Aspies For Freedom

This is part of an interview with him-

What has been your favourite movie role so far, and why?

This movie I just finished called Mozart And The Whale. I got to play this character who's autistic - he has Asperger's syndrome. It's my favourite because it was really challenging and rewarding. You know, when you get to be a part of a world that you otherwise wouldn't have the chance to learn about, it's rewarding. I spent a lot of time with people who suffer with the syndrome.

How much do you see your role in Mozart And The Whale as a responsibility to a community of under-represented people?

I see it as a huge responsibility, but at the same time I only have a responsibility to the character that I'm playing. You cannot play a syndrome, and anyone who thinks you can is sorely mistaken. You play a character and if you know anything about autism, it's that it's a spectrum disorder and there are as many types of people with autism as there are people without. I just had to be true to the character that I was playing, especially because it's real life. It's based on a true story about a real guy, and I had to make sure that I was diagnosable, you know? I had to make sure I didn't deviate from what is considered Asperger's. But yes, it's a huge responsibility.

What would you say to people who reckon you're trying to pull a Rain Man and bag an Oscar for Mozart And The Whale? Jenny

It's nothing like that. It's written by the same guy who wrote Rain Man, but that's because the guy who it's about wrote to Ron Bass saying how much Rain Man meant to him and how, when he saw it, it changed his life because he didn't know he had autism - he thought he was just eccentric. His life was tearing him apart because he couldn't understand why he couldn't relate to someone and he was angry and feeling like he wasn't going to make it much longer. Then when he saw Rain Man it struck a chord with him and he went to a doctor and got diagnosed. Anyway, if people want to say that I'm doing this just to get some sort of award out of the deal, then that's a very, very... quite a cynical view. I already got out of it everything that I wanted to get out of it and I met some of the coolest people that I know through making that film. So whatever.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/webaccess/jos...tt_1.shtml

I am looking forward to watching it.

I have only ones I heard of are Rainman, this latest short film Autism is a world, Mozart and the whale (not yet released), Mercury Rising, possibly Shine (David Helfgott story).
I think there are made-for-tv movies too.

If they are good or decent is personal choice I suppose.

I thought Shine was about schizophrenia rather than autism.

I thought that was a Beautiful Mind?

I thought that they never specified what condition Helfgott had, and that it could be autism?

Is it possible that he has both autism and schizophrenia, many people seem to think that he has AS.

http://myautis.com/famousaspies.html
http://www.artsaccess.org.nz/pianist.htm
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/st...12,00.html

What woud it be like to be autistic? Autistic people can seem like closed books: obsessive, solipsistic, unreadable. It is easy to be misled by romantic myths and misinformation about them. We have all heard of 'idiots savants' - people with low IQs but outstanding gifts for music, writing, drawing, calculating - and cinema capitalises on such talents. In Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman played an autistic man with a phenomenal way with figures; in Shine, Geoffrey Rush was the virtuoso pianist David Helfgott.

Yet others cite him as only having schizophrenia.
Is it possible that he has a dx of schizophrenia, plus autistic traits and thats what people recognize in him?

Whether it's schizophrenia or autism, it would seem to be win-win.  Either way it presents the image that people with disorders are not innately inferior, on a cognitive or talent level, to other human beings, which is a concept radically different from the popular assumption.  I've only met one schizophrenic in my life, but found him remarkably easy to get along with, much easier to understand than a normal/NT person.  It's only one guy, but the similarities between us were thought-provoking to say the least.

To get back to my original topic, given the wide trend of regarding autistics and schizos as borderline nonpersons requiring a Final Solution (even before I'd learned about CAN and such at this site, I knew to avoid mentioning my Asperger's because it inevitably gets me treated as either a retarded person or a dangerous loon, regardless of how I had appeared before mentioning it), anything that raises the possibility that deviant neurological structure is not the mark of the beast is a real help.

On the other hand, I have read posts on various parts of the net complaining that Rain Man made everyone think of Autistics as a bunch of living calculators without complex reasoning or creativity.  So it's not perfect.  But I'd rather be seen as Supernerd than Quasimodo, if I had to pick a stereotype.

My mum used to work with people with schizophrenia and we used to go on day trips and events as a group, and I found it easier to communicate with them than NTs, to me NT is someone who is "normal".

Jerry just wanted to clarify that the above quote wasnt what I wrote myslef, it was a quote from one of the links I gave.

Yeah, I'll probably register eventually, but I'm so laaaaazy...

I think the term idiot savant, in addition to being relatively old, is specifically descriptive of the idea of someone with narrow savant abilities who is incapable of functioning in the real world, and not of autistics in general.  I'd be very surprised if it didn't predate the actual discovery of autism, as a matter of fact.  The name is of course insulting, and for all I know the phenomenon described might not even exist or be very highly exaggerated, but it's hardly a synonym for the extraordinarily gifted in general, is it?

Not the helpful response we might have hoped for.

Stella

While you were chatting to him, you should have asked him why he also oppresses those who have no voice, kids who are non verbal and still get treated badly and get electric shock therapy and dont know the word oppression.

        Not enough to suit me but this is what I know:  The movie is still looking for a distributor for theaters in the USA and UK. Money to film it was raised by selling those rights in other nations in advance of the production. They have had standing offers from HBO and other TV markets since day one but still want a theater release.

         I am not sure what will happen. It will have an audience but whether it is a theater or TV one is still up in the air.

                               Jerry Newport

What does dvd rip from the net mean?