Blind Film Club: What Did 'Ray' Do for Blind People?

Will Butler:

Hello and welcome to the Be My Eyes podcast. I'm Will Butler and this week we have another very special edition of our blind film club and it's one of the most well known films about blindness. That's right, it's Ray. But first, we have one more big giveaway we're doing on the Be My Eyes podcast for our listeners this season and this time it's also a big one, it's the vision enhancing wearable from eSight.

Will Butler:

What is eSight you may ask? Well luckily I have the information right in front of me. eSight 4 is the most advanced and versatile vision enhancing device for people with low vision or legal blindness. Ready for life on the go, eSight provides superior visual acuity, 100% mobility retention, all the comfort and ease of use. From attending school, advancing in a career, exploring new places or connecting with loved ones, eSight is helping people with low vision see new possibilities. Learn more at eSighteyewear.com and if you want to try to win one of these things, well, you probably know the drill by now. Go to BeMyEyes.com/eSight and enter your information. Be sure to read all the rules on the page because they will have you do a home evaluation in order to win, but we are very excited to be able to give away one of these fancy devices. The contest is going run for the next three and a half weeks. Check it all out at BeMyEyes.com/eSight.

Will Butler:

And now it's blind movie night. I'm joined by some of my favorite blind folks in the world. They are scholars, musicians and writers and we're going to talk about one of the most iconic portrayals of blindness for better and for worse, ever to hit the screens. And let's go.

Will Butler:

We're back with our favorite film club members, Sheri Wells-Jensen, Andrew Leland and Byron Harden. Hey everybody, how you guys doing today?

Byron Harden:

Real good.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Good.

Will Butler:

Byron. Sherri and Andrew

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

We're good.

Andrew Leland:

Feeling strong.

Will Butler:

Feeling strong. It's been quite a year, but we are back again to analyze another one of our favorite portrayals of blindness in film. I think we were a little hesitant to pick this movie because it is such a well known portrayal, but to me it felt important because it is going to establish a baseline for any future conversation we have about blindness on screen. We chose the Jamie Foxx bio pic of Ray Charles, Ray.

Will Butler:

Anyone want to hop in with any initial just gut check type thoughts about this movie? Is there some burning comment you've got to get in here before we start to pick apart this very famous movie about a very famous blind guy?

Byron Harden:

No, not me. I'm ready just to flow. I have some things, but I think it's going to come out in conversation.

Will Butler:

Byron, I don't know if you watched Ray initially or if you've re watched Ray now, but what's your feeling about the movie before our discussion today or before we were looking at it from a more academic lens here?

Byron Harden:

Yeah, this was my second time watching it and I felt that it's one of these performances that... I thought his performance was stellar. I know he slipped in and out of the Ray voice a few times and it was the Jamie Foxx voice, you knew it was Jamie Foxx, but sometimes it was really believable to somebody that can't see. I understand that the story seemed like it was more based around not so much him... Well, him handling the atrocity of him losing his sight early on and I looked at the movie from that particular perspective and no so much on his career, more so on how he handled the blindness.

Will Butler:

Right, they never let you forget that he's blind in this movie, right?

Byron Harden:

Right.

Will Butler:

Sheri, do you remember where your head was at before you sat down to watch this?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, this is my first time watching it and I resisted it because I know, but I always resist the movies where there's a sighted person playing a blind person just because I get... I mean that's almost all of them, right? So I have to get over that, but I was really reluctant to go into it because I thought, "What are they going to do the guy?" And so I felt defensive of him going in because I was worried about just what was going to happen to him. I felt bad for him just because-

Will Butler:

You didn't want the witness the blind abuse that was going to happen?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Exactly, yeah. So the thing that I did after watching this movie is I hurried up and skimmed through his autobiography-

Will Butler:

Was this Brother Ray?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

I'm glad someone read it because I didn't have time to sit down with it, so maybe you can pull some insight out of it.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

It was a pretty straightforward just what happened to him career wise. It was very career focused, but it was written very much in his style. It was ghost written, right, but it was really clearly his style, his phrasing, his way of talking. So I felt like it was him just talking about his career.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Then I also hesitate to say too much because it's his life and if it's an accurate portrayal of how this blind guy deals with blindness and lives his life, part of me is like, "Well, okay, that's how he did, so who am I to second guess him or to say, 'Well, he should do that,' or 'Well, he should have been using a cane,' 'Well, he should have done this,' and 'What's all that about being paid in singles? Come on, fold your money.'" I don't feel authorized to offer those critiques because it's a real human being and that's really how he did.

