Temple Grandin | |
---|---|
Genre | Biographical drama |
Based on | Emergence by Temple Grandin Margaret Scariano Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin |
Screenplay by |
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Directed by | Mick Jackson |
Starring | |
Music by | Alex Wurman |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers | |
Producer | Scott Ferguson |
Cinematography | Ivan Strasburg |
Editor | Leo Trombetta |
Running time | 107 minutes |
Production companies | |
Original release | |
Network | HBO |
Release | February 6, 2010 |
Temple Grandin is a 2010 American biographical drama television film directed by Mick Jackson and starring Claire Danes as Temple Grandin, an autistic woman whose innovations revolutionized practices for the humane handling of livestock on cattle ranches and slaughterhouses. It is based on Grandin's memoirs Emergence and Thinking in Pictures . The film premiered on HBO on February 6, 2010, and won several awards including five Primetime Emmy Awards, and Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild prizes for Danes.
Temple Grandin is an uncommunicative child who is prone to tantrums and is diagnosed with autism. The medical consensus at that time was that autism was a form of schizophrenia resulting from insufficient maternal affection. Despite recommendations to place her in an institution, Temple's mother hires therapists and works to help her daughter adapt to social interaction.
As a teenager, Temple travels to her aunt and uncle's ranch to work. She observes cows being placed into a squeeze chute to calm them, and, during an anxiety attack, she uses the chute to calm herself. Inspired by her teacher, Dr. Carlock, to pursue science, she is admitted to Franklin Pierce College where she develops an early version of the squeeze machine to calm herself during stressful times. Her college misinterprets the use of the machine as a sexual act and forces her to remove it. In response, she develops a scientific protocol to test subjects' reactions to the machine, proving it to be a purely therapeutic device. Temple graduates with a degree in psychology and pursues a master's degree in animal science.
Temple faces sexism while attempting to integrate into the world of cattle ranching but ultimately designs a new dip structure designed to allow cattle to voluntarily move through rather than being forced. Initially, the device works as intended, and garners favorable coverage in local press, but the ranch hands are dismissive of her design and alter it, resulting in the drowning of several cows. Angered, Temple visits Dr. Carlock, and leaves the meeting encouraged to continue her efforts to improve the industry and start her own slaughterhouse.
Several days after visiting Dr. Carlock, Temple gets a call from her mother revealing that he has died. Later, while shopping, Temple meets a woman named Betty whose husband works for a slaughterhouse. Temple meets with Betty's husband at the slaughterhouse and explains her plan for the layout of the slaughterhouse. Her idea is tested, and works.
Years later, in 1981, Temple arrives at the National Autism Convention and shares her story.
The idea for a biopic of Grandin originated with its executive producer Emily Gerson Saines, a successful talent agent and a co-founder of the nonprofit Autism Coalition for Research and Education (now part of Autism Speaks). In the mid-1990s, Gerson Saines was a vice-president at the William Morris Agency when her 2-year-old son was diagnosed with autism. She learned about Grandin soon afterward, when her mother told her about seeing Grandin's book Thinking in Pictures in a bookstore and, around the same time, her grandmother independently sent her an article about Grandin by Oliver Sacks. [1]
Reading about Grandin renewed Gerson Saines' "energy, motivation and spirit" in coping with her son's condition. "Temple's story brought me hope and (her mother)'s story gave me direction and purpose," Gerson Saines said in a later interview. "Parents of a child with autism everywhere need to hear it, functionally and spiritually. I knew this story had to be told and given my access as a talent representative in the entertainment industry, I felt it was my responsibility to make that happen." Through Grandin's agent, Gerson Saines asked to meet Grandin for lunch. "She came in wearing her cowgirl shirt—in her very Temple way, in her very Temple walk. I realized that there were people staring at her, and in a different lifetime I might have been one of them, but all I could think of was, 'I can't believe how lucky I am to be here. This woman's my hero.'" [1] [2]
Grandin was familiar with Gerson Saines' work with the Autism Coalition and granted her permission to make the film, but the endeavor—first launched in the late 1990s—would take more than ten years to come to fruition. [1] [3] Variety reported in 2002 that David O. Russell was attached to direct the film from a screenplay by W. Merritt Johnson (adapting from Grandin's memoirs Emergence and Thinking in Pictures). [4] Russell later dropped out and was replaced by Moisés Kaufman, who also left the project. By 2008, Mick Jackson had signed on to direct, and Claire Danes was in negotiations to star as Grandin. Johnson's script had been replaced by one from Christopher Monger (both Johnson and Monger are credited as writers of the finished film). [1] [5]
One element Gerson Saines was sure about from the beginning was that she wanted to work with HBO, in part because of her longstanding relationship with the network through her work as an agent. "But I also knew that by going that route, more people will see it," she said. "When you're trying to make a movie like this, it's very rare that it reaches a wide audience." HBO was equally intrigued by the story, and Gerson Saines credits past and present HBO executives with keeping the project alive until it could be properly realized. "I made a commitment to Temple that I was going to make it and make it right...I never pushed to get it made until now, because now we got it right." [1] [5]
