Helen Hunt, John Hawkes talk about playing real people, portraying sexual honesty

From The LA Times:

If truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction, sometimes it's also more compelling. In their new film, "The Sessions," costars John Hawkes and Helen Hunt found plenty of inspiration in their characters' real-life counterparts: the late Mark O'Brien, an author confined to an iron lung after contracting polio as a boy, and Cheryl Cohen Greene, the sex surrogate he enlisted to help him lose his virginity at age 38.

At a recent installment of The Envelope Screening Series hosted by Times film reporter John Horn, Hawkes said he based much of his performance on the real O'Brien, having read his autobiography, "How I Became a Human Being," and watched Jessica Yu's Oscar-winning short documentary about O'Brien, "Breathing Lessons."

"There was Mark's body, and there was his voice," Hawkes said, referring to Yu's film. "And so I didn't invent a lot. I just tried to really take as much of the Mark that I saw and tried to make it my own, to embody him."

Hunt, for her part, said she has played real people in previous films but always relied on her own thoughts and ideas about the character to guide her. This time, however, she "had no plan" and didn't expect to experience a "burning-bush moment” upon meeting Greene.

Fortunately, Hunt was struck by Greene’s enthusiasm and openness, and found her inspiration there. "I took everything," Hunt said. She added, "Grabbing at my version of her aliveness was the best idea I had, so I did it."

Cardboard wheelchair set to roll out from Israel

From Israel21c:

Israeli entrepreneur Nimrod Elmish is positive that the idea for a wheelchair made out of cardboard has crossed many people’s minds. But it took an Israeli team to make it a reality.

“Welcome to the startup nation,” says Elmish, an expert in leading early-stage startups to maturity. “We have seen you can build agriculture in the middle of the desert. We recognize a major problem in the world and we find the best solutions. We can always find a solution – you just need persistence and patience.”

With great feedback and global interest in their first venture – recyclable cardboard bicycles – Elmish and automation expert Izhar Gafni of I.G. Cardboard Technologies have quietly added the cardboard wheelchair project to their operation. It’s made of less than $10 worth of durable recycled cardboard, plastic bottles and recycled tires.

“Anything that you make out of wood, plastic or metal can be made out of our material,” Elmish tells ISRAEL21c. “Cardboard bikes, wagons, wheelchairs, chairs for airplanes or trains, toys, even cars. We’re not building cars yet. But I say, ‘yet.’ We believe that nothing is impossible and anything is possible.”

Wheelchairs for Africa
An international non-profit organization dedicated to providing free wheelchairs for the disabled in developing nations heard about the cardboard bicycles and got in touch with ERB, the parent company of I.G. Cardboard Technologies.

Since 2001, the organization – which requested anonymity – has bought 120,000 metal wheelchairs from Chinese manufacturers every year to ship to Africa, at an annual cost of more than $6 million.

“It will cost him a one-time fee of $6 million to build a factory for the production of cardboard wheelchairs in Africa and then almost nothing to produce them,” says Elmish, CEO of I.G. Cardboard Technologies.

“He can produce as many wheelchairs as he wants once the factory is running. All we need is access to old car tires, plastic bottle recycling and cardboard recycling.”

The maintenance-free cardboard wheelchair, weighing eight or nine kilograms (less than 20 pounds), can withstand water and humidity, and can carry riders weighing up to 400 pounds. It is even cheaper and simpler to create than the cardboard bicycle.

Elmish says the chairs would be made on largely automated production lines supplemented by a workforce comprising people with disabilities.

“There are no financial benefits to making the wheelchairs in cheap labor markets. We choose the country [where the factory will be set up] with incentives in mind,” he explains. “Our factories will always be local in order to receive government grants for the manufacturers.”

Rebates for using “green” materials would cancel out production costs. The wheelchairs and bicycles could thus be given away for free in poor countries.

“Our partners and manufacturers [will] receive almost all of the production costs of our products back from governmental and global incentives, making our products available to almost any person in any philanthropic or commercial business model,” according to the company’s mission statement.

Origami meets Israeli technology
Making a cardboard bike or wheelchair looks like an exercise in origami with enormous blocks of cardboard.

“People look at cardboard as a material that looks like something strong. But the secret is how to make it strong,” says Elmish. “Izhar Gafni developed the theory of how to make it stronger. If you only fold the cardboard it will hold nothing. You need to find ways to give it strength that the regular material doesn’t have.”

The Israeli mindset played an important role, he adds: “The thinking of the resources, the social model, the thinking behind employing disabled people, the thinking of giving back to the community.”

Governments, politicians, manufacturers, consumers and non-profit organizations have all shown great interest in the cardboard vehicles.

“The feedback is amazing,” says Elmish. “A year and a half ago, the most common reaction we got was that no one would even think of buying our product and that the markets would reject it. Now that’s the least of our problems. Everyone wants a part of this.”

The hype has been so great that Elmish had to hire two people just to sort through his 300 to 500 daily emails from fans and potential sponsors.

“One year from today our four products will be on the market — youth bikes, children’s balance bikes, wheelchairs and electric bikes,” he predicts.

Several European railroad operators have expressed interest in placing the bikes outside stations as a way of enticing people to continue by bike to their destination. “The whole idea is to take the cars out of the city,” says Elmish.

While naysayers still abound, Elmish says the prototypes have proven their mettle.

“There are a lot of smart guys who still say it cannot be done,” he says. “So we’re building a small factory in Israel to show how it’s done.”

Why Syfy’s superhero series Alphas is TV’s best show about mental illness

From Todd VanDerWerff  for The AV Club:

TV has always had trouble tackling mental illness as a topic. The idea of doing a series about depressed, manic-depressive, or schizophrenic characters is daunting: Where is there room for the semi-standard weekly moments of uplift? HBO’s In Treatment took viewers through several weeks of intensive psychotherapy with a variety of patients, but it never delved too deeply into actual mental illness; instead, it focused more on people with debilitating problems in their past that could be overcome with diligent talk therapy and lots of focus. (To its credit, the show never suggested these people could be “cured” in a matter of weeks, but it did speed along the process leading to their breakthroughs.) The Sopranos and Homeland revolve around protagonists with mental-health issues, but this is a color around the edges of the show, an element that informs the other stories going on at any given time.

TV’s best current show at tackling the topic of mental illness (and many other issues as well) is a science-fiction series that seems, at first, to have nothing to do with the subject. Syfy’s Alphas, ending its second season on Monday, October 22, appears to be the most successful superhero show in many years, though it never calls its characters superheroes, or involves them in typical comic-book stories. For the most part, it’s a superhero procedural, in which the central “team” of Alphas use their powers—everything from super-senses to the ability to read the electronic waves floating all around us—to track down villains who are using their own abilities to evil ends. The show’s second season ties this all together into an overarching narrative about the team’s battle with the seemingly immortal Stanton Parish, who wishes to wipe non-Alphas from the Earth. Which may sound a little like an X-Men plot, because it is.

Yet Alphas contains a surprising emotional resonance for a series that seemingly aims to be just another Syfy case-of-the-week show. Alphas is good at bread-and-butter sorts of things, with teammate banter and action sequences that are a cut above other Syfy shows. Yet the show is capable of moments of superb feeling and beauty, and it’s always striving to do much more than simply tell superhero tales in a modern setting. After just a superficial look at the show, it becomes clear what it’s really about: a group of mental patients coming together to work through their issues in a group-therapy setting. (It’s no coincidence that the show’s ostensible protagonist and team leader, played by David Strathairn, is a psychologist.)

