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Adam
and his parents Rosanne and Richard
Adam loves classical music, playing the cello and chasing girls. Adam's
father Richard feels his wife, Rosanne, has made Adam her whole world,
abandoning many of the causes that made him originally fall in love
with her. Rosanne's feistiness can be bracing and disruptive at times,
but she seems to have the right idea when it comes to finding
acceptance for autistic children. "One thing I learned growing up with
the Civil Rights movement," she says in the film, "is that it's not
just enough for you to be doing better. Your whole tribe has to do
better, or else you really can't do that much better." So, is Adam
doing better? Richard and Roseanne bring us up to speed on their life
with Adam since the cameras left:
Adam Inhales the Crowd
RICHARD: "Adam just got his braces off. He's performing for groups of up to a thousand
people at a time. He plays Beethoven on his cello, but then he grabs the microphone and
sings a song spontaneously. At a recent performance for some reason he started break-
dancing. He inhales the crowd. The first time he had a large audience he was playing and
every forty-five seconds or so he would stop and he would say out loud, 'Keep going!'
The first time, everybody was sort of surprised, and then the second time he did it, they
all started applauding. And then he did it a couple more times - because we had said,
'Don't stop, whatever you do. Play this thing through.' He just does it at his own weird
pace."
Mainstreaming and Music
RICHARD: "Adam's in a public school called Rosewood Elementary. It's in West
Hollywood. And he's done so well there, he's in a normal mainstream class. He's not in
Special Ed. He's in the school band. He was accepted in the Philadelphia Philharmonics
Strings Camp for kids at Bryn Mawr College for two weeks. He lived in a dorm there.
They had kids from five to twenty-two years old. A five-year-old Chinese violin
prodigy; a Russian kid who was twelve; a Yugoslav kid flew in. They'd never had an
autistic kid before, so they took a chance largely because of the film, because of the
notoriety around the Tribeca Film Festival. Roseanne went back and stayed with him and
we hired a couple of students from Bryn Mawr to also help out. He went into this way
over his head -- these are kids who do eight hours a day practicing. He was in the bottom
wrung orchestra, but he worked his way up several rungs. The people in the
Philharmonic string section actually teach the camp, and they thought he was great. They
said basically the sky's the limit. He could be a composer, because he can write music,
and he hears it. Sometimes I'll take him to a blues club in South Central L.A. and just ask
the woman who owns the club if Adam can sit in with one of her bands. And Adam will,
with these guys who are in their seventies."
Adam v. California
ROSANNE: "We sued the state of California because they had cut off Adam's therapy.
And we won. When you sue the state, you don't get a big settlement. But we got fifteen
hours a week of behavioral therapy for Adam, and we got the law changed. The regional center we belonged to had decided that they would cut every kid off at the age of five and force the parents
to try to get services from the school district. But the school district only offers services
that have to do with education. In the film that lawyers told them it would take four
hundred thousand dollars to sue; we did it for twelve thousand. We made a deal to use the
lawyer for the three days in court, and I did all of the paperwork - the evidence books,
the research. We caught the state redhanded. They were talking to the company that
provides the therapists and telling them how to write their reports to say that the child
should be cut off individually. And then they would use that report to cut the child off.
One of Adam's therapists gave us copies of the communication between the therapists
and the regional center, instructing them on how to write the reports. Adam had been cut
off by six therapists who had never met him. And I had all of the emails of me begging
them to meet Adam before they cut him off. Now, if they want to cut your kid off from
therapy, you have the right to be in the room when the decision is made so that you can
be an advocate for your child. Now parents have to put in writing that they want to be
included at any of the decision-making about services. The judge's decision came down
just when we finished shooting the movie.
"He would never have been able to go to Philadelphia and study with the Orchestra, if he
had not had those 15-hours a week of therapies. Adam no longer runs away. He has
been talking quite a bit, he talks up a storm. It made all the difference in the world."
Nature Boy
ROSANNE: "Recently Adam was having a hard time rehearsing, they said well we'll just
bring him out to do his piece. He was going to play this really beautiful sonata that he
learned at the camp. I was outside with him because I didn't want him to disturb the
other kids performing. And of course he got away from me, and ran up on stage. He
took over the show. Told the orchestra what to do, told the deejay what to play. One of
the songs that he sings when he performs is 'Nature Boy.' That Nat King Cole song. I
don't know if you've heard it, but it was written by an autistic homeless man who
annoyed Nat King Cole's manager until he played the song; they put it on the 'B' side of
one of the 45s, and that became one of his biggest hits. They used to have to go under
bridges to find him, to give him his royalties because he was absolutely autistic. I
thought that would be an appropriate song for Adam. [SINGS] 'There was a boy, a very
strange, enchanted boy. They say he wandered very far, very far over land and sea....A
little shy, and sad of eye, but very wise is he....And then one day, one magic day, he
passed my way, and as we spoke of many things, fools and kings, this he said to me. The
greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.'"
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