UNDERSTANDING AUTISM

UNDERSTANDING AUTISM THANK THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO'S BENNETT LEVENTHAL
FOR THE REALISTIC PORTRAYAL IN `MERCURY RISING'

By Achy Obejas, Tribune Staff Writer. Published: Friday, April 24, 1998 Section: TEMPO Page: 1

Bennett Leventhal--a twinkly-eyed bear of a man who is a world-renowned child psychiatrist and one of the few people on the planet who could confess that until recently he wasn't sure who Bruce Willis is -- has a video copy of the trailer for Willis' latest movie, "Mercury Rising," on his computer.

With a flash of his fingers on the keyboard, Leventhal calls it up. The upper left-hand corner of his screen comes alive, and there's Miko Hughes, Willis' young co-star, walking on the ledge of a building, his eyes vacant, while Willis and bad guy Alec Baldwin wrestle on the very precipice.

"I'm just off frame," says an excited Leventhal, pointing to the blue blankness adjoining the square with the movie action. "There's a wire (running) from Miko to me. And it's really scary, even if you know nothing's going to happen because it's all done on a sound stage."

That connection between Leventhal and Hughes was critical to "Mercury Rising." In fact, it was quite possibly because of Leventhal, the chief of child psychiatry at the University of Chicago who was brought on as a consultant, that young Hughes was able to create so vividly the character of Simon, a reasonably high-functioning autistic child inadvertently caught up in a web of murder and international intrigue.

"Miko had to learn to abandon a whole series of common gestures that we don't ever think about, such as nodding while listening or particular rhythms of speech, even eye contact," explains Leventhal, 48, who has been working with autistic children and other kids with developmental problems since he volunteered at a summer camp at age 15.

In essence, Hughes had to learn to become autistic, a task complicated not only by his tender age and lack of exposure to autistic people but by the vast range of symptoms manifested by the disease itself.

Clinically, autism is a developmental disability of the brain. Autistic people often have trouble processing social interactions, handling multiple stimuli and dealing with change. They also tend to have hypersensory experiences, making them sometimes considerably more sensitive than normal, and other times less so. According to the Autism Society of America, there are more than 400,000 Americans, mostly males, who have some form of autism.

Although no two autistic individuals are alike, there are some common behaviors, such as rocking back and forth, humming, spinning or repeating certain phrases. Most of the time, these are techniques through which the extremely narrow focus of the autistic mind copes with excitement or distress.

For years, autism was a medical mystery. In the 1940s, Bruno Bettelheim, the noted University of Chicago medical researcher, proposed that autism was the result of bad parenting.

"That diagnosis was wrong, and it damaged a lot of parents and a lot of kids," says Leventhal who, ironically enough, now directs programs which began under Bettelheim. "But I don't think (Bettelheim) was necessarily a bad guy, and we can't expect him to have known in the 1940s what we know now. He did what he could, and while I'm neither friend nor foe, I admire him for that."

One breakthrough in the study of autism has been the understanding that the condition is neurological; another is that early intervention can be decisive. "There are quite a few individuals who do extremely well with treatment," says Dr. Stephen Edelson, director of the Center for the Study of Autism, located in Portland, Ore. "Treatment can significantly improve the behavior and life of autistic children."

"People assume autistics look different, but they don't--they look exactly like us. They're not freaks of nature," explains Leventhal, who will host a private screening of "Mercury Rising" Friday for autistic youngsters treated at the U. of C. and their families. "And when they're just sitting there, their behavior is exactly like ours. It's only over time that you can discover the differences. Some are subtle, and some are painful."

And some are also extraordinary. A few autistics, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's Raymond, the math wiz in the movie "Rain Man," manifest savant abilities, although most do not. In "Mercury Rising," Hughes' Simon is a puzzle master whose troubles begin when he inadvertently deciphers a national security code imbedded in a puzzle book. Rather than a savant skill, however, a way with puzzles is a fairly typical trait of autistics.

"Autistic people are known to put puzzles together rather quickly, whether they're right side up or upside down," explains Edelson. "Autistic people seem to ignore the picture and attend to the shape. It's a perfect example of how their brain works."

For "Mercury Rising," Leventhal had to explain those mechanisms to Hughes as well as to Denise Woods, an acting coach brought in to help the pair out. "My real job is to put people together, not to take them apart," he says, "so this was a real challenge; I'd never done anything like it before."

