Will Butler, Andrew Leland, Sheri Wells-Jensen, and Byron Harden join forces for the premiere of Season 3 to review the Oscar-winning drama, Scent of a Woman. The film starred Al Pacino as an infamous, grumpy blind man set against the world and starring alongside a young Chris O'Donnell. The question remains: How did Al Pacino do in portraying blindness, both in terms of autenticity and entertainment value?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I think it's our privilege and maybe responsibility to be super suspicious of any work of art that wants to go on metaphor about blindness.
Will Butler:
Hey everyone, you're listening to the Be My Eyes podcast. I'm Will Butler and we're back for another season. Today on the Be My Eyes podcast, we're trying something new. Our first ever blind film club featuring my friends, Byron Harden, Sheri Wells-Jensen, and Andrew Leland. We're going to be talking about the well-known film portraying blindness, starring Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman.
Will Butler:
But first, some things to look forward to for the Be My Eyes podcast this coming month. We are doing some giveaways. That's right. The new season of the Be My Eyes podcast wants to give you free stuff. I can't reveal anything yet, but suffice to say, we're going to be giving out a few very cool wearable devices that have the potential to improve your life as a blind or low vision person. Special thank you to our product partners who are participating in those giveaways with us. How do you win? Well, it's pretty simple. All you've got to do is listen to Be My eyes podcast and at some point very soon, we're going to give you instructions for how to win one of these devices. That's all the info I have for now, but keep your ears peeled.
Will Butler:
Now, on to today's episode. For those who don't know, Andrew Leland is a well-known journalist and writer based in Massachusetts. Sheri Wells-Jensen is a linguistics professor based in Ohio. And Byron Harden is an audio educator and producer based in Illinois. They all have one thing in common, they identify as blind. I brought them on the podcast today to talk about one of the most well-known movies about blindness, Scent of a Woman. We're going to present the full conversation now, uncut, for your listening pleasure. If you have a film about blindness that you'd like us to discuss on the podcast, let us know. Just shoot us an email to podcast@bemyeyes.com, and we will take that into consideration.
Will Butler:
Hope you enjoy today's episode and be sure to hit that follow button, subscribe to the podcast, share the news about our giveaways on social media. I can't wait to share some of these amazing conversations coming up over the next several weeks. Thanks again, everyone. Hope you have a great time with our first ever blind film club.
Will Butler:
Well, I brought all of you guys together because you're some of my favorite people in the world. Period.
Byron Harden:
[inaudible 00:02:37] too.
Will Butler:
I just respect all of you and everything I've learned from you. And so rather than continue to... I've always wanted to have you guys on the podcast. Some of you I've had, had on the podcast, but I wanted to do something fun with a group. One of the things that people always ask me when we get into a conversation about blindness is about the famous portrayals of blindness in pop culture. Of course, most of what most people know about blindness comes from movies and TV. Possibly the most famous is maybe Ray Charles or some version of The Miracle Worker, story of Helen Keller. But the one that always poked out at me is one that I wasn't as familiar with, was Scent of a Woman. I had never seen them film. I had only heard about it and I had heard mixed reviews. I knew that the lead character, not the lead actor, lead character, was blind.
Will Butler:
And so I just thought, let's start a little film club. It's a bit of an experiment, but let's get together some really smart blind people to pick apart what is going on here in this film. I want to give a review of the film just in general, to tell folks whether or not it's worth a watch, but I also want to zero in on Al Pacino's portrayal of a blind man, and really get you guys' take on it.
Will Butler:
Before we really jump into the film, one thing I want to point out here is that we are all coming at this from different perspectives. And I want everyone to have really strong opinions. I want you to stick by whatever opinion you had going into this even if it doesn't jive with maybe what all three of us are saying. So take a moment to ground yourself and think about what you thought of this movie, what you think of this movie right now, before hearing everyone else's take. It's okay if you're persuaded, but I really would like you to present your original impression of the film before we start convincing each other. Because I think that's the most authentic thing.
Will Butler:
The final thing I want to point out is there's this concept in blindness called the hierarchy of sight. We can argue about where that concept came from, but the point of it is just that in our community there are so many different levels of vision. We need to be very careful not to use sight as a wedge. I'll just speak for all of you. I know some of you have been blind since birth. Some of you are just becoming blind. Some of you like myself, I became blind when I was 19. And others of you, I'll let you tell your own story, have gone in and out of blindness. So we have very different relationships with blindness and some of us are still quite visual.
Will Butler:
So some of us may have seen visual details of the film that others have not seen. That's perfectly fine if you want to bring those visual details to the table, but we're not using the visuals of the film as a trump card to nail down your argument over someone else. Does that make sense to everyone?
Andrew Leland:
[crosstalk 00:06:09]. Yeah.
Will Butler:
Does to me. Does anyone want to add anything to that series of thoughts as we establish some ground rules for this conversation?
Andrew Leland:
It was something that I'd thought about just because I am in the category of somebody who can still watch films visually. I wasn't even dreaming of using it as a trump card, but it does raise interesting questions, that kind of interpretive questions I think would be fun and interesting to talk about. Like the audio description, what audio description captures and how you interpret a representation of a blind person visually versus through description. Because as I was watching it there were some things about Pacino that ironically I felt like might've... I don't know. I'd be curious to hear what the description. I didn't listen to the description, but there was some things about his performance and specifically the representation of blindness that I felt like were only located in his visual performance.
Will Butler:
Yeah. I think what I'd like to do is, let's dedicate a small segment of this discussion to unpacking what we were able to capture visually and look at it together as a group.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah. I was thinking exactly about that because I was thinking that sounds like really clumsy ass cane technique to me, but the audio description didn't say, "Like a clueless, unskillful cane user, he thrashes his cane around," which is what it sounded like he was doing. But they mentioned his cane a lot but there was no clue about whether it was skillfully wielded or not. I wished that I had the visual take on it because I had a feeling there were non-verbals that were getting through.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Byron, were you able to watch it through with audio description?
Byron Harden:
No. As a matter of fact, my mom and I watched it in. So I think we had a pretty well-rounded perfect point of view because... Sherry, she mentions the cane technique and that was one of the first questions that I had. At one point when he was being led around by Charlie, he was using his cane unconventionally. He was holding the grip, as she was telling me, like a few of our students have done coming here. And then tap the back of the step type thing when you're going down the stairs. So it had that and I thought it was a really good portrayal of that. But then when he... I'm sorry. This is when he was haphazardly being led around. But when it came to the point where he was traveling on his own, he went to your conventional touch technique, which was the overhand, you know what I mean? With the, what I call holding the pistol, the pistol grip. And he went to that and I thought that that was some attention to detail that normally you may not see or experience in a flick.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Well, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but I want to [crosstalk 00:09:41] set it up [crosstalk 00:09:42].
Byron Harden:
That's what I do.
Will Butler:
No, but I think actually it's perfect because you watched it with someone. Your mother is sighted, right, Byron?
Byron Harden:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
And I also watched it with someone who is sighted. I wasn't intending to, I was actually intending to watch it alone, but I was at someone's house on Saturday night and they happened to have the movie on DVD so I couldn't resist. And then Sheri, I understand you watched alone with audio description.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yes.
Will Butler:
And then Andrew, you watched it alone visually, correct?
Andrew Leland:
Yep.
