Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film, video, major and alumni profiles.

Welcome back to Alumni Live, the podcast.

My name is Malcolm Kramp, a senior in Grand Valley's film and video program.

Today we will be discussing the experience and challenges of working

in film production for autistic people as both film students and

professionals in the industry.

Joining me today is Ryan Copping, GVSU film video alumni from the class of 2006.

Ryan is a screenwriter, film and culture historian, and Visiting

Professor teaching film study classes here at Grand Valley State University.

Ryan, thank you for joining me today.

Glad to be here.

Before we begin, I would like to take this moment to clarify our intended

use of terminology such as autism and autistic with consideration and

respect, as we acknowledge this may be perceived as sensitive to some listeners.

Let's discuss some of your background, your education, career as a filmmaker,

researcher, and subsequent work as a professor here at Grand Valley.

Well, I think I always wanted to be a filmmaker.

before it was film, it was actually radio.

I got interested in radio when I was a child and then kind of morphed into film.

I suppose I'm kind of a frustrated filmmaker because that's

what my goal has always been.

I didn't really set out for a career in academia, it just happened.

I did my undergrad in film and video and still photography here in, 2002 - 2006.

I then did my Master's in Communications, and while I was doing the master's I

was just offered to teach a class as an adjunct, and I wasn't really expecting

it, but I took the opportunity and I enjoyed it, and it just built from there.

After I graduated I taught for three years, and then I went

over to England and I did a Ph.

D.

there.

then I came back here and now I'm, in my second year as a Visitor at Grand Valley.

Lovely.

recently on a previous episode of Alumni Live, we discussed

the profile of Grand Valley alum Tim Dailey at Exceptional Minds.

A California based academy that helps to prepare autistic students for a

career in animation and post production.

From that, you reached out to us with the idea for a deeper dive to discuss

Autistic individuals working in the film industry and as film students.

Well I got the idea for this because of my experiences both as an autistic

person as a student in the program.

on the film shoots that I've worked on and also as a professor.

I feel that in many ways, although it's gotten a lot better in the last

20 years, autism is kind of invisible.

It's not something that a lot of people necessarily think about.

And I've had students who identified as autistic or diagnosed as autistic

and, I'm not entirely certain that their needs and rights are being

recognized as much as they should be.

So that's why I'm here.

I feel like that's an important baseline to establish, because as you

mentioned, historically autism is often very , misinformed, or normally a

misunderstood diagnosis, and one that has often not been represented with

consideration in culture and media.

To give a brief baseline for listeners, what is the autism spectrum,

and why its considered a spectrum?

Yes, this is a big question.

So, autism is a neurological difference.

from people who are not autistic, who we generally call allistic.

these people used to be called neurotypicals, but there's some problem

with that, so I use the term allistic.

Basically, it's generally believed that the way parts of the brain

are connected to each other is different in autistic people.

I'm not a neurologist, so I can't necessarily go into it more than this.

The diagnosis of autism is one that is based on behavior,

cognition, and experience.

So unfortunately, there's no CAT scan or blood test or anything like

that that you can take to determine whether someone is autistic.

So we have these neurological differences that appear to be

built around, the way parts of the brain are connected to each other.

It's very likely that autism is a normal part of the human experience, there have

probably been autistic people throughout history through Prehistoric times.

The explosions of diagnoses that we've seen in the last thirty years or so

are probably just it being recognized in people, not actually more cases.

The way that these neurological differences manifest themselves.

is different in each person And it's also very hard to actually say, is

this because the person is autistic or is this because of something else?

Because it's like saying, why do you like jazz music or something?

It could be a neurological reason.

It could be psychological.

Could be your.

grandfather played jazz and you really like it.

it's very hard to actually say that someone is doing one thing

because they are autistic.

That said, there are lots of traits that are typically associated with autistic

people, although not all may have them.

One that I struggle with is sensory issues.

