Someone sent me an e-mail gushing about a documentary titled 39 Pounds of Love. It’s about a thirtysomething Israeli man with SMA named Ami who goes to America in search of his childhood physician, who told Ami’s family that he wouldn’t live past age six.
I’ve only looked at the trailer, but I’m not sure I see the dramatic tension in this concept. Various physicians probably gave my parents a similar prognosis for me, but I couldn’t even tell you what their names were. Doctors make inaccurate prognoses all the time; life goes on. Or maybe I just attach less significance to that sort of thing.
And can we please, please have a documentary about people with disabilities that doesn’t elicit reviews that use words like “inspiring” and “moving”? I want a documentary that shows us as neurotic, dull, pompous, shallow, and ordinary as everyone else. I want a documentary that shows us fighting with our siblings, swearing at people in authority, getting drunk, and sleeping around. Come to think of it, I want to be in that documentary.
I just discovered your blog today and wanted to let you know that I find it amusing. Additionally, I agree with your comment about people with disablities in documentaries. I have some disablities myself and I would appreciate seeing a movie that said by the way this person has a disablity, but let’s look at what else they’re doing.
Mark, I want you to know that I find you COMPLETELY neurotic, dull, pompous, shallow, and ordinary. But then, I’m not making a documentary about you.
But Mark, don’t you understand? People like you exist to give people like me inspiration.
I think that’s how the Sopranos phrased it. Of course, then the character ruined it by sleeping with the patronizing ass.
Of course, I don’t think “Dull!” and “Pompous!” would be good exclamations to have on the marquee of your documentary.
Wasn’t Christy Brown in My Left Foot portrayed as something of a jackass? Of course, even if he was, it still spurred on accolades of “uplifting”, “inspirational” and “eye-opening”, so it sounds to me like you’re screwed either way.
My next writing project is going to be about a person who suffers from CP who, in his disability, reveals absolutely nothing about the resiliency of the human spirit. In fact, rather than your adjectives, from my experience (and in all seriousness I’m not talking about you at all) I’d use self-absorbed, whiny, impulsive-in-a-bad-way and childish. It would be pretty interesting, actually, to show how a completely different set of circumstances that a severely disabled person faces daily results in them developing virtually the same types of antisocial qualities as able-bodied jackasses.
completely agree with your point.
why the hell it’s so easy for us to categorize???
and how about – cool, cynical, funny, geeky, intelligent, creative and even nice?
lol
that’s what i can see from where i’m at.
(but then i’m in #($*%ing Israel, so maybe your bad qualities get overly-dispersed in the atmosphere due to distance, kinda like blue sun rays. )
(GEEK. )