Will Butler:
Okay. This is perfect. We have all different ways of experiencing the film. And just a note on film access here, not incredibly easy to find the accessible version of Scent of a Woman. Does anyone want to comment on that? Sheri, maybe walk us through what's [crosstalk 00:10:33] without implicating yourself.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Without what, me implicating myself? No, I don't think I did anything illegal. Did I? I don't know. I mean, I listened to the MP3 of the film with the audio description included.
Will Butler:
Why did you have to go find a dusty MP3?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
A dusty MP3. [crosstalk 00:10:58]. Because the Amazon version did not have the audios included, even though I'm confident that I'd watched this movie before at some point, because some of it was familiar to me. And I know that there was audio description I think. Wasn't there when I watched it the first time? I can't remember [inaudible 00:11:13]. But the audio description existed so why it's not available on the Amazon version, let's find someone to throw mud at for that because whatever, why not? Why isn't it there?
Will Butler:
Yeah. It should be. Should be. They have that capability. So we don't need to get bogged down in film accessibility, but there is an issue there of blind people being able to figure out where the accessible version of a film is.
Byron Harden:
I just want to say accessibility on that film is flowing like mud. [inaudible 00:11:41]
Will Butler:
Let me just read you guys the synopsis real quick. Okay. This is the Wikipedia synopsis and this is for those who have not seen Scent of a Woman or are not familiar with it. "Scent of a Woman is a 1992 American drama film produced and directed by Martin Brest, that tells the story of a preparatory school student," that's Charlie, "who takes a job as an assistant to an irritable, blind, medically retired army officer. The film is remake of Dino Risi's 1974 Italian film." I'm going to butcher this, "Profumo di donna, adapted by Bo Goldman for the novel Il Buio e il Miele. Italian: Darkness and Honey by Giovanni Arpino and from the 1974 screenplay by Ruggero Maccari and Dino Risi." Okay. "The film stars Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell, with James Rebhorn, Philip Seymour Hoffman," which is interesting seeing young Philip Seymour Hoffman, "And Gabrielle Anwar."
Will Butler:
I didn't realize here that this film had this kind of... It was drawing on probably what is a long history of misperceptions about blindness from Italian authors, who I presume are not blind. But maybe I'll do a little bit of research on that. So folks before we really... The first thing I want to do is I just like to quickly go around and get some positive takes on this because I know we all can criticize. But what were your favorite scenes of the film? What sticks out at you? What made you laugh? What did you find really charming? Byron, maybe we can start with you.
Byron Harden:
I mean, the thing that I thought was fascinating that the both actors came in. It was, I guess you could consider it like the climax of the film, was of course when he was about to commit suicide. And it was a moment where they really realized their worth and expose to each other. I think that that is for today's time, for everything that's going on, the sensitivity especially in this country, even just globally. I was really moved by that and that really stapled me to the characters. And I know that that's important because that's really how you buy into the story. Because at first, I mean, right before that, of course when they were riding around in the car, I thought that that was a cool scene. But a little unrealistic to me, but obviously it's a wow factor thing.
Byron Harden:
Of course some people who wouldn't know [inaudible 00:15:10], man, that's probably possible you could do that. I do it in my own backyard, to be honest. I move my suburban around when we moving sound equipment around and stuff like that. But I would not go speeding down the street at any given moment. So I thought that, that really spoke to trust and then that led right up to exactly what [crosstalk 00:15:34].
Will Butler:
These climactic scenes. The climaxes were really what stuck out to you and what you enjoyed the most?
Byron Harden:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Will Butler:
Andrew, what were your favorite scenes?
Andrew Leland:
This movie came out when I was like 11 years old, I think. And I think I saw it around and I don't know if I saw it in the theater. But I remember during the climax, after the climax, Byron is talking about with a big speech, "I'm just getting warmed up." Like the-
Will Butler:
Yeah. That's good.
Andrew Leland:
The big lecture to the assembled entire school. I remember my friends quoting that in high school. People would say, "Whoa!" And there was just like-
Will Butler:
I love that.
Andrew Leland:
Cultural icon [crosstalk 00:16:27].
Will Butler:
Yeah. Very cool [crosstalk 00:16:28].
Andrew Leland:
A lot of nostalgia. Not to mention the fact that it's about a high school student. So I think the pleasure for me, a lot of it was like, it just putting me back to that time when I first saw it. And I got to say too, the production values, and I don't just even mean visually, I just mean the screenplay, the performances. I was looking at Martin Brest briefly before we called, he did Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run. And this is just some high... Say what you will about the representation stuff, all that.
Andrew Leland:
But if you're just asking about the pleasure principle, I just feel like there's a lot of quality stuff in here. Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite actors and it's great to see him. I don't know how old he is when they made this, but he can't be older than 23 or something. So, yeah. And then the screenplay, there's cheesy moments, but I think like Byron is saying, it got me. And I was like, why I do not want to feel emotional right now. I was like really ready to just have a [inaudible 00:17:32] on the face the whole time, but it won me over. It's like the screenplay is great and the performances are great.
Will Butler:
Sheri, I saved you for last because I know you might struggle [inaudible 00:17:42].
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I really like-
Will Butler:
What is your favorite scene?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
My favorite part? I really enjoyed Charlie's portrayal. I thought he was just in a beautiful job. All of the conflict you could just... Really, I thought it was nuanced, I liked his dialogue. I like almost everything about that character. And I liked that I was right there with him emotionally. I could track his, what are we doing and how can I make this stop or how can I help? Just his emotional transition to the whole thing I thought was beautifully wrought.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Really, he's really sensitive character. You could see how it was a launching pad for Chris O'Donnell.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
It was beautiful. He did some magnificent work, I thought.
Will Butler:
I want to point out too, that Sheri got that interpret, got that impact without seeing his beautiful cherubic face. Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong, this is a very winning young man that we're seeing on screen, right?
Andrew Leland:
Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of scenes are, Pacino is chewing the scenery and Chris O'Donnell is just got this expression of alternate joy and horror. A lot of his performances are these response, visual, silent responses to Pacino.
Will Butler:
I think that's an important point because when we start being critical, it's important to realize that we can appreciate a good performance as well. And I think I'd love to hear your thoughts Sheri about... If we could dig a little deeper into what makes Chris O'Donnell's performance compelling, I think that might be an interesting counterpoint to some of your thoughts about Al Pacino.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I think I know... Part of this is the production values. There was not huge amounts of background music that was obscuring the details of his voice. You could hear him going, his little intakes of breath you could hear them. There were not a lot of misplaced, inaccurate sound effects put in for effect. You know how in the... I've been watching less Star Trek lately. Anytime anything happens on Star Trek, like they open a door, the whole theater goes, boom! And anytime someone pushes a button and you hear [inaudible 00:20:28]. And you don't know what that's for. It's just a big noise meant to get you all excited, I guess. But the sound sculpting in the movie I thought was really also exquisite. I heard his cane technique. It sounded bouncy to me. It sounded like cane was going high. And I thought that's really cool that they permit that level of sound to be there as opposed to covering it up with music or with some other sound that is meant to give you a mood rather than to convey information.
Will Butler:
Last popcorn before we open up the discussion a bit. This time we'll go backwards. I want to know what your least favorite scene was. What was the moment in the movie that made you go, [inaudible 00:21:20], as a blind person morally, I cannot stand up for this certain type of behavior. Sheri, I know you've probably got something in mind.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
No, I didn't think of a one moment. There was a little bit of face touching there at the end. I don't like the face touching. Keep your fingers out of the people's faces.
Will Butler:
Was there face touching? I don't [crosstalk 00:21:47] remember that.
