#Kim peek movie

At age six, school thevancouversunistrators and teachers were less impressed with his reading brilliance than with his hyperactive tendencies he lasted seven minutes in a school classroom. Though he couldn’t walk for nearly five years, he could memorize books that had been read to him by 20 months of age. At not even two years of age, his parents realized that Kim was gifted in certain ways.

Though Kim Peek was diagnosed as mentally retarded as a baby, his parents rejected what was recommended by many so-called experts at the time: institutionalization and even a lobotomy. “We try to do what Dustin asked us to do,” Fran Peek continues, referring to the time when Hoffman asked Fran to promise he would take his son “out in the world so he would grow and so would everyone else who meets him.” He’s a goodwill ambassador and zealous advocate for the disabled. Kim’s father, who remains on the telephone throughout the 80-minute interview from their home in Utah, says that what Kim does when he is invited as a guest at a school or conference is not preach or lecture.

His “Golden Rule” message to conference delegates? Just what it says on his “business” card - learning to respect and treat others “as you want them to treat you.” This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He is now so confident, exuberant and outgoing that with his pattern of 20 motivational speaking engagements a month (expenses charged but not fees), he calculates he is closing in on “interactions” with nearly two million people, not including the 300 to 400 who will meet him at the Vancouver Autism 2002 conference this weekend. Since the fateful day when he met Hoffman in Hollywood, and followed the actor’s advice to emerge from his cocoon, Peek is no longer isolated, introverted and sheltered. (The term has more or less displaced the “idiot savant” label formerly used for those who may have mental and/or physical impairments but are extremely high functioning in some areas). Peek, who is neither retarded nor autistic, as doctors once thought, is a megasavant.

#Kim peek movie

The movie did, however, wholly transform the life of Kim Peek, the now 50-year old man who inspired the original script by Barry Morrow and whom Hoffman shadowed and befriended in 1986 so he could study Peek’s mannerisms in his homework for the role. The role didn’t drastically alter his life he was famous before the 1988 film and his celebrity endures. Real Rain Man’s life touches millions: Man who inspired Dustin Hoffman movie to share his story in Vancouverĭustin Hoffman has appeared in about a dozen movies since his Academy Award winning portrayal of an autistic savant in the remarkable film, Rain Man.

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