Don't Play Me, Pay Me Campaign

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I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread here before about this campaign to support disabled people in the entertainment industry. In my opinion, it's something Hollywood sorely needs.

http://www.dontplaymepayme.com/

The campaign was started in 2008 by Nicky Clark, the mother of now almost-18-year-old British actress Lizzy Clark after she landed her first professional acting job at 14 for the BBC movie adaptation of Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson, making her the first actress with Asperger's Syndrome to play a character with Asperger's in a major TV production—something the BBC network set out specifically to do.

Although the role in Dustbin Baby was minor—and I am happy with the BBC for searching and selecting an Aspie actress for the part—I had some complaints. For instance, in the original Jacqueline Wilson novel of the same name, the character of Poppy has Down Syndrome, not Asperger's, and there are, in fact, actors with Down Syndrome as well as Autists. The film also emphasizes the "special" school, also known as "segregated."

Unfortunately, I haven't heard of Lizzy in any acting roles since, but I do wish her the best with her career. You can watch her in Dustbin Baby below; she first appears at about 0:46:04.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs2ZX7e2ZWU[/youtube]

Thank you for posting that link. I've read through the entire site and I agree with everything that's been said on each page.

Thanks for the info. Good to see more positive actions and efforts being taken. Long way to go, but it's a beginning.

I don't really have a problem with them having changed the character from the book from having Down's to AS. While I don't believe any disability is fairly represented yet by any form of media, DS has received more somewhat fair representation than AS has. ASD's are far more prevalent than DS too, so in a way I consider this move to be in the realm of "positive discriminatory" decisions.

A couple of films this brings to mind (both of which featured DS actors), are I am Sam, and The Ringer. Even though Sean Penn played a man with DS in the first, it was a step in the right direction in that it did feature quite a few actors who really did have DS, and portrayed them in what I found to be very realistic and almost "favorable" light. The Ringer (if you haven't see it), featured Johnny Knoxville as a man pretending to have DS in order to enter the Special Olympics, believing that defeating mentally ret*d athletes would be an easy way to win money to pay off some debts. What I liked about that movie was that not only did he fail at fooling the other athletes, they were actually shown to be far more intelligent than he realized. Both films, to me, seemed to be the first to portray people with DS as just as human as the rest of us.

Nothing like that has ever been done in any widely successful film for AS or ASD's of any kind for that matter. Adam was pretty good, but even his character wasn't played by a real Aspie, and his character was far to stereotypical. Hugh Dancy, who played Adam, as far as I know is nowhere on the spectrum.

It would be good to see more efforts like this.

Poppy was DS in the book? The Wikipedia page for the book says she has Aspergers.

One major difference between actors with DS and actors with ASDs is the looks, DS has a common look, AS does not.

Huh. Well, I haven't read or seen either one. Just the clip posted.

I noticed that on the Wikipedia page for the book, too before I read it, so it surprised me when I got to the part of Poppy and she had Down Syndrome instead. They basically changed the character completely though from the book to the film, except the name Poppy.

I agree Adam was far too stereotypical, but thought it was worth seeing. There are non-autistics that can play autistics well, too. Claire Danes, for instance, was phenomenal as Temple Grandin. Sigourney Weaver was great in Snow Cake. I also thought Mozart and the Whale was a great film, based on real-life Aspies Jerry and Mary Newport. But like Nicky Clark says, Neurotypical actors have the monopoly at the moment. You can watch her in a brief news video speaking about her daughter at http://irkedmagazine.com/9914/dont-play-me-pay-me/ Oh, and I just thought I'd mention, Rain Man didn't actually have autism, but rather FG Syndrome, an intellectual disability which causes physical anomalies, such as an unusually large head.