Byron Harden:
[inaudible 00:21:48]
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
[crosstalk 00:21:51] [inaudible 00:21:54] I'm over the edge I can't come back moments for me we'll have to do the face touching.
Will Butler:
When did that happen? I can't remember.
Byron Harden:
Twice.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
They were getting out of the car. The one that the voiceover, that the audio description explained, was they were getting out of the car when they gotten back home and he was giving Charlie his money and there was a little bit of a face fondle. [inaudible 00:22:15]
Will Butler:
Yeah. Like, oh, he finally expressed-
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
He finally gave in his natural-
Will Butler:
His affection in the way that [crosstalk 00:22:23] blind people do. Andrew, what [inaudible 00:22:30] if anything, about the film?
Andrew Leland:
I mean, I realized it's like the title of the movie, I mean, there were a couple of times when he smelled women that I was okay with, but most of the time I was just like, this is so just gross. And I realized it's like... I don't know. Like that's the point. And it was just like he was this lovable sex maniac, but just the way that he did it... And I was thinking about it too, because recently this New Yorker writer Ved Mehta die...
Andrew Leland:
This New Yorker writer, Ved Mehta, died. I don't know if you guys saw his obituary, but he was a New Yorker writer and he was blind from about the age of three. Wrote a lot of memoir, but also did a lot of journalism. He was an interesting figure, but right after he died, there was a mini backlash that I saw on Twitter of just these horror stories of him. The New Yorker would assign him all these young, all these female assistants and they would walk in and he would be like, "Have you made love this day? Because I can smell it."
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Ew.
Will Butler:
Oh, God.
Andrew Leland:
"You need to bathe." And it's so gross, and to do that to somebody, and I felt like when Pacino was doing in the film, I think it was supposed to be lovable and it just turned my stomach.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Yeah. That is fair and I also found, if anything, to be most out of place in the movie was the core premise presented in the title. It's almost like they mistitled the film or something. Byron, what did you not like?
Byron Harden:
I agree with Sheri 1,000%. I don't know what blind person does that. I know I'm not interested in that.
Will Butler:
Touching faces?
Byron Harden:
Even with my girlfriend, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I'm not going to go into details, but I wouldn't do that. Let me keep it there, because I'm going to tell you something.
Will Butler:
Okay, so no face touching.
Byron Harden:
The movie, okay, to me, or any movie that deals with a blind person, and I don't know if it's wanting to see what that person looks like. I don't know what the purpose was in this movie for him touching the face. I can only think it was to provide some type of visual concept in the mind, but you cannot do that. You just cannot do that. But what you can do is you can come up with your own concept. So you're not getting an accurate thing, but if you touch the face, to me that's just a thing that you don't do. You could kiss someone on the lips before ... It's just the reality of it.
Will Butler:
So let's unpack this a little bit more, because it's actually an incredibly prevalent trope that you see in books, in films, in television. Almost any time you have a major blind role, they're touching someone's face. What is going on here? Shari, you might be best qualified to give us a little historical or just sort of some context here. What's up with this touch? Why do cited writers portray this?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Okay. So I don't know, because I learned about face touching from sighted people.
Will Butler:
You're like, "I can do this?"
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
This is not a blind person thing. This is a sighted person thing.
Andrew Leland:
And the reason it's not a thing is because you don't actually get any information, right? I've never tried it, but isn't it basically like, ah, you appear to have a nose and cheeks. Good to know.
Byron Harden:
That's what I'm saying. That's what I was saying. Yeah. There's no accuracy there.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I remember when I was-
Byron Harden:
I guess ... No, go ahead.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I remember when I was a kid, there was one sleepover. We were all a bunch of 10-year-old girls and we decided to play the ... I don't think it had anything with blindness at all, but we were doing all kinds of things with the lights off. And they're like, "Well, can we identify each other by touching faces?" And everybody went for the hairdo. What was the hair like or what necklace were they wearing? Nobody went, "Oh, I recognize the heart shape of your face. And you've got curvature of your elfin nose." No one did that, because that's not a thing.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Well, that says it perfectly. There's not enough. That's not how we communicate. That's not how we recognize one another, through bone structure and that sort of thing.
Byron Harden:
And it's like a foul game of pin the tail on the donkey. I don't know how many birthday parties y'all want to as a kid. It's like what's the target here? That's my question. To the movie, that is, or to any blind person out there that wants to touch somebody's face.
Will Butler:
Well, and it seems like if you're blind, too, logistically even just ... Let's assume for a second that you want to touch someone's face. Hard to kind of like do without hurting the person, it seems like.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
You've got to trail up from the elbow and then you go ... To me, you're like groping the whole thing.
Will Butler:
Yeah. It's just a bad idea across the board, but you see it over and over and over and over again. There was a new show on the CW called In The Dark, which because it's a whole season of television, I'm not going to put you guys through it.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Thank you.
Will Butler:
But it there's a sighted actress, sighted show runner playing a blind character who solves a mystery. And it is episode one where she is feeling the face of the murder victim. It's episode one. It's the climactic moment of episode one, the pilot, and there was no blind people in the room for that decision.
Byron Harden:
I'm going to say this real quick. I remember guys that weren't familiar with blindness and kind of locker room talk, they'd be like, "How do you tell how a girl looks? Do you touch her face?" I'm like, "No. No, I don't do that." Because two things here. The first thing is that I know from a person who's both had sight and couldn't see what that difference is, and I know that it's not going to be accurate. Now, a woman could have a mark on her face and it could look quite attractive to a sighted person, but to the blind person now, this is like Rocky Dennis. You know what I'm saying? And so, it's to me, I just think you cannot violate that person. Plus you cannot violate the idea of that person. That's really more important to me. It's really the idea, because I am very visual as it goes.
Will Butler:
What do you mean by that, violating the idea of the person? Because I think that's interesting. Are you saying that even if you could get information from their face, it doesn't matter because that's not how you relate to them? I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Byron Harden:
No. I mean, because let's be honest. We're going to draw up some type of idea of how someone looks, and if they sound proper, then chances are you probably are going to consider them to be attractive. I'm speaking from the blind perspective, of course. And what was really amazing about that is that you can [inaudible 00:31:08] that in your mind, and then you're not really giving a person a real shot, when they definitely, and it's kind of the equivalent of a sighted person seeing someone that they think is less attractive and they're not really giving them a real shot at the end of the day. So to me, that's the idea of that person, whether that's a romantic thing or it could be business. Well, you wouldn't be touching a business partner's face. Maybe somebody would. I don't know.
Will Butler:
Well, I'm thinking of the saying beauty is skin deep.
Byron Harden:
Exactly.
Will Butler:
And that's an interesting cliche that doesn't involve eyes. Whether you're experiencing someone by touch or through your eyes, you're still forming a shallow perception of who they are. Right?
Andrew Leland:
Pacino or Frank or whatever you want to call him, that's one of the first ... In their first interaction, his first interaction with Charlie, he says, "How's your skin?" which is strange in light of this conversation. I don't really think we ever explicitly get what that's about.
Will Butler:
Sherry, do you mind if I ask you, of course, I don't want to single you out, being that you're the only woman that is in this conversation, and I don't want you to have to speak for, represent a group.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I'm speaking for all blind women now.
