Rainman

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I just watched Rainman again. It's the first time I have seen it since I found out I was Autistic. I love it even more now than I did before. It is still one of my favorite movies. Just wanted to say that.

Indeed...I enjoyed the movie, too. I've seen it about five times.

Before "Rainman," K-Mart was a really tacky place. After the movie, they renovated many of the existing stores, and bought new locations.

I bet Raymond really desired that girl in that elevator!

I hear so much about it and I think to myself, "Wow I've never seen this movie but scamming casinos looks like a WAY better living!"...

Having been to one K-Mart in my entire lifetime (as far as I can remember) I'm wondering if I'll ever corroborate this. Curious how a store which sells nothing whatsoever of use to me is inexorably associated with my brain.

Not that I would call the Longmont, CO Kmart much of a benchmark.

Corroboration would be impossible, anyway.

Rainman was made in 1988. Probably before you were a thought in your parents' mind.

My pop-culture gnomes filed it in the seventies on account of the hairstyles & fonts, oops...

The Tom Cruise character dressed precisely like a character from "Miami Vice."

A scientologist-to-be teaching the American public about Autism... I think I'm gonna be more amused learning this whole movie outside chronological order.

As confirmed by the Neurotribes book the movie Rainman was the first Autistic Adult and one of the first ""higher functioning" autistic most people had seen and really expanded the understanding of autism.

I saw it again for for the first time this year since seeing it on my VCR a few months after it came out. What struck me as I watched it again was the films message of acceptance that in many ways is still way ahead of where we are almost 3 decades later. This lack of acceptance is one reason why many distance themselves from the film and particularly the Rainman stereotype which has been used by many to think that is what the autistic they know is like and many others to tell autistics they are not autistic because they are not like him. The fact that Kim Peek was not autistic is a main tool autistics use to distance themselves from the charactor. The film was based on a composite including autistics. Peek was not autistic because he was born literally with parts of his brain missing, but he presented as autistic.

Of course Rainman is an extreme version of me and on the on the outside not at all like most members here but the traits are pretty much the same as me. So after the recent viewing instead of distancing my self from him I embrace my inner Rainman.

I remember seeing it back in the 80s - decades before I was diagnosed - I always thought "I'm a bit like that, but obviously not that extreme" sort of like I could understand what he was thinking or what the motivation behind what he was doing.

I remember my dad renting Rainman in 1989 before my mum told me about my diagnosis. I also remember watching it on TV a month and a half ago. It's a very funny movie.

I've seen about half of this movie in English class in high school, and it seemed pretty good.

I remember reading somewhere that the screenwriter gave Kim Peek the Oscar he won for the film, so the whole thing seems okay.

I like it too, it's a nice movie.

The character was based on Kim Peek (who turned out not to be autistic).

Would I say this was an accurate portrayal of an autistic person? My answer would be "somewhat." Because autism manifests itself in many different ways.

I found the movie to be hilarious at times--especially when Raymond (Rain Man) just HAD to watch Judge Wapner.

The fashions worn by the "hip" people were accurate for their time and place. Very Miami Vice.

You could tell it was the 1980s. The Tom Cruise character (Raymond's brother) was as "cutting edge" as they come...yet even he had to use a phone in a phone booth, and have the correct change, to make urgent calls. Very few people carried cell phones on the street in those days.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 29 Nov 2015, 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's a very moving and clever film - perhaps too clever. Dustin Hoffman gave an outstanding performance in an extremely difficult role. Tom Cruise was mediocre, as always.

The legacy of 'Rainman', however, is a skewed public perception of autism, which does no one any favours. It raised awareness of AS, but hasn't really helped society understand it better as it only shows one particular area, what is usually know as the autistic savant. What we need to see is the spectrum in all its rich diversity.

I agree with Hyperborean. It's a wonderful movie and I greatly enjoy it; it's both funny and very moving.

However, it does show only one type of presentation of autistic or autism-like behaviors, and I wouldn't call Raymond "high functioning" -- he needed a lot of care. He was also a savant, something not all autistic people are.

The film is a good thing in as much as it does put autism out there to a huge public. But as Hyperborean points out, in another sense it has hampered the general public's understanding of autism because now every autistic person who is "higher functioning" than the Raymond character, who suppresses sensory issues more than he is portrayed doing, or who does not display astonishing and highly out-there savant skills as he does, gets told by skeptical "all-knowing" NTs: "You can't be autistic -- you're nothing like Rainman."

This is now the universal response of most of the public when faced with the rest of us on the autism spectrum. It gets old.