Will Butler:

Andrew, thoughts before and after from watching this? I assume it's not your first time seeing it?

Andrew Leland:

Yeah, I had seen it once before, and that was actually, what Sheri just said, it was one of the big takeaways I had thinking about critiquing the performance of blindness because it's a historical figure and it's so different from our last conversation about Scent of a Woman where that's like this totally imagined blind character, so I think there's a lot more openings to say, "What are you saying about blindness?" And I think there is stuff that we could talk about and we will talk about in terms of the screenplay, but for me, the performance is harder to push against, just because of the historical aspect of it, and also not just in terms of did he use a cane or not, but also even like Jamie Foxx doing a Ray impression and that's just a very different experience than watching Al Pacino, for example, be a blind guy. So I think that was interesting and also I think made me go easier on the movie in terms of its representation of blindness.

Will Butler:

There are some parallels though between Ray and Scent of a Woman, which jumped out at me pretty clearly. Did anyone else catch some of the similarities?

Andrew Leland:

The dark year kind of a thing, is that what you're talking about?

Will Butler:

That was for me the thing that shocked me is after the climatic conflict point of the movie he says the almost exact same line as Al Pacino, where he goes, "When I step out the door, I'm alone, I'm in the dark."

Andrew Leland:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

And I thought, "Wow, that's incredible that that's the same climatic line," but of course there were all these other things about he's got a sidekick who he trusts and then he doesn't trust and the womanizing. Again, historical character versus a imagined character, but you do have to also wonder how much is... There's this interplay between history and fiction and then fiction influences history. I'm sure that Ray influenced Scent of a Woman and then probably in return when they were creating Ray 12 years later, Scent of a Woman was in the back of their mind as well, right?

Andrew Leland:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Byron Harden:

That's a good point that I didn't even consider. I think that Ray, losing his sight early on, I kind of think that that was just creative writing at that point. I don't think he would have... not in that particular setting, an argument with his wife.

Will Butler:

Right, would he say something like that you mean?

Byron Harden:

Yeah, now if he had lost his sight at 45 years old, okay, I could see that, but I just think that was a little bit creative writing.

Andrew Leland:

Yeah, the whole movie, even beyond blindness, for me the really standout moment like that was when he was having an argument with, I think it was not the woman he went on to marry, but the sort of mistress.

Byron Harden:

Margie?

Andrew Leland:

Yeah, and that's how he wrote Hit the Road Jack! where they were yelling and he's like, "Hang on, that gives me an idea. Hit the Road," and just burst into song and then she starts singing with him. It's entertaining I guess and it's a good movie moment maybe, but also just totally ridiculous. So to me that's the level that the movie was operating on. Like, "I'm in the dark here, I suddenly burst into song in the middle of an argument." It almost had a quasi musical theater quality to it in that way.

Will Butler:

Yeah, and I think that when you take a liberty like that creatively, there are trade offs. You're getting people a story that's enjoyable, but in the same way that maybe portraying or misportraying the composition of a song, as that simple, is damaging to creatives everywhere. I think probably misportraying him saying something like, "I'm in the dark here," is fairly damaging to blind people everywhere, and I guess that's what movies do when they take these little liberties, is they say, "Well, we are actively misportraying something, but we're doing it in order to tell an entertaining story."

Byron Harden:

Yeah, I agree with that, especially being a little touchy or a little offensive to the blind community. I think that's the feel sorry for me type of... the ooh is me. It's like why would you go to that? You shooting heroin or what they call boy, "It's that boy, right?" and your wife is confronting you this whole pretty much lifestyle, this secondary lifestyle that you lead and then you go to blindness? What kind of rebuttal is that? It's like, "I'm blind, that's what we do."

Will Butler:

I felt the same way. It really stuck out to me and Sheri maybe also you have some thoughts on this, how every time he got in an argument with someone and every time he was really cornered, he brought out the blind card, and I just don't know if that's a normal behavior. Again, like Byron said, maybe for someone who's new to blindness, who thinks that it's a worthy scapegoat for all your problems, but I don't know. Sheri have you ever busted out your blind card in an argument with your husband?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I was just thinking that. I was like in all of the arguments I've had with all the people in all of my life I've never screamed, "I'm in the dark here," and I don't know how that played for him. I don't know, does it work? Because if it works we should consider it maybe, but I just never even... Okay, every once in a while when my kids leave a chair out or something I might say something like, "Was I supposed to smell that chair there? Come on." I'll say stuff like that, but I've never done the, "I'm in the dark here," to win an argument, not because it's beneath me, but because it never occurs to me.