Jackson knew early on that Danes was his first choice to portray Grandin, believing that Danes' seriousness and dedication would help her to capture Grandin's mercurial mental and emotional shifts without veering the film into disease-of-the-week melodrama. Danes herself was coming off a string of more lightweight roles (whose "primary job and experience [was] to become gaga over a man," she described) and eager to take on a more demanding part. Although she was only vaguely aware of Grandin at the time, Danes dove into research, including watching documentaries about Grandin and studying Grandin's books and recordings. "It was really daunting, because she's alive and has a great eye for detail," Danes said. The two women spent about six hours together in Danes' apartment, ending with a hug from Grandin ("For her, that's not easy," Danes observed), which Danes was glad to take as validation that Grandin approved of her for the role. [6]
Temple Grandin began shooting in October 2008 at Austin Studios in Austin, Texas. [3] [7] The film was noted for filming in Texas at a time when TV and film production had grown scarce in the state, and legislators were seeking to expand financial incentives to draw more film crews. Grandin producer Scott Ferguson said that Arizona, New Mexico and Canada had all been considered before producers had chosen Texas, in part because different areas of the state could be used to represent the rural West and New England. Ferguson also credited the abundance of trained film crews in the Austin and Dallas regions as a significant benefit to shooting in the area. [8] Cinematographer Ivan Strasburg shot the film on Kodak Super 16 mm film stocks with Arriflex 416 cameras, which were usually operated hand-held to "create a 'slight' feeling of visual tension." [9]
Gerson Saines brought Grandin to observe the last day of shooting, which was a scene involving a cattle dip tank that Grandin had designed. [1] [6] Although Grandin said that she tried to stay away from Danes to avoid impinging on her performance, she was quite concerned about the proper construction of the tank and about the breed of cattle being used in the scene. "I thought, we can't have a silly thing like that City Slickers movie, where they had Holstein cattle out there," Grandin said. "If you know anything about cattle, you'd know that was stupid." She said watching Danes on the monitors was "like going back in a weird time machine to the '60s." [6]
The film was previewed on January 27 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, in a screening attended by Grandin. [10] A trailer was previewed for critics during their winter press tour on January 14; critics responded positively to "the film's bright palette and inventive direction." [11]
HBO and bookstore chain Barnes & Noble partnered to promote both the film and Grandin's books, displaying information about autism and the film in all Barnes & Noble stores and creating a free downloadable coloring book about Grandin, using illustrations by autistic artists. Grandin appeared for a special book signing, discussion and preview of the film at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble on January 25. [12]
Upon its February 6, 2010 debut, Temple Grandin received a Metacritic score of 84/100 based on reviews from 19 critics. [13] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 100% approval rating based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A heartfelt glimpse into Temple Grandin's mind, this engrossing biopic reaches its full potential thanks to Claire Danes' unsentimental performance." [14]
Entertainment Weekly 's Jennifer Armstrong wrote:
The beauty of [the film] is that it makes the title character's autism—and the unique insight it gave her into livestock psychology—relatable to anyone with a heart, and fascinating to anyone with a brain. The fact that it does so with such a singular story only makes the movie that much greater. [15]
Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times called it:
A made for-television biopic that avoids the mawkish clichés of the genre without draining the narrative of color and feeling. Ms. Danes is completely at ease in her subject's lumbering gait and unmodulated voice. She makes Temple's anxiety as immediate and contagious as her rarer bursts of merriment... And as the character ages and learns more social graces, Ms. Danes seamlessly captures Temple's progress. [16]
Robert Bianco of USA Today wrote that unlike many other HBO productions, "Temple is an incredibly joyous and often humorous film." While praising the direction and the strong supporting cast of Catherine O'Hara, David Strathairn, and Julia Ormond, Bianco declared that "as good as everything is around them, Temple Grandin belongs to two women: the real Temple, who appears to be a spectacular human being, and Danes, who is clearly a spectacular actor." [17]
The A.V. Club 's Noel Murray, himself the father of an autistic son, wrote:
Some of the movie's aesthetic choices border on the cliché. The pulsing minimalism of Alex Wurman's score has become as much a shorthand for 'intellectual mystery' as Arabic wailing has for 'Danger! Terrorists!,' and Temple Grandin's illustrative animated sequences run a little too close to A Beautiful Mind for my taste.
Murray gives the film a grade A−, in part for Danes' success in portraying Grandin as a full-fledged personality instead of "a checklist of symptoms gleaned from a medical journal." [18] NPR's David Bianculli unambiguously named the film:
The best tele-movie of the past several years... I can't praise this movie highly enough. It's not maudlin or sentimental, but it is excitingly inspirational. It scores big emotional points with very small touches, the sound of a heartbeat, a tentative touch, a victorious smile. The acting, writing, directing, production values, every sight and every sound in HBO's Temple Grandin is perfect. [19]
In livestock agriculture and the meat industry, a slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir, is a facility where livestock animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a meat-packing facility.
Mary Temple Grandin is an American academic and ethologist. She is a prominent proponent of the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry, where she offers advice on animal behavior, and is also an autism spokesperson.
