This week Neil Amdur in The New York Times takes a look at three coming movies that focus on people living with Asperger’s syndrome.
“Adam” is about life, not his disability,” said Jonathan Kaufman, the founder of the Manhattan-based consulting agency DisabilityWorks Inc., who worked as a technical adviser on the film. “It uses his Asperger’s as the lens that colors his life, not the central focal point. It’s about relationships, love, family. The illness is not separate from the person.”
“Mary and Max,” which opened the Sundance festival. It deals with the pen-pal relationship of a 44-year-old New Yorker, who has Asperger’s and lives on chocolate hot dogs, and a lonely 8-year-old Australian girl. The motivation for the film came from hundreds of letters, spanning 20 years, between Adam Elliot, a young Australian, and a middle-age pen pal in Staten Island who he later learned had Asperger’s.
The article also highlights the growing number of books about Aspergers.
“Pretending to Be Normal: Living With Asperger’s Syndrome
” by Liane Holliday Willey, which is mentioned in “Adam,” and the best-selling memoir “Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s,” by John Elder Robison. Jessica Kingsley Publishers released three books this spring: “22 Things a Woman Must Know If She Loves a Man With Asperger’s,” by Rudy Simone; “The Love-Shy Survival Guide
,” by Talmer Shockley; and “The Imprinted Brain: How Genes Set the Balance of the Mind Between Autism and Psychosis
,” by Christopher Babcock.
Link to NYT article Asperger’s Syndrome, on Screen and in Life
Source: New York Times