And this is one thing I feel very strongly about, Most allistic people, not all,

but most allistic people can go into a place that they've never been before.

And they don't have to worry about, can I physically bear to be in this room?

Whereas a lot of autistic people, and definitely me, every time I

go anywhere new, there's always the question of, Is it too loud?

Is there going to be a smell that's going to make me nauseous?

Can I eat the food there?

if it's too hot or too cold, can I leave?

I have trouble with certain fabrics.

Like you never see me wear a sweater or a jumper if you're in the UK because

I can't stand how it feels on my skin.

. Another thing that is Somewhat sensitive to talk about, and I want to choose

my words carefully here, here, is at least the perception that many autistic

people struggle with social skills.

I think that's a very reductive way of looking at this, however, I do feel that,

some autistic people, including myself, sometimes struggle with, connecting

or communicating with other people.

The reason why I want to be careful what I say here is that it's very easy to

fall into a kind of negative stereotype which I've read on the internet,

autistic people are hopelessly uncool

geeks

who don't have any friends or things like that.

And that's a stereotype and that's problematic, and I do want to say there

are some autistic people, just as there are some allistic people, who are, kind

of loners and, solitary, but many of them choose to be like that and that's

just the way that they want to be.

That said, I do think that many autistic people feel a sense of social ostracism,

and, bigotry, and prejudice against them because the world is not really designed

for them and people are not necessarily designed for their, needs or some of the

behaviors that they want to demonstrate.

So that's a problem, but that's really more one of social discrimination

than it is of of the person.

Would you mind sharing a few details of your personal journey?

In regards to the sensory stuff, that's probably the most obvious one.

When I was a little kid, I went to my mother and I said, there's a worm in my

shoe and she couldn't understand what I was talking about, and what, was going

on was my sock was folded within my shoe.

It didn't hurt exactly, but it was distracting and uncomfortable.

I couldn't really focus on anything else, and I think it was difficult for teachers

to understand, why that was a problem.

I remember in the third grade, I had poor balance and I would

sometimes fall out of my chair.

I think the teacher thought I was doing it for attention when I wasn't.

I was literally just losing my balance.

I already shared that there's always a kind of apprehension when I go to a new

place because I don't know necessarily if I can handle it from a sensory standpoint.

I do want to say about 95 percent of the time I can, I try not to let it stop

me from going to new places, but when you do hit that 5 percent of the time of

like, geez, I can't concentrate on what this person's saying because the music's

so loud, or, whatever, that gets bad really fast, you carry that with you.

In regards to some of the social things, I really didn't have

very many friends as a child.

, I was called by the other children as being strange and unusual.

And I think part of this is, I admittedly had some interests that

kids at the time didn't really have.

Like we mentioned radio, I read an encyclopedia

on 1940s radio broadcasting when I was nine, cover to cover.

In retrospect, in 1993, that probably was not what most of the other children were

interested in, they were talking about, Michael Jackson and things like that.

I think some of it is, just the conformity that I think a lot of children or

younger teenagers feel, or at least they, they did in my generation, I'm

a millennial, kind of gets better.

And then it got a lot better after I found out I was autistic when I was 29.

one of the theories around this is that empathy kind of works like this,

that you put yourself in a situation

that you've never been in, and you go, Oh, I would feel like this in

this situation, or I would want this.

So that's what this person who's in this situation wants.

I'm going to say this to them, or do this for them.

And the problem is, that's not necessarily what the person wants.

We often don't know what the other person wants.

But autistic people have this problem, in that if they put themselves in

a certain situation, they can be so different from another person

that this is a giant misjudgment.

That's what autistic people are dealing with all the time.

They're constantly trying to figure out What should I say in this situation

to make this person comfortable?

I mean, that's what I would do now.

Do you want to call someone?

Are you okay?

Do you want me to leave you alone?

Can you get home?

All right.

That's what I should have done, but I didn't think to do that.