To be fair, this is easy to miss. I certainly did, and I’ve reviewed two seasons of the show so far. What turned me on to this undercurrent was this comment by The Real Dylan Toback on a recent review. Toback points out the similarities between the way the show frequently shows the more negative flipside of the characters’ powers and the mental illnesses that would most commonly be associated with those sorts of powers. For example, Rachel, the character who has super-senses and can focus all of her ability into one sense or another to, say, track an escaped Alpha by his scent, also has to keep her distance from other humans and has to have things in a certain way, so as not to set off her too-keen senses. The show has frequently portrayed this downside of her power as something akin to obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it’s made the scenes this season where she learned to let her first boyfriend in several years into her personal space all the more affecting.

Toback’s comment unlocked a world within the show for me, one that had always been lurking underneath its surface without really calling attention to itself. Team member Bill—who’s capable of immense brute strength when provoked—is dealing with rage issues, while Hicks—able to make incredible shots with only the slightest moment to aim—has little patience or empathy for those who won’t do things his way. The show’s newest character, Kat, and a prominent guest character this season, Mitchell, offer resonant takes on amnesia and Alzheimer’s. Kat can only remember about a month’s worth of her experiences. This rapid short-term memory cycling allows her to pick up anything she wants in short order, but it’s also kept the truth about her past from her. (In a devastating reveal, a memory she had of her mother turned out to be a memory of a TV commercial.) Mitchell, meanwhile, has the opposite problem. He’s able to take on any memory anyone else gives him, becoming a sort of journal of Alpha experience, and obscuring his own memories. The two play out different sides of the memory-loss coin, with Mitchell rattling off memories from others that have no meaning to his present company, and Kat creating endless video diaries to remind herself of things she already knows for when she no longer knows them.

The series similarly builds up its mental-illness analogies in its structure and mythology. Straithairn’s character, Dr. Lee Rosen, assembled the team because their particular abilities would be helpful in capturing the bad guys, sure, but the characters also frequently talk through their problems, hopes, and aspirations, as would be common in a group-therapy setting. Rosen, for his part, aims to do his best to help them move past the downsides of their abilities, to become more fully realized human beings and celebrate what’s good about their powers, just as anyone suffering from mental illness will eventually have to come to terms with how it’s a part of their life. The villains of the week tend to be characters whose Alpha powers have relegated them to the edges of society, where they vainly struggle to belong, or use their powers for ill-gotten gain. These stories also frequently deal with the Alphas having to cope with situations they don’t entirely understand because their own powers (or illnesses) keep them from doing so. For instance, recurring character Skylar (played by Summer Glau) is attempting to build a better life for her Alpha daughter than the one she had. Even the series’ most horrific end for the Alphas—a place called Building Seven at a facility in Binghamton, New York—strongly resembles a mental hospital in almost every way, right down to the way Alphas sent there are essentially sedated, so they don’t have access to their powers.

The show’s second season has focused the most attention on three characters who drive home the series’ fascination with mental-health issues even more. One character, Gary (played by Ryan Cartwright, in one of the best performances on TV right now) became prominent simply because he was so popular in season one. Yet the show is careful to depict how the flipside of his power—the ability to read those waves floating out in the ether—becomes a kind of debilitating autism, one that was keeping him from meaningful human interaction with anyone other than his mother until he joined the team. He hasn’t been cured, or anything close to it, but he’s learning, through his proximity to the others in the group, how to function in society, to the point where he moved out of his house this season and began to work through the trauma incurred during a stint in Binghamton.

Much of the season’s first half focused on Rosen’s daughter, Danielle, a character with ties both to her father and Stanton, the season’s Big Bad. Danielle’s power, the ability to feel what anyone else was feeling and then communicate that to someone else, was in some ways the flipside of Hicks’ ability: She had too much empathy, where he had too little. (Naturally, they started sleeping together.) A closer read of Danielle’s arc—she died midway through the season, in a moment of self-sacrifice that seems remarkably close to outright suicide—reveals that she was the show’s take on depression, on finding the world and its emotions a little too close to the surface, and too difficult to take. It wasn’t always clear what the show was doing with this character, but once she was gone, Alphas became even more pointed on this particular notion: Rosen spent his life trying to save his daughter from the demons he knew would inevitably consume her, and he failed. The situation sent him spiraling.

But the strongest work of the season in this regard came from Nina (Laura Mennell), one of the characters fans least liked in season one. Nina’s power involves being able to look into anyone’s eyes and give them orders that must be obeyed. The show calls this ability “pushing,” and the downside of has been portrayed as something akin to addiction or narcissistic personality disorder. Nina has an all-encompassing need to control the situation around her, to make everything go a certain way, and when the season begins, she’s splitting off from the group, ready to go her own way and abuse her power to get whatever she wants. In a terrific episode called “When Push Comes To Shove,” the series not only depicts how this becomes her psychological nadir, but also how events in her childhood—when she realized she could use her power to force her parents to stay together—cycled outward to create the damaged wreck she is today. The episode is impressively dark, though it ends with a moving moment where Rosen chooses to trust her not to push him, so he might help her get better. The episode contains a moment of naked recognition of what anyone suffering from a mental illness goes through, a moment when Nina looks into a car window at her own reflection and tries to push herself into feeling better. It doesn’t work. She can’t escape the cycle by herself. She needs help and diligence, and the only place she can find them is in that therapeutic setting.

Alphas hasn’t yet figured out how to escape the dilemma of all series whose leads have mental illnesses—namely the idea that such illnesses make the characters such super-bad-ass crime solvers that their powers become enviable. (For an execrable example of this, check out TNT’s Perception from earlier this year, about a crime-solving professor with schizophrenia.) This is, perhaps, the sort of thing the series will never escape, given that superpowers will always seem cool on their surface. Yet the series has committed so successfully to portraying how these powers line up with real-world mental illnesses that it mostly sidesteps this question. Yes, there are cool moments, and yes, there are moments when the guy who seems least likely to save the day does so, but there are also the dark hours of the soul, when all seems lost and nobody knows what to do. At its core, Alphas is a series about healing, but it also realizes that all healing is only temporary. These people can—and will—always be wounded again.

Canadian writer says Hollywood gets it right for once in portraying disability in "The Sessions"

From The Globe & Mail in Canada:

In the film The Sessions, the actor John Hawkes plays the poet Mark O’Brien, an intellectual acrobat who was struck by polio as a child and lived mostly in an iron lung. He had sensation but was paralyzed except for a few muscles, including one in his neck and one in his jaw.

By nature, I am suspicious of any film that’s determined to soar my heart or triumph my human spirit. All too often, disabled people on screen are props for the emotional epiphanies of able-bodied characters. Radio, The Other Sister, Forrest Gump, Rain Man – all use disabled characters as so-called “magical negroes,” the equivalent of black subordinates awakening the consciousness of white bosses.

But The Sessions is the rare film where the consciousness of a disabled character fills the foreground. The reason The Sessions works, and deserves to set a precedent for all cinematic depictions of disability, is simple: sex.

O’Brien was a writer based in Berkeley, Calif., who died in 1999. The film is about his quest to lose his virginity at age 38, with the help of a sex surrogate, played by Helen Hunt. O’Brien was also the subject of an exceptional Academy Award-winning documentary called Breathing Lessons, and Hawkes’s interpretation, from the nasally voice to the moon-pie eyes, is a ringer. But the role isn’t mere mimicry, and the disability isn’t inherently heroic. Hawkes creates a fully realized person, artful and funny, a little raunchy, and only occasionally cute (twice, involving shopping for shirts).

The film dares to depict a man whose body is broken but still intensely carnal. Sex and disability rarely go together in popular culture, except as a punchline. Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man was as neutered as a Muppet, and certainly didn’t have to contend with premature ejaculation. The Sessions doesn’t just pay lip service to the idea of “visibility,” selectively clear-cutting around the body’s deepest needs. It shows the fullness of one man’s life, confronting the tittering question: “But can a disabled dude do it?” The body, in all its chaos, is truly made visible.