Byron Harden:

I'm going tell you, I've not used it in that manner, but in discussion, it is... being that I have a unique sorry in the sense that I lost my sight twice, I will talk about some things that I do miss in conversation and those things have affected me, my second round of blindness has affected me in a way that some type of therapeutic consultation would make sense. So I get that part of it, but this dude never... Well, for as long as he can remember can see. So I'm like, "Dude, I don't know." What should have happened, the line that should have been written, the subsequent line should have been written from Bea's perspective was, "Who gives a damn about you not being able to see? All these things you do, you're conquering the world, Ray."

Will Butler:

They portray him as such an independent soul, so self-reliant.

Byron Harden:

Absolutely.

Will Butler:

And yet that's where he goes when he gets into a pickle? I don't know, I just don't buy it.

Andrew Leland:

There is a moment that I really liked that I feel like gets at that Byron is saying about the kind of coming back at him with that, where... I think it's maybe the same scene or somewhere around there, where she hands him the son's MVP trophy for baseball and I think she says like, "Did you ever look at this, like really look at it?" And there is a little bit of sighted screenwriter being like, "Isn't this cute that I'm having her use the word look," maybe, but the way it plays out in the scene it feels authentic in the way that I have seen just with blind people, like maybe even at the beginning of this conversation where you're like, "Did you see the movie yet?" We saw the movie and there's no like hand waving self consciousness like, "Did you 'see' the movie?" And it's the same thing. She's just like, "Look at your son's trophy," the same way that any wife would say to her husband in that argument, in that moment like, "No, really look at this," and then she puts it in his hands and he's feeling it.

Andrew Leland:

To me that's a good moment because his blindness is present, and it's kind of being called attention to, but also ultimately the point of that scene I think is not about his blindness, it's just about him realizing what he's done to his life and his family because of his addiction, and I guess that's one of the more interesting parts of the movie that I felt like in the screenplay there's all this stuff about his mom saying, "Don't ever become a cripple," and then later she's like, "You became a cripple," but it's because of his addiction. I thought that that was nicely done.

Will Butler:

Yes.

Byron Harden:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yes. It's funny that we're talking about him as a very independent person. I read him throughout the movie as traumatized and lonely. The one scene that brought that home to me is there was something about he was on the bus and everyone else went away or... No, it's when he's in the club and everyone else went out, they all left him and there he was, and he had to find his own way home, he finds his own way there and his lack of connection with the people around him, which I don't know, to me that just read as trauma, it just read as something went deeply wrong in his past and he never dealt with it, and maybe it was his little brother. I think that was what the movie said, was it was his little brother in combination with blindness and wherever it came from his life was a mess and blindness was just one of the vehicles by which he, I don't know... It's one of the things that happened, but it wasn't maybe the most important thing.

Will Butler:

Well, that's a great point, Sheri, and I think I want to bring us back around to this idea of Ray's trauma and everyone trying to prospect on it and figure out what was Ray's trauma, but first, just to zoom out for a moment, and then we'll go back in and take the movie beginning to end.

Will Butler:

So I did a little bit of research and there's some pretty interesting things going on behind the scenes of Ray. First of all, this movie actually was in the works since 1987, it came out in 2004, the year that Ray happened to pass away, but it's director and writer, Taylor Hackford, a white guy, who is now married to Helen Mirren I believe, got the rights to Ray's story back in 1987. Nobody wanted to make this movie about some blind musician. He couldn't get it made.

Will Butler:

It was one of these things that sat around for literally a decade or more until finally he financed to make the film independently. Now remember what's going on. It's 1987, there haven't been films like this with a blind character and meanwhile Al Pacino comes in, portrays this powerful role of a blind character in Scent of a Woman, and wins an Oscar. So suddenly, it's 1997, '98, '99 and everyone is looking at Ray's story a little differently. Nonetheless, he's still struggling to get it produced and who swoops in but the billionaire businessman, Philip Anschutz. Any of you know who Phil Anschutz is?

Byron Harden:

I don't.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I got nothing.

Andrew Leland:

No.