Claire Catherine Danes is an American actress. Prolific in film and television since her teens, she is the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. In 2012, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Hugh Michael Horace Dancy is an English actor who rose to prominence for his role as the title character in the television film adaptation of David Copperfield (2000) as well as for roles in feature films as Kurt Schmid in Black Hawk Down (2001) and Prince Charmont in Ella Enchanted (2004). Other film roles include Joe Conner in Shooting Dogs (2005), Grigg Harris in The Jane Austen Book Club (2007), Luke Brandon in Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), Adam Raki in Adam (2009) and Ted in Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011). On television, he portrayed criminal profiler Will Graham in the NBC television series Hannibal (2013–2015), Cal Roberts in the Hulu original series The Path (2016–2018) and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in the Channel 4 miniseries Elizabeth I (2005); the latter role earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Dancy currently portrays Senior Assistant District Attorney Nolan Price on NBC's revival of the original Law & Order (2022–present).
Bryce Dallas Howard is an American actress and director. Howard is the eldest of filmmaker Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Howard's four children. She attended the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, left in 2002 to take roles on Broadway but graduated in 2020. While portraying Rosalind in a 2003 production of As You Like It, Howard caught the attention of director M. Night Shyamalan, who cast her as a blind girl in the thriller The Village (2004). She later secured the starring role of a naiad in Shyamalan's fantasy film Lady in the Water (2006).
A hug machine, also known as a hug box, a squeeze machine, or a squeeze box, is a therapeutic device designed to calm hypersensitive persons, usually individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The device was invented by Temple Grandin to administer deep-touch pressure, a type of physical stimulation often self-administered by autistic individuals as a means of self-soothing.
Christopher Monger is a Welsh screenwriter, director and editor, best known for writing and directing The Englishman who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain and writing the HBO biopic Temple Grandin. He has directed eight feature films and written over thirty screenplays.
Ruth Christ Sullivan was an American organizer and advocate for education for people with autism.
Robert Morgan Carlock is an American screenwriter and producer. He has worked as a writer for several NBC television comedies, and as a showrunner for 30 Rock, which was created by his recurring collaborator, comedian Tina Fey. He co-created Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt with Fey. He co-created the television show Mr. Mayor starring Ted Danson, again with Fey.
Mick Jackson is an English film director and television producer best known for the 1984 BAFTA Award-winning television film Threads. He is also known for directing projects such as the comedy L.A. Story (1991), the romance drama The Bodyguard (1992), the HBO film Temple Grandin (2010), and the drama Denial (2016).
Anna Gunn is an American actress. She is known for playing Martha Bullock on the HBO Western series Deadwood (2004–2006) and Skyler White on the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad (2008–2013). Her accolades include two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Claire Elizabeth Foy is a British actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix drama series The Crown (2016–2023), for which she received various accolades such as a Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Melissa Farman is an American actress. She is known for playing a young Danielle Rousseau in Lost and for her role as Bristol Palin in HBO's Game Change.
Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior is a 2005 book by Temple Grandin and co-written by Catherine Johnson. Animals in Translation explores the similarity between animals and people with autism, a concept that was originally touched upon in Grandin's 1995 book Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism.
You Don't Know Jack is a 2010 American made-for-television biopic written by Adam Mazer and directed by Barry Levinson. It stars Al Pacino, John Goodman, Danny Huston, Susan Sarandon, and Brenda Vaccaro.
Emily Gerson Saines is an American talent manager and producer.
Sy Montgomery is an American naturalist, author, and scriptwriter who writes for children as well as adults.
Georgia O'Keeffe is a 2009 American television biographical drama film, produced by City Entertainment in association with Sony Television, about noted American painter Georgia O'Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The film was directed by Bob Balaban, executive-produced by Joshua D. Maurer, Alixandre Witlin and Joan Allen, and line-produced by Tony Mark. Shown on Lifetime Television, it starred Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons in lead roles.
Bessie is a 2015 HBO TV film about the American blues singer Bessie Smith, and focuses on her transformation as a struggling young singer into "The Empress of the Blues". The film is directed by Dee Rees, with a screenplay by Rees, Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois. Queen Latifah stars as Smith, and supporting roles are played by Michael Kenneth Williams as Smith's first husband Jack Gee, and Mo'Nique as Ma Rainey. The film premiered on May 16, 2015. By the following year Bessie was the most watched HBO original film in the network's history. The film was well received critically and garnered four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Television Movie.
Thinking in Pictures is a psychologically-focused autobiography written and largely edited by Temple Grandin. First published in 1995, it documents much of her life with autism. Grandin is often labeled as having "high functioning" autism; having published literary works and academic articles in addition to working as a professor and lecturer of animal science. The title, Thinking in Pictures, comes from Grandin's analogy of her method of thought processing; she states that words come as a second language to her. Though Grandin sees the world differently than most, her firm belief on being "different, but not less" and daily intent of self-preservation manifest clearly throughout her writing. Many instances in the book recount her work on cattle farms and how she sees images in her mind of prototypes of machines and edits them before building even occurs. In addition to explaining her work with cattle, Grandin incorporates information on aspects of autism like diagnostic criteria, common misconceptions, and treatment alternatives throughout her book.