There’s a scene in HBO’s biopic Temple Grandin in which, as the titular character doing research in a male-dominated industry, Claire Danes ambles across a dusty cattle slaughter yard towards her pickup truck as cowboy-hatted workers stand idly by.

There are bloody bull testicles smeared on the windshield. The workers smirk.

Danes, who once played a broody teen in ABC’s My So-Called Life and a love-struck Shakespearean heroine in the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, says in a shouty Boston accent “I used to eat bull testicles! This is a waste!” before jumping in the truck and careening away.

Once home, she sobbingly kneels on all fours to get into her “hug machine,” a homemade contraption with walls that slide inward to cradle her sides while a cushioned ledge supports her chin. The tears subside.

It’s a metaphor for the lifetime of obstacles faced by the real-life Temple Grandin, a best-selling author and professor of animal science at Colorado State University, who was diagnosed with autism when she was four.

Based on Grandin’s books Emergence and Thinking in Pictures, the film tracks her through her childhood, stigmatized high school years and groundbreaking research on her way to a doctorate degree.

Standing staunchly in her cheering corner are Grandin’s mother (Julia Ormond, Che), her aunt (Canadian Catherine O’Hara, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and science teacher (Oscar-winner David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck).

With their encouragement, Grandin transformed the designs of cattle ranches across the United States (half the country’s cattle are processed with her methods today), using her empathy for the animals to create more efficient and humane systems as they’re led to slaughter.

“Nature can be harsh,” Grandin, now 62, tells reporters at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “Those cattle would never have been born if we hadn't bred the cows and bulls together. While they're alive, we've got to give them a good life.”

To prepare for the role, Danes, a Golden Globe winner for My So-Called Life, did much more than slip on a pair of dirt-smudged overalls and hope for the best.

“There was no way I could take this role on casually. I have such incredible respect for Temple,” Danes emphasizes to reporters.

“I grilled her, and she was incredibly open and responsive. I met with a few different autistic people. It is true. Autism is on a spectrum, and it manifests itself differently in every person.” 

The 30-year-old actress also worked with a choreographer to mimic Grandin’s mannerisms as well as a dialect coach – she even loaded the voice lessons and interviews with Grandin onto her iPod to get the inflections just right.

The result is a performance that’s garnering award buzz, and acclaim from those in the autism community.


Catherine O'Hara

“I believe this film will do more than any lecture, any book, any research article has ever done to create a common understanding of complex features of autism,” Dr. Joseph E. Nyre, president and CEO of The Hope Institute for Children and Families, a nonprofit organization mainly serving children with autism, tells TVGuide.ca.

“[The way the film allows] us to see the world through the eyes of someone who has autism is remarkable and will without question change how we educate teachers and clinicians, and how we work with families and how even people not affected by autism begin to understand the disorder.”

Indeed, mathematical sketches are superimposed on several images in the film to illustrate Grandin’s scientific ponderings. Close-up shots of seemingly random items quickly cut to successions of similar ones Grandin’s seen in her past – for example, a rancher’s kerchief triggers images of cowboys decked in their finest.

It was a calculated decision, made to emphasise how Grandin and others with autism “think in pictures” unlike the general population.

“My son is autistic, and I was given the book Thinking in Pictures by my mom when I was in a very dark place in my life,” says executive producer Emily Gerson Saines.

“And I think what attracted me to this story is that it brought hope, and when you're trying to teach your autistic child how to speak and function within society, it's a really difficult job, and you're not always getting something back.

“The other thing that I really loved about this story was that it took somebody who some people would call, as we say in the movie, a freak, and it celebrated them.”

It builds on other television characters with an autism spectrum disorder: Boston Legal’s Jerry (Christian Clemenson) and ReGenesis’s Bob (Dmitry Chepovetsky) had Asperger syndrome, and two children of The Shield’s Vic (Michael Chiklis) were diagnosed with autism.

Meanwhile, critics have speculated that The Big Bang Theory’s theoretical physicist Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Community’s walking pop-culture encyclopedia Abed (Danny Pudi) have Asperger's, too.

But though Grandin and characters like Sheldon may have Mensa-worthy intellects, defying expectations and stereotypes, Nyre maintains it’s important to remember that not all people with autism are born child prodigies.

“I think there’s a common misunderstanding of the savant nature. We all remember Rain Man and the character played by Dustin Hoffman, where he had remarkable math skills. That’s not necessarily a common feature for all people who have an autism spectrum disorder,” he says.

“Because [Grandin is] so bright and so verbal and able to share her story so intimately, she helps us understand through the eyes of someone with autism how they perceive the world. And that accomplishment alone is changing, and has changed, how we view the disorder.”


The HBO original film Temple Grandin premières Saturday, Feb. 6, at 8 p.m. ET/MT.

Thoughts? melissa@tvguide.ca

Follow Melissa on Twitter or check out the latest RetroChick column every Tuesday

– Additional reporting by Amber Dowling