I think it's very important to gain a little insight into that kind of

perspective, because tying into our main subject with autistic individuals

working on film productions, either as students or as professionals, this entire

industry is based around new experiences, making experiences, every film set is

different, every production is different.

From your experience, what are the sort of challenges that creates

Well, I think to begin with, it's generally believed that there are

a lot of autistic people in media.

Tony Atwood, I believe he said this, that the two industries that

autistic people are most likely to work in are media and academia.

So I think I might want to start by saying what's the appeal

of media to autistic people.

And one is, in many ways it's a way of slowing down the world.

I think many autistic people perceive the world as rather

chaotic and rather uncontrolled.

And if you go specifically to see a movie, you're in a sense paying

for a sensory cutoff experience, particularly in a theater.

You're going in to a dark room where everything is designed to

make you look and pay attention to what is going on in that room.

That kind of ability to focus on a certain part of the world, and you

can do this in literature and other, mediums that's part of the appeal.

I think many autistic people, or just speaking for myself, working in film

production or media production, is helpful because there's an etiquette

that is, easy to understand and explained usually to everyone.

You know if you're the first AC and you have a problem, you don't go and

talk to the makeup person about that.

I think that's part of the appeal.

The biggest issue that I see everywhere, and probably if you've listened this

far, you can guess what I'm going to say, is I wish that movie sets were

more, cognizant of sensory issues, particularly location shoots, particularly

things having to do with loud noises.

I think the safety is pretty good with this, but bright

lights, that can be a problem.

particularly, for me, going out on location shoot, if I'm directing

something, I've presumably been to that

place before but if you're just working on a movie doing

whatever first AC or something.

You get sent somewhere and you might be out in the desert and it's 95

degrees you're suddenly in trouble.

That can be a big problem and I would say basically everywhere

more sensitivity to sensory issues.

I was going to add because I have worked on some student film projects

and Grand Valley Summer Film Project.

I have worked above the line, below the line in various positions, I've

been Production Coordinator, Unit production manager, AD in one case.

And, there's often, a checklist of things , to consider for a project

like schedule, food, budget, logistics, and gear and everything like that.

But , looking back on it, the thing that was always missing in that checklist or

the thing that was never brought up was being considerate of the disposition of,

the needs of people on the crew,, okay, This person has a food allergy, me in

my case, I am a severe asthmatic, so I always have to be aware of the environment

I walk into, but as you touched on, we could do more steps to be more considerate

and accommodating for, people who have sensitivity issues on film sets.

Do you have any further ideas?

Well, I also think that one thing that autistic people often struggle

with are vague directions.

And I think that's why this is a pretty good industry to work in.

Because, put the camera over there.

That's not an ambiguous statement.

I suppose , if you're directing an actor or something like that, there

can be, act more happy or something that can be a little ambiguous,

but, it's also good because it's not necessarily difficult to understand.

Another thing I think that all movie sets could do is how most of the time and

they should be doing this, the Production Coordinator or somebody calls everyone

and says, Do you have any dietary needs?

Yes, I'm a diabetic, so that's very helpful.

But I would like to see for every movie or TV show or music video that's ever made.

The very first day of shooting, there's a company meeting where the UPM or

somebody like that comes out and says, This is a high stress industry.

we're going to be having crisis situations here, but everyone here

deserves to be treated respectfully.

And we want anyone here who feels like that they're not being listened to or

they're not being treated respectfully to go to this person who we've designated as

the person that they can listen to or for this purpose and say what's going on.

One of the disadvantages, of the hierarchical structure of a film

set is very often someone close to the bottom of the hierarchy has some

kind of systemic problem, they can't go to the Director or the Producer

and say, Hey, this is happening.

Every single shoot, particularly, at least with the crew, who are probably

going to be there most days, you have that message said and there's a

designated person who someone can, talk to and try to, , mediate these issues

so people don't feel like they need to suffer in silence or there's going to

be retribution if they say something.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Dirk Koning

Memorial Film and Video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen Vinnedge remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now, back to the show

So to switch gears a little bit, , I would like to steer the

conversation to your work here as a film professor at Grand Valley.

