[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Article: For Disabled, It's Hooray for Hollywood

[Shelley L. Rhodes]

There is one movie that the disabled community is up in arms about.  The 
Million Dollar Baby is well, not exactly the best PR for people with 
disabilities.  But the director and the disabled community have been 
fighting for years.

New York Times
Friday, January 28, 2005

For Disabled, It's Hooray for Hollywood

By CLYDE HABERMAN

TO no one's surprise, Jamie Foxx received a best-actor Oscar nomination this 
week for his mesmerizing portrayal of the blind Ray Charles in "Ray." To the 
surprise of some, perhaps, this was good news for New Yorkers with 
disabilities and for the people who help them.

When Hollywood turns its klieg lights on an illness, a disorder, a 
dysfunction, a handicap - the acceptable word is up to you - the public has 
a way of paying attention. On good days, that makes life easier for those 
who treat the problem. On really good days, it can pry money loose from 
donors.

"It's clear to me that people refer to movies all the time," said Dr. Harold 
Koplewicz, director of the New York University Child Study Center, which 
deals with psychiatric illnesses in children.

At Lighthouse International, which helps blind and visually impaired people, 
officials are not counting on the Foxx nomination to bring in cash. But 
there are other possible rewards, said Barbara Silverstone, the president 
and chief executive. "Disabilities are being treated in films with much more 
accuracy, and not just blindness," she said. "A lot can be done to help the 
cause, so to speak, of raising public awareness."

By now, awareness may have been raised high enough to reach the rafters.

Hollywood has long cast a teary eye on diseases and disorders. "We're still 
reaping the benefits of 'The Miracle Worker,' " said Matt Campo, director of 
development at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and 
Adults in Sands Point, on Long Island. That film, about the young Helen 
Keller's struggles, came out in 1962.

But over the last 15 years or so, disabilities have come to be cherished. 
For a while, from the late 1980's on, it was all but impossible to win a 
best-actor Oscar without playing a severely troubled character.

There was the autistic Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man," the cerebral-palsied 
Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot," the criminally insane Anthony Hopkins in 
"The Silence of the Lambs," the blind Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman," the 
AIDS-afflicted Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia," the retarded Tom Hanks in 
"Forrest Gump," the alcoholic Nicolas Cage in "Leaving Las Vegas," the 
mentally shattered Geoffrey Rush in "Shine" and the obsessive-compulsive 
Jack Nicholson in "As Good as It Gets."

Now we have the cinematically blind Mr. Foxx. For good measure, his 
competition includes Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the disturbed Howard 
Hughes in "The Aviator."

It's almost enough to make you wonder if it is wise to go to the movies 
without a medical dictionary. But for those who work with disorders, the 
benefits from these films and Oscars are unmistakable.

With "Philadelphia," Mr. Hanks made AIDS sufferers more acceptable to people 
unfamiliar with the disease, said Ana Oliveira, the executive director of 
Gay Men's Health Crisis. "They could not only see what AIDS looked like," 
she said, "they could see what that life looked like."

Mr. Hanks then took on AIDS as a cause, said Robert Hagerty, who is in 
charge of H.I.V. research at the New York University Center for AIDS 
Research. "If nothing else," he said, "it makes the actor personally 
identify, and then use his clout to go raise money."

For Dr. Koplewicz, "As Good as It Gets" was a breakthrough. "Jack Nicholson 
gave O.C.D. a face," he said, referring to obsessive-compulsive disorder. 
"That translates into two things: destigmatizing it, and eventually 
permitting people to give money for it."

THE usefulness of films in shaking the money tree is questioned by John 
Frank, director of development at the Association for the Advancement of 
Blind and Retarded, in College Point, Queens. Still, "the movies get an 
intellectual discussion going," Mr. Frank said. "It peels back one of the 
layers of the onion."

Realism helps. Ms. Silverstone liked "Scent of a Woman." Lighthouse 
International had trained Mr. Pacino for his role. "Why shouldn't a blind 
person be able to tango?" she said. Indeed.

At one point, though, the Pacino character zooms along New York streets 
behind the wheel of a Ferrari. "We cringed a little at that," Ms. 
Silverstone said. The concern was that some people would take that scene 
literally and say, "Look at the crazy things blind people do."

There is no such problem with "Ray." A blind man at a piano? Big deal. 
Besides, a little perspective can't hurt. "The reason Ray Charles was so 
great was not because he was blind," Ms. Silverstone said, "it was because 
he was talented."



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/nyregion/28nyc.html




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