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(In Production)
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to Dislecksia:The Movie!
 In Harvey's travels, he meets many dyslexics. Pictured here is Reyn Guyer with some of his family;they're all dyslexic. |
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Synopsis
About
one American in seven has some degree of dyslexia. It's a condition
that makes it hard to learn to read the same way other people do. With
some special techniques, taught or self-invented, most dyslexics can
learn to function normally. And a lot of dyslexics are brilliant, talented,
and successful. In the comic documentary Dislecksia: The
Movie, dyslexic director Harvey Hubbell V — with
assistance from dyslexic writer Jeremy Brecher and several dyslexic
crew members – will present the latest scientific knowledge about
dyslexia and the experiences of dyslexics. Viewers will come to know
dyslexics — and those who teach them and study them — not
just as statistics or talking heads but as people. And they'll know
a lot about dyslexia: its causes, its effects, and what can be done
about it.
Dislecksia will give viewers a better understanding of the condition. It will also give dyslexics and their families hope — as well as a crash course in how to laugh at their own condition.
Director's Statement
About one American in seven has some degree of dyslexia. Dislecksia:
The Movie is about them.
Danny Glover is one. Some people think Albert Einstein was one.
And I'm one too.
I'm not stupid (although a lot of my teachers thought I was.) It's just that my brain works in a different way.
Dyslexia is a condition that makes it hard to learn to read the same way other people do. With some special techniques, taught or self-invented, most dyslexics can learn to function normally. And a lot of dyslexics are brilliant, talented, and successful.
Also funny. When you can't do the things that seem easy to the other kids, one natural reaction is to become the class clown. My own research indicates that at least 56 percent of the funniest people in America are actually dyslexic.
I'm one of the lucky ones. After years of pain and humiliation as a failure, I was diagnosed and given the training I needed to become an effective reader.
Today, in addition to being a dyslexic, I'm a filmmaker. I make documentaries, but documentaries with a difference — what I call comic documentaries. They're informative, but they're also entertaining.
My shows have won four Emmy awards, including one for Outstanding Entertainment Program — not your usual award for a documentary.
For Dislecksia: The Movie I'm going to go and find out what's happening to my fellow dyslexics. The funny ones . . . the successful ones . . . the one's whose lives have been unnecessarily ruined...
Maybe I can find Danny. He's the one who said, "Kids made fun of me because I was dark skinned, had a wide nose, and was dyslexic. Even as an actor, it took me a long time to realize why words and letters got jumbled in my mind and came out differently."
I'll visit my neighbor who never learned to read and worked as a manual laborer — until one day he started patenting a slew of highly successful inventions.
I'm also going to go talk to research scientists who are discovering the causes and cures of dyslexia. I'll ask them to show me what goes on in their labs and explain the brain scan images they are using to show what's different about the way dyslexic brains function.
I'll go to schools where dyslexics are being taught to read successfully. I'll find out how educators identify those at risk; how they diagnose the exact nature of the problem; and what techniques they use to get dyslexics’ brains reading effectively.
I'll talk to dyslexic kids about their experiences — good and bad. I'll follow kids through their “career” as dyslexics from the time they are first identified, through their evaluation and treatment, to the point where they are able to use their talents and capacities unimpeded by their dyslexia. Maybe I can find a specialist who will give me an evaluation, or even stick my head into one of those brain scanners and see what's going on inside.
I'll visit the old-timers — doctors, educators, and researchers who have been dealing with dyslexia for half-a-century and more. From them I'll learn something about the history of the condition and the evolution of efforts to correct it. Perhaps from their experience we can also extract some wisdom about dealing with dyslexia in the future.
There are dyslexics all over the U.S. and all over the world. My travels will certainly take me North, South, East, and West in this country. I plan to go to England where there are some exciting treatment approaches and some exciting approaches to public policy and public awareness as well. If other countries have exciting developments that belong in the movie, I'll visit them too.
