearing pants.
And then I saw the trees were not trees. They were legs. And the legs belonged to a brown tyrannosaurus with slashes of bright orange. And the tyrannosaurus smiled at me.
“Hello,” the tyrannosaurus said. “I am a tyrannosaurus, and I am interested in your garage.”
I was very surprised. Have you ever been very surprised? I mean, very, very surprised. I could not move. I could not run. I could not speak. I think my face looked very funny because the tyrannosaurus’ smile became much bigger.
You never know who is going to be at the door.
“Don’t worry,” the tyrannosaurus said. “I won’t eat you. Look at my teeth.”
I looked at his teeth. They were not sharp teeth. He had very big, very white, very… friendly teeth. Can teeth be friendly? His were beautiful, friendly teeth. I think a person could sell toothpaste with such beautiful teeth. I saw my face reflected in his two giant molars. I noticed I was scared out of my mind.
“I am sorry,” I said finally. “Do you want some popcorn?”
I didn’t know what to say. You try talking to a tyrannosaurus sometime. Probably you won’t know what to say either. Also, I was still holding a big bowl of popcorn. From that movie I was watching. I thought maybe it was rude if I did not offer the tyrannosaurus some popcorn.
It was caramel popcorn, in case you were wondering. Probably bad for a tyrannosaurus’ teeth. Which means probably they are bad for my teeth, too. And I wondered how much popcorn a tyrannosaurus could eat. I realized that I think about stupid things when I see a tyrannosaurus on my doorstep.
“That is very kind of you,” the tyrannosaurus said. He took one piece of popcorn between two fingers and tossed it into his mouth.
“Delicious, really,” the tyrannosaurus said. “But I am not here for your popcorn.”
The tyrannosaurus moved closer, and I almost dropped my bowl of popcorn.
“I want to live in your garage,” said the tyrannosaurus.
Along with many other movie fans today, I can say that Steven Spielberg has had a huge impact on me. His energetic, artistic, powerful, passionate films have again and again inspired wonder and excitement in my soul, and I generally count one of his movies as my favorite of all time–Jurassic Park, if perhaps not for artistic reasons entirely, then for its huge sense of astonishment, its incredible tension, its fantastic achievements in effects, and because it came out on my birthday and became one of my best memories at the movie theater when I went with my family back in 1993. Spielberg’s latest film, The Fabelmans, is pretty much a straight autobiographical tale of the great director’s life, made with his long-time collaborator John Williams on the music, and Janus Kaminski once more responsible for cinematography (they have worked together on 20 films!). This latest movie has a lot of heart and nostalgia and pathos to spare, though perhaps some of the movie magic can feel forced before the last scene can shimmer onto the screen.
The basic story follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle, The Predator [2018]) as he grows up within the constrains of a dysfunctional family, in a dysfunctional society, and uses movies to escape and to construct his world through 1950s and 1960s USA. His father, played by Paul Dano (2022’s The Batman), is a workaholic who is sweet on his family but creates chaos with a series of upheavals due to his job(s). His mother, played by Michelle Williams (The Greatest Showman [2017]), is a flighty artistic type who causes chaos due to mental instability and, err, relational issues. Sammy navigates the mostly loving storm of his family life by forming his fears and excitement into a series of amateur films with his sisters, friends, and family–and the films both help him to overcome and create new trauma and drama as the film progresses.
The Fabelmans‘ story is powerful, with touching imagery, and a sometimes searing, sometimes mawkish series of emotionally-electric set pieces as Sammy creates magic and mayhem with his cameras. Spielberg’s adoration of film bleeds through the screen as he remakes the amateur shorts and projects of his youth with a living sense of wild nostalgia, and for me the most emotionally-resonant sequences were those showing Sammy immersed in creating his movies and innovating with effects, editing, and directing. Near the midpoint of the film, Sammy makes a terrible discovery about his family through his film-making, which acts as a powder keg storytelling moment, searing the screen with the painful metaphor of film as simultaneously savior and destroyer in his life. The creation of his films and Sammy’s relationship to movies imprint and punch through every major event in the movie, and in that relationship lies the movie’s greatest strength, but also some clunky weaknesses.
Maybe the biggest weakness of the film for me was that Sammy’s movie wizardry occasionally comes across as overindulgent as a plot device–like we are supposed to be so taken with the kid’s ability, and Sammy’s movies are supposed to be so powerful, that they manipulate not only his life, but the lives of those around him. Over and again we see audiences oohing and awing at his creations, and the films become like magical touchstones to the plot. Even a bully, who was previously seen viciously beating Sammy, later is so profoundly moved by Sammy’s depictions of his (the bully’s) physical prowess that he collapses into an emotional wreck. This even after Sammy tonguelashes the bully for his bad behavior. The scene came across as so outlandish that I was wrenched out of the narrative, even feeling embarrassed for the actors.