Because as you discussed, the nature of this industry and the requirements

and its characteristics, what sort of insights could you tell us

about working with film students?

What kind of challenges, have you seen come about?

If I was teaching production or I was a producer, I think that the

biggest thing, is just awareness that there may be autistic people present.

Part of this is you can't really look at someone and go, they're autistic.

And often when I've disclosed this to somebody, I'm greeted with a whoa.

I had no idea.

, so being aware that there are autistic people around is important.

There's a lot I think, at the university, or any university I that can be done.

One is a STEM room, it could just be a quiet room or a private

room or something like that.

A room that an autistic person or really anyone, it could just be someone with,

you know, anxiety issues or someone having a bad day or something, that

they can go in and it's quiet, there might be some stim toys or things like

that there, and that they can just be by themselves and collect themselves

and not feel the pressure to perform.

One of the issues that I would say as a professor that I sometimes

struggle with is You have to be there at a certain time.

So it's sort of like if you have a nine to five office job , you have

to be there at 9 in the morning but depending on what you're doing, take

a coffee break or calm down at your desk or something like that but if

I'm teaching a 3 o'clock to 4.

15 class, I have to be there from 3 o'clock to 4.

15 and sometimes you walk in there and something's going on and

you just have to get through it.

That is, of course, true of everybody.

But I think in terms of students, it would be really good if we had the idea

of attendance is required, but if you need to step out due to sensory issues or just

any issues or something going on in your personal life and you want to, you don't

want to be around other people, you need to take care of it, that's okay, and

here's a designated place that you can go.

And there really is no designated place so far as I know.

There's certainly not one in L.

S.

H.

I think there's a student lounge, but it doesn't really serve that purpose So

I would really be in favor of that just a sensory room that students or

faculty or staff or anyone could go.

I want to emphasize to all of my autistic students, or indeed students

who are having any kind of issue, that if you need to step out, it's okay.

Now you need to, talk to me about what you missed later.

You would be expected to do that, but it's perfectly okay, it's something

that could identify to a student to personally, but I've had students

with other issues who needed to leave.

And I want to say, that's okay.

you've had a bereavement or you're, sick That's okay.

It's still your responsibility to be in touch with what you missed.

It's reason why we as professors have to have these attendance policies is

because the people who don't have a good reason for missing class those

people but we need to normalize this isn't a good day for me to be here

And also in terms of movie content.

I try to be sensitive to this, too.

Sometimes I forget, , this is a movie that has X content in it, and you

may not want to watch it for whatever reason, and if you don't, I'll give you

an alternative or something like that.

I'm certain that would be true of literature or something.

Those are all things I think that could be helpful, I would also like to see

professors trained beyond just the idea that you're going to have autistic

and neurodiverse students in your class and it's not all through DSR.

Oftentimes, depiction and representation in media is sometimes misinformed.

They rely on stereotypes, maybe old stigmas.

From your perspective, would you say there's been an improvement

in depiction in media, in representation these past few years?

I'd say there's been an improvement, but it's and I don't mean this jokingly.

But it's gone just as the treatment of neurodiversity in general has gone from,

, absolutely heinously terrible to bad.

I mean, I think we've gone from absolute bigotry to it's on the radar.

So that's good.

Part of the issues with representation in the content that you see is, as

I said before, you can't tell if someone is autistic by looking at them.

So, one of the unfortunate ways that characters are coded

as autistic is stereotyping.

Like, Dr.

Sheldon Cooper on the Big Bang Theory or something like that.

I personally know someone, I actually talked to her before I came on

here, who's autistic, and she is very big on the stereotype that

all autistic people are geniuses.

There's the idea that, we all have this capability, we're all building a nuclear

reactor in our garage or something,

well, that's not actually true.

Not all autistic people are really smart.