Will Butler:

He's an obscure figure, but he runs an incredible amount of business in America and in addition to being the owner of a company called AEG, which puts on music festivals such as Coachella.

Byron Harden:

Absolutely, yep.

Will Butler:

He also owns hockey teams, he owns major, major businesses, energy, railroads, real estate, sports, newspapers, movie theaters, arenas, and he's an incredibly conservative, as you would imagine, billionaire.

Will Butler:

So Phil Anschutz, there was a massive boycott of Coachella at one point because of Phil Anschutz's involvement and according to the director himself, he even considered backing out of the movie once Phil Anschutz got involved, but he didn't, and they went on to make the film. I'm pointing this out to show you that this film was not the creation of those who lived it per se, this was not created by black people, it was not created by blind people, it was very much a product of a few powerful white guys.

Will Butler:

So zooming back in here, the film gets made, Jamie Foxx is selected to win the role. Jamie Foxx is, up until this point, a relatively beloved but not necessarily lauded actor, he's a comedian, but he throws himself into the role, and he studies and there's all these articles about how he "became Ray." He was supposed to spend months hanging out with Ray Charles, but he only spent two weeks hanging out with him because he said he was imprinting the mannerisms of a 73-year-old instead of the mannerisms of the younger Ray, so he stopped hanging out with Ray two weeks in, and he had all these method tactics while he was doing the role. He wore an eye prosthetics that supposedly made him blind up to 14 hours a day and while he wasn't shooting he stayed up all night practicing piano. So Jamie Foxx, obviously an excellent musician, he went to school for music, his first job was as a rehearsal pianist at a dance studio, he knows what he's doing and he's playing the piano in every scene of the movie. Now he's not singing, though he does have a good Ray Charles impression.

Will Butler:

So this movie is obviously buoyed by the performances of black actors and actresses and that is really the heart and soul of the movie, but very similar to what we're seeing on the screen of the white characters engineering and containing, in many ways, those black talents in the film, is sort of what is happening behind the scenes of the movie. When the Oscars rolled around and everybody patted themselves on the back, it was Taylor Hackford and Phil Anschutz, who were really making the serious money.

Will Butler:

So that's the background of Ray as far as I read it. I didn't get a chance to sit down with the autobiography, but I think that it's sort of understood that this pretty closely follows what is at least publicly known to be Ray's story of growing up poor in Georgia or North Florida, watching his brother drown, very shortly after going blind due to some sort of infection and then being taught to be self-reliant by his mother, but we open on Ray in his early young man days, 17, 18 going out to find his first gig and this is where I would turn back to what Sheri was saying because the first thing that really struck me about this film is the blind abuse.

Will Butler:

The first 20, 30 minutes of this film, he is just getting ripped apart for being blind. Sheri, did you pick up on this? Does this resonate with you at all? What's going on here?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, it was very much like the awkward adolescence scene where maybe the blind person was just being tolerated and was just there and was just unable to integrate with... weirdly, even though they played music together, they weren't friends, they didn't trust each other. I don't know, [crosstalk 00:26:05] played.

Will Butler:

Musician-

Byron Harden:

You talking anybody Fathead?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I mean I feel like-

Will Butler:

You're talking about Fat... all the musicians, right?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

They're kind of like-

Byron Harden:

Oh, all of them? Okay.

Will Butler:

At first they're hesitant to bring him in. There's constant blind jokes about him. Like the guy won't let him on the bus because he's blind. When he finally does get a gig then musicians don't want to hang out with him, they laugh at him in his presence, they don't let him on the drug sessions. I understand it to a certain degree that this was a different time, this was a different era, things weren't as progressive. Of course, we had segregation and the attitude towards disabilities wasn't as developed, but how realistic is this really, guys, this blind abuse that we're seeing?

Byron Harden:

I think it was 100%.

Will Butler:

Interesting.

Byron Harden:

Yeah. I felt that the racial/unique ability prejudice was definitely something that at that time was people were a little less sophisticated as it pertained to handling these types of experiences, even if it weren't their personally. You have something as ignorant as somebody looking at someone different because the color of their skin, I would not be surprised that that would be the same level of ignorance towards someone who couldn't see or couldn't walk or something like that.

Byron Harden:

We get met with it today, even in agencies that support us as blind people. We get met with that same level of prejudice with these types of shelter shops and stuff like that. I just think that it's blind people selling pencils, I say it all the time, I'm in a unique position to comment on that, which I won't go down that road, but like I say, it is a mentality that definitely fundamentally, I think it still exists.