Will Butler:
Right. Yeah. But I mean, Sherry, what goes into attraction from a blind perspective? And we can all speak on this just a little bit. We don't need to go down a rabbit hole, but just to give listeners a reference point for not basing it off of how someone feels, if we're not, and of course we're not looking at the structure of their nose or whatever.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I don't think we can ... We can't claim any kind of high ground that we're isolated from those factors, because people are shaped by how other people react to them. So you can tell, I think, how attractive someone is perceived to be by how they carry themselves. And I used to think when I was a kid that it had something to do with voice quality, but I'm pretty sure now it just has to do with how they expect to be treated and how people treat them. And I think it's reasonably subtle, but when I come to an understanding of how attractive I think someone is, I'm rarely wrong.
Will Butler:
Interesting. Yeah. I can definitely relate to that, and I agree. It's somewhere in between the quality of their voice and their expectation of treatment. I totally agree with you.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah. And it's sort of like the race thing, right? I mean, it's not like there's a subset of blind people that believe that they are impervious to race. They can't possibly be racist because we don't see color.
Will Butler:
Right. Right.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
And I mean, we grew up in this racist society, and we know about race. It's not like we don't know about it. And the same thing is true with physical attractiveness. We know about it, and we know how important it is to people. I mean, we know how important it really is, and we also know how important everybody thinks it is. And so we're mixed into the same cultural ick with everybody else when it comes to physical attractiveness. We clearly are, with everybody, I think.
Byron Harden:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
This is such a rabbit hole. We've got to move on. But no, just real quick. Are we allowed to be shallow as blind people? Are we allowed to care what someone looks like?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Absolutely.
Will Butler:
Or should we try to focus ourselves on a higher principle? I don't know.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
How many layers of we're just kidding ourselves do you want to go into here? I mean, absolutely people are shallow.
Will Butler:
And do you think, Sherry, that as blind people, we ... I don't know. What's our relationship with shallowness? Are we any different from anyone else?
Byron Harden:
Not at all. We just repurpose the shallow. That's all that happens.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I'm shallow, but I'm not shallow about appearance, I don't think, although I might be. I'd have to think about it. But I'm definitely shallow. I mean, you don't read enough or you're not cool enough or you don't have the right culture. I'm definitely shallow. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, because I don't have ready access to the visual input, so it's too much ... That's it. Okay. I got it. It's too much effort for me to be shallow about how people look. It's not like I wouldn't be. It's just too much effort. So I have to focus my shallowness in other ways.
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I did not.
Will Butler:
You didn't ask your husband for his measurements?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I waited until the appropriate time and I did explorations as appropriate.
Byron Harden:
Oh, oh.
Will Butler:
Andrew, do you got any thoughts on this?
Andrew Leland:
I guess I could bring it back to the movie. That is one thing, for all of its ickiness, that's interesting about Scent Of A Woman is that it allows Al Pacino that shallowness that I think a lot of movies have denied blind people, because Georgina Kleege has a really, really great book, called Sight Unseen, where she writes about Scent Of A Woman and a bunch of other movies. She has a whole chapter about movies, and she points out that most depictions of blind men, in particular, are of they're basically castrated by their blindness. And I mean, that's in Scent Of A Woman, too, but he kind of overcompensates by becoming hyper sexed, which is pushing against the trope a little bit.
Andrew Leland:
So even though it bummed me out that he was smelling women from across the room and then going on and on about how marvelous and whatever they smelled like and worse than that, it was still also nice to see pushing back against that idea that I think is really prevalent, not just in movies, but in sighted culture in general, this fascination with like how could a blind person appreciate their spouse? Or like how do you even know? Or like Byron was saying, you shouldn't even care about that kind of thing. And restoring normalcy, which includes shallowness and desire and sexuality to blind people.
Andrew Leland:
And I think that's probably true about disabled people more broadly, but then there's something especially interesting that happens with blindness, because like with race, sexuality is so visually constructed that people just can't wrap their heads around how a blind person could have any sort of engagement with that world.
Byron Harden:
You know, because Andrew, you reminded me of something. And I'm not saying that this is not possible, but I don't know what blind person, and I think that they kind of ran a little bit over the boundary lines when it came to this heightened senses, once you lose the other. You know what I'm saying? And I'm just like I don't know who does this. Like you're a cheetah and you're sitting on one side of the room, you got this hyper sense of smell and it's what drives you. And that's just not what it is for blind folk, at least the blind folks that I know. I just thought that that was over. I thought it was overcooked.
Will Butler:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Andrew Leland:
The super powers of like the super crip, like, "I can smell across a room filled with plates of food the perfume on the woman six tables away."
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
And it also came off as predatory to me. That's not okay.
Will Butler:
Freaky.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah. I need you to stay away from me.
Will Butler:
I asked you guys all to think about it in terms of three main things: the authenticity of this portrayal of blindness, the entertainment value of the film itself, and to what degree was it offensive just to you personally. And we don't need to go down the list one by one, but I want to start with you, Sherry, just to give your overall feelings. I feel like maybe I've been holding you at bay here, because I know that you have strong feelings about the film. I could feel that just in the first few seconds of our call. You said, "It's two and a half hours I can't get back." Tell us your read on this very important, iconic Oscar-winning film.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Okay. Well, the thing I think that's most important to do first is rustle up a little compassion for the character, because that tradition for being a competent, joyful, seeing person to a competent, joyful, blind person is not an easy road. That's not easy, and it involves a lot of pain and a lot of struggle, a lot of doubt, and a lot of, "Oh, my God, why is this happening?" It's a disruption from everything from the spiritual to the physical. It's huge. Okay.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
That said, I just really thought he was a tiresome old dog, and so it was hard for me to keep him within my sense of, "I need to feel compassion for you because I get it. You're going through tough times." So I kept sort of fading in and out, trying to hold him in that, "No, I get you. I get you. You've got to experience this. You've got to explore. You've got to be held. You've got to be cared for while you make this transition," to, "I've got a feeling you were a jerk before you went blind and you're still a jerk." And I'm grateful that he made the whatever transition he made at the end where now he's going to try to be open and try to rejoin the human race, but he was going through a lot of violent struggle with who he was, and yet he had so many advantages. I'm thinking how many blind people do I know that have the money he had and the freedom that he had?
Will Butler:
Right. He had a limo. He was renting a room at the Waldorf Astoria. He had resources. He had family. He had all these things going for him, in a sense, except his own personality.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah. And it wasn't his blindness that was his problem. I mean, maybe that's the point, right? I don't know. It wasn't his blindness that was his problem. But the thing that ... And that's okay with me. I mean, you can have stories about blind people who are jerks. That's okay. But the thing that deeply troubles me is the read that people are going to get is blindness was this guy's problem, and it just wasn't. He would have been a jerk living in somebody's garage, regardless of blindness, I think. And I worry that people see the blindness aspect as this causative factor in his dysfunction.
Will Butler:
Even though they said it. At the dinner table, they said he was an asshole before he was blind. Even with that, you think people still are going to read it as, "Well, no. Cut him a break. Blindness must be the worst thing ever."
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
That's what I worry about, because I don't think people sit down and go, "Ooh, let me analyze this." They're just like it's a movie. They suck it down. That was a movie. Whoa. And there were some super compelling things about him. And he made a good speech at the end, like you do, and you can find the redeeming characteristics in him at the end. So I don't know why the blindness had to be layered on top of all that, and I worry that people will take the wrong message away from it.
Will Butler:
So if you were going to write a film about a blind guy who's a jerk, which you should be able to do, as you said, what would you do differently or what you think are the traps not to fall into?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I think that the message was going to be that he was killing himself because he was blind.
Will Butler:
Right.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
He wasn't killing himself because he was rich. He wasn't killing himself because he was an ass, because he'd been an ass before.
