Was Rain Man based on Kim Peek , George Finn or both?

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Abcrone
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03 Mar 2014, 11:54 am

I had watched a documentary about the well known megasavant Kim Peek and how Barry Levinson the director of the movie Rain Man got his inspiration for the film from seeing Kim Peek's autistic savant capabilities, But today I was watching this old 60 minutes documentary about George Finn a lesser well known savant, And in the interview the narrator says the movie rain man was based entirely on him no mention of Kim Peek at all, So I was just confused as to if it was based on both of them or not.



youwho
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03 Mar 2014, 12:12 pm

I'd always heard he was based on Kim Peek, though that may just be the savant skill aspects.
Kim Peek himself wasn't actually autistic, he had Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum, so he had essentially
a brain split in two that was capable of doing two things at once. In his case it seems like both hemispheres
had savant capabilities. Apparently he didn't have social communication difficulties, but he did have
lots motor skills and daily living problems, and probably 'executive functioning' issues.

Maybe they actually based the character on a number of different people, and on the definition of autism itself.



dianthus
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03 Mar 2014, 2:27 pm

I think the film was inspired by Kim Peek, but the character is more of a composite of many different people.