So that's something.

there's certainly not enough autistic characters of color.

There's not enough autistic women, in film.

And the autistic, white guys that you do see tend to be, again, stereotypical

nerds with poor social skills.

One thing most autistic people in my experience, need to do

is something called stimming.

and that's where you get out a kind of buildup of sensory stuff in your

body by in some way moving your body.

And this is something that non autistic people do as well.

Like if you've ever tapped your foot to music or something that's a stim, but

autistic people Typically need to do this a lot more than non autistic people.

one of the more obvious ways of doing this is rocking back and forth

and that's not socially acceptable.

So, a lot of autistic people are taught and are punished, sometimes in school,

sometimes by their parents for doing this.

So, I would like to see a movie with a character just see them

stimming, to normalize stimming.

Normalizing that not all autistic people are white guys would be good.

Another thing would be not all autistic people are children.

If you Google this, most of the resources you get on autism is, in regards to

children, usually written from the.

point of view of a non autistic or supposedly non autistic parent

trying to diagnose their child.

And I find this interesting because it's highly genetic.

So there's a decent chance that one of the parents at

least is autistic themselves.

So I'd like to see more autistic adults.

I want to see an autistic superhero.

I want to see an autistic rom com just want to see it.

normalized.

So from your perspective, do you think we are starting to see a change

happen in society, both with culture, media, and society in general?

Do you think we're starting to see

people becoming more aware of it.

Yes, but not enough.

If you'd 10 years ago, I probably would have said yes.

And that was a very exciting time.

There were a lot of breakthroughs and the media did start to cover this in

different ways and it was quite a bit better And that's still happening but

it's at a snail's pace the progress that seemed to happen around the

teens hasn't really paid off in the way I would have liked to have seen it.

In many ways we've gone from close to zero representation to very

stereotyped or problematic representation.

And there's one thing I would often call this out the news media, which

is a, school or a university or something like that has opened up a

new program to help autistic students.

Most of the time I would say that's great.

I'm not going to criticize that, but it's the way that it's covered is very

much oh, here's, Cute Jimmy, and isn't it too bad that he's autistic,

but look, the, school's taking pity on him, and he can, bring a Rubik's

Cube to school or something, The tone and tenor of these often offensive and

belittling, to many autistic people.

One thing I would actually praise the media on, that I post on my Facebook page,

which is disturbing, but I feel the need to do it, is the media is very good at

covering abuse, of autistic children.

And if you Google this, You can see a lot of news stories in various places

around, the United States and probably around the world where, say, autistic

students, are arrested at school or carried physically into the principal's

office or just really, terrible stuff.

It pains me to see it, but I do applaud news outlets for promoting these

things because people need to see this happens and how bad, this actually is.

And I think most autistic people have some story about something

like that happening to them.

So I do applaud the news media for covering those kinds of stories and

letting people see how bad it really is.

I'm very curious on that perspective because do you think we're especially

seeing that with younger generations like with the current crop of film students

coming in with these perspectives, and oftentimes the drive, they want to say

this is me.

This is who I am.

What do you think it's going to become of this?

I think it's getting better.

And I don't know if any of my students have heard me say this,

but I said this to the faculty.

I wish I was 20 years younger.

And it's not just because I'm, turning 40 and time for my midlife crisis.

I wish I was 20 years younger because as I see Gen Z is being more empathetic,

less arrogant, and generally more open to, neurodiversity, but also

really all kinds of diversity than probably any other generation in

history, or at least modern history.

Not that there aren't serious, problems within that generation.

But, I think that it's probably the best time, in a long time anyway, to be an

autistic person and I think that the openness to this is a lot different.

And I think that the main thing that this generation has that mine, at least in the

90s and the early aughts, didn't, is just a kind of openness to being different.

I remember just how, conformist things were, and I sometimes call it the

W word, weird, because autistic people are used to being called

that in a, very negative way.

and are kind of primed or almost triggered to hear that.