A few years ago, the film-within-a-film comedy Tropic Thunder took heat for a scene where Robert Downey Jr., playing a method actor (in blackface, no less) chastises his co-star (Ben Stiller) for a poorly received performance as a farmhand named Simple Jim: “Never go full retard,” warned Downey. The cascade of complaints from disabled-rights organizations apparently didn’t reach conservative pundit Ann Coulter’s ears, who tweeted the same word about Obama just this week, proving daily discourse isn’t much more enlightened than crass comedy.

The language may have been bracing, but the point was legitimate: Playing disabled – or a certain kind of sanitized disabled – is a fast track to an Oscar. Women go ugly; men go handicapped. In Hollywood, it’s a virtuous act for a beautiful actress to put on a prosthetic nose or gain some weight.

Even more pandering is an actor like Sean Penn rounding out his “challenging parts” repertoire by playing a Starbucks employee with the mental capacity of a seven year-old (that queasy film, I Am Sam, is so sentimental that it’s like being pinned down and force-fed lavender sachets while watching 26 hours of Susan Boyle videos, Clockwork Orange-style). The worst part of thespian disability is the slow clap the performers earn for a few weeks of exaggerated muscular spasms. A slew of recent articles have described how Hawkes pulled it off in The Sessions, craning his neck to the point of agony, and spending a week learning how to dial a phone with his mouth. That’s great, but also, you know, temporary.

Roland Barthes wrote that “the Other is a scandal which threatens … existence.” A disabled body, always “Other,” is profoundly at odds with Hollywood’s central impulse: to lull and affirm the status quo. Hollywood doesn’t like uncomfortable, and disability is. It’s uncomfortable for most of us to be confronted by reminders of the body’s possible frailty. So Hollywood plays it safe, and our own anxieties go unchallenged.

Of course there are movies that do confront that discomfort: Julien Donkey-Boy; a slew of documentaries, including Bonnie Sherr Klein’s Shameless: The ART of Disability; maybe even the Farrelly brothers’ There’s Something About Mary. But when it comes to disabled characters – like the magical negroes and the noble savages before them – mainstream cinema prefers a little swelling of our able-bodied hearts to a tweaking of our complacent minds.

In The Sessions, O’Brien is allowed only six encounters with his therapist, but a lot happens each time, with frankness and tenderness. As the physical stakes heighten, so do the emotional ones. In one scene, O’Brien becomes concerned with the pleasure of the woman astride him. I had my own (able-bodied) epiphany: Explicit sex between consenting adults that isn’t porny and waxed or bottom-lip-biting comical is almost as rare on screen as disability. Finally, my spirit was triumphant: I got to see desire, up close, in all its forms.

"Breaking Bad" star RJ Mitte shares his experiences on being bullied as a kid

From CNN:

On Thursday night, “Breaking Bad” star RJ Mitte joined HLN’s Dr. Drew. Mitte has cerebral palsy.  He talked about how how he survived bullying while growing up.

“I was choked out when we were in P.E.,” he said. “Somebody [also] grabbed my sweatshirt and I had my hand broken. [There was ] name calling [as well].”

But Dr. Drew pointed out, “You haven't allowed anything about you to hold you back in any way. You're a famous actor and you have what would be thought of as a disability and you've turned that into a feature of your career.”

Mitte replied, “The biggest thing is being disabled doesn't mean you're disabled. You can do anything you want.”

Conservative political pundit Ann Coulter blasted for use of R-word

From CNN:

Parents of children with special needs are demanding an apology from conservative political pundit Ann Coulter (pictured) for tweeting after Tuesday's foreign policy debate that she approved of "Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard."

It appeared to be a response to critiques of Mitt Romney's debate performance, but it wasn't the first time Coulter used the "the r-word" during this election season. And, it's not the first time blogger Ellen Seidman has called her out on it.

"At this point, I'm thinking the woman must surely be aware that the word is offensive, and she chooses not to care. That's pretty vile and heartless," said Seidman, the mother of a special needs child who shares her world on the blog "Love that Max."

"You want to slam the president, go ahead. But you can't think of any other word to use? Come on."

The word "retard" demeans Max and millions more with intellectual disabilities, Seidman tweeted at Coulter. Still, the comment was favorited 1,215 times and earned 2,993 retweets as of this writing, presumably by a number of people who didn't find it offensive. But sentiments from those who chose to respond to Coulter on Twitter ranged from disappointment to outrage.

"You disgust me. That man is the president of this country. (& I'm sure all of the disabled children in America appreciate you.)," actor Sophia Bush tweeted.

"Politics aside, this tweet from @anncoulter was offensive & disgusting. ANY use of the "R" word is unacceptable," @amurphy217 said.

The Special Olympics also condemned her use of the word, saying that it was "sad to see @AnnCoulter continue her use of hateful language by using the #Rword in her discourse."

Even people known for their sense of humor came out against it. Comedian and Twitter personality @UncleDynamite resurfaced a 2-year-old post from his tumblr in which he explained why he would no longer follow anyone he saw using "the r-word."

He re-posted it after seeing people retweeting and favoriting the tweet, which he found disturbing coming from a a "well-educated, self-described Christian with such a huge public presence."

He hopes she'll read it and maybe have a change of heart, but he's not necessarily counting on it.

"Based upon Ann's tweets today, I'd say she's dug in and unrepentant," he said Tuesday in an e-mail. "She must not know, love or respect anyone with an intellectual disability, then, and more's the pity. I'd like to see her after a great day of volunteering at a Special Olympics or Best Buddies event. I'd lay odds she'd never think or say the r-word word ever again, and she'd probably be quick to anger if someone she heard did so."

Others observing the controversy surmised that Coulter used the word solely to draw attention.

"Guys. Ann Coulter is trolling you. Always. Outrage gives her strength. The only thing that will kill her? Complete & utter indifference," @PaprbakPrincess tweeted.

Congress banned the use of the words "retard" and "retardation" in 2010 in federal health, education and labor laws in favor of using the words "intellectual disability." The American Psychiatric Association also plans to replace the term "mental retardation" with "intellectual development disorder" in the fifth version of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to be published by in 2013.

Then why do people cling to the word, Seidman and people like her wonder. She has posed the question before in her blog, which is probably why she woke this morning to find a slew of tweets and e-mails asking her to call out Coulter again for repeatedly using "the r-word" to describe President Obama.

The last time was just a few weeks ago in a blog post called "Let's talk about people who cling to the word 'retard.' " In the post, she recounted a series of recent examples of the word being used: in a New York Times article, in the comments of a YouTube video she made for the Special Olympics' annual campaign to end the use of the word, in the comments section of a CNN.com article.

She also included Coulter's last tweet about a video the president made for the National Forum on Disability Issues: "Been busy, but is Obama STILL talking about that video? I had no idea how crucial the retarded vote is in this election."

"Many people think that using the word 'retard' to slam someone is fine—as long as it's not actually directed at a person with disability. I've had plenty of people argue with me over that distinction. What people don't understand is that every time someone uses the word 'retard,' they perpetuate the idea that people with intellectual disability, like my son, Max, are stupid or losers," Seidman said in an e-mail Tuesday.

"As I've said before, my son shouldn't be defined by ghosts of stereotypes past. He has enough to contend with in this world. Use. Another. Word."

"How's Your News?" reporters back with new documentary about covering 2012 political conventions

From Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel. How's Your News? - "Election 2012" trailer from How's Your News? available on Vimeo.

 

Politicians are completely full of it, especially during interviews with journalists, and especially during an election year. So what happens when a news team consisting of only developmentally disabled adults tries to get past the vote-mongering spin and to the truth? A new movie shares their eye-opening, hilarious, and revealing journey to the center of American bullshit.

How's Your News? is a project that initially started 15 years ago, at a summer camp for developmentally disabled adults. According to the project's website, a video class at the camp wanted to include as many participants as possible in a project, and so they made a news program where campers reported on news stories and eventually did man-on-the-street interviews in a nearby town. They've done tons of projects since, from a series on MTV to an episode of This American Life. Their newest film is called Election 2012, and features footage of the three-person news team reporting from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions and on the campaign trail.