WARNING DISCLOSURE: Since Dislecksia: The Movie is made by a dyslexic, the route it takes to those discoveries may be more than a little quirky.
The mission
Dislecksia will be a comic documentary, but it has a serious purpose. It will give viewers a better understanding of the condition itself, the problems it makes for individuals and families, and the programs that are needed to deal with it. It will help dyslexics and their families get the assistance they need. It will give them hope — as well as a crash course in how to laugh at their own condition.
While estimates vary somewhat, reading disability is a massive problem. An in-depth study by Yale University concluded that dyslexia affects one out of every five children. A survey by the US Department of Education found that nearly 38 percent of fourth graders had not achieved even basic or rudimentary skills in reading. An estimated four-fifths of all learning disabilities are reading disabilities.
The individual, social, and financial costs are almost beyond calculation. Kids who don't learn to read face frustration, humiliation, and battering of their self-esteem. Many adopt counter-productive responses, from getting sick when they have to read out loud to becoming "class clown" to hide their embarrassment. They drop out of high school at double the rate of other kids. With limited reading skills, poor education, and damaged self-image, many dyslexics are set up for a life of frustrated hopes and limited opportunities. They are blocked from utilizing their talents to realize their aspirations.
The costs to society are equally devastating. The ability to read is a prerequisite for contribution to society both as a worker and as a citizen. Yet our communities and workforce are filled with adults who cannot read — a recent study estimated one million non-readers in the New York City workforce alone. Many are talented people whose potential contribution to society is lost because of their disability. A disproportionate number of those with reading disabilities fill our juvenile detention facilities and prisons.
The good news is that these tragic outcomes can be almost completely forestalled. As the many highly successful dyslexics demonstrate, even those with severe dyslexia can learn to function at high levels that take advantage of their full range of talents.
If they receive the right kind of help early enough, all dyslexics can improve their reading and most can learn to read with competence. Yet most dyslexics are not identified until third grade at the earliest. Only a small proportion — less than one-third — receive treatment. Often the treatment they receive is inappropriate and/or inadequate.
If treatment is delayed, the brain becomes less malleable for rerouting neural circuits and treatment therefore becomes more difficult. Children who don’t learn how to read fall further behind their peers because they miss out on additional reading practice. For many, the pain and shame of failure instill an aversion to even trying.
These consequences are unnecessary. They can all be corrected by means of changes in public knowledge about and attitudes toward dyslexia. Indeed, many experts in the field of dyslexia believe that changing public awareness of what dyslexia is and what can be done about it is the key to eliminating this unnecessary scourge. If those at risk for dyslexia could be identified, diagnosed, and provided the special instruction they need, the “problem” of dyslexia could be largely eliminated.
The mission of Dislecksia: The Movie is to provide a critical tool for creating that public awareness. It will educate a wide public on what dyslexia is — not a sign of stupidity as so many believe, but of a need to learn in a different way. It will tell parents of dyslexics what they can do to ensure that their children are properly diagnosed and given the kind of instruction they need. It will help schools understand what they need to do to identify those at risk for dyslexia and to provide the instruction that will allow them to learn. It will help educators gain support from parents and the community to provide what dyslexic kids need. And it will help dyslexics themselves understand that they have the potential to learn successfully, but that they have to learn in a different way.
Almost everyone in America has a dyslexic in their family, has friends and colleagues who are dyslexic, or is dyslexic themselves. I hope that after seeing this movie, every one of them will say, “Now I know why Tommy can't read — and I know what to do about it."
The project
I've assembled a team to produce Dislecksia: The Movie that I believe can do justice to the serious mission of the project while creating a show that people will watch just for the fun of it.
Dislecksia: The Movie will be produced by Captured Time Productions, a creative team of documentary makers with its own production facility in Litchfield, Connecticut. Founded by my wife Andie Haas Hubbell and myself in 1992, Captured Time has won more than 50 awards at major film and video festivals.