And this generation, I think, on the whole, doesn't necessarily go, this

person is not acting in the way I might necessarily expect, or this

person is, doing something I don't understand, but let me kind of work

with them, or at least treat them respectfully and be nice to them.

, What advice would you give to your undergrad self, if you could, go

back in time, speak to your younger self, what would you say to him?

Well, I'd certainly say, you're autistic, because I didn't really realize until

I was 29, so, my life probably, would have been a lot different if I had

been diagnosed or I realized when I was younger, but I would say it's a cliche.

I would say it gets better I would also say just generally and I think that

most people my age would probably say this to younger people is It's gonna

be okay, I know that particularly your generation was hit hard by the pandemic

and you missed ending high school and a lot of those kinds of experiences there.

But I would also say that, You get through things, you get through a

lot of difficult things, that you didn't think that you actually would.

So I would say don't give up because there are a lot of resources . I think the

number one thing among other things, I wish that I had known when I was younger

is if you have some problem, not even neurodiversity, just there are often

people in the world who are there to help you with that problem and often that's

their job, but you didn't know that and you didn't know how to get that help.

And one thing I really applaud the university for is, I'll

just give a plug for this.

I do this in my classes.

. If you go to gvsu.

edu slash support, there's all of these resources for students with tons of

different problems, food insecurity or mental health issues or whatever.

And there's someone at the university that you can talk to and may be able to

point you in the right direction with it.

Not necessarily that they can solve every problem, but, , there's

a lot of, , resources that are available . And I would also say,

if you need help, ask for help.

This generation is much more comfortable with counseling.

If you're uncomfortable with that, or you're somewhat reticent about

that I would certainly encourage you to look into that and that there are

lots of resources for you and there are lots of various other things so

you know talk to go to Someone that you trust don't suffer in silence.

I guess that's the main thing.

If you have some problem or some issue, there's someone

somewhere who wants to help you.

What advice would you have for film students in particular?

Specifically people pursuing this art form, this industry.

Well, I would say, one thing that I find frustrating about Any industry that

there's no A to B to C way to success.

And film students tend to be very ambitious.

The ones who aren't very ambitious usually drop out pretty fast and they

do something else because, you gotta be willing to work hard and, work,

weekend, 12 hour days, all that stuff.

and, one of the most common questions that we get asked is how can I be

a movie director, or how can I be successful editor or something like that?

And unfortunately, there's no real steps that you can do to guarantee success.

I mean, there are people who've gotten every opportunity break that you can

think of and they hadn't made it.

And there are also people who have been just completely struck by

lightning and had amazing, careers.

I want to say it's very hard, particularly if you're ambitious, to

kind of deprogram yourself of that.

But have to be like the feather in Forrest Gump.

It's very based on luck and the current situation.

And, I remember telling someone is suppose that I got somehow got a million

dollars, or 2 million dollars to make a feature film together, and it was March

of 2020, what would have happened there?

I worked for five years to get this money together.

And then the pandemic happens.

Those things just kind of happen.

It's kind of a bitter pill to swallow when you're young, and now I am sounding

old, because you want to control so much, and the world, at least for me,

and I think for most people, even very successful people, , the, Coppola,

or Scorsese, or, Tarantino, or Spike Lee, or someone like that, they

would probably say, I believe I'm talented, I worked really hard, and

I.

was in the right place at the right time.

Another piece of advice that I would give, and this is the film professor,

film history and theory person, is you gotta watch and understand the classics.

Often the, freshman students coming in are apprehensive about watching movies

in black and white or silent films,

and they say something like, I don't like to watch an older film, and

I'll say like, what is an older film?

And they say well, a movie made in the 90s or something.

And for me, an old movie is like a movie made in the 1890s.

if I was teaching, which I used to teach, writing, reading, read Toni

Morrison and Charles Dickens and J.

D.

Salinger, read the great works of literature.

