Opening the Door to Temple’s World

Claire Danes stars in HBO’s biopic about autism’s greatest mind.

by Elizabeth McBreen

    She came of age in the 1960s, an era when women rarely had college degrees, let alone a career. She received her master’s degree in animal science, became a leader in the livestock industry at a young age, and coped with the ubiquitous sexism of the day. She was also dealing with her autism.   
    The life of Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is chronicled in a new Home Box Office (HBO) movie, Temple Grandin. The movie debuts Feb. 6 and portrays Grandin’s struggle with her sometimes crippling disability and her natural, unflinching tenacity that has made her a hero and icon within the autism community. The script evolved over 10 years, and has had a rotating cast of writers, directors, and actors. Executive Producer Emily Gerson Saines, who spearheaded the project because of her admiration for Grandin, was intent on creating a movie that would be a fitting tribute for her and decided it would not become reality until every detail was just right. In 2008, everything finally came together.
    It was while Gerson Saines was struggling with her son Dachel’s pervasive development disorder (PDD) diagnosis that her mother gave her a copy of Grandin’s book Thinking in Pictures. The book changed Gerson Saines’ perspective on the life she felt she had lost and the life she was about to begin. “I thought to myself, that she was incredible, and this could be my son. So I better get to it and stop feeling sorry for myself. As a result of this I started really talking to my husband and we started to figure out things to help my son.  We worked together and made him the best version of himself that he can be.” Gerson Saines decided to make the movie about Grandin’s life because she felt it could help others who found themselves in the same situation in which she had found herself. Grandin ultimately gave Gerson Saines the rights to her life story because she is the mother of an autistic child, and Grandin believed the burgeoning producer would make a movie that honestly portrayed her life and her autism. 
    When Director Mick Jackson received the movie script from his agent, he says he was probably one of the few people in the world who didn’t know what a story about Temple Grandin meant. “I thought, ‘Is it a religious film? Is it about architecture?’” Jackson began reading the script one night over

  dinner. He soon pushed aside his meal to give the story his full attention. “I thought, ‘how do you go from the beginning of her story — severe autism, no speech — to becoming such a force in the world?’” Jackson knew that night that he wanted to be a part of the project. 
    Wanting to make every detail authentic, Jackson worked closely with Grandin during the project. The movie conveys not only the challenges Grandin faced as a young person with autism - hypersensitivity and social anxiety – but also highlights her natural strengths and unique abilities. Grandin is a “pattern thinker.” Early in the movie, she opens a gate and her focus is not on the gate itself, but the moving angle she visualizes as the gate slides open.
    Jackson also knew who had to play Grandin when he read the script. Claire Danes (My So-Called Life, Romeo + Juliet) was Jackson’s first choice. “It was a very ambitious project,” says Danes, “not only because I would be playing Temple over a long period of time, but also because the scope of the project was enormous.” Portraying a person with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was not completely foreign to Danes. Her husband, Hugh Dancy, had recently starred in Adam. In the film, Dancy portrays a man with Asperger’s syndrome.
    To prepare for her role, Danes spent an afternoon with Grandin. “It was a limited amount of time, and I had so much information to gather,” says Danes. “It was nerve-wracking, but she was so gracious and open. She was happy to discuss every detail of her life with me.”
    During their short time together, Danes studied Grandin’s movements and the cadence of her voice. She later listened to recordings of Grandin’s interviews, read her books, and watched video tapes of her lectures. With the help of a friend and choreographer, Danes mastered the physical effects of autism and Temple’s unusual gait, a result of her problems with balance. “Playing her was thrilling and terrifying. I didn’t want to disappoint her. I remained very mindful of how she thinks as we were shooting,” Danes says. “I tried to think of things in a very literal way as she does—I would picture cameras actually rolling and things like that. But I can’t possibly make my mind work like hers.” 
    In the first scene of the movie, Danes, as Grandin, looks directly at the camera to deliver the first line. It was the first scene of the movie to be filmed. It was also the first time that anyone, including Jackson, had heard or seen Danes speak and move as Grandin. “When we filmed that first shot of the movie,” says Jackson, “we were all blown away. Claire had been so impressed with Temple that it had become an act of channeling her.”
    The film begins in an unconventional way, says Jackson. “Instead of starting off early in her life, we see Temple with full-blown autism, stepping off a plane as a teenager.” Grandin had traveled from her home in New England to Arizona to spend time on her aunt and uncle’s cattle ranch. It was her time on the ranch and in close proximity to cattle for the first time in her life that sparked Grandin’s life long passion of the humane treatment of livestock.

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