Six all-time classic films that I'm fairly certain have an autistic main character:
1) Taxi Driver. There is literally nothing about his attempted relationship with Betsy that makes sense if you assume Travis is neurotypical. And this clip doesn't even include his strange reaction to being compared with a Kris Kristofferson song.
Seriously, Quentin Tarantino talked about his experience watching the movie in a theatre with a black audience who found many of Travis' eccentricities absurd. And the things they pointed out are things I could easily see myself doing.
2) The Big Lebowski. You could make the argument that all three members of the main trio are on the spectrum. Donny's spaciness might be a sign (admittedly, the least convincing of the three), and I could easily see Walter's big freakouts as a sort of meltdown at something going very wrong with the way he sees the world, perhaps sublimated into a form that would be more acceptable in 'Nam. But the way the Dude keeps repeating certain phrases that he thinks sounds cool even if they don't necessarily work sounds like the way I wound up learning to speak. I learned to speak later than a lot of kids to the extent that my parents said my first language was Written English and my second was Spoken English, and the way he does this makes me suspect that maybe he had a language delay too.
Then again, maybe I'm over-reading into this movie.
3) Paris, Texas. He's mute for a good portion of the movie, is largely solitary (even if most of the film involves him growing beyond that), and insists on renting a specific car. Not a specific model, a specific car. Hell, I'm certain that Barry Levinson took a good part of the road trip subplot from Rain Man directly from this movie.
4) The Graduate. Surprisingly, Dustin Hoffman somehow made a more relatable autistic character 20 years before he made Rain Man.
5) The Conversation. If Harry Caul isn't, his mistress who talked about how she used to calm herself as a kid by hitting her head definitely is.
6) The Producers. There will never be a more accurate depiction of an autism meltdown in cinema than the one Gene Wilder has early on.
1) Taxi Driver. There is literally nothing about his attempted relationship with Betsy that makes sense if you assume Travis is neurotypical. And this clip doesn't even include his strange reaction to being compared with a Kris Kristofferson song.
Seriously, Quentin Tarantino talked about his experience watching the movie in a theatre with a black audience who found many of Travis' eccentricities absurd. And the things they pointed out are things I could easily see myself doing.
2) The Big Lebowski. You could make the argument that all three members of the main trio are on the spectrum. Donny's spaciness might be a sign (admittedly, the least convincing of the three), and I could easily see Walter's big freakouts as a sort of meltdown at something going very wrong with the way he sees the world, perhaps sublimated into a form that would be more acceptable in 'Nam. But the way the Dude keeps repeating certain phrases that he thinks sounds cool even if they don't necessarily work sounds like the way I wound up learning to speak. I learned to speak later than a lot of kids to the extent that my parents said my first language was Written English and my second was Spoken English, and the way he does this makes me suspect that maybe he had a language delay too.
Then again, maybe I'm over-reading into this movie.
3) Paris, Texas. He's mute for a good portion of the movie, is largely solitary (even if most of the film involves him growing beyond that), and insists on renting a specific car. Not a specific model, a specific car. Hell, I'm certain that Barry Levinson took a good part of the road trip subplot from Rain Man directly from this movie.
4) The Graduate. Surprisingly, Dustin Hoffman somehow made a more relatable autistic character 20 years before he made Rain Man.
5) The Conversation. If Harry Caul isn't, his mistress who talked about how she used to calm herself as a kid by hitting her head definitely is.
6) The Producers. There will never be a more accurate depiction of an autism meltdown in cinema than the one Gene Wilder has early on.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
![[Image: harmlesskitchen.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/yxR97P23/harmlesskitchen.png)
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