In the same way, if you're a filmmaker, a you have an enormous advantage.

over a writer because it will take you two to four hours to watch one

of the great works, whereas they might have to read a, 500 page poem

in Middle English or something.

So, you owe it to yourself to, watch every film on the sight and sound list.

find some critic that you like and watch every film on their 100 or 25 best list.

One thing that I find very edifying is watching everything that they've did,

not just their famous films or the films that you like, because you learn from

what's considered to be their lesser films, their failures , and it helps

you understand how an artist works.

For the most part, careers are combinations of bad,

Good, mediocre, and amazing.

Watch movies, that get you out of your aesthetic comfort zone.

So those two

Could I tell the story about how I was diagnosed?

Absolutely.

Okay.

This is actually an entertaining, at least to me, story about how I found out.

I was living in England, doing my Ph.

D., and I met a woman online who is a very dear friend of mine, Shell.

And we went out, didn't really seem to work out that well, but we stayed

in contact and we were friends.

So two years later, she posts on her Facebook page that she

had been diagnosed as autistic.

So I googled it, and I kind of knew in about five seconds that it was me.

course I was going, no, wait, I mean, you're being paranoid and this isn't you.

And there's all that.

I tried to put it on the back burner while I was in Italy with the novelty

of the vacation, but during some lulls, I went online I was like, okay I really

should look into this and I should go to the doctor it took me four years from

the time I suspected to the time I was diagnosed, I was actually diagnosed the

officially the week before I left England.

So I, suspected, three years because it was right before my, 30th birthday.

And I was diagnosed, when I was 33.

It took that long, and that is also not a unusual experience

for particularly autistic adults.

It takes a long time and over there, I had the access to the wonderful NHS.

Even with that, it took forever.

Whereas over here, the United States does not have as good of a healthcare

system and there are a lot of horror stories, particularly from adults about

the difficulties of getting a diagnosis.

I contacted Shell and I was like, that was really brave that

you did that, which is true.

I mean, it certainly changed my life.

I asked her, do you think I'm autistic?

She said, yeah, I think that you are, and I started asking my friends, and , I

thought they would say, no, come on, but most of them, the reaction was yeah, I

wanted to share that one because I'm doing this really for the same reasons,

that Shell posted on her Facebook page is that, the more people that are public

about this, the less shame and stigma, and it encourages other people who might

be suspecting themselves to go down that road, and particularly because

Shell and I both think it's about 50 50, the ratio from men to women, and

of course some people are non binary.

About 20 years ago it was 10 percent of people diagnosed were women, and

now it's gone up to about a third, and we both think that it's, near parity,

because women, for various reasons, are usually taught to cover it up more.

I would also say one thing that gave me a little pause doing this is every

time I disclose this to someone there is a lot of how is this person

going to react and should I tell my employer, tell a family member?

how does this actually work and every time that you do that you don't

quite know what their action is.

, so that's part of the motivation for doing this as well.

Awesome.

So one thing you were discussing earlier kind of the differences between

introverted people versus extroverted and how oftentimes there's tends to

be a stigma associated with autistic people tending to be quiet, but as you

mentioned, that's not always the case.

So would you like to elaborate that?

Yeah.

One of the reasons I'm also doing this is I can't really

speak for other autistic people.

I can only really speak for myself, but I also, feel an obligation to speak

because I am an extrovert and I do public speaking for a living as a professor.

And I know a lot of autistic people, which is to a degree, somewhat of

a stereotype, but it is certainly true, who are shy and just don't

like to be part of the public eye.

And I want to say, that it's completely okay to be like that.

And there are some people who, some non autistic people who keep to themselves.

And that's just the way that they are.

And that's beautiful.

And that's great.

I also feel another thing that many autistic people

often say is you can't win.

It's sort of like you sit there and you be quiet and you don't ask questions

and you don't say anything and people complain that you're anti social and

that you're not participating, but then you ask questions you make suggestions

and comments and people say that you're doing it in the wrong way or you're

too loud or you're not doing it enough.

