Yesterday, I rewatched Big staring Tom Hanks, released in 1998. The setup is fairly simple. Josh, A 13 year old boy is entering puberty and likes this girl. Unfortunately, he is short and the girl likes an older 16/17 year old boy. So, Josh wishes on a magic Zoltar machine. He says “I wish I was Big”.
The next morning he is transformed into Tom Hanks. His mother thinks he has been kidnapped by a maniac. He has to flee his house to NYC. He ends up with a girlfriend, a loft apartment, and a well paying job.
I watched this movie with my 21 year old son. At multiple parts of movie he complains that (besides bad writing) that Josh is 13 years old (on the inside) and can not consent to a sexual relationship with an adult woman. Also, Josh finds a VP job in just a couple of days and a loft apartment with 15 foot ceilings in a week. He has tailored suits within a couple of months. The plot unfolds in about 2 months.
Hallucination Theory
I think the movie is secretly different. I believe Josh was electrocuted by the Zoltar machine. He spent the next few days or weeks in a coma. In this state, he dreamed the entire movie. With this lens, a nonsensical, problematic movie becomes sensible. The whole movie is what Josh imagines becoming an adult is. The steps are as follows:
Get a job
First night, he is scared. He hears gun shots in the city and cries himself to sleep. The next day he regains composure and then looks for jobs in the classified ads of a newspaper. There is a data entry job at a toy manufacturer (similar to Mattel). Since he is good with computers, he thinks it might work. He applies for the job and they hire him on the spot. He gives them a false social security number, but that seems to work.
Get a Promotion to VP
After his first paycheck for a few hundred dollars, he is very excited. He then has two chance encounters with the CEO. One in the toy store where they play Heart and Soul on a giant piano together. The CEO has so much fun with Josh that he promotes him immediately to Vice President. Josh has been at the company less than a month.
Get an appartment
With his new found job, he immediately gets a giant loft apartment in NYC with 15-20 foot ceilings. This is high enough to accommodate a trampoline in his apartment. It’s the first place he looks at and says “Ill take it” on the spot. Keep in mind, he has no bank account of his own yet. The decor is what a 13 year old would choose.
Get a girlfriend
Last step, Josh gets a girlfriend and has sex with her. They even include scenes were the girlfriend asks where the relationship is going, all within the first month. She wants to get serious and he isn’t ready for that since he is a kid (inside).
Why this makes sense
When I look back at my life, entering adulthood after college, it was literally the exact same plot and only slightly slower. This starts in spring of 1994 for context.
- I meander around Manhattan and walk into buildings to find a job
- A temp agency hires me on the spot and sends me to work the next week
- Columbia Tri-Star Entertainment hires me full time as an executive assistant within a month
- First apartment within a month of hire (no trampoline)
- Meet my future wife in March 1995
- Starts my own web company in November 1995
In hindsight, this is a crazy-fast journey in a little over a year. I had no idea what I was doing. Inside, I didn’t feel like an adult. I still thought I was a child in a man’s body. (Maybe I still do a little bit)
In the movie Big, he imagines life to be the same series of steps which take advantage of his innate skill. He was good with computers and loved games. He imagined that he would be successful doing what he loved and get paid well to do it.
This not only was how I imagined life to be, but was a fair approximation of my real world experience.
Weird
As I wrote this post, I just realized how closely my own experience was to Josh’s. It was truly faster than I remembered. I did end up doing something I was good at and enjoyed. I never got a trampoline, but movies are allowed to embellish to heighten the reality a bit.
Of course, It felt different at the time. It has been a whirlwind for me for the last 30 years.
I don’t know the final thought. Maybe Josh was hallucinating. Maybe it was just a metaphor for the real experience of starting an adult life. Maybe my life was extremely out of the ordinary and maybe it’s closer to the norm than I think.
As I enter the next phase of my life (retirement), I wonder what I will think of this period 30 years from now.
Whatya think?