Born in 1985: The MTV Dreamer
Big Dreams. Loud Music.
Born in 1985? Then you remember the camcorder you carried on your shoulder, watching MTV at a friend's house because you didn't have cable, and your MySpace Top 8.
The story
The first thing on the tape is Gabe Scaglione's father's thumb. It fills the whole screen, pink and blurry, and behind it a man is asking whether the red light is on.
Born in 1985: The MTV Dreamer is a first-person life story told in the language of the tape deck. A boy is born in June 1985 in New Orleans to a Sicilian-Irish family. His father owns a po-boy shop. His mother works nights as a nurse at Charity Hospital. His grandmother, Nonna Rosaria, rules the apartment upstairs. And Gabe has a camcorder, which he points at everything.
The story follows him through the kitchen of the shop and through the television at his best friend Quinn's house, where the cable is on and the afternoons belong to music videos. It moves to a high school homeroom on the morning of September 11, 2001, when a teacher wheels in a TV and says nothing. It follows a friend who deploys in 2003, and the August day in 2005 when a grandmother refuses to leave.
Then comes the long return: a shop reopened with a generator and a FEMA trailer, the Saints' first trip to the Super Bowl, a wedding where a Cajun band and a New Orleans brass band meet in the middle, and a Mardi Gras morning in 2025 with a son asleep in the back seat and a camera in his lap.
Chapter titles come from the buttons on a video machine, from Record to Pause to Be Kind, Rewind.
A timeline of 1985, famous people born that year, and a look at what the year means in other cultures are included at the back. It is an easy birthday present for a husband, brother, or friend who grew up on music videos.
A few things that happened in 1985
- 1985 — Late October — Hurricane Juan makes landfall in Louisiana and floods the coast for days
- 1985-01-28 — Dozens of stars record "We Are the World" in Los Angeles for African famine relief
- 1985-03-11 — Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union
- 1985-04-23 — Coca-Cola introduces New Coke
- 1985-07-03 — Back to the Future opens
Also born in 1985
- Cristiano Ronaldo — Soccer forward; five-time Ballon d'Or winner and his sport's all-time leading international goal scorer
- Lana Del Rey — Singer and songwriter; Born to Die and Ultraviolence
- Lewis Hamilton — Racing driver; seven-time Formula One world champion
- Luka Modrić — Soccer midfielder; won the 2018 Ballon d'Or and captained Croatia to the 2018 World Cup final
- Michael Phelps — Swimmer; won 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, the most of any Olympian