$354.8million[2][3] ($914 million in 2023 dollars)[4]
Rain Man is a 1988 American roadcomedy-drama film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive and selfish wheeler-dealer Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autisticsavant whose existence Charlie was unaware of. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting real-life savant Kim Peek; his characterization was based on both Peek and Bill Sackter, a good friend of Morrow who was the subject of Bill, an earlier film that Morrow wrote.[5]
As of 2024[update], Rain Man is the only film to win both the Berlin International Film Festival's highest award and the Academy Award for Best Picture in the same year. It was also the last film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to be nominated for Best Picture until Licorice Pizza in 2021; 33 years later.[8]
Plot
Arrogant collectibles dealer Charlie Babbitt is in the middle of importing four grey marketLamborghinis to Los Angeles for resale. He needs to deliver the cars to impatient buyers who have already made down payments to repay the loan he took out to buy them, but the EPA is holding the cars at the port because they have failed emission tests. Charlie directs an employee to lie to the buyers while he stalls his creditor.
When Charlie learns that his estranged father Sanford Babbitt has died, he and his girlfriend Susanna travel to Cincinnati to settle the estate. He inherits only a group of rosebushes and a classic 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible over which he and Sanford had clashed, while the remainder of the $3 million estate is going to an unnamed trustee. He learns that the money is being directed to a local mental institution, where he meets his elder brother Raymond, of whom he was unaware.
Raymond is an autisticsavant and adheres to strict routines. He has superb recall, but he shows little emotional expression, except when in distress. Charlie spirits Raymond out of the mental institution and into a hotel for the night. Disheartened with the way Charlie treats Raymond, Susanna leaves him. Charlie asks Raymond's doctor, Dr. Gerald Bruner, for half the estate in exchange for Raymond's return, but Bruner refuses. Charlie decides to attempt to gain custody of his brother to get control of the money.
After Raymond refuses to fly to Los Angeles, he and Charlie resort to driving there instead. They make slow progress because Raymond insists on sticking to his routines, which include watching The People's Court on television every day, getting to bed by 11:00p.m., and refusing to travel when it rains. He also objects to traveling on the Interstate after they encounter a car accident.
During the course of the journey, Charlie learns more about Raymond, including his ability to instantly perform complex calculations and count hundreds of objects at once, far beyond the normal range of human abilities. He also realizes that Raymond had lived with the family as a child and was the "Rain Man" (Charlie's infantile pronunciation of "Raymond"), a comforting figure Charlie had remembered as an imaginary friend. Raymond had saved an infant Charlie from being scalded by hot bathwater one day, but Sanford blamed Raymond for nearly injuring Charlie, and committed him to the institution, as he was unable to speak up for himself and correct the misunderstanding.
Charlie's creditor repossesses the Lamborghinis, forcing him to refund his buyers' down payments and leaving him deeply in debt. Having passed Las Vegas, he and Raymond return to Caesars Palace and devise a plan to win the needed money by playing blackjack and counting cards. Although the casino bosses obtain videotape evidence of the scheme and ask them to leave, Charlie successfully wins $86,000 to cover his debts. He also reconciles with Susanna, who has rejoined the brothers in Las Vegas.
Returning to Los Angeles, Charlie meets with Bruner, who offers him $250,000 to walk away from Raymond. Charlie refuses, saying he is no longer upset about being cut out of his father's will, but he wants to have a relationship with his brother. At a meeting with a court-appointed psychiatrist, Raymond proves to be unable to decide for himself what he wants. Charlie stops the questioning and tells Raymond he is happy to have him as his brother. As Raymond and Bruner board a train to return to the institution, Charlie promises to visit in two weeks.
A now-abandoned gas station and general store in Cogar, Oklahoma, was used in a scene from the film. The Colvert sign has since been removed, revealing the full name of the business.
