Fung Kai No.

1 Secondary School
English Language
Listening Quiz (blank-filling) *2016 DSE Paper 3 Part A Task 4

Name: __________________ Class: _______ ( ) Date: __________________

Marks: ______________/15
Fill in the blanks while you’re listening to David Stott.

David Hello everyone. My name is David Stott and I’m here to talk to you
Stott about one American movie star from the 1950s who has perhaps had
the biggest influence on young people all over the world. So who is this
movie star? Well, of course, it’s James Dean.

Even if you don’t know his name or have never seen him in a movie,
you still might recognize him. How? Well, you might see his image in a
work of art, such as a painting or a (1)screen print. He has featured in
some of the most famous art of the last century. Apart from art, you
might see a photo of him on someone’s wall, or in a restaurant,
obviously a black and white photo as it would have been taken in the
1950s. Or you might hear his name in the (2)lyrics to a pop song, which
would be something about (5R)looking like James Dean, or smoking like
James Dean, driving a fast car like James Dean or just being cool like
James Dean. He is one of the most (3)recognisable people of the last
century.

But why is he so (3R)recognisable? I mean why is James Dean still so

famous even today? Well, one of the things that ensured he would be a
(4)legend is that he died so young. He died at the age of 24 and so his
good (5)looks never (6)faded. The other reason why his fame continues
today is that he died tragically in a car (7)crash. This, I think,
(8)contributes significantly to his continuing fame. What’s even more
surprising is that James Dean wasn’t one of those (9)actors who made a
lot of films. His fame rests on his roles in just three movies, and I’m
going to talk about those in a moment.

Actually, fame did not arrive so easily for James Dean. Before he made
these three movies, he was involved in acting but only had small roles
and he had to (10)supplement his income with other jobs such as a
(11)stunt tester on a TV game show called Beat the Clock. And he was
actually fired. Why? It’s quite ironic really. In this TV show, contestants
had to do (11R)stunts inside a certain time limit. One of the typical
(11R)stunts was, like, say contestants had to pick up and carry an egg
across a room in thirty seconds but they weren’t allowed to use their
hands. That sort of thing. James Dean’s job was as a (11R)stunt tester.
So, he had to test the (11R)stunts to see whether they would be possible
to do inside the time limit. Actually, he was so good at doing the
(11R)stunts and so quick that he was fired from the show!

As I said earlier, his fame rests on just three movies: East of Eden,
(12)Rebel Without a Cause, and (13)Giant. It is the second of these
movies, (12R)Rebel Without a Cause, filmed in 1955, that has been the
most influential in popular culture. So what’s so special about (12R)Rebel

Without a Cause?

Well, for the first time ever in the movies, (12R)Rebel Without a Cause
showed the problems faced by a typical teenager in the 1950s. So what
were these problems that teenagers faced back then? Well, they were
pretty similar to those teenagers face nowadays. But as I say, what
made it special was that these problems had never been shown in
movies before.

Before that time, and I know this sounds crazy now, middle-aged adults
usually had the leading roles. Young people played roles such as sons
and daughters of the main characters. So why were young people even
in movies? Well, young people were usually just there to show that the
main characters — the adult characters — were happily married and
had a happy family. So typically young people were on the (1R)screen for
only five to ten minutes in the entire film. And that was it.

James Dean and his role in (12R)Rebel Without a Cause changed all of
that. It was as though (14)Hollywood and the US movie going public
suddenly woke up. This had three huge effects on the movie industry.
Firstly, a large number of movies about teenagers began to be made.
 Before this, as I said earlier, movies were always about adults. The
second major effect was that this kind of film began to be made in many
different countries, so it wasn’t just in (14R)Hollywood. It was in movie
industries all over the world that films about teenagers started to be
produced. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, young people who
had been (15)ignored by the movie industry were targeted as an
audience by the movie industry. So young people became the target
audience.

OK. Let’s fast forward forty years to the rise of another movie star,
Johnny Depp.

Remarks:
1. Underlined: answers in this task
2. * : difficult words
3. (R): the word will appear elsewhere as the answer, so it’s hidden in the student’s version