I probably shouldn’t feel bad for them, though. Even with a few misfires, the acting throughout is well-done from all involved–with perhaps the most discordant performance being the semi-minor role of Sammy’s girlfriend late in the tale. LaBelle is magnetic on screen as young Spielberg/Fableman, Dano is deeply emotionally wrenching–but the greatest performance for me had to be Williams as Sammy’s mother. As events play out, she proves to be the most complicated and tortured soul in the movie–and we see that in her actions, she causes as much good and bad as Sammy’s films. Several scenes focus in on her ebullient presence, and she crackled on screen–especially in one scene where she is forced to watch one of Sammy’s films and witness a big surprise.
I couldn’t help but wonder, though, given that the characters in the film are based on real people, just what Spielberg was feeling as he made the movie. From other articles online, I found images that showed that the costumes and hairstyles of the cast were closely based on the real appearances of Spielberg’s family, sometimes almost to an eerie degree. The actors also seemed to have been chosen for their resemblances to the parts they were playing. How bizarre and emotionally trying it must have been for Spielberg to work through recreating scenes with actors dressed as the most precious people from his past! I started to wonder if maybe Spielberg asked LaBelle to act more closely to how he remembered himself from his childhood, or if he gave tips to Williams or Dano on the quirks of his parents’ moods and behavioral ticks. Given that the movie deals with his family’s failings as much as their successes, too–including some details on betrayal–the sense of raw openness and emotion made me feel conflicted. What could Spielberg have been thinking when he made this movie? I’ve seen it reported that he named the film “The Fabelmans” instead of “The Spielbergs” as a means to avoid the accusation that the film was an exercise in self-aggrandizing, but even still the movie does stick close to real events for the most part–even more than some “based on a true story” films that can at times fudge details with abandon. Still, the title seems to indicate that Spielberg was a bit conflicted in creating this film, too.
I also saw some reviewers comparing this film to The 400 Blows, the celebrated 1959 film by legendary director Francois Truffaut–which was also autobiographical in nature and covered Truffaut’s childhood in similar, often heartbreaking fashion. Of course, The 400 Blows was Truffaut’s first film as director, and so he was in a very different position compared to Spielberg in reference to their careers and fame at the time the respective films were made. Still, both deal with familial strife and stressors in school, although Truffaut’s focused more on the dictatorial teachers he had to deal with, and Spielberg turned more towards anti-Semitic bullying he had to endure. More striking for me–and this is a bit of a spoiler–was that both Truffaut and Spielberg include scenes in which they as children/youth discover their respective mothers cheating on their dads. Apparently with Spielberg, the scene is fabricated, and he had actually lived much of his life blaming his father for the disintegration of the family, so the change does feel self-serving in this case. (Even as I write that, though, I look back on the movie and think those scenes where he discovers and confronts her infidelity are some of the most powerful in the movie…) Truffaut’s movie, however, feels almost introspective, with the movie exploring the director’s trouble-making past and the troubles he dealt with partially as a result of his own actions. Unlike with Spielberg, Truffaut’s film does not feel doused in nostalgia, either. Both films are well-worth watching, though, and movie lovers might find an added enjoyment by viewing them as a double feature.
Perhaps unfairly, I was a little disappointed in John Williams’ score. Given that this is probably the last collaborative film between Spielberg and Williams, I was hoping for an iconic, bombastic, and glittering aural landscape like his most classic compositions from Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars or Harry Potter. However, the music here is much more subtle, with his contributions often soft piano numbers reflecting Sammy’s mother’s background in performance on the ivory keys. So much of the music in the movie instead turns to licensed golden oldies, which I still loved… but I wanted so much to thrill to Williams’ melodies particularly, so I couldn’t help but be a little bummed.
The Fabelmans occasionally cloys, and some sequences can drag slightly, but Spielberg still shows his power with story and set up, and there is an undeniable impact and affection that overpowers the screen. While maybe not one of Spielberg’s best movies, there is a lot to love here, with a set of great performances, sparkling nostalgic cinematography, and a sense that we are getting a glimpse at Spielberg’s deepest heart for his childhood and love for his family–and not just another slam-bang action vehicle. Recommended cinematic goodness.
I also did a YouTube video in Japanese, embedded below. It’s just my ramblings in Japanese after watching the movie, but I wanted to give it a try. If you can speak the language, or if you’re just curious, maybe give it a watch.
