Owen Suskind started withdrawing from the world when he was three. His parents, who were both journalists, watched in distress as his speech turned into a garble and he lost the ability to walk properly. Owen had developed autism. His parents were told that he would never be able to learn anything or look after himself, even if he recovered some ability to speak. They believed this until they watched The Little Mermaid together, and realised that he had learnt every line of dialogue in the film.
It turned out that Owen knew all the Disney films by heart. He understood the stories. More than that, he understood the world in terms of those stories and their characters, particularly favouring the secondary "sidekick" characters – Iago, Sebastian, Timon, Pumbaa and Jiminy Cricket – whose roles usually involved giving the heroes sage advice. His parents and brother started to communicate with him using the lines of dialogue he recognised; thanks to their commitment, he was able to engage with life and talk to others. And with the world now in order, he could learn to read and write.
![Owen Suskind as a small boy, from the film about his life, Life, Animated.](/web/20160925213343im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/n/w/a/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grk9oi.png/1474768773020.jpg)
Roger Ross Williams spent a year shooting Life, Animated, a documentary based on Ron Suskind's best-selling book about his son. Now 23, Owen was able to abandon himself to the camera with a frisky insouciance of someone entirely at home with film and the filmmaking process. People living with autism tend to recoil from disruptions to the daily routine, but Owen was quite happy to live with a cameraman Tom Bergman popping in and out, even staying the night when he moved to an independent living unit. "He's standing there when Owen opens his eyes for the first time in his own home and Owen never looks at the camera," says Williams. "Because Tom´s just part of his life."
By that stage, he was not only holding down three jobs – working part-time in a cinema, in a toy store and leading children in drawing sessions at an art gallery – but presided over Disney Club, a club for autistic aficionados where they show clips from the cartoons and discuss what they mean. His own Disney Club expanded to 45 members and there are replica clubs across the US. Why Disney? "It's because it's a clear road map through life," says Williams. "It's very simple. The facial expressions are extreme, so it's a way they can kind of decipher emotions and decipher the world."
![Owen Suskind's life opened up when he connected with Disney films.](/web/20160925213343im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/k/f/3/n/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grk9oi.png/1474768773020.jpg)
Williams has never been a fan of Disney cartoons himself. He started his own journalistic career in television current affairs, became disillusioned with the timidity of editors and moved to what he calls "fake news", training under Michael Moore on TV Nation. Then he moved into documentary, initially working for the Sundance Channel. His short film Music by Prudence, about a limbless Zimbabwean beggar who found fame as a singer, won an Academy Award; his last film, God Loves Uganda, was about the efforts of American Christian fundamentalists to push their right-wing ideologies in Africa. The happiest kingdom of them all wasn't really his bag.
What he had was a personal connection with the Suskind family. He had worked with Ron Suskind at the ABC network; he had also made a film for PBS with Cornelia Suskind's parents. Ron Suskind had since won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and written several major works of non-fiction on subjects such as terrorism and the global financial crisis. Life Animated: a story of Heroes, Sidekicks and Autism was the first thing he had written that was personal and, as he was working on it, he suggested to Williams that it could make a good film. He wasn't afraid to ask his son to go before a camera. "He wanted that," says Williams, "because Owen came to him years ago and said 'people look past me'. Owen wanted people to know who he is."
Williams saw the possibilities immediately. He has long been an advocate of people using the adversity they have faced in life to make art. "This film is about giving voice to an outsider who has been cast off by society which is prejudiced against him because he is different," he says. Most documentaries about people with disabilities, Williams says, are made from the outside looking in. "This is about bringing the audience into Owen's world, being on the inside so you realise not only who he is, but that he has so much to offer."
![Ron Suskind (left) and his son Owen reveal how they have dealt with autism in <i>Life, Animated</I>.](/web/20160925213343im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/k/f/3/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grk9oi.png/1474768773020.jpg)
At that stage, however, he didn't know Owen at all. He visited the Suskinds to shoot some test footage. "It was the Valentine's Day dance," he says. "I was amazed to see he had a girlfriend called Emily and they were so in love and kissing constantly – Disney-style kissing, no tongue! – but they were so sweet and Owen was so adorable. And I had a video of Ron and Owen sitting on the bed in Owen's room, doing the voices from The Lion King. I took it to A&E; Indiefilms – that is a branch of the television network – and they signed on within 24 hours."
The crucial nuts to crack, however, were the Disney chiefs. Ron Suskind's book was published by Disney; it had to be. "Everything Owen says is Disney intellectual property, everything he draws, so there is no other publisher in the world that can publish this because Owen is owned by Disney," says Williams. This actually boded well, as the Disney imprint had let Suskind do what he wanted and were very pleased with the result.
The difficulty with the film was that Williams was determined to animate the book's last chapter, a story Owen had written and illustrated himself called The Land of the Lost Sidekicks involving his own avatar and several of his favourite characters from different Disney films. "And that is a really tough sell for Disney," says Williams, "because they have never allowed anyone to redraw their characters and they have never intermingled characters from different stories." He had to pitch to an assembly of Disney's chiefs and lawyers at Burbank, which he says was so unnerving that he kept dropping things. He showed them some footage of Disney Club. "Then when the lights came up, I heard sniffles," he says. "They were crying! Ron calls it 'the day Roger made the lawyers cry'."
People with autism can be confounded by crowds and strangers, but Owen Suskind has embraced his extended 15 minutes of fame. "He works the audience," Williams says with a laugh. "When Owen shows up, it is a rock concert, Owen running down the aisle high-fiving people while they are on their feet cheering. He takes the stage and says 'I feel the love in this room!'. He always says that! Because he doesn't have the constraints we have; he's not nervous about what people think of him. He can only tell the truth."
So maybe the rest of us are trapped. Williams recalls his first meeting with the French animators who brought The Land of Lost Sidekicks to life. "The head of the company is Philippe Sanrier; he's like this crazy French guy who did Despicable Me and lived on a boat on the Seine for 15 years. He said to me: 'When people finish watching this film Roger, they will pray to be autistic.'" He laughs. "I was just like: 'You're hired!'."
Life, Animated opens September 27.
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