This project is cool for a few reasons. First, it showcases the humor, drive, and humanity of adults with developmental disabilities (contrary to what Sarah Palin might say, people with disabilities are not magical angels sent down from heaven to teach us lessons; they're people with strengths and weaknesses and ideas, like you or me). Second, the way their subjects react to them is incredibly revealing and interesting of their character. Like the part in the preview when Ann Coulter is being gracious and kind and honest and not condescending to Jeremy? SO EMOTIONALLY CONFUSING FOR ME.

How's Your News describes the project as a "positive, empowering view of life with a disability." Check out the preview for free, or watch the whole thing at the project's website.

New book first 'to create a wide-ranging chronological American history narrative told through the lives of people with disabilities'

Scott McLemee's review of Prof. Kim Nielsen's new book, A Disability History of the United States, in Insider Higher Ed:

There's a mean streak at the heart of a certain kind of American optimism -- a rugged, go-it-alone, dog-eat-dog strain of individualism that is callous at best, shading into the sociopathic. It values independence, or says it does, but only by regarding dependency as a totally abject condition. The reality that illness or old age threw even the hardiest pioneer into reliance on others hardly factors into this worldview; the notion that civilization implies interdependence is, for it, almost literally unthinkable.

As I say, this outlook can manifest itself as optimism (the future is one of unbounded possibility, etc.) not always distinct from wishful thinking or denial. And it’s just as likely to pour out in resentment that is keen, if not particularly consistent. “I am a victim,” the logic goes, “of all those people out there playing victim.” Absent a frontier, the frontier spirit starts wallowing in self-pity.

The absence of pity of any sort from Kim E. Nielsen’s new book A Disability History of the United States, published by Beacon Press, is hardly the most provocative thing about it. Nielsen, a professor of disability studies at the University of Toledo, indicates that it is the first book “to create a wide-ranging chronological American history narrative told through the lives of people with disabilities.” By displacing the able-bodied, self-subsisting individual citizen as the basic unit (and implied beneficiary) of the American experience, she compels the reader to reconsider how we understand personal dignity, public life, and the common good.

Take the “ugly laws,” for instance. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, major American cities made it illegal for (in the words of the San Francisco ordinance from 1867) “any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” to appear in “streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places.”

The laws were unequally enforced, with poor and indigent people with handicaps being the main targets. For one thing, the impact of the Civil War plus the incredible frequency of industrial accidents meant there were more unsightly beggars than ever. But while deformed and damaged bodies were being cleared from the streets, there was a pronounced public appetite for the exhibits at “freak” shows.

Now, the two phenomena in question have been studied in some depth over the years. A monograph on the ugly laws appeared not that long ago -- and while there have been more detailed studies of the world of “human oddities” than the late Leslie Fiedler’s cultural history Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (1978), I doubt many have been nearly as thought-provoking. Nielsen’s historical narrative is presumably meant for undergraduates and the general public, so it’s natural to lose nuance in the treatment of either topic. But the breadth of the survey also means there is a gain in perspective.

No direct link exists between the policing of disabled bodies and their exploitation as entertainment, yet there is a connection even so. “In contestations over who was fit to be present in the civic world and who was not,” Nielsen says, “people with disabilities often found themselves increasingly regulated. Those not considered fit for public life were variably shut away, gawked at, [or] exoticized.”

It was a far cry from the norm of a century earlier. “The general lack of discussion and institutional acknowledgement of physical disabilities” in 17th- and 18th-century America “suggests that they simply were not noteworthy among communities of European colonists in the period before the Revolution,” Nielsen writes. “Indeed, it suggests that such bodily variations were relatively routine and expected – and accommodations were made, or simply didn’t have to be made, to integrate individuals into community labor patterns.”

Over time, in other words, disability became abnormal. Or at least it quit seeming “normal” in the way that it once did: a hard fact of life, to be sure, but just in the nature of things. Consider the way severely wounded veterans of the Revolutionary War reintegrated into the life of the new Republic. Citing recent historical work, Nielsen indicates that they “labored, married, had children, and had households typical in size and structures, at rates nearly identical to their nondisabled counterparts." They “worked at the same types of jobs, in roughly the same proportions” as well, and as a group they experienced poverty at the same rates as others of their background. The wounded returning from later wars had a much harder time of it.

Not all handicaps are created equal, of course. Nor is it self-evident that they should be lumped together (war wounds and birth defects, blindness and retardation, mental illness and dwarfism) under the common heading of “disability.” Nielsen sketches the changing ways political and medical authorities responded to the afflicted -- by trying to help them, or hide them, or both. In any case, the trend was to define them not by what they could do, but by their handicap. At the same time, attitudes towards the disabled were becoming tangled together with other prejudices. If certain people weren’t allowed to vote or otherwise exercise much power, it was only because their race, gender, or foreign origin left them physically or mentally unfit for it. Stigma and inequality fed off one another.

The very idea of being profoundly, inescapably limited in some way makes for anxiety when the cultural norm is the expectation “to create successful and powerful selves” that are ready to “stand on our own two feet” and “speak for ourselves.” Nielsen points out that the last two figures of speech are part of the problem. There are people who literally can’t “stand on their own two feet” or “speak for themselves.” While my exposure to the kinds of disability activists Nielsen writes about in the final pages of her history has been limited, they do seem to have an ironic and sarcastic (rather than po-facedly indignant) response to such "able-ist" imagery -- regarding it less as an insult than as evidence that the speaker is a bit thick. Which is usually true. The "unchallenged," as we might be called euphemistically, tend to be somewhat lacking in imagination and insight about their struggle for greater equality and autonomy.

And yet they have won some battles – by demanding help. By demanding a redistribution of resources on the basis of their intrinsic right, as human beings, to the dignity they could not enjoy otherwise. Someone in a wheelchair can zip around the neighborhood just fine, getting to her job at the pharmacy on time, provided the curbs are made accessible. And no, the person in the wheelchair is not responsible for paying for that, any more than her customers are responsible for mixing their own medications. Interdependence is not a failure of independence; it is the condition for enjoying the sort of independence that means anything at all.

Actor John Hawkes on Mark O'Brien, 'The Sessions' and maintaining an even keel

From Hitfix. You can watch the 1996 Oscar-winning documentary "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien" free online.

NEW YORK -- The first time actor John Hawkes heard about Mark O'Brien, the polio-afflicted author, journalist and poet he portrays in the new film "The Sessions," it was due to the Oscars. Documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu had just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for 1996's "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien." Hawkes read a quote from her in the newspaper basically noting that the dress loaned to her for the evening cost more than the budget for her film, and he enjoyed a chuckle over that.

Hawkes knows a little something about low-budget filmmaking, too. After working consistently for years as a character actor on screen and TV, he's become something of an indie darling. "The Sessions" in fact marked his third-straight trip to the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (at which point the film was titled "The Surrogate"). And 16 years after the Oscars managed to put O'Brien on his radar, he looks entirely likely to pop up on Oscars' radar for his performance of the man.

But going back to "Breathing Lessons," it was a crucial tool for Hawkes when it came to inhabiting O'Brien. "I watched it probably 40 or 50 times," he says. "There was Mark in all his glory. There was his twisted body and his voice and his attitude and his poetry, all prevalent. There are a lot of things I could mime from that film. It afforded me a chance to capture some of the real sound and feeling and vibe of Mark himself."

But the performance needed to be about way more than mere physicality. O'Brien spent over four decades in an iron lung. But from that prison his spirit flew on the page. The wealth of writing available to Hawkes was equally beneficial, he says, and indicative of the undying light he most wanted to capture in his performance.