Will Butler:
Right. It was because he was blind and he couldn't live the life he wanted to live anymore.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
But he was living the life he wanted to live. There he was, doing it.
Will Butler:
Right. But yeah, you get the message pretty clearly at the beginning that is his intention is to kill himself because he's lost his vision.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
And the scene where he was tangoing with the woman. He did a remarkable feat of kick ass orientation and mobility. He's like, "I want the measurements of the dance floor." The guy's like, "Okay." And then he apparently kept track of that the whole time and didn't bump into one single thing. And he was graceful and twirled her around without ever going over too far to the edge of the dance floor. How'd he do that?
Speaker 1:
You know what?
Byron Harden:
Sheri, that's a good point, because I thought that was some of the unrealistic stuff. He was kind of more operating as a lifelong genes blind person than someone who had just lost his sight five years previous.
Will Butler:
That's interesting. So you think that it is possible for blind people to be as on the ball as he was.
Will Butler:
It's possible for blind people to be as on the ball as he was, but someone who had just lost his vision a few years ago would never be at that skill level.
Byron Harden:
I'm not going to say that, because you're talking to a guy who rode a bike as a blind kid, a year after being sick and losing my sight.
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
Maybe I just shot myself in the Frank, pun intended.
Will Butler:
I just need to get to the problem, which is not that you disliked Frank. We dislike characters in movies all the time, but what does having him be such a wretched, just difficult person... and I don't want to say difficult, relentlessly difficult, through the whole film.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Deliberately.
Will Butler:
Deliberately.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Relentlessly.
Will Butler:
Belligerently difficult.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
What does that do to us, as real blind people living in the world? How does that affect our real lives?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I'm torn on how to answer this, because just I feel we have the right to be shallow, we have the right to be belligerent and be jerks too.
Will Butler:
Of course.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Okay, I could figure out why he was depressed, because he's alienated this family and doesn't feel he has friends. Right? There were weird, idiosyncratic holes in his blindness skills. Sometimes he was really, really cool, like that dancing thing. I don't know. That'd be hard, I think. I think I could do it if I had to, if I thought about it a lot.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
But just to leap up and do it that way, he had a lot of freedom and he had a lot of advantages. He never really said what about blindness was making him so mad, if in fact it was the blindness making him so mad. Like he didn't do that thing where it's like, "I can never see the faces of my family," because he didn't like his family. Right? So he wasn't worried about that.
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I don't know.
Will Butler:
When you go, when you step out of the door in Bowling Green and go to the grocery store, how does Scent of a Woman affect your life? If at all, or maybe you think it's irrelevant in our culture, but to me, this is one of the few images the general population has in their mind of a blind person. That's what it boils down to. Do you agree, Sheri?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I don't know. His whole thing was he was miserable about himself and yet he had these mystic abilities to identify your perfume, or whatever he could do. I struggled to sort all that out. So maybe if we're giving everybody the biggest advantage that we can give them, maybe the image that Al Pacino gives to the sighted world is, "I don't get this. It's weird." Maybe they're confused about it too.
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I don't know.
Will Butler:
It's confusing. Okay, real quick. On a scale of one to ten, just gut instinct, Sheri, authenticity?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Six.
Will Butler:
Entertainment value?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Three.
Will Butler:
How personally offended were you?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I wasn't very offended. It's hard to offend me. I wasn't. I don't even have an offensiveness scale, really. Because there've been worse things.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Interesting. So you didn't like it, you didn't find it particularly entertaining, but you're not going to go around claiming you're offended?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah, it's not worth it.
Will Butler:
Maybe we will reconsider that third category, for future discussions. If you guys have-
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
No, I'm sure you can find offensiveness in [inaudible 00:50:22].
Will Butler:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It begs the question though, is being offended useful-
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Keep trying.
Will Butler:
... in any way.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think being offended is super-useful. If people are out of bounds, you got to call them on it. I think that's really important.
Will Butler:
Okay. Okay, so it's not an offensive film to you. To you. Interesting. Andrew, what was your big takeaway from Scent of a Woman? When you were joining us an hour ago, what did you want to discuss, if anything?
Andrew Leland:
I don't know. Something related to what Sheri was just saying, because it is ambiguous, the way that blindness is his problem. Like on the one hand, at the big climax with the suicide, he's like, "I'm in the dark here," but-
Will Butler:
Oh yeah. I forgot about that. [crosstalk 00:51:19]-
Andrew Leland:
That's this pretty clear statement of, "My life sucks because of my lack of vision," but then it also does this weird thing where one of the big problems with blindness in any media, or movies, or books, or whatever, is that it's a metaphor and it stays a metaphor, and all the offensive things that can come out of it, or if not offensive, just misleading, is that it's not grounded in the lived experience of blind people. It's these images are these passed-down ideas about blind people, including smelling people from great distances, and all that.
Andrew Leland:
So it's like he's in the dark here, and that's his big problem, but it's almost like the metaphorical blindness is his problem rather than the actual blindness, in the movie. So I was really struck by the scene where, I think it's after he drives the Ferrari and they're walking back to the hotel, and then he's staggering, and he's going to pee on the middle of Park Avenue. Charlie is like, "What are you doing? What's wrong with you?" Throughout the movie, we've seen him drinking heavily, but we haven't seen him drink in a while, in that scene.
Andrew Leland:
It seems pretty clear, the suggestion that it's his depression, is just overtaking him and is actually physically disabling him in some way. Like he just can barely keep it together. There's another scene where he's in bed and he's just so sleepy, and it's this dark depression hanging over him. In those moments, blindness felt distant from the picture. I thought that the movie did a weird thing where it conflated his darkness and depression, and his blindness, in a way that let the blindness recede, almost.
Will Butler:
Interesting.
Andrew Leland:
I don't totally know what to do with that, but maybe that's part of what makes it less offensive, is that... I don't know, it really cracked me up, that scene. It wasn't a funny scene at all, but the Thanksgiving scene when the guy says the line, his nephew says the line that you quoted, where he's like, "He was an asshole before, and now he's just a blind asshole." It was this bizarro, NFB motto where it's like, "Blindness is not what defines you. Like, you're an asshole one way or another."
Will Butler:
[inaudible 00:53:44].
Andrew Leland:
I kind of like that. So, for me-
Will Butler:
That's the line that's going to get you in trouble.
Andrew Leland:
Oh, I'm in trouble now?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Nope, it was-
Will Butler:
Yeah. Now, you're in trouble.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Was blinding him a way of getting him out of being an asshole? Because then we should blind all asshole, right? Because then they'll get better?
Andrew Leland:
Yeah. It's not a bad idea, but yeah, ultimately, anybody feeling suicidal because of their disability is a giant red flag in a movie. So for me the takeaway, I guess, is this question of where does depression end and blindness begin, or vice versa?
Will Butler:
Or even extrapolate it out. Where does depression begin and your human condition end, right? Because for some people, it's blindness. For some people, it's something else. Right? I think it's relatable, in a sense.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
But Andrew, you're really interestingly situated, because you've done a lot of research about blindness, but you're still relatively new to this world.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
You still can see, but you're facing the prospect of being completely blind at some point. So when you looked at Al Pacino's face, when you looked at his mannerisms, his movement, how does it make you feel? Just in your gut and in your heart?
Andrew Leland:
Yeah. So I have to hang up my film critic hat now, and answer as a human being, you're saying?
Will Butler:
Yeah. Sorry, but-
Andrew Leland:
He has a lot of dignity. He's Al Pacino, man. He looks cool. Like they dress him in thousand-dollar suits, and he's wearing cool sunglasses. His cane is black. I don't know if the audio description mentioned that. He has this very-
Will Butler:
No.