In drafting the story for Rain Man, Barry Morrow decided to base Raymond Babbitt on his experiences with both Kim Peek and Bill Sackter, two men who had gained notoriety and fame for their intellectual disabilities and, in Peek's case, for his abilities as a savant that were evident in high speed reading and extremely detailed memory. Prior to the conception of Rain Man, Morrow had formed a friendship with the intellectually disabled Sackter, and, in doing so, ended up taking some situational aspects from his friendship and using them to help craft the relationship between Charlie and Raymond. Following the success of Bill, the made-for-TV movie he had written about Sackter, Morrow met Kim Peek and was wildly intrigued by his savant syndrome. Going into the creation of the film, Morrow was still essentially unaware of the intricacies of the condition, as well as of autism itself; instead deciding that the movie was less about Raymond's intellectual disability, and more about the relationship formed between Raymond and Charlie.[9]
Roger Birnbaum was the first studio executive to give the film a green light; he did so immediately after Barry Morrow pitched the story. Birnbaum received "special thanks" in the film's credits.[1]
For a year prior to playing Raymond Babbitt, Hoffman prepared to portray Raymond's autism by seeking out and educating himself on other autistic people, particularly those with savant syndrome. Hoffman had some experience with disabled individuals prior to filming, having worked at the New York Psychiatric Institute when he was younger. Inspiration for the portrayal of Raymond Babbitt's mannerisms was drawn from a multitude of sources, but he thanked three men in his Oscar acceptance speech.[17] One was Peter Guthrie, the autistic brother of Kevin Guthrie, a Princeton football player with whom Hoffman was in touch at the time.[18] Another was autistic savant Joseph Sullivan, who was the subject of two documentary films[19] and whose mother, Dr. Ruth Sullivan, was the founding president of the Autism Society of America and served as a consultant on the film. The third was savant Kim Peek, with whom Hoffman met as part of his research of the role, wherein he would observe and mimic Peek's actions, attempting to give an accurate portrayal of what an individual with savant syndrome might act like. His mimicry of Peek's savant syndrome was deemed a poor fit for the character by Hoffman, resulting in Hoffman's decision to make Babbitt not only a man with savant syndrome, but also with autism.[9]
Filming
Principal photography included nine weeks of filming on location in Cincinnati and throughout northern Kentucky.[20] Other portions were shot in the desert near Palm Springs, California.[21]:168–71 There was originally a different ending to the movie drafted by Morrow that differed from Raymond's going back to the institution. Morrow ultimately decided to drop this ending in favor of Raymond's returning to the institution, as he felt the original ending would not have stuck with the viewers as effectively as the revised ending did.[9] Almost all of the principal photography occurred during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike; one key scene that was affected by the lack of writers was the film's final scene.[5] Bass delivered his last draft of the script only hours before the strike started and spent no time on the set.[12]
Box office
Rain Man debuted December 16, 1988, and was the second highest-grossing film at the weekend box office (behind Twins), with $7million.[22] It reached the first spot the weekend of December 30 – January 2, finishing 1988 with $42million.[23] The film would become the highest-grossing U.S. film of 1988 by earning more than $172million. Worldwide figures vary, though. Box Office Mojo claims that the film grossed over $354million worldwide,[2] while The Numbers reported that the film grossed $412.8million worldwide.[3]
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Rain Man holds an approval rating of 88%, based on 136 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus states: "This road-trip movie about an autistic savant and his callow brother is far from seamless, but Barry Levinson's direction is impressive, and strong performances from Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman add to its appeal."[24]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[25] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A", on a scale of A+ to F.[26]
becomingly modest, decently thought-out, sometimes funny film"; Hoffman's performance was a "display of sustained virtuosity ... [that] makes no lasting connections with the emotions. Its end effect depends largely on one's susceptibility to the sight of an actor acting nonstop and extremely well, but to no particularly urgent dramatic purpose.[27]
Canby considered the "film's true central character" to be "the confused, economically and emotionally desperate Charlie, beautifully played by Mr. Cruise."[27]Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four. He wrote:
Hoffman proves again that he almost seems to thrive on impossible acting challenges. ... I felt a certain love for Raymond, the Hoffman character. I don't know quite how Hoffman got me to do it.[28]
Gene Siskel also gave the film three and a half stars out of four, singling out Cruise for praise: "The strength of the film is really that of Cruise's performance...the combination of two superior performances makes the movie worth watching."[29]
Amy Dawes of Variety wrote that "one of the year's most intriguing film premises ... is given uneven, slightly off-target treatment"; she called the road scenes "hastily, loosely written, with much extraneous screen time", but admired the last third of the film, calling it a depiction of "two very isolated beings" who "discover a common history and deep attachment".[30]
One of the film's harshest reviews came from The New Yorker magazine critic Pauline Kael, who said, "Everything in this movie is fudged ever so humanistically, in a perfunctory, low-pressure way. And the picture has its effectiveness: people are crying at it. Of course they're crying at it—it's a piece of wet kitsch."[31]