"I suppose a guy who lives 49 years and 43 of them in an iron lung and exceeds a lot of expectations, just by nature that person is going to be a battler," he says of his way into playing the part from within. "A character who's been dealt an unfortunate hand, I would want to avoid self-pity. You don't want to watch a character wallow in their grief, but rather try to solve their problem, and that seemed to be a good part of Mark's life. And humor was hugely important, to find humor wherever we could in the script. The situation is fraught from the outset."

And indeed, there are light touches throughout that keep the film not only balanced, but realistic as a result. The story told by "The Sessions" is a specific one, though, that of the time O'Brien spent with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene (played by Helen Hunt in the film). Knowing he was nearing the end of his rope and had never been with a woman intimately due to his affliction, O'Brien enlisted Greene's services for six sessions of sex therapy. But the bond depicted in the film crosses sterile therapist/patient boundaries and becomes something moving unto itself.

Adding a sense of realism to the dynamic is the fact that Hawkes and Hunt had never met prior to the film. So a lot of the spark of introductory awkwardness is alive in those scenes, Hawkes says, while the growth of the relationship was helped further by the fact that the sessions were filmed sequentially.

"You hear the word 'brave' thrown around about acting performances a little too freely, but I think in this case it actually applies," he says of his co-star's work. "It's a really courageous performance on a lot of levels. And you also hear 'the nudity was necessary' for the movie or the story or whatever and in this case it's not bullshit. It's such an integral part of the movie and her character needs to handle it in such a specific way, and she does it so beautifully."

Hawkes says the Sundance experience has been "phenomenal" and that he laments the fact that he won't be at the fest with another film in 2013, but three years in a row have meant a lot. And it seems they've all been leading to this moment, when he finally assumes leading man status in a vehicle of his own.

"For me it's been the first time I've seen each of those movies ['Winter's Bone,' 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' and 'The Sessions']," he says. "It's been a nervous thrill to watch those with a crowd and Sundance has been really great to me…It's kind of an overwhelming festival but I really admire Mr. Redford. I mean you think of all the people who've been inspired and given chances to work there, from the labs to the festival itself, and it's literally hundreds of filmmakers. That's an honorable and rare and wonderful thing."

The first of that string brought Hawkes his first-ever Oscar nomination, but he says that hasn't really changed his life all that much. "I think part of that is how I've approached it," he says. "Maybe I'll be in a summer blockbuster, sequel eight of some film along the way, but so far I've been able to avoid that. I don't need much money to live. I've saved money from the TV shows I've been on. I have a low overhead and I just prefer to do things that stir me. There are some really amazingly great, big movies out there, but I just haven't really been asked to be a part of them, so I prefer to do the little ones at this point. I'm made nervous by higher visibility on many levels. Since I don't have a mortgage, I don't have any children, it offers me freedom to kind of do what I want to do, which is low budget films that not that many people see, normally."

Nevertheless, his work in "The Sessions" will bring him to a whole other level. And "two-time Oscar nominee" starts to have a much different ring to it. He'll find himself in a race with formidable competitors like Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins and Denzel Washington -- actors who have been well-rewarded by the Academy, in other words. Might his affable portrayal spark a desire to award new blood at the Dolby Theatre? Perhaps. But Hawkes isn't likely to miss a beat if it does.

"There's no goal beyond the life I already have," he says.

Ben Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien. Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for next year’s Academy Awards. Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s Bone.

Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

Ben Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien. Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for next year’s Academy Awards. Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s Bone. I grew up close to Berkeley and was a little familiar with Mark O’Brien before seeing the film, but it captured that sense of place for me – especially with little touches like Pink Man to set the atmosphere. Yes, of course! That’s good, because we shot in Los Angeles because we couldn’t afford to shoot up there. We had to make our own Pink Man and everything. [Laughs] Luckily there are a couple of Victorian streets in Los Angeles that we were able to utilize. How familiar were you with O’Brien’s story beforehand? I was minutely aware of Mark because I had heard of Jessica Yu’s amazing, Academy Award-winning short doc about Mark, called Breathing Lessons. I’d just vaguely kind of remembered that, and I may have seen an article about him at that time, but it was a new kind of story to me when I picked up the script and read it. I was pretty taken with the script itself, by Ben Lewin, and knowing he was going to direct the film which is often a wonderful thing – it’s the person who wrote the script, directing the movie. I just thought he was an extraordinarily interesting man, a polio survivor himself and very uniquely qualified to tell the story. When the project came to you – a very challenging role, to say the least - what made you decide you had to do it? My first question to Ben, as we sat down to meet before he’d offered the role and before I’d accepted the role, was ‘Why not a disabled actor?’ And he assured me that he had taken the last couple of years, he’d put out feelers to disabled groups, and had auditioned several people – a couple of them are in the film – and just felt like he hadn’t found his Mark. So with that huge question answered, I talked to Ben a lot about how he saw the film as a whole, how he saw the character of Mark; I had my ideas, we chatted and seemed to get along really well, so it was a good fit. We went forward from there. And this is a very small project. Ben raised the money by appealing to friends, basically, and so this tiny little script suddenly attracting William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, and a bunch of other wonderful actors – it’s vindicating to read something and think, ‘This is really good!’ And then you realize other people think so too. I’m not insane, it is a great script! How challenging was the shoot itself, physically? It was very challenging – again, a minute amount of the challenge that a disabled person faces, moment to moment, but certainly it was physically challenging. I helped invent a device that we used to curve Mark’s spine, basically a large piece of foam that we nicknamed ‘The Torture Ball’ because it would lay under the left side of my body and curve my spine for every shot in the movie. Sometimes I’d have to lay on that for an hour at a time, and it was hard – it apparently displaced my organs. [Laughs] My chiropractor told me that my organs were migrating and to hopefully finish the movie soon. I have minor health issues that may relate to laying on that thing, but nothing compared to what many people suffer daily, and it’s a small price to pay for what’s turned out to be a really beautiful film. To paraphrase Mark himself in the film, it may have hurt – but it was worth it? Yes! Definitely. It’s an interesting choice that Ben made to present Mark’s story here not as a straight biopic but with a focus on his relationship with his sex surrogate. What do you think that shifted angle brings, as opposed to a more conventional portrayal? Interesting. I think Ben originally had seen the movie as a biopic and then began to realize that the part of Mark’s life that interested him the most was his quest to learn his sexual possibilities as a disabled man. I think it’s a really wise choice; biopics are interesting, but I’d rather see a documentary of a person’s whole life, and I’d much rather see a narrative feature focused on a small piece of their life. And if you can focus on a small piece of someone’s life and tell it well enough, I think it informs the whole of their life. And there’s a real interesting story there – there’s a relationship that develops, certainly heightened in our film, but with the blessing of the real surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Green, to heighten and complicate their relationship a bit and to make it a love story of sorts. The subject matter, as you describe it, doesn’t have wide appeal but I think it has so much humor and so much truth, it’s a breath of fresh air. Mark’s voice really comes through – the same painfully honest, witty spirit you can see in his writings. It was important to me to fight self-pity at every turn, and for the film as a whole to fight sentiment as much as possible. He certainly never wanted people to feel sorry for him. No! The idea that he was a courageous person and stuff, he thought was bullshit. Like, how do you presume to know what I feel, what I go through? I think through his articles he was very interested in the political and social aspects of his disability. One thing that’s striking about Jessica Yu’s film, and I believe I also read something Mark wrote about it, is that to the taxpayer – to those of us who help support disabled people by paying taxes – it was half or maybe one-third of the cost of him being in an institution and live on his own, to pay rent, to hire attendance, way less of a strain on the taxpayer than keeping him an institution, where he was sadly stuck for a few years of his life when his parents were too old to take care of him. Luckily, the University of California, Berkeley in the ‘70s said, we’ll take care of any student who qualifies, who can pass our admission – it doesn’t matter what their disability. There’s an amazing photograph of his iron lung, 800 lbs. of it, hanging from a crane right outside his dorm room window as they’re trying to get it inside. So I know Mark always had a really felt beholden to Berkeley and felt a wonderful debt to that college and that town. They opened up his life, he was kind of reborn in his 30s in Berkeley. Sex and love are central to Mark’s journey in this film, and it’s such a fascinating terrain to explore – the relationship between disability and sexuality, and sexuality and manhood, and what they all might have meant to him. I can’t exactly speak in exact detail to his innermost thought, but he was quite effusive in his writings. In Jessica Yu’s film there is a brief mention of his surrogate time. Bill Macy’s made the point that he worked with a group, and disabled people, like able-bodied people, want to be independent as much as possible and live their lives that way, and they also want to love and be loved. Those are commonalities among people everywhere, and certainly disabled people are no exception. I think that Mark mainly was interested in sex because he was more largely interested in love and in a relationship with someone, and I think that he felt that if he ever met someone he could love, that he would want to have explored his possibilities, sexually. So that’s where the surrogate comes in. The minute that the first screening here ended, folks were buzzing about next year's Oscars. It’s a little early! [Laughs] It’s a lot early. I mean, there may be twenty more amazing films that come out in the next year. I hope so! So who knows? It’s way too early and it doesn’t exactly make me nervous, I just turn a deaf ear to it because low expectations have always been the key to happiness for me. I don’t want to expect things to happen as much as hope, and if those Oscar predictions come true, fantastic – because it will bring more people to this film. After the success of Winter’s Bone, perhaps, how much did things change for you? Has the way that you’ve chosen projects in the last few years evolved at all? No, though I’ve certainly been afforded the opportunity to choose what I might be a part of. It’s not like every director in every movie is seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that directors wouldn’t be interested in me for. What are you interested in? I’m interested in amazing stories told by talented people, and to get to play a terrific role. The three things I try to find are story, parts, people. Has it gotten easier to find the great characters? You know, I think it maybe is. It’s certainly changed for me because when I first got to Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had worked a lot of my life and was still working regular jobs. Acting was more fun to me, and paid better when I could get the gigs, so in order to avoid any further carpentry and restaurant work and things I’d been doing for many years, I just took whatever came my way. I was happy to be able to pay rent and eat. Certainly I’m freer now; I don’t get to do everything I want to do, but I no longer have to do things I don’t want to do - so that’s good.

Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

en Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien. Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for next year’s Academy Awards. Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s Bone. I grew up close to Berkeley and was a little familiar with Mark O’Brien before seeing the film, but it captured that sense of place for me – especially with little touches like Pink Man to set the atmosphere. Yes, of course! That’s good, because we shot in Los Angeles because we couldn’t afford to shoot up there. We had to make our own Pink Man and everything. [Laughs] Luckily there are a couple of Victorian streets in Los Angeles that we were able to utilize. How familiar were you with O’Brien’s story beforehand? I was minutely aware of Mark because I had heard of Jessica Yu’s amazing, Academy Award-winning short doc about Mark, called Breathing Lessons. I’d just vaguely kind of remembered that, and I may have seen an article about him at that time, but it was a new kind of story to me when I picked up the script and read it. I was pretty taken with the script itself, by Ben Lewin, and knowing he was going to direct the film which is often a wonderful thing – it’s the person who wrote the script, directing the movie. I just thought he was an extraordinarily interesting man, a polio survivor himself and very uniquely qualified to tell the story. When the project came to you – a very challenging role, to say the least - what made you decide you had to do it? My first question to Ben, as we sat down to meet before he’d offered the role and before I’d accepted the role, was ‘Why not a disabled actor?’ And he assured me that he had taken the last couple of years, he’d put out feelers to disabled groups, and had auditioned several people – a couple of them are in the film – and just felt like he hadn’t found his Mark. So with that huge question answered, I talked to Ben a lot about how he saw the film as a whole, how he saw the character of Mark; I had my ideas, we chatted and seemed to get along really well, so it was a good fit. We went forward from there. And this is a very small project. Ben raised the money by appealing to friends, basically, and so this tiny little script suddenly attracting William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, and a bunch of other wonderful actors – it’s vindicating to read something and think, ‘This is really good!’ And then you realize other people think so too. I’m not insane, it is a great script! How challenging was the shoot itself, physically? It was very challenging – again, a minute amount of the challenge that a disabled person faces, moment to moment, but certainly it was physically challenging. I helped invent a device that we used to curve Mark’s spine, basically a large piece of foam that we nicknamed ‘The Torture Ball’ because it would lay under the left side of my body and curve my spine for every shot in the movie. Sometimes I’d have to lay on that for an hour at a time, and it was hard – it apparently displaced my organs. [Laughs] My chiropractor told me that my organs were migrating and to hopefully finish the movie soon. I have minor health issues that may relate to laying on that thing, but nothing compared to what many people suffer daily, and it’s a small price to pay for what’s turned out to be a really beautiful film. To paraphrase Mark himself in the film, it may have hurt – but it was worth it? Yes! Definitely. It’s an interesting choice that Ben made to present Mark’s story here not as a straight biopic but with a focus on his relationship with his sex surrogate. What do you think that shifted angle brings, as opposed to a more conventional portrayal? Interesting. I think Ben originally had seen the movie as a biopic and then began to realize that the part of Mark’s life that interested him the most was his quest to learn his sexual possibilities as a disabled man. I think it’s a really wise choice; biopics are interesting, but I’d rather see a documentary of a person’s whole life, and I’d much rather see a narrative feature focused on a small piece of their life. And if you can focus on a small piece of someone’s life and tell it well enough, I think it informs the whole of their life. And there’s a real interesting story there – there’s a relationship that develops, certainly heightened in our film, but with the blessing of the real surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Green, to heighten and complicate their relationship a bit and to make it a love story of sorts. The subject matter, as you describe it, doesn’t have wide appeal but I think it has so much humor and so much truth, it’s a breath of fresh air. Mark’s voice really comes through – the same painfully honest, witty spirit you can see in his writings. It was important to me to fight self-pity at every turn, and for the film as a whole to fight sentiment as much as possible. He certainly never wanted people to feel sorry for him. No! The idea that he was a courageous person and stuff, he thought was bullshit. Like, how do you presume to know what I feel, what I go through? I think through his articles he was very interested in the political and social aspects of his disability. One thing that’s striking about Jessica Yu’s film, and I believe I also read something Mark wrote about it, is that to the taxpayer – to those of us who help support disabled people by paying taxes – it was half or maybe one-third of the cost of him being in an institution and live on his own, to pay rent, to hire attendance, way less of a strain on the taxpayer than keeping him an institution, where he was sadly stuck for a few years of his life when his parents were too old to take care of him. Luckily, the University of California, Berkeley in the ‘70s said, we’ll take care of any student who qualifies, who can pass our admission – it doesn’t matter what their disability. There’s an amazing photograph of his iron lung, 800 lbs. of it, hanging from a crane right outside his dorm room window as they’re trying to get it inside. So I know Mark always had a really felt beholden to Berkeley and felt a wonderful debt to that college and that town. They opened up his life, he was kind of reborn in his 30s in Berkeley. Sex and love are central to Mark’s journey in this film, and it’s such a fascinating terrain to explore – the relationship between disability and sexuality, and sexuality and manhood, and what they all might have meant to him. I can’t exactly speak in exact detail to his innermost thought, but he was quite effusive in his writings. In Jessica Yu’s film there is a brief mention of his surrogate time. Bill Macy’s made the point that he worked with a group, and disabled people, like able-bodied people, want to be independent as much as possible and live their lives that way, and they also want to love and be loved. Those are commonalities among people everywhere, and certainly disabled people are no exception. I think that Mark mainly was interested in sex because he was more largely interested in love and in a relationship with someone, and I think that he felt that if he ever met someone he could love, that he would want to have explored his possibilities, sexually. So that’s where the surrogate comes in. The minute that the first screening here ended, folks were buzzing about next year's Oscars. It’s a little early! [Laughs] It’s a lot early. I mean, there may be twenty more amazing films that come out in the next year. I hope so! So who knows? It’s way too early and it doesn’t exactly make me nervous, I just turn a deaf ear to it because low expectations have always been the key to happiness for me. I don’t want to expect things to happen as much as hope, and if those Oscar predictions come true, fantastic – because it will bring more people to this film. After the success of Winter’s Bone, perhaps, how much did things change for you? Has the way that you’ve chosen projects in the last few years evolved at all? No, though I’ve certainly been afforded the opportunity to choose what I might be a part of. It’s not like every director in every movie is seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that directors wouldn’t be interested in me for. What are you interested in? I’m interested in amazing stories told by talented people, and to get to play a terrific role. The three things I try to find are story, parts, people. Has it gotten easier to find the great characters? You know, I think it maybe is. It’s certainly changed for me because when I first got to Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had worked a lot of my life and was still working regular jobs. Acting was more fun to me, and paid better when I could get the gigs, so in order to avoid any further carpentry and restaurant work and things I’d been doing for many years, I just took whatever came my way. I was happy to be able to pay rent and eat. Certainly I’m freer now; I don’t get to do everything I want to do, but I no longer have to do things I don’t want to do - so that’s good.

