Life, Animated: An Autistic Child Develops Speech Through Disney Films

The summer season of the KCET Cinema Series continued at Santa Monica's Aero Theatre on June 14 with "Life, Animated." The stunning documentary incorporates animation and live action footage to tell the story of the day-to-day life of a young, autistic man named Owen Suskind. 

Owen's parents discovered an unusual way to communicate with their son when they realized that he could quote Disney movies. Using the classic films and characters, they were able help him speak. Now in his early 20s, the documentary follows Owen as he finishes school, gets his own apartment and enters the adult world. Based on the book "Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism" by Owen's father, noted journalist Ron Suskind, the film was directed by Academy Award-winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams. 

Sponsored by the James and Paula Coburn Foundation and E. Hofert Dailey Trust, the KCET Cinema Series brings audiences pre-release movie screenings and Q&A sessions.

This week, host Pete Hammond was joined by Paul Davidson, executive vice president of The Orchard, who is distributing "Life, Animated." A portion of their conversation appears below. 

On the recent film acquisitions made by The Orchard 

Paul Davidson: The Orchard is an independent film distribution company. It's been in the music business for decades and, in the last couple of years, we really expanded our focus on acquiring films for theatrical distribution. In 2015, "Cartel Land," which was nominated for a documentary Oscar, "Dior and I," another documentary that came out last year, as well as some of the narratives like "The Overnight" and we just released, this last Friday, Morgan Neville, his new movie, "[The Music of Strangers:] Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," which is in theaters in New York and L.A. and expanding. 

Pete Hammond: "The Music of Strangers."

PD: "The Music of Strangers." We have Taika Waititi's new movie called "Hunt for the Wilderpeople," coming at the end of June. 

PH: Fabulous movie. I've seen it. 

PD: A very fun movie. And then this movie on July 1. And then, as the year goes on, we've picked up Pablo Larraín's new film from Cannes, called "Neruda," and Oren Moverman's new movie, "The Dinner," with Richard Gere and Laura Linney, coming out later this year. 

PH: So, you're like a whole little studio here, Paul. 

PD: We're an indie studio. We're just not producing. We're just acquiring. 

PH: You don't want to get into the producing end of it?

PD: I'll let other people produce. We'll pick up finished products. 

On how The Orchard landed "Life, Animated"

PD: We saw it at Sundance. Typically, every January, that's a big stop for us as a distributor and Roger Ross Williams won the directing award at Sundance for the film he was producing. He won the Oscar for a documentary short years prior, but, yeah, we saw it at Sundance and that's, we're talking about the chorus, the game where you see the movie and you sit down with all the great folks involved. You have Julie Goldman, who is part of Motto Pictures, who produced it, along with Amy of IndieFilms and Roger, the director, and the family is there as well. You come into their room, you sit down and you tell them why you love the movie so much and how you're going to support that film, how you're going to get it out so that people can see it. It's kind of a process. 

PH: Do you have to tell that to Owen?

PD: Well, Owen, was a part of that process. At midnight, he wasn't sitting there with us, with the family. Ron and Cornelia were there, this is their family. This is their son. They want to make sure that they're entrusting the film to an extension of their family. It's important to not only pitch them your strategy for the film, but also you have to be cognizant of Owen's needs. 

Owen has been traveling across the country back and forth with his family to film festivals and it takes a toll on him. He's used to a certain process and schedule for his life. 

We were just talking with his mother today about, as we open the film, something that has helped for him is he's staying somewhere where there is a pool. Between him going out and standing in front of people, he can kind of work off the stress and the energy by having something peaceful like that. It's just that you have to be super cognizant that this is a family with their own lives. It's not just an actor in a movie, who, by the way, also have their own lives, but this is, you're pulling people out of their day-to-day.

PH: I just saw this [film] again tonight... The first time, for whatever reason, it swam over my head, but his bother is named Walt. What are the odds of that?

PD: We changed his name for the movie. Just kidding. He's great and it's interesting, I feel like Walt has some of the most poignant moments of the film. When he has that moment where he talks about this realization that, with every birthday that goes by, eventually his parents won't be around and he's going to be the person that is going to be there for his brother. I think, no matter what the situation is in any family, there's just something that everybody goes through as time goes on and generations fall by the wayside. You are suddenly responsible for whatever, for your family, for everybody involved. 

PH: ...I imagine that there were other people bidding on this kind of film certainly at a festival like that. What was it that you saw that made you think, I can make this work in theaters.

