HBO Film on the Life of Temple Grandin Debut on Feb 6th

By Steve Porter
Northern Colorado Business Report
January 29, 2010

It's been a long time coming, but it looks like it was well worth the wait.

HBO Films will debut "Temple Grandin" on Feb. 6, a movie based on the life of the renowned designer of humane animal-handling facilities who also teaches at Colorado State University.

Grandin, 61, has been working with writers and producers on a possible movie for almost a decade. "The project's actually been in the works for about nine years," said Grandin in a phone interview during a whirlwind speaking tour ahead of the film's debut. "They finally got the right team put together."

Grandin's especially pleased with the choice of Claire Danes, a talented, up-and-coming Hollywood actress, to portray her during her late 20s and 30s. "I think she did a really good job, and another thing I like in the movie is they show how my mind works," she said.

Grandin, a 20-year CSU professor of animal sciences who lives in Fort Collins, is a high-functioning autistic person who didn't begin talking until the age of four. While some autistics can barely communicate with the
outside world and live deeply within their own minds, Grandin's autism actually worked to her advantage, helping her to focus on the world from an animal's perspective.

Over the years, Grandin's become a celebrated designer of livestock equipment and published several books on that subject and on better understanding autism. Probably her most famous book is her 1995 autobiography "Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism," on which the movie is based. She's also the author of "Animals in Translation: Understanding the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior," published in 2005, and last year's "Animals Make Us Human."

Grandin said the new film concentrates on her life in the 1970s when she was just getting started in her chosen field of meat-animal welfare and designing equipment to help make their lives less cruel. It wasn't an easy time for a woman - autistic or otherwise - to be taken seriously in the patriarchal world of ranchers and beef producers.

"Getting started in the '70s was not easy," she said. "Nobody in the cattle industry actually ever threatened me, but one time someone put bull testicles on my car to let me know I wasn't wanted."

Full text: http://www.ncbr.com/article.asp?id=27678