Andrew Leland:
... suave, black cane. So visually, I wouldn't mind looking like Al Pacino. That's not really what you're asking, though. In terms of his performance of blindness, he does the thing where he just never looks anybody in the eye, which from hanging out with blind people, I know is not real. There's another weird moment where Chris O'Donnell is like, "Are you looking at me?" I wonder if it was the moment where Chris O'Donnell is questioning his blindness, because he's suddenly seeing him as an equal, or as a human somehow.
Andrew Leland:
I don't know what it was about. But yeah, to answer your question, I guess, how did I feel watching Al Pacino as a blind person, from my perspective as somebody very slowly moving towards further blindness? I guess the thing that, just reading this book, I'm hanging out with tons of blind people as much as I can. There is a way that I just look to role models. Like Sheri was saying, how to make that journey from... how did you put it... joyful, competent, sighted person to joyful-
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yes.
Andrew Leland:
... competent, blind person. Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman is not really my role model here, because I've got access to all these real bad-ass blind people that I can look at. But yeah-
Will Butler:
For some people, [crosstalk 00:57:24]-
Andrew Leland:
What's that?
Will Butler:
For some people, [crosstalk 00:57:27]-
Andrew Leland:
That's true.
Will Butler:
He was.
Andrew Leland:
That's true.
Will Butler:
To distill it, it sounds like you're saying, actually you don't mind the portrayal, because it's Al Pacino. It's cool. That's okay, I think. Most people view blind people as pathetic, or if not pathetic, pitiable.
Andrew Leland:
Let me... yeah.
Will Butler:
Pathetic is maybe not the right word, but pitiable, right? Al Pacino is not that. He's a lot of things, but he's powerful.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah, yeah.
Will Butler:
Right?
Andrew Leland:
The confusing thing that I'm feeling right now is, from reading disability studies, I know that overcoming narratives are bad and wrong, and you're never supposed to want to overcome your disability. That's offensive, I get that. But then at the same time, thinking about this bridge that Sheri is describing, that's not overcoming blindness, but there is a transformation that happens there where you figure out... it's a figuring out or processing of blindness somehow.
Andrew Leland:
The movie, with it's soaring soundtrack and multiple climaxes, definitely got overcoming in there, but also, I feel I can look through that and see some version of coming to terms with it, or accepting it. For me, I think I've got a little bit of muddy... like it's all mixed together, of what is bad, cheesy, offensive overcoming, and what is good, productive, acceptance and processing?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
That's such a good point, but the thing that I wanted to throw in there is that, then you have to understand that you never get there.
Will Butler:
Sure.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Right? Because it's not like I can be joyful and competent, and go outside and have everyone go, "Oh, welcome, joyful, competent human." Because you're always getting slimed by the mainstream cultural perspective, which he does have a little bit in the movie. Like at the beginning they said, "Oh, we had him in a home and he didn't like it." As if they have the power, and the authority, and the moral obligation, to care for him even though he's clearly a functional adult. Now, that story is in-
Andrew Leland:
[crosstalk 00:59:51].
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
... there somewhere, right? Because you can get there in your head for a minute.
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
But as soon as you take your head back out into public... to twist my metaphor more... someone's going to screw your head back on for you.
Andrew Leland:
yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
In the way they think it goes.
Will Butler:
Yeah. I think that's important. It's a really important point. This movie is a lot of what I call phase one blindness, which is self-acceptance. I've talked to a few of you about this. What I consider the second phase of being a blind person is dealing with the rest of the world accepting you. You don't see a lot of that explored in this film. It's mostly about an internal conflict, which is fair. But that other thing that Sheri's talking about, of walking out the door every single day and having people underestimate you every single day, that is also a huge part of what presses on us. Right?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
No, I didn't see him face a lot of that.
Will Butler:
No.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
He kept popping out of his limousine.
Will Butler:
Yeah, yeah. Which he did pretty well.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
A lot of the little things that we have techniques for, like how do you know what kind of money you're giving to somebody? We have techniques for that. There weren't any of that. I was disappointed that there was no... how does he do his money?
Will Butler:
Yeah. No, that's what you get when you have a film that's not made by a blind person, right? They're not interested in portraying that. Andrew, one to ten, authenticity? Just go with your gut here.
Andrew Leland:
I'm breaking the rules by being influenced by Sheri, but I think six is a good call.
Will Butler:
Okay.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
That's an excellent call.
Byron Harden:
Spoken like a true woman.
Will Butler:
Entertainment value?
Andrew Leland:
Yeah, this is where I'll diverge. I think despite myself, I had a good time. I think I'll go with seven.
Will Butler:
Then, were you offended?
Andrew Leland:
I'd say like 3.9. Repeating.
Byron Harden:
The woman part, yeah, creeped him out, the smelling.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Byron Harden:
I think that. Yeah.
Andrew Leland:
And the suicidal, shading into suicidal, over blindness. But, yeah.
Byron Harden:
Yeah.
Andrew Leland:
So I'll say three. I'll leave it at three.
Will Butler:
Byron. I saved you for last because I thought maybe you enjoyed the film most. Maybe Andrew actually enjoyed it the most, but I don't know yet because you haven't really given us your big takeaways. You watched it with your mom. Did the two of you enjoy it together? Did you have different feelings about it? Paint a picture for us.
Byron Harden:
Yeah, we both enjoyed it. I was aware of the black cane thing, and anyone that was any blind person knows that unless you're self-taping that cane, white cane is pretty much the legal way to go. I think if you have a black cane, and I think if you get smacked by a car in the street, it's going to be a little less liability on that person, I think.
Will Butler:
Yeah. Yep.
Byron Harden:
Because the cane's not taped properly, right?
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
Also, things, the money thing, of course. I saw that as a little flip, but like I said, once again, the suicide portion... or attempt, or the possibility of an attempt, I should say... was my favorite portion. "I'm in the dark here." That, right there, tied everything together for me. I deal with a lot of adults who have recently lost their sight.
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
Oddly enough, I've lost my sight, matched with the adults that we do train that has lost their sight, and they're trying to do something very visual. I thought the movie did offend. I thought the director, the movie, the whole production was fantastic, and you were very much correct in thinking that I may truly enjoy the movie. Because I really did. One thing about myself is that I think I might have a little bit different perspective than a lot of blind people when getting into public. I really liked the stuff, him just packing his suitcase and like, "Come on, let's go," and not really being scared to travel. That thing is-
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Byron Harden:
I see a lot of blind folks that are like that. That, "Hey, I'm just going to the airport, I'm going to jump on this plane and we're going to do this. We're going to jump on this train. It don't matter. Yeah, we're going to get lost, but cool. Whatever, we may get stuck up. We don't care," and still moving forward in life. I really appreciated that.
Will Butler:
Yeah, so you saw-
Byron Harden:
Al Pacino's accent. I'm an Al Pacino fan, right?
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Byron Harden:
So maybe I'm a little biased, right? But Frank's accent was incredible. He does that accent in multiple films, I think, but I really felt connected to... and I've never been in the military, but I thought that a really macho colonel guy in charge, and now you're blind. What in the hell do you do with that? That's such a contrast. I think a lot of people, especially when the self-esteem is a little bit compromised, and that's why a lot of times when they're in these upper... these higher positions in the military and stuff like that, they can mask their weaknesses.
