Asperger Syndrome (AS) is an autism spectrum disorder that causes those who have it to become focused on a single topic or subject to the exclusion of all others. People with AS are rarely cognitively impaired but they have poor social skills that make interacting with other people a challenge. “Individuals with Asperger’s Disorder usually want to fit in and have interaction with others; they simply don’t know how to do it. They may be socially awkward, not understanding of conventional social rules, or show a lack of empathy. They may have limited eye contact, seem to be unengaged in a conversation, and not understand the use of gestures.” [Autism Society of America]

In the film Ben X, the title character is a teenaged boy with AS whose struggles with socialization make him an easy target for the bullies at his school. Ben’s only escape is in the world of online gaming, sinking himself into a game called Archlord. A particularly tough day at school sends Ben spiraling into a mindset where he views the bullies making him miserable as video game characters and starts to take action accordingly. I recently spoke with writer/director Nic Balthazar about the film.

“The beginning of it all was when I was asked to write a novel for young people who didn’t read,” a task made more challenging because, he says, “I was the writer who didn’t write.”

“The same day that they asked me, in the paper there was a story about a 17 year old boy who committed suicide by throwing himself off a medieval castle where I live, in Gent, Austria.”

The teen, who had AS, left goodbye notes in which he said that he’d been bullied to death. Balthazar used that incident as a starting point for his novel.

“I think a story like that appeals to your sense of justice,” says Balthazar. “You read it and you’re so damn angry. Any suicide of a young person is awful in itself.”

When he sat down to write the film, Balthazar envisioned it as a “three-act thriller” so it was hardly surprising when a producer read it and wanted to option it. Before the story became a film, however, Balthazar was approached by a young actor who wanted to do a solo piece based on the novel. Although the novelist initially thought it was a bad idea–how does one transform a complicated story with many different characters into a solo theater piece?–the actor wouldn’t accept a no answer and eventually Balthazar was convinced to give it a try. The theater piece had a lot of video pieces accompanying the actor, as well as video game footage and dance music, turning the book for people who don’t like to read into theater for people who don’t like to go to the theater. The play’s innovations made it a success, spawning 250 sold out shows before the story was finally turned into a movie.

There’s a serious message behind Ben X–per Balthazar, “why not use the medium to send a message?” but keeping in mind that people “don’t want to see that waving finger all the time” and gearing the film to a younger audience, he knew that the film had to be visually very attractive.

“This young boy is very much into video games, so we took that and with the video game universe, because of online community gaming, it all came together: this is a boy who lives in the alternate reality of video games and tries to train himself for real life.”

The film’s portrayal of the video game universe earned it a Red Star award for innovation at the Palm Springs Film Festival. Balthazar: “I think it’s well deserved.” He says that Ben X is the first film, or one of the first films, that has been partially filmed in cyberspace, by capturing images of game play. “It’s the wet dream of any director–your actors will do whatever you want.”

To ensure that online gaming was portrayed accurately, Balthazar and his crew arranged to “film” the gaming segments in an actual MMORPG called Archlord. It was an exciting experience for Balthazar: “I could do the most incredible camera angles without a crane or even a camera!” One of the interesting parts of the experience while creating the video segments for Ben X was his discover that high level characters are like “superstars” of online gaming and other characters will flock to be near them, requiring his crew to perform “crowd control in cyberspace”. To his relief, when the situation was explained to the gamers who’d gathered round the high-level character needed to tell the story, they were cooperative and he used a number of gamers as consultants to ensure that he was portraying their world as they see it.

In addition to making sure that he got online gaming right, it was important for Balthazar to make sure that he was getting AS right and so he consulted with a number of autism experts–people with autism, professionals in mental health and others. It was a challenge to balance the Ben character: “It is dangerous to overplay it, to underplay it, or to just miss the boat.” In the film, he doesn’t seek to simply talk about autism, he aims to tell the story as seen through the eyes of someone who is autistic.

“We define autism as a problem of empathy,” Balthazar says, which means that “autism is a perfect allegory for so many adolescents who have the same fear. They don’t understand the world and the world doesn’t understand them.”