Read More at: http://movieline.com/2012/10/19/john-hawkes-sessions-interview-mark-o-brien/#utm_source=copypaste&utm_campaign=referral

en Lewin’s The Sessions (formerly The Surrogate) emerged as the undisputed hit of Sundance 2012, landing a $6 million sale with the unlikeliest of subjects: A paralyzed man’s quest to lose his virginity, based on the life and writings of Bay Area poet Mark O’Brien. Thanks to Lewin’s sensitive and honest script and an impressive turn by indie favorite John Hawkes -- who shines with wit and grace in a physically demanding performance as O’Brien, who has no use of his limbs due to polio but begins to explore his sexuality with the help of a hands-on sex therapist (Helen Hunt) – The Sessions earned consecutive standing ovations and got critics buzzing with the possibilities for next year’s Academy Awards. Movieline sat down with Hawkes after the film's Sundance debut to discuss the indie labor of love, why O’Brien’s story resonates so powerfully, and how opportunities have expanded for him since breaking out two years ago in Park City with his Oscar-nominated turn in Winter’s Bone. I grew up close to Berkeley and was a little familiar with Mark O’Brien before seeing the film, but it captured that sense of place for me – especially with little touches like Pink Man to set the atmosphere. Yes, of course! That’s good, because we shot in Los Angeles because we couldn’t afford to shoot up there. We had to make our own Pink Man and everything. [Laughs] Luckily there are a couple of Victorian streets in Los Angeles that we were able to utilize. How familiar were you with O’Brien’s story beforehand? I was minutely aware of Mark because I had heard of Jessica Yu’s amazing, Academy Award-winning short doc about Mark, called Breathing Lessons. I’d just vaguely kind of remembered that, and I may have seen an article about him at that time, but it was a new kind of story to me when I picked up the script and read it. I was pretty taken with the script itself, by Ben Lewin, and knowing he was going to direct the film which is often a wonderful thing – it’s the person who wrote the script, directing the movie. I just thought he was an extraordinarily interesting man, a polio survivor himself and very uniquely qualified to tell the story. When the project came to you – a very challenging role, to say the least - what made you decide you had to do it? My first question to Ben, as we sat down to meet before he’d offered the role and before I’d accepted the role, was ‘Why not a disabled actor?’ And he assured me that he had taken the last couple of years, he’d put out feelers to disabled groups, and had auditioned several people – a couple of them are in the film – and just felt like he hadn’t found his Mark. So with that huge question answered, I talked to Ben a lot about how he saw the film as a whole, how he saw the character of Mark; I had my ideas, we chatted and seemed to get along really well, so it was a good fit. We went forward from there. And this is a very small project. Ben raised the money by appealing to friends, basically, and so this tiny little script suddenly attracting William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, and a bunch of other wonderful actors – it’s vindicating to read something and think, ‘This is really good!’ And then you realize other people think so too. I’m not insane, it is a great script! How challenging was the shoot itself, physically? It was very challenging – again, a minute amount of the challenge that a disabled person faces, moment to moment, but certainly it was physically challenging. I helped invent a device that we used to curve Mark’s spine, basically a large piece of foam that we nicknamed ‘The Torture Ball’ because it would lay under the left side of my body and curve my spine for every shot in the movie. Sometimes I’d have to lay on that for an hour at a time, and it was hard – it apparently displaced my organs. [Laughs] My chiropractor told me that my organs were migrating and to hopefully finish the movie soon. I have minor health issues that may relate to laying on that thing, but nothing compared to what many people suffer daily, and it’s a small price to pay for what’s turned out to be a really beautiful film. To paraphrase Mark himself in the film, it may have hurt – but it was worth it? Yes! Definitely. It’s an interesting choice that Ben made to present Mark’s story here not as a straight biopic but with a focus on his relationship with his sex surrogate. What do you think that shifted angle brings, as opposed to a more conventional portrayal? Interesting. I think Ben originally had seen the movie as a biopic and then began to realize that the part of Mark’s life that interested him the most was his quest to learn his sexual possibilities as a disabled man. I think it’s a really wise choice; biopics are interesting, but I’d rather see a documentary of a person’s whole life, and I’d much rather see a narrative feature focused on a small piece of their life. And if you can focus on a small piece of someone’s life and tell it well enough, I think it informs the whole of their life. And there’s a real interesting story there – there’s a relationship that develops, certainly heightened in our film, but with the blessing of the real surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Green, to heighten and complicate their relationship a bit and to make it a love story of sorts. The subject matter, as you describe it, doesn’t have wide appeal but I think it has so much humor and so much truth, it’s a breath of fresh air. Mark’s voice really comes through – the same painfully honest, witty spirit you can see in his writings. It was important to me to fight self-pity at every turn, and for the film as a whole to fight sentiment as much as possible. He certainly never wanted people to feel sorry for him. No! The idea that he was a courageous person and stuff, he thought was bullshit. Like, how do you presume to know what I feel, what I go through? I think through his articles he was very interested in the political and social aspects of his disability. One thing that’s striking about Jessica Yu’s film, and I believe I also read something Mark wrote about it, is that to the taxpayer – to those of us who help support disabled people by paying taxes – it was half or maybe one-third of the cost of him being in an institution and live on his own, to pay rent, to hire attendance, way less of a strain on the taxpayer than keeping him an institution, where he was sadly stuck for a few years of his life when his parents were too old to take care of him. Luckily, the University of California, Berkeley in the ‘70s said, we’ll take care of any student who qualifies, who can pass our admission – it doesn’t matter what their disability. There’s an amazing photograph of his iron lung, 800 lbs. of it, hanging from a crane right outside his dorm room window as they’re trying to get it inside. So I know Mark always had a really felt beholden to Berkeley and felt a wonderful debt to that college and that town. They opened up his life, he was kind of reborn in his 30s in Berkeley. Sex and love are central to Mark’s journey in this film, and it’s such a fascinating terrain to explore – the relationship between disability and sexuality, and sexuality and manhood, and what they all might have meant to him. I can’t exactly speak in exact detail to his innermost thought, but he was quite effusive in his writings. In Jessica Yu’s film there is a brief mention of his surrogate time. Bill Macy’s made the point that he worked with a group, and disabled people, like able-bodied people, want to be independent as much as possible and live their lives that way, and they also want to love and be loved. Those are commonalities among people everywhere, and certainly disabled people are no exception. I think that Mark mainly was interested in sex because he was more largely interested in love and in a relationship with someone, and I think that he felt that if he ever met someone he could love, that he would want to have explored his possibilities, sexually. So that’s where the surrogate comes in. The minute that the first screening here ended, folks were buzzing about next year's Oscars. It’s a little early! [Laughs] It’s a lot early. I mean, there may be twenty more amazing films that come out in the next year. I hope so! So who knows? It’s way too early and it doesn’t exactly make me nervous, I just turn a deaf ear to it because low expectations have always been the key to happiness for me. I don’t want to expect things to happen as much as hope, and if those Oscar predictions come true, fantastic – because it will bring more people to this film. After the success of Winter’s Bone, perhaps, how much did things change for you? Has the way that you’ve chosen projects in the last few years evolved at all? No, though I’ve certainly been afforded the opportunity to choose what I might be a part of. It’s not like every director in every movie is seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that directors wouldn’t be interested in me for. What are you interested in? I’m interested in amazing stories told by talented people, and to get to play a terrific role. The three things I try to find are story, parts, people. Has it gotten easier to find the great characters? You know, I think it maybe is. It’s certainly changed for me because when I first got to Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had worked a lot of my life and was still working regular jobs. Acting was more fun to me, and paid better when I could get the gigs, so in order to avoid any further carpentry and restaurant work and things I’d been doing for many years, I just took whatever came my way. I was happy to be able to pay rent and eat. Certainly I’m freer now; I don’t get to do everything I want to do, but I no longer have to do things I don’t want to do - so that’s good.

