News and Notes
Commentary From the Editors
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Kim Peek, Real-Life "Rain Man," Dies at 58
Peek was "the Mount Everest of memory," according to a fascinating little obituary in The NY Times, but his powers were offset by his total social awkwardness:
Mr. Peek had memorized so many Shakespearean plays and musical compositions and was such a stickler for accuracy, his father said, that they had to stop attending performances because he would stand up and correct the actors or the musicians.Rain Man wasn't based on Kim Peek's actual life, but screenwriter Barry Morrow began the script after meeting Peek at a meeting of the Association of Retarded Citizens in 1984. The film came out in 1988 and Dustin Hoffman won the best actor Oscar as the title character, the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt.
"He'd stand up and say: 'Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off.'"
The Daily Mail weighs in with a claim that in later years Hoffman snubbed Peek after having "honed his Oscar-winning performance by studying his... peculiar mannerisms, movements and diction during an intense six-hour encounter at a Hollywood studio." Well, maybe.
MSNBC has a more interesting archived Today Show report on Peek's memory. It really kicks in about the 3:00 mark, when Peek begins reciting the stops on Interstate 5 south of Ashland, Oregon, then adds a full report on the 1957 World Series.
Labels: Dustin Hoffman, Kim Peek, Rain Man
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 6:55 PM0 comments 
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Mary Ellen Mark Photos
This slide show from Vanity Fair is fun -- photos by Mary Ellen Mark from behind the scenes of famous movie people. The photos include shots of stars like Jack Nicholson, Katharine Hepburn and (young) Sean Penn.Our favorite is Dustin Hoffman with Laurence Olivier, on the set of 1976's Marathon Man.
Labels: Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp, Katharine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, Sean Penn
Posted by Mr. Hehn at 4:15 PM0 comments