Will Butler:

You think it's just more cloaked now, more hidden and behind politically correct speech and all this stuff?

Byron Harden:

Things got a little bit more sophisticated in the manner of handling or presenting, dressing it up, it just wears a different outfit now. So yeah, I just think that it's a very accurate representation.

Will Butler:

Sheri, the thing you said about how to you he just seemed traumatized and alone, and I think that obviously seeing your brother die is probably a serious first trauma, but there's this concept also of chronic lower grade trauma that can occur to you now in modern therapeutic circles and Ray could have been equally traumatized by how alienated or discriminated against he was for his blindness. Is that what you were getting at or am I putting words in your mouth here?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, that's sort of where I'm going at and that's... it's sort of... I feel like both things happen. There are days when I can go out and I walk down the street and someone says hello to me and that's all groovy and I go and I teach my classes and everything is fantastic, but then other days when I try to do something simple like get on an airplane and basically they have to call in the security if I say I don't want to pre board. There are times where you go into a group setting and they're like, "Oh, come over here and I'll get you a little chair and you can sit here," and then there are times when I go into a group setting and they're like, "Well, hi." I wish I knew what button to push to control those variables because I can never predict when each thing is going to happen, but I think we all live with it, trauma of exclusion in that sense that you can't just be somewhere because someone is going to make a fuss.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

You get into a cab and some days it's... Like, if I take a cab to campus, some days it's, "Good afternoon Dr. Wells-Jenson. How nice of you to [inaudible 00:31:06], lovely" or la-da-da, and some days it's like, "Oh, do they have a special program for you on the big campus?"

Will Butler:

Ooh.

Byron Harden:

Sheri, are you wearing your helmet at this point?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I know, right. But you got to have a whole set of strategies and mechanisms and ways of talking to yourself about that in order not to curl up and hide.

Will Butler:

Yeah. Well, I was in a meeting the other day where someone was trying to explain blindness to somebody else and I believe both these people were not blind, and someone said, "The thing to know about blind people is that they're very comfortable in their own environment, but once they step out into another environment, that's when all the challenges arise." I'm paraphrasing here. No shade on the person who said that because it is a probably partially accurate observation, but I would argue that it's not due to our own inability to take in a new environment. It's because when we go into a new environment the other people in that environment often can't handle the new stimulus of us being there, right?

Byron Harden:

Right.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

You can manage that to some extent on some days. We can all turn that around sometimes, but not every time.

Will Butler:

Yeah, it's like if you went to an airport. We've got all the tools to get around an airport without tripping or falling or getting lost, and even with some of the technology, we can find that gate we're looking for, but it's really the blockage of other people getting in the way of us doing things our own way that keeps us from succeeding.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Airport trauma.

Will Butler:

Yeah. Here's the other thing that I noticed and this is in the same vein. There's this thing that happens over and over in the film where people get in between Ray and his environment and it's like you reach out to touch something and someone grabs it for you and puts it in your hand. You try to find the door and someone moves. There's this constant thing about people wanting to serve as the interface between you and the world and that to me resonated as very relatable and very accurate of, "Here, here's some money." "Oh no, I'll handle that for you." "Oh, let's have a conversation about this." "Oh no, no, we'll have that conversation for you." That actually to me resonated as very, very true and I'd be curious to know in what other instances you guys think that happens in your own lives, about people trying to step in and be the intermediary between your experience of the world.

Will Butler:

Andrew, you've been a little quiet over there, how did you feel when you saw Ray being stifled in the first half an hour of the movie? You've spent a lot of time interviewing blind people, you've had your own experience coming into blindness, you still kind of experience the world both with a cane and without. Do you ever worry that people are going to treat you in this way or where you at?

Andrew Leland:

Yeah, I always use my cane when I'm out in the world and I definitely sometimes wish I could it away because I have enough vision that I can sometimes see it coming, not that I need vision, I'm sure I'll feel it coming if I can't see it coming, but I'm with Byron, I think that a lot of those early scenes of just call it ableism, that's what I would call it, with like the white races country music singers and then the black musicians equally, very different types of ableism I think, but the same idea of like cheating them out of money, coddling him or talking down to him, I think all of that is real and I think that you're right, that historically it would just be more out in the open, just like racism was institutionally... like it was segregated, but I think even if just like if you look at Ray's life, like mainstreaming in public schools had started to happen, but by... what year was he in school? You guys have a better handle than me for-

Will Butler:

'30s and '40s.