Producer/Director
As the producer & director, I’ll draw on my past experience
making “documentaries with a difference.” My Electronic
Road Film, for example, portrayed a trip I took across the country
discovering the diversity — and sometimes downright wackiness
— of my fellow citizens. Telluride IndieFest Director Michael
Carr called it “The best ‘grassroots’ depiction of
current American values.” It won an Emmy for “Outstanding
Entertainment Program.” My Loop Dreams provided
a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a low-budget feature movie.
It won Emmys for Outstanding Entertainment Program, Individual Achievement
for Directing, and Program Writing as well as the New York Festivals’
Gold World Medal for Comedy.
Co-Producer
The co-producer will be my wife Andie Haas Hubbell. She has won five
Emmy awards for documentaries like The Roots of Roe (on
the history of abortion and contraception law in the US) and Global
Village or Global Pillage? (on responses to globalization).
She’s recruited such stars as Sharon Stone, Brooke Shields, Drew
Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn, Jason Robards, Peter Coyote, Edward Asner,
Ellen Burstyn, James Whitmore, Joanne Woodward, and Ann Archer to appear
in her programs. Many of her programs have been broadcast on public
television. In 2001 the Connecticut Film Commission named her “Connecticut
Filmmaker of the Year.”
Writer
The writer will be Jeremy Brecher, PhD He’s an historian and the
author of a dozen books — as well as a fellow dyslexic. He serves
as Humanities Scholar in Residence at Connecticut Public Television
and Radio and has been Fulbright Research Scholar at the University
of Otago. He has scripted and/or helped produce twenty documentaries.
He is the winner of several Emmy awards, two Edgar Dale Screenwriting
Awards, and the Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association.
He has worked with the Hubbells for more than 15 years and shared with
them the New York Festivals’ Gold World Medal for Comedy.
Editor/Producer
Eric Gardner, our lead Editor and one of our Producer's, has been working
in the film and video world for 25 years. He has edited shows such as
The Real World and currently edits Survivor.
Eric was the Director-Producer-Editor for his independent feature Under
The Influence, which stars Peter Greene (Pulp fiction,
Usual Suspects, The Mask) and won several awards including the
Grand Jury Prize at Big Bear Lake International Film Festival.
Dislecksia: The Movie will be guided by the best available expertise in the field. Some of America’s leading dyslexia researchers and educators have agreed to review this proposal. I hope and expect that many of them will agree to become formal advisors for the project.
Dislecksia: The Movie will be distributed by broadcast and cable TV, videocassette, DVD, and streaming video on the web. Every effort will be made to connect viewers to organizations and resources that can be helpful to dyslexics and their families. The movie will be accompanied by a Viewers Guide and a website that will provide additional information and references to the many excellent materials on dyslexia that are available in print and on the web.
Advisory Board
Hunt Lowry
CEO / President, Roserock Films
Will Baker
Founder, The Dyslexia Foundation
Carolyn Cowen
Director, Communication by Design Consulting
Emerson Dickman, Esq
Attorney At Law, President of the International Dyslexia Association
Guinevere F. Eden, PhD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Georgetown University Medical
Center; Director, Center for the Study of Learning
Walter Fiederowicz
Financial Consultant & Venture Capitalist
Kenneth Pugh, PhD
Senior Scientist at Haskins Lab; Research Scientist,
Dept. of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine
Sylvia O. Richardson, MD
Past-President International Dyslexia Association; Past President
of American Speech and Hearing Association; Professor Emeritus, Pediatrics
and Distinguished Professor of Communications, University of South Florida
Roger Saunders (Deceased 2006)
Past-President International Dyslexia Association
Gordon Sherman, PhD
Executive Director, Newgrange School and Educational Outreach Center
Delos Smith
Senior Economist
Sally Smith, Prof (Deceased 2007)
Founder/Executive Director, Lab School, Washington, DC
Arlene Sonday
Founder, Sonday Systems; Educational Consultant Fellow, Academy of
Orton Gillingham Practitioners and Educators
Gordon Wallace, PhD
Emeritus Faculty, The Citadel
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