Rain Man was placed on 39 critics' "ten best" lists in 1988, based on a poll of the nation's top 100 critics.[32]
The release of Rain Man in 1988 coincided with a tenfold increase in funding for medical research and diagnoses of individuals for autism. The latter is primarily due to autism's being more broadly defined in newer editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, particularly versions III-R and IV.[45]:389–401 The movie is credited, however, with significantly increasing awareness of autism among the general public.[45]:354-380
Rain Man is known, in particular, for its portrayal of a man with both autism and savant skills, leading much of its viewing audience to incorrectly assume the intellectual capabilities of autistic people at large.[9] Characters like Raymond Babbitt, whose characterization has been criticized for adhering to stereotypes, are portrayed as having an otherworldly intellectual ability that, rather than disable them from living a "normal" life, instead assists them in a nearly magical way. Although having savant abilities is certainly a possibility for autistic individuals, the combination is incredibly rare.[46] Conversely, Rain Man has also been seen as dispelling a number of other misconceptions about autism, and improving public awareness of the failure of many agencies to accommodate autistic people and make use of the abilities they do have, regardless of whether they have savant skills or not.[47]
Since Dustin Hoffman's 1989 Academy Award win for his performance in Rain Man, about half of all Best Actor trophies have been awarded for portrayals of characters who are disabled in some way; none of these recipients share their characters' disabilities in real life.[48][49] Just one year after Hoffman's win, Daniel Day-Lewis (thus far the only actor to have won three awards in the category) garnered his first Best Actor win for his portrayal of cerebral palsy patient Christy Brown in My Left Foot. The Academy's incentivizing of such casting practices has drawn criticism from disabled actors and self-advocates, who argue that these decisions sideline more authentic stories about disabled characters, in favor of leveraging already-established actors' prestige.[50][51] This pattern has even been satirized by the 2008 film Tropic Thunder (in which Tom Cruise also appears), wherein Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Kirk Lazarus, chastises a fellow actor for portraying a character whose developmental disability is deemed too alienating for a mainstream audience.[52]
Rain Man is also known for popularizing the misconception that card counting is illegal in the United States.[53]
Raymond Babbitt was caricatured as a rain cloud in the animated episode of The Nanny, "Oy to the World". During the episode, Fran fixes up CC the Abominable Babcock with the Rain Man. He is portrayed as a cloud of rain mumbling about weather patterns and being an excellent driver.
References to Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman's performance in particular, have become a popular shorthand for autism and savantism. In the final episode of the first season of Community, Pierce calls Abed "Rain Man" when listing members of the study group; Abed had been described previously as having Asperger's Syndrome, which is now diagnosed as autism spectrum disorder.[56] In the 2015 biographical drama film Steve Jobs, when Jobs (played by Michael Fassbender) is confronted by Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), he refers to co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) as "Rain Man". In the film, Fear Street Part One: 1994, Simon, surprised by Josh's knowledge of a seemingly unknown girl who had attacked him, says: "Jesus, Rain Man. How [...] do you know that?".
Qantas and airline controversy
In June 1989, at least fifteen major airlines showed edited versions of Rain Man that omitted the scene involving Raymond's refusal to fly, mentioning the crashes of American Airlines Flight 625, Delta Air Lines Flight 191, and Continental Airlines Flight 1713, except on Australia-based Qantas. Those criticizing this decision included film director Barry Levinson, co-screenwriter Ronald Bass, and George Kirgo (at the time, the President of the Writers Guild of America, West). "I think it's a key scene to the entire movie," Levinson said in a telephone interview. "That's why it's in there. It launches their entire odyssey across country – because they couldn't fly." Although some of those airlines cited as justification avoiding having airplane passengers feel uncomfortable in sympathy with Raymond during the in-flight entertainment, the scene was shown intact on flights of Qantas, and commentators noted that Raymond mentions it as the only airline whose planes have "never crashed".[57][58]
The film is credited with introducing Qantas's safety record to U.S. consumers.[59][60] However, contrary to the claims made in the film, Qantas aircraft have been involved in a number of fatal accidents since the airline's founding in 1920 (although none involving jet aircraft, with the last incident taking place in December 1951).[61]
The Buick convertible
Two 1949 Roadmaster convertibles were used in the filming, one of which had its rear suspension stiffened to bear the additional load of camera equipment and a cameraman. After filming completed, the unmodified car was acquired by Hoffman, who had it restored and added it to his collection. He kept it for 34 years. Hemmings Motor News reported that the car was auctioned in January 2022 by Bonhams in Scottsdale, Arizona, and sold for $335,000.[62] The camera-carrying car was similarly acquired by Barry Levinson, who had it restored by Wayne Carini of the Chasing Classic Cars television series a few years later.
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. His accolades include two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Hoffman has received numerous honors, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1997, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012. Actor Robert De Niro has described him as "an actor with the everyman's face who embodied the heartbreakingly human".