Byron Harden:

Yeah, '40s.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

Andrew Leland:

So there could have been a situation probably for like white blind kids maybe, like a fraction of what we have today, but certainly it would have been a segregated school for the blind that he went to. So I just felt like that felt real to me and in terms of my own experience I do think that the cane just is like a lightening rod for ableism and doesn't even really matter what's going on with the person holding it, it's just a signifier that makes people treat you differently. So that I thought was pretty realistic in terms of [crosstalk 00:37:06]

Will Butler:

Let's talk about the cane because we don't see any white canes in this movie. Now, as I understand it, white canes were really brought into use more after World War II, so it could be that they were just getting started with the white cane. Was anyone able to figure out whether or not Ray actually used a cane? I could not for the life of me figure it out.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

So I asked my spouse this and he said there were no canes in the movie and in Ray's autobiography he said the three things that he never wanted to have were a guitar or a cane or a dog because he didn't like the idea of the blind blues musician with the guitar and my understanding is that he never did. He either just went for it and walked or had a guide.

Will Butler:

Wow. So Ray thought of himself as bucking stereotypes, huh?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, he didn't want to be... I think... because that's part of what makes me read a lot of this as trauma, is that he had some wicked skills. There was that scene where he was frying chicken in the dark that they specifically mentioned that he was cooking in the dark, and he got on the damn bus by himself and went across country. That takes guts. This is not a passive frightened fellow, but at the same time, it's that juxtaposition of just the raw courage that it takes to get on a bus when you nobody and go out across the whole country versus some of the other things that happened to him. It's a lot.

Byron Harden:

But I thought he received that training early on through-

Will Butler:

He went to a school for the blind, they must have...

Byron Harden:

And I wished they would have really gotten into some of that, just give me a scene on that because paired with his mom and that, he's on the bus at seven or eight years old as a blind kid with no shoes on, right, going to the school, and it's like, "Come on." I think he's ready at 18 years old and you're fearless at that point, you're like, "I could take the world on. I don't care." But I really wish they would have given us a scene or two on the blind school. I think it would have helped support that he looks like Superman down the line traveling across the country. I think that would have help educate. That could have took that opportunity for education to those that don't know. There are blind people... A couple of my trainers, they walk around with zero cane. We pick them up at the airport, they don't have a cane.

Will Butler:

Really?

Byron Harden:

Yeah. I should have called these dudes out on here, but I'm not going to do it. No, they're great-

Will Butler:

So, that's interesting. Can you tell us a little more about that, Byron, without naming any names?

Byron Harden:

Yeah. A couple of my guys they will move around the country without a cane. I would never in my entire life consider it. They will have their cane, but it stays folded and they exactly like Ray, they wear the hard bottomed shoes, they're able to hear. If we're going somewhere they use you as the guide where they don't even latch onto you. These guys prefer to walk behind you, so they're listening to your cane. So their travel skills are through the roof undoubtedly. Is it the safest method of travel? No, but I guess it kind of... and I don't know why, I haven't had that discussion.

Byron Harden:

So that part of Ray I get. When he leaves Bea, when he drops her off and he hits her with the line that all of us have dated a girl and you want to go to that next level. She shoots him down and he say, "Okay, I'll see you in three weeks," and he leaves and she's like, "Do you need some help or do you need to call a cab or something?" He's like, "Nah, I don't need that, three blocks up, just at this [inaudible 00:42:01] boom, boom, boom. Hello, and he going down the road.

Byron Harden:

Now, he does do some trailing. He does do some shore lining there.

Will Butler:

With his feet?

Byron Harden:

Yeah, with the grass, his feet and the way that he was walking, he definitely had the... Jamie Foxx had that part completely nailed. Just the way he... his pace and how you could hear that he's using his feet, which is the same thing that I hear from my guys that they're trained here at IC music and they come around with no cane. But I 100% would not leave the house without a cane and not know the environment. Will I have my cane in my bag and maybe not use it? Yeah, there's a couple of venues in town that I would do that at being that I am familiar enough with it, but I'm not familiar to the tune of you don't know if there's going to be a mop bucket in the middle of the floor, you don't know if somebody spilled something. It's like, "Nah, I'm not interested in that," but yeah, I saw that as a very accurate portrayal.

Will Butler:