Ben X screens Sunday, June 1 at 4:00 pm at Uptown Cinema.

In last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy [abc], officially named after a Belle & Sebastian song, Seattle Grace Hospital gets a visit from a dehydrated runner and an escaped Amish. George deals with his dad’s death, the senior doctors scramble upon hearing rumors of the Chief’s retirement, and Bailey has a dream. All of this in the unsurprisingly delayed recap. After the jump.
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Image, via deerfarmer

Alright, people, this is getting ridiculous and it’s time we addressed the problem. First, this summer, we had too many squid and they were possibly driving up the murder rate in this town–a murder rate that just keeps going up [mb, mb]. Then there were crazy urban raccoons that were killing housepets and chewing on their owners [mb]. And then! Lunatic ravens right straight out of Edgar Allen Poe, chewing on windshield wipers [mb]. (The fact that Poe’s raven had nothing to do with automobiles is neither here nor there.)

And now, now the newspaper says that deer are colliding with cars in Washington state more than ever before [P-I]. This is serious business, people. The animals are clearly mounting an attack, and I can’t say that I blame them. The outdoors are smelly [P-I] and the water is killing all the whales [P-I] and poisoning all the salmon [DOH].

All I’m saying is, watch your backs. It’s only a matter of time until they convince the housepets to get in on it to. I’ll bet those raccoons will make good heavies, and then we’re all screwed.

I’ve been emailing the city council urging them to pursue, what I consider, an affordable and environmentally consious viaduct replacement solution. I’ve received several emails back from the council members. These two emails, the first responses I received, are from Nick Licata, council president and all around awesome guy. Mr. Licata’s perspective is unique among the council because he is the only member to support the rebuild. While I disagree, he still has a solid head on his shoulders.
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As July draws to a welcome close (see also: “go the hell away!” [mb] and “blame it on the squid?” [mb]), up-and-coming infographic and data-dredging superstars j &/or k have put together another bar-chartastic look at how Seattle’s crime scene compares to the rest of our violent nation [chs].

Short answer: not that much different. With fewer crimes per capita than criminal hotbeds Tacoma and Detroit, and more than Portland or the U.S. average [Ed: note to honor roll parents, not a good kind of "above average"], Seattle seems entirely unexceptional. The unfortunate part of this would-be reassuring analysis is that it not only excludes this depressingly violent month in local news, but also this year as well as the whole of 2005. But for now — bar charts! yeah.

In today’s PI the experts explain our recent 9 homicides as “just coincidence and bad luck” [P-I]. They go on to point out that it wasn’t the heat that made people want to kill anyone, seeing as how there was no heat yet. They are also probably not the fault of the moon. (In usefulness, this article ranks right up there with the much-hyped Huff report that explained what we already knew.)

The article goes on to further state that if these had been nine separate killings, rather than three of them with multiple victims, they wouldn’t be gathering so much attention. King County can’t provide a tally of homicides so far for the year, which suggests that they don’t have a whiteboard in a back room somewhere where they mark them off.

image, via wikipedia

I was with them with the whole no obvious reason for all the killings thing until I read about the squid. Squid are usually a bycatch catch, something that gets caught in your net when you’re really fishing for something else. And right around the same time all these killings started, the squid bycatch quadrupled [Times].

Bycatch is managed by Sea State Inc., of here in town, and they’re trying to keep fishing boats–most of which are from Seattle–out of the area where all of the squid is being caught so that no one goes over limits on squid and has to pay fines. And that might be just what the squid want. All these murders might not be because of the heat or the moon, but they could also very well not be because of the squid. Anyway, that’s my new position on the whole thing.

This week’s it’s holiday time on Grey’s Anatomy [abc]. Isabel and her patient are tuned in to the magic of the season. George gets stuck coping with the most ulcer-causing family in existence. Sandra Oh and Chief Wannabe #2 learn a lot about each other as a result of a heart transplant. On top of all of that, Meredith helps Alex study for his boards, Bailey’s pregnancy takes its toll, and McDempsey and AddiSatan aren’t on the same page w/r/t to catalog shopping.

The detailed recap is after the jump.
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