Or you're doing it too much, I should say.

So, the thing is that if you are particularly in that latter group, you

might miss social cues or interrupt someone, that doesn't necessarily

mean that this person is being rude.

It just means this person might be missing some of these social cues.

But I think what many allistic people perceive that as is this person is

just being a jerk and they're given negative social pressure because of that.

And then the person who has no idea what social rule they missed just feels like

people are attacking them personally and is less likely to participate and then

they are accused of being too quiet.

So that's also why I think greater attention needs to be given to issues of

affect and to a degree the way we think about social skills is actually quite

ableist and we need to have a way of, not judging people solely based on their

ability to, follow social etiquette.

Those kinds of situations are something that autistic people often struggle with.

And also, you develop a sense of paranoia because you're never certain

like you meet somebody, we should have lunch or I'm interested in this

business idea you have or something.

You're never really certain.

Do they really mean that?

Or are they just saying that to be polite or to get rid of

you or something like that?

And you carry that around with you because you're never totally certain.

What does this person actually mean when they say that?

You mentioned, , you've got some projects in the works.

What are you working on?

What's going on with you?

I have a lot of projects that I'm working on.

I try to write one script a year.

The thing I most want to do is a script I have about an autistic woman in the 1890s.

I wrote it right after I was diagnosed myself.

And I would say that probably out of all the scripts that I've written or all

the projects I'd want to work on, that's the one that I would most want to make.

And I started thinking about what it would be like to be autistic

in a different time period.

And that's another thing

that I would say you don't usually see.

We think of autism as being very contemporary, but it's actually

been around for a long time.

probably since caveman time.

So that's the favorite out of all the scripts I've written.

I wrote the story treatment with a friend of mine, and I wrote the script myself.

I just started writing a historical film about King Alfred of England,

he was the first king of England.

That is just a fun script.

So what's fun about this King Alfred script is I'm giving

myself an unlimited budget.

I'm not doing that thing of like, how can I actually film this?

I'm just writing this, David Lean epic, and if it ever does get made,

I'll probably be able to make, two minutes of it on whatever budget I get.

I'm very interested in historical films, I actually think that, historical

films and historical theater are the closest that we ever get to time travel.

When I was in England, there was a revival of Terence Rattigan, the

British playwright, who had been forgotten for a while, but a lot of

his plays were produced while I was over there, it just felt like you had

gone back in time to the 1940s or 50s.

I really love the film.

medium's ability to show you past times and how they look.

I'm fascinated by that.

I wanted to be a movie director.

So being a film professor was not my first career.

but at this point, I've set the goals.

I don't want to die before at least making one feature film.

Hopefully several.

The script about the autistic woman is the one that would like to make

the most, and I think I could do that on a relatively low budget.

But that's what I'm working on.

I'm also working on my second book.

Actually, I have two ideas for a second book.

So I have one book out, which is an adaptation of my thesis

my PhD thesis about World War I.

This one would be a sequel to that , which would be about films about World

War I made in the 50s and 60s, and I'm particularly interested in comparisons

between World War I and what we refer to as the Vietnam War, which I don't think

that's the best historical way of calling that, but just that's what probably most

listeners would be familiar with, and also, I have another idea for a book

that I actually wrote the proposal for this, but I haven't submitted it because

right now, if I did get the contract for it, I wouldn't have the time to

write it, called Before Rain Man, and the idea for this is that it's about

films about autism that don't know it.

That's about autistic characters in cinema before we had the

codified idea of what autism was.

The most obvious one to me would be Sherlock Holmes, and

I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan.

, , that's a book that has been on the back burner for a while, but if I do get

some time off, I'd like to write that.

Well, that's about all the time we have.

Ryan, thank you so much for sitting with us today to discuss this.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and insight.

it was a wonderful pleasure to speak with you

Thank you very much.

I appreciate this.

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