Barry Lee Levinson is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). His other best-known works are similarly mid-budget comedy drama and drama films such as Diner (1982), The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Wag the Dog (1997). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.
Savant syndrome is a phenomenon where someone demonstrates exceptional aptitude in one domain, such as art or mathematics, despite significant social or intellectual impairment.
A mental calculator or human calculator is a person with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation.
Stephen Wiltshire is a British architectural artist and autistic savant. He is known for his ability to draw a landscape from memory after seeing it just once. His work has gained worldwide popularity.
Martin Brest is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. After his feature debut, Going in Style (1979), he directed the action comedies Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Midnight Run (1988), which were critical and commercial hits.
Laurence Kim Peek was an American savant. Known as a "megasavant", he had an exceptional memory, but he also experienced social difficulties, possibly resulting from a developmental disability related to congenital brain abnormalities. He was the inspiration for the character Raymond Babbitt in the 1988 movie Rain Man. Although Peek was previously diagnosed with autism, he is now thought to have had FG syndrome. The Utah Film Center's Peek Award honors his legacy.
Bernard Rimland was an American research psychologist, writer, lecturer, and influential person in the field of developmental disorders. Rimland's first book, Infantile Autism, sparked by the birth of a son who had autism, was instrumental in changing attitudes toward the disorder. Rimland founded and directed two advocacy groups: the Autism Society of America (ASA) and the Autism Research Institute. He promoted several since disproven theories about the causes and treatment of autism, including vaccine denial, facilitated communication, chelation therapy, and false claims of a link between secretin and autism. He also supported the ethically controversial practice of using aversives on autistic children.
Bill is a 1981 American made-for-television biographical drama film starring Mickey Rooney and Dennis Quaid based on the life of Bill Sackter. The film was broadcast on CBS on December 22, 1981. A sequel, Bill: On His Own, was released in 1983. Writer/filmmaker Barry Morrow, portrayed in the film by Dennis Quaid, based the story on his life experiences with Sackter, and later became his legal guardian. Sackter, who did not have autism, would also serve as a partial inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbitt in Morrow's early draft screenplay for the 1988 film Rain Man.
St. Anne Convent, located in Melbourne, Kentucky, is the home of the American Province of the Congregation of Divine Providence, a community of Roman Catholic Sisters. The convent houses the provincial offices of the congregation, the residences of two local communities, as well as Moye Spiritual Life Center. There are 140 members of the American Province of Sisters of Divine Providence, but the congregation also has provinces in France and Madagascar.
Ruth Christ Sullivan was an American organizer and advocate for education for people with autism.
William Sackter was an American man with an intellectual disability whose fame as the subject of two television movies and a feature-length documentary helped change national attitudes on persons with disabilities.
Societal and cultural aspects of autism or sociology of autism come into play with recognition of autism, approaches to its support services and therapies, and how autism affects the definition of personhood. The autistic community is divided primarily into two camps; the autism rights movement and the pathology paradigm. The pathology paradigm advocates for supporting research into therapies, treatments, and/or a cure to help minimize or remove autistic traits, seeing treatment as vital to help individuals with autism, while the neurodiversity movement believes autism should be seen as a different way of being and advocates against a cure and interventions that focus on normalization, seeing it as trying to exterminate autistic people and their individuality. Both are controversial in autism communities and advocacy which has led to significant infighting between these two camps. While the dominant paradigm is the pathology paradigm and is followed largely by autism research and scientific communities, the neurodiversity movement is highly popular among most autistic people, within autism advocacy, autism rights organizations, and related neurodiversity approaches have been rapidly growing and applied in the autism research field in the last few years.
Barry Morrow is an American screenwriter and producer. He wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for Rain Man. He is the father of Emmy Award-winning animator, writer, and storyboard artist, Clayton Morrow, and father-in-law of animator and storyboard artist, Cindy Morrow.
American actor Dustin Hoffman began his career by appearing in an episode of Naked City in 1961. His first theatrical performance was 1961's Shmem needs a shink as Ridzinski. Following several guest appearances on television, he starred in the 1966 play Eh?; his performance garnered him both a Theatre World Award and Drama Desk Award. Hoffman made his film debut in 1967 when he appeared in the comedy The Tiger Makes Out. In the same year, his breakthrough role as Benjamin "Ben" Braddock, the title character in Mike Nichols' comedy-drama The Graduate, led to Hoffman achieving star status and his first Academy Award nomination. He then acted in the play Jimmy Shine as the eponymous character and the comedy film Madigan's Millions. In 1969, he starred alongside Jon Voight in the Academy Award for Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy, for which Hoffman was nominated a second time for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
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