David Hoffman: I had a fire nine days ago. My
archive is 175 films, my 16 millimeter negative,
all my books, my dad's books, my photographs. I
had collected -- I was a collector, major,
big-time. It's gone.
I just looked at it. And I didn't know what to
do. I mean, this was -- was I my things? I
always live in the present. I love the present.
I cherish the future. And I was taught some
strange thing as a kid like you gotta make
something good out of something bad. You gotta
make something good out of something bad. This
was bad, man. I cough. I was sick.
That's my camera lens, the first one, the one I
shot my Bob Dylan film with 35 years ago. That's
my feature film, King Murray, won Cannes Film
Festival in 1970, the only print I had. That was
my papers. That was in minutes, 20 minutes. An
epiphany hit me. You gotta make something good
out of something bad. I started to say to my
friends, neighbors, my sister -- by the way,
that's Sputnik. I ran it last year. Sputnik was
downtown, the negative. It wasn't touched. These
are some pieces of things I used in my Sputnik
feature film, which opens in New York in two
weeks, downtown.
I called my sister, I called my neighbors. I
said: Come dig. That's me at my desk. That was
a desk took 40-some years to build, you know, all
the stuff. That's my daughter Jean. She came,
she's a nurse in San Francisco. Dig it up, I
said. I want pieces, bits and pieces. I came up
with this idea, "A life of bits and pieces," which
I'm just starting to work on, my next project.
That's my sister. She took care of pictures
because I was a big collector of just snapshot
photography that I believed said a lot. Those are
some of the pictures. Something was good about
the burned pictures. I didn't know -- I looked at
that and I said: Wow, is that better than -- --
that's my proposal on Jimmy Doolittle. I made
that movie for television. That's the only copy I
had. Pieces of it. "Idea About Women."
So I started to say: Hey, man, you are too
much. You could cry about this. I really didn't.
I instead said I'm going to make something out of
it, and maybe next year -- and I appreciate this
moment, to come up on this stage with so many
people who have already given me so much solace,
and just say to TEDsters: I'm proud of me, that I
take something bad, I turn it, and I'm going to
make something good out of this. All these
pieces. That's Arthur Leipzig's original
photograph I loved. I was a big record collector.
The records didn't make it. Boy, I tell you, film
burns. Film burns. This was 16 millimeter safety
film. The negatives are gone. That was my
father's letter to me telling me to marry the
woman I first married when I was 20. That's my
daughter and me.
She's still there. She's there this morning,
actually. That's my house. My family is living
in the Hilton Hotel in Scott's Valley. That's my
wife, Heidi, who didn't take it as well as I did;
my children, Davy and Henry. My son Davy in the
hotel two nights ago.
So my message to you folks for my three minutes
is that I appreciate the chance to share this with
you. I will be back. I love being at TED. I
came to live it, and I am living it. That's my
view from my window outside of Santa Cruz in Bonny
Doon, just 35 miles from here. Thank you,
everybody. (Applause.)