The first thing Leventhal did was to tell director Harold Becker ("City Hall," "Taps") that they had to scratch the script's original name: "Simple Simon." "I told him it was awful, that I couldn't be associated with a project with such a name," he says.

Then he met with Hughes and his parents, chatting with them about their views on autism. Like a lot of people, their notions of autism were based on portrayals found in pop culture, particularly the movies, and they were mostly wrong.

" `Rain Man' did a reasonably good job of depicting autism," says Leventhal, "but most films don't. There's one in particular, a Richard Dreyfuss film called `The Silent Fall,' which is just terrible. It makes autistic people look vacant, distant and withdrawn, as if they have no personalities and can't have relationships -- which is just not true."

Moreover, some films that purport to tell stories about autistic people don't portray autism at all. "Not all directors are always well intentioned," says Edelson. "We read the script to `House of Cards' and told the director that the story wasn't about autism, that it had nothing to do with autism, but they went ahead and did it their way anyway and called it autism."

" `Rain Man' is probably the best, but it's a good portrayal of somebody under entirely different circumstances from Simon," explains Leventhal. "In `Rain Man,' Dustin Hoffman played an older man who'd been institutionalized, who didn't live in the real world. In `Mercury Rising,' Miko plays a boy who lives in the real world, who isn't afraid of an airplane or a bus. . . . What Simon's afraid of are social demands."

Patients as models

For the first meeting with Hughes and his family, Leventhal also brought in one of his patients, a high-functioning autistic woman, who was able to illustrate some of the subtleties of the disorder. "I think the small things, such as head movement and things like that, are much more important than stuff like the arm-flapping," he said.

Leventhal also arranged for Hughes to visit the Keshet Day School in Northbrook, where the young actor made friends with several autistic kids. Eventually, a school scene in "Mercury Rising" was shot at Keshet, using its real students.

"What happened was that Miko began to develop affection for these kids, to feel for them and call them by name," says Leventhal. "They had become people to him rather than autistics."

Using traits derived from the different autistic people Hughes had come in contact with, he and Leventhal developed the character of Simon. "If you look carefully, you realize Simon has a particular gait, not a typical kid's gait--a certain posture, a certain head position," he says. "My job was to keep Miko in character but not to teach him acting -- to teach him autism."

To do that, Leventhal and Hughes met in the morning for about an hour before the start of each day's filming (Leventhal stayed on the set throughout the three months that the movie, which was shot on location in Chicago, was filmed.) . One week, while Leventhal was off the set attending a business meeting, they spoke every night and rehearsed Simon's voice, which was based on that of one of the students at Keshet. They determined that one of Simon's quirks would be an obsession with maps and directions, which he always recited aloud.

"We'd watch the video rushes every night and then Harold, the director, would say, `Is that right? For the picture I need it to be this and this way-- is that consistent with the character?' If I said no, then we'd negotiate," says Leventhal.

A scene that may not appear real to many viewers comes at the end, when Simon spontaneously hugs Art, the rogue FBI cop played by Willis.

"Both Harold and Bruce wanted Simon to hug him, and they asked if it was possible," says Leventhal. "The truth is that it's not uncommon for autistic children to hug and kiss people. The difference is that they do it by rote, with prompting, and they may not understand why they do it. It's learned behavior. They know that if they do it, they'll keep getting attention from this person."

Edelson likewise asserts that the scene is credible, even though at the end of the picture Simon hasn't seen the Willis character in what may have been months. "Autistic people have excellent memories, and they're affectionate," he says. "What I'm impressed with is that, quite often, when (Hollywood) makes these movies, they don't have consultants, or they just talk to them for a day or two. These filmmakers should be commended for having someone there all the time, for trying to get the facts right."

Yet Leventhal freely admits he cheated a little on at least one fact. "At one point, I had Simon tell Willis to turn down my street, the street I live on, although it didn't have anything to do with where they were going," he says with a laugh. "Then I felt better, like I'd left my mark on the movie."

The movie also left its mark on him. "It's just such a massive project, with so many talented people and so much money," he says. "I told Harold, the director, how ironic I thought it was that for $100 million--or whatever they're spending to make and promote the movie--we could probably cure autism."

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Added by Lou O'Brien April 30, 1998 at 17:30