Byron Harden:
Once they get exposed, it's like, "Oh my God." It was like in the thirties, when the Great Depression happened and people were diving out the fifth story window backwards, right? Killing themselves because there was no money around, or the thought that there may have not been any money around, that exposed their deficiencies, weaknesses, whatever you want to refer to. When people get to that point, they see no other way. I think the darkness metaphor was both blindness and mental.
Will Butler:
Right, right.
Byron Harden:
In the possibility, or lack thereof.
Will Butler:
I like what you're saying, because you saw reality reflected in this character.
Byron Harden:
Yes.
Will Butler:
Both for the positive and the negative. You saw a blind person who's a go-getter.
Byron Harden:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
Which is important to remember, Al Pacino might be grumpy, but he's not afraid to step out the door. That is actually important. But also, I want to really double click on this thing you're talking about with depression, because of all of us, you are the one who is closest to the folks who are at the beginning of their blindness journey and really, really struggling. You have... correct me, I don't know if I should say this, but you have people crying in your studio on a regular basis. Right, Byron?
Byron Harden:
Yeah. Yeah.
Will Butler:
Can you tell us a little bit about... so you found the depression that he was experiencing very real? Right?
Byron Harden:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I said, adults is the lion's share. When we trained through rehab services, it's usually adult, it has to be adults, right? Just abiding by the-
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
... rules and protocol of rehab services. But there are multiple instances, it never fails, where when a person is able to obtain... Now, these are tears of joy and triumph. Where he is was a little bit more of anger and despair, right? But it's still one and the same. You cannot have one without the other.
Byron Harden:
You cannot have one without the other. And in all of these persons who have cried tears of joy has also cried those same other tears on the opposite side of sorrow. And so when they are able to walk away and control software and computers, and like I said, in a very visual environment, and they're able to get to their passion, that's an overwhelming experience. And who better to introduce that than someone who's lost their sight multiple times in life? And I'm not saying that to say I'm the only person or I'm the best person for the job.
Byron Harden:
But I am saying I understand the complexities of being able to see one day and then the next day, there's nothing there. It's explicitly individual. I'm aware though, because to me, the rules change. I'm excited for the rules to change. I'm excited to be blind. So like I said, I know I'm a different case, but I have to bring that to those persons. I have to bring that because that now becomes their light. And so I thought that Charlie was that light. I thought he was that light to Frank. And it was like, oh, maybe I don't have to do this.
Byron Harden:
I have another option here. And so that connectivity to it's a brighter day coming is really at the end of the day, it's not just the blindness thing, like Andrew was saying. I think that's just basic mental health where in today's time where suicide is crazy, the rates are. But I think being able to have that light at the end of the tunnel, I thought that Charlie was that, when at the same time, like I said, it's one and the same. Because Frank was Charlie's light at the end of the tunnel. So you could say Charlie went back to school a whole different kid. We didn't see that, but that was implied, right?
Will Butler:
Yep.
Byron Harden:
And so providing that kind of circle, that kind of cycle of life or hope, or believability, or inspiration I think is basic life.
Will Butler:
And Sheri tapped into it at the very beginning. And I love that you brought it back to Charlie, Byron, because in some way, he doesn't ever treat this blind guy poorly.
Byron Harden:
Right.
Will Butler:
Right?
Byron Harden:
Right.
Will Butler:
He doesn't ever do anything ... I mean, at the very beginning, he tries to touch him, which is classic. He tries to grab him. You remember Sheri, where he says, "Why are you ..." He said, "Are you blind?" Then he goes, "No. Are you blind? Why are you grabbing me?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah, there was that. I thought Charlie was like, "Hey, there." [crosstalk 01:12:06].
Will Butler:
I'll grab you-
Byron Harden:
I'll tell you another realistic part, though. We were right there when they were in the restaurant eating the $24.99 hamburgers and Charlie tried to signal to the waiter, just bring him water instead of the John Daniels. Okay. And so that is very offensive to a blind person for a sighted person to try to undermine. And he was hot about that. Frankly, that's me. I'm like, "Yo, look, Come, come, come, come, come, come here. Let me talk to you for a second. Yeah. See, that's not allowed. Okay? Understand? Do you dig what I'm saying to you? Thank you. We're clear? Right. Okay, cool."
Byron Harden:
And that's the way you handle situations, especially when you're talking about a man. I mean, come on. You're treating him like a child at that point. Right. And I think Frank, like I said, it was so many good things that laid on that table, in that presentation. Also, here is another one. Here's another one. When the cop was handing his ID back to him, even though it was an unrealistic part, the cop was like, "Do you want this?" And he's like, "Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah." Because obviously, he didn't see the cop holding his hand out with his license, with his ID back to him, right?
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
And that kind of attention to me, gives this film high ratings.
Will Butler:
Sheri, it sounded like you had a comment on something.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Oh, no. I don't know what I might've been mumbling about before, but they didn't explain that part in the description. It's
Will Butler:
Yeah. I did read that Pacino studied with the Lighthouse Guild in New York for this part. And specifically, he asked to be introduced to trauma victims who had lost their sight due to trauma. So he was very interested in general, who lost his sight juggling grenades might act as a blind person, as opposed to someone who had lost it gradually. So I think Pacino. It's Pacino, right.
Byron Harden:
Hey, man, this is a genius guy.
Will Butler:
Right. So we got to give him some credit. But Byron, before we get into the final section here, one to 10, authenticity?
Byron Harden:
Diversion is my game. I'm going to have to go with the nine.
Will Butler:
Okay. Entertainment value?
Byron Harden:
Oh, Byron is going to go with nine and a half.
Will Butler:
And offense? And were you off-
Byron Harden:
Are there halves? Do we have it?
Will Butler:
Yeah, give whatever you want. [crosstalk 01:15:25] for a film club. And were you offended at all?
Byron Harden:
I'm going to have to say negative one. So below zero.
Will Butler:
You're actively not offended. I like that. Well, it just goes to show there's many different types of blind people in the world, as there are different types of people in the world. And believe it or not, we all have different opinions.
Byron Harden:
Yeah.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Well, no.
Will Butler:
Imagine that. I just want to do a final section on just the skills as we were talking about his cane technique, or just the little minutia of being blind that are portrayed in the film. Does anyone have any further thoughts on did he have a good ... This is where it starts to get difficult, because we're blind so visually assessing whether or not he was doing something "correctly" or "authentically" does prove a logistical challenge. Byron, when you were watching with your mom, did you guys have any discussions about that?
Byron Harden:
Absolutely.
Will Butler:
Did she say that's not real?
Byron Harden:
Absolutely. Yeah. So the cane technique, just to touch on that for a quick 20 seconds, tapping the back of the step, I don't do that. But she says that she sees, because she also drives and leads our learners when they come in and they're going back to the hotel for the evening after class. She says that she sees some of them doing that. She pays close attention. See, the problem with Byron Harden is that he is totally blind and he doesn't act like it. He doesn't. I forgot that years ago. And so I don't move around as a normal kind of-
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
I guess what someone would consider to be a blind person. And I don't know what the hell that is, but-
Will Butler:
Okay. So, you're saying ... yeah. So you're saying not your technique. It's not your technique, but maybe others.
Byron Harden:
But somebody does that, right?
Will Butler:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Byron Harden:
They use that technique. Me, personally, I just slide my cane off the step, oh okay, and I know about how far the next step is and how wide that next step is. That's why I use that particular technique. I don't think that it's accurate cane technique to tap the back of the step. However, the way that he was holding the cane, once again, he was holding it like he was stabbing a gazelle. I don't know what's up with me and these jungle animal things today, but like he's just trying to kill something.