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Florida autistic teen uses social media to fight for right to attend his local school

From NPR's State Impact in Florida:

Sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand followers too.

That’s what happened to Henry Frost after he posted a photo to Facebook.

The photo shows 13-year-old Frost sitting on the steps outside a downtown Tampa building with his service dog Denzel. Not shown are the thousands of Republicans who had gathered nearby for the week-long Republican National Convention.

Frost holds a sign. It reads: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 granted equal rights to all people. I am a person. I want these rights.”

Frost has autism and a list of related physical problems which have so far eluded a tidy diagnosis. He communicates using an iPad app that speaks what he types.

The right Frost is seeking is the ability to attend Wilson Middle School in his South Tampa neighborhood. The Hillsborough County school district has told Frost they believe he is better off at a specialized program at Coleman Middle School, his family says.

Frost’s photo – and his cause – has gone viral since the photo was posted at the end of August. Thousands have given it an electronic thumbs-up on his I Stand WITH Henry Facebook page. And more than 2,100 have signed an online petition asking Hillsborough schools to let Frost attend Wilson Middle.

Disabilities and special education experts say it’s a common dispute: A family and a school district disagree about what school is best for the student.

School officials say they work hard to give thousands of students with disabilities and their parents what they want. But sometimes parents don’t get the final decision and school officials do.


While he tries to win admission to Wilson, Frost is taking courses at home online. His family worries he is falling behind his classmates. Frost says he just wants to prove himself in a general education classroom.

“Please see me as a person like you,” he types, triggering the mechanical voice of his iPad. “I would like the chance to try.”

Just over a year ago the idea of Frost leading a protest was unthinkable, his mother, Lauri Hunt, and stepfather Russ Hunt said.

Frost was attending a charter school which specializes in special education. His family took educators at their word that Frost was getting everything he needed in school.

He was interested in cars and asked his parents for a ride in a red Camaro for his birthday.

And then Frost saw a documentary called “Wretches and Jabberers” last spring.

The movie follows autism activists Larry Bissonnette and Tracy Thresher as they travel the globe talking to reporters and others about autism. Often, they answer reporter questions by typing answers into a device which speaks the words.

It was the first time Frost had seen people with autism describing life with the disorder in their own words.
Something clicked in Henry, his family said.

“It knocked him off his path,” Russ Hunt said of the movie’s effect on Frost wanting to switch schools. “From that point on that was how it built.”

Bissonnette and Thresher visited Tampa and met with Henry soon after.

Communicating through an iPad is both painstaking and efficient.

Frost often gets stuck trying to answer questions, constantly referring to friends or past events.

That’s when the movie serves as a reference point in Frost’s life.

Frost uses an 18-second piece of the movie’s soundtrack to focus himself when his mind gets caught in one of the repetitive loops typical of autism. He uses the soundtrack as a shorthand way to describe what he’s thinking or feeling.

When Frost gets overwhelmed by a reporter’s interview questions, he regroups in another room – just as a character does in “Wretches and Jabberers.”

Lauri Hunt has to remind Frost to return to his “thinking spot” if she sees him start to hover while typing. She might put her hand on his elbow or shoulder to help him focus. Sometimes he brushes her away.

But Frost can also quickly sift through hundreds of saved phrases and find what he needs. That includes the ability to quickly explain his medical history to paramedics or doctors.

Lauri Hunt said the way Frost views himself has changed after seeing the movie. For the first time Frost started telling people what he wanted.

“In the last year he’s like ‘I,’ ‘I,’ ‘I,’” Lauri Hunt said.

And that means seeking rights for the disabled, including protesting in downtown Tampa during the RNC.
“He started with ‘I would like these rights,” Lauri Hunt said. “Then it was ‘I want these rights.’ And now it’s ‘I have these rights.’”

Despite what Frost and his family want, special education experts say parents don’t always get to choose. That’s because when a labyrinth of federal and state laws meet local practice, sometimes the two sides can’t agree.

Federal law says that students with disabilities have a right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. Experts say that puts a preference on educating students with disabilities in general education classrooms.

Florida law has a similar preference, stating students can only be put into special classrooms if a school cannot accommodate the disability with aids and services in a general classroom.

But sometimes educators and parents disagree about what should be in a student’s education plan and where he or she should attend school.

Privacy laws forbid school districts from discussing individual student cases. Hillsborough County schools said they follow the law and declined to speak about Frost’s request.

Speaking generally, school board chairman Candy Olson said disagreements between the district and parents are rare.

Last year the district designed special education plans for 25,000 students, she said. The parents of just seven students took their dispute to a judge.

Olson said it’s difficult to tell a parent they can’t send their child to the school of their choice, but the district only does so when they believe the student would be better-served or safer at a different school.

“It’s heartbreaking and it makes you angry,” she said. “But there are laws and they’re meant to protect everybody.”

Disabilities advocates say Florida school districts have different views on including students with disabilities in general education classrooms.

Ann Siegel is an attorney with Disability Rights Florida. The group handles about 300 special education disputes each year, including Frost’s.

A Florida Department of Education memo says it’s up to a school district to prove why a student shouldn’t attend a general education classroom.

But Siegel says districts often require that parents prove their child can handle the work. School districts know the process and the law better. Parents can find it difficult to oppose their team of experts.

Parents find it hard to accept the decision isn’t always theirs, Siegel said. They don’t always like the results when they win and their child is placed in a general education classroom.

“There’s very little that I find is black and white in special education,” she said. “Even when you win, you’ve lost time. And you’ve tainted a relationship with the school district.”

Hillsborough County school board member Olson said she understand how it looks when a school district says no to mom. But she says they have to follow the law and the student’s education plan.

School districts can’t afford to hire specialists for every school – it just isn’t an efficient use of tax money, she said. But the school district provides for every student.

“We see miracles with children with special needs,” Olson said. “It’s not for lack of trying; it’s not for lack of caring. But sometimes it’s just a disagreement.”

But while the school district disagrees, Frost is taking classes at home. Lauri Hunt believes he is falling further behind while the family tries to prove he can handle life and work at Wilson.

She worries how other will react to Frost’s public protest.

“You do spend your whole life trying to protect your kids from everyone knowing so much about them,” she said. But the family said the reaction has been mostly positive.

Neighbors have rallied to support his cause. So have strangers on the Internet.

Frost finds some inspiration in the movie “Hairspray,” about Baltimore students who fight to integrate a 60’s television dance show.

“It’s killingly hard to say how I feel,” Frost said – another reference to a line in “Wretches and Jabberers.”
But does he feel like he inspires others, just as Bissonnette and Thresher did for him?

“I think yes,” he said. “I am kind and treat people with respect. That is a role model.”