PD: Again, for us, the way we operate is we operate from a place of passion and inspiration first. If we're not feeling that, there are a lot of companies, and more power to them, that may approach it from the numbers perspective first, we still, everybody still has to try to make money, this is a business, but are we passionate about it... we're involved with this family, this team, for at least a year of our lives. We need to make sure that we feel super inspired about the film. For us, that's what it was. We saw this and to me, we talked about this a lot in our company, as we were talking to press about the movie, yes, it is about a family with a son that has autism and the challenges of breaking that wall down and communicating with him, but, as a parent, as somebody that has kids, I watch this movie and I think to myself, you want to make sure your kids are safe. You want to make sure that as parents you have the answer if something is wrong, you have a solution.

What resonates in this film is we all face these situations where we feel helpless and what do we do if there are no answers? There's a sense of inspiration that comes from watching Rob and Cornelia in the face of doctors saying, this is how he is, figuring out a pathway to communicating with him. That's universal. Whether you have people in your family that have autism or friends who have kids that have autism. It touches everybody in a way that is widespread. To us, we felt that it was a universal theme of people finding a way to communicate with others in their family, whether it be Disney movies. I have a nephew that has Asperger's and it's Minecraft for him. Everybody has something that can unlock that door and that's what really moved us. 

On Owen's life after the film

PD: He's not with Emily [his girlfriend from the documentary]. We were actually just talking about this the other night. If you see him, he's now on the prowl for a new relationship. We did screenings last week in L.A. and he was literally asking people afterwards if they knew girls in the Boston area. His mother even heard him say in his words, he said, "I'm the most eligible bachelor in Boston." 

That was actually the first time I spent a lot of time with him, last week, and he's very comfortable. He's good in front of a group. I think he's kind of media-trained himself to a certain extent just to get himself comfortable talking about the movie and being the subject of this film. 

There's some kind of wish fulfillment things that will happen for him soon, for example, he's going to go on "The View" with Gilbert [Gottfried] and Whoopi [Goldberg] and it will be this good opportunity for them to do different voices from different Disney movies. He loves IMDB. We're working to try and get him an editorial takeover of IMDB so that he can choose the movies and control what's on that site. 

He's doing great. Again, it's a lot going on for him, but he's doing as well or better than you see him in the film. 

An anecdote, a Q&A that the family did last week, someone asked, "What about Emily? Has she seen the movie?" Cornelia just talked about how, obviously, before the film was ever shown, they showed it to Emily and her mother and they were taken by the film. Emily obviously didn't like watching the breakup moments. That made her a little bit sad to relive it, but, generally, they both gave their sign off and felt really good about it. 

On Disney and Regal Cinemas' involvement in the film. 

PD: I think when we first saw it, we were amazed by the fact that Disney was so supportive of the footage in the film. The Regal thing came later. For those who are involved, it's an inspiring story. 

I think the interesting thing is that everybody, they want it to stand on its own. Disney has been great and very generous about allowing the producers to license the footage for the film and to have some of the characters that Owen drew on the poster. Regal, again, has been very generous. But, they don't want to turn it into a movie that's all about sponsors. They want it to stand on its own. If they can make it easier for us to get the word out or to ensure that the elements of the movie that help complete that picture are available to us, that's what they've done. 

On independent film today

PD: There's this anecdote that I like to bring up because I'm fascinated by it. If you look at the top 10 box office revenue generating movies in 1987, nine of them are movies that were original ideas and one was based on a book. That was the landscape. 

In 2007, nine are reboots, remakes, sequels and one is based on a book. The original ideas have taken a back seat to that because it's, they can't justify it. It's too much of a risk. In general, it's a risk-averse industry, so a movie based on a comic book or a video game or a sequel or a remake makes more sense. That being the case, and that's fine, now there's been this kind of chasm or vacuum that's opened up for smaller budget movies with casts, I mean real actors who want to be a part of this space. Now, who is going to distribute these movies? I see it as a huge opportunity. There are a lot of indie distributors. There are more than enough movies for us to find the ones that we are passionate about.

And you hear, I hear the chorus of discontent, whether it's in the chorus of discontent to the sequelitis that's happening right now and when people connect with a movie, that's the thing, it will stay in theaters. A movie like, to call out some of my colleagues, like... a movie like "My Name Is Doris" or "Eye in the Sky," these are indie distributed films that resonated and they've done super well. I get excited about that opportunity, about finding that diamond in the rough... and to find those movies and have it resonate with audiences. It's a challenge. It's scary at times because you're very focused on that opening weekend. Will it do enough to keep it in theaters? But, you take a swing, use your instinct and hopefully all is good. 

On documentaries today

PD: One hundred forty-four docs were released last year. There's a lot of them, but I think that docs have gotten much more mainstream with the advent of the Netflix of the world, at a time when they couldn't get the major studio films, docs were kind of the gateway drugs so to speak to lighting up their systems. It's become more populist and people are entertained by it, so it's opened up the doors for docs. There's a real opportunity. It doesn't cost as much as narrative, so there's an opportunity to find the right one to resonate.