Byron Harden:
And does some blind people do that, especially new blind folks? Yes. But I thought that that was also one of the weird things was that he could use the dimensions of the dance floor, and like Sheri was saying earlier. And so now you got this conflict of proper cane technique, but also at the same time, I have to look at it. Frank is an asshole. He didn't want to take any mobility lessons. He didn't want it. He didn't know anything about to do that.
Will Butler:
Right.
Byron Harden:
He didn't want to commit to being blind. And so that's why he had this weird ass cane technique. But when he grabbed Charlie's elbow, finally, it was one of those things where he went to the touch technique. And I was like, "Oh. Okay. All right. Man, that's kind of cool."
Will Butler:
Yeah. Yeah.
Byron Harden:
The money thing, obviously, to me if I'm giving money to someone, my money is folded up in a certain format. So the black cane, the color of the cane. I do know people that have black canes, and I know people that have canes that match their outfits, whatever they're wearing. Me, personally, Frank is that type of guy, so I can't say I wouldn't put that in a movie or I wouldn't write that in, but I could see that being ... That's why I said it was hyper authentic.
Will Butler:
Yeah.
Byron Harden:
I know people that do that.
Will Butler:
Okay. I just need to get to the ... Any final thoughts before we move on to Andrew? These are our concluding thoughts about the film here.
Byron Harden:
I thought it was wonderful. I thought that the sound was a little bit questionable, especially when they were yelling. It was kind of bursty. I don't like that. I like things to sound natural, no matter how loud they are. If it's something that's 90 decibels, let me hear that. Let me experience the spectrum, especially as a blind person. I would have to say, I would recommend everyone to spot this film.
Will Butler:
All right. Andrew, we don't have to pick apart the technique if that's not your interest, but I just want to get your final thoughts. So we'll give you a chance to give your final take on that first. And may just in assessing films about blindness in general, because if this is something we're going to do again, I want to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's really valuable for people.
Andrew Leland:
One thing that's stuck in my mind is just listening to Byron talk about the relationship between Frank and Charlie, and the cheesy version to say it would be like they both learned a great deal from each other. But there were all these little hints throughout the movie about vision that were not directly connected to Frank, around the whole plot of Charlie witnessing this prank that his classmates did. And at the edges ... So I'm just trying to ...
Andrew Leland:
This is not a fully formulated thought, but there was something in like when Frank comes to Charlie's aid at the end, as his advocate, as his father substitute, because Charlie's father left him, there's something about where Charlie doesn't rat on these other kids, even though they're rich, entitled slime balls. And it's like, what he's doing is he's denying what he saw. And there's this way in which the model of Frank, it's like a positive metaphor of blindness. It's a rare example where it's a good thing to not have seen, or to turn a blind eye, so to speak to something.
Will Butler:
Well, yeah. If I may, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is parsing really, the stuff about, "Oh, I didn't have my contacts."
Andrew Leland:
Right.
Will Butler:
And he's relying totally on sight as an alibi.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
Right. And it's really flimsy and uncompelling. And then at the end of the day, it's not through sight that Charlie gets let off, it's through integrity and oratory.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
Right? This amazing narrative that in speech, that Al Pacino is able to give.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
And maybe that is the superpower of blind people. It's not the ability to have hyper hearing or hyper smell, but it's the ability to have a coherent thought, to speak compellingly, to have integrity, to have strength, all these things that aren't as appealing in a comic book, but we can get out of a movie like this.
Andrew Leland:
Yeah.
Will Butler:
Really interesting. Sheri, I want to let you have the final word this.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Me, too. How did I get this position of getting the final words? But it'-
Will Butler:
Well, I feel a little bad that all these dudes are ganging up on you. But I also don't worry about you. I know that you have-
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Yeah, don't worry about me.
Will Butler:
You've got this. And I just wonder, can you take us home here? I sometimes call Sheri my blind mom because she has honestly, taught me so much about how to look at myself as a blind person.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Not that I'm much older than you.
Will Butler:
... how to be comfortable. Oh, yeah. No.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Anyway.
Will Butler:
It's a young mom. But give me the-
Byron Harden:
Young mom.
Will Butler:
Take us home here, Sheri.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Okay. So there are two things that I want to pull from stuff you guys have already said, and just spin them together here at the end, because I think they're really super important. We've talked a lot about the metaphor of blindness and I think it's our privilege and maybe responsibility to be super suspicious of any work of art that wants to go on metaphor about blindness. I think if that's what they're going for, don't they have anything better than one? Because that's been done. How many times?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
And that's a way of sneaking into people's subconscious and planting ideas about blindness. So we know that language doesn't control ... I'm a linguist. All right. That's my thing. That's my training. So we know that language doesn't control the way people think, but we do know that language exerts a meaningful influence on what people associate with other things. So if you go through your life pairing metaphors about your physical inability to see, with metaphors about being spiritually or intellectually or emotionally unaware, that mess is not trivial and it's not harmless.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
And it makes a difference in real people and how they perceive you. That implicit bias stuff. It makes a difference in how we think about each other. And we're not immune to it because we all grew up swimming in that same soup where blindness metaphors are rarely about being strong, beautiful and talented. That's not the way that really flows. But the other thing, the positive thing that I wanted to think about at the end is one of the most precious things that I think I have as a human being, let alone as a blind person, is my sense of agency and my sense of, if I want to go to New York, I go to New York.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
I'm a grownup and I have power to make decisions over my own life. And that's something that that character had. And he might've used it in ways that made me want to go have a glass of milk and lay down, but he's a grownup. And if he wants to be an ass, then he's got that sense of agency that's precious. And that's one of the things that you could see a little bit around the edges. It wasn't emphasized, but you could feel it. And sometimes he would say things like we tried to put him in a home, or have you tried the braille watch, like trying to control him.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
So I didn't get too much chance to bristle on his behalf, but I remembered that I should because that sense of you are entitled to be your own human is so important. And it's one of the first things that people try to take from you when you have any kind of disability. So I really appreciated that he had that part in spades going through the whole movie.
Will Butler:
Beautiful. I couldn't agree more.
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Hooah.
Byron Harden:
Hooah.
Will Butler:
Oh, we all spent [crosstalk 01:27:49]. I had it, that one. Hooah. Does everyone want to give me a hooah?
Lucky Tennyson (SMM7):
Hooah.
Byron Harden:
Hooah.
Will Butler:
Sheri?
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
Ah. No. All right. Hooah.
Lucky Tennyson (SMM7):
That was beautiful. And it's like the most reticent hooah ever uttered.
Byron Harden:
Right. Okay.
Lucky Tennyson (SMM7):
The anti-hooah.
Will Butler:
Guys.
Byron Harden:
Oh, man.
Will Butler:
Thank you all so much for doing this. It's been a wonderful discussion, and that is an hour and a half that you all won't get back. But you're giving a lot to the rest of the world and to our listeners. And I hope we can do this again some time.
Lucky Tennyson (SMM7):
Amazon not only should-
Sheri Wells-Jensen:
It was fun.
Lucky Tennyson (SMM7):
... make one of the most famous movies about blind people who have audio description on Amazon, but they should also include this conversation as a ... to the director's commentary extended cut at the end, I think. So if you're listening, Amazon, the challenge is laid before you.
Will Butler:
I like that. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Tune in next week for more info on the first Be My Eyes Podcast giveaway. Let us know what you'd like to hear on the podcast. All inquiries can go to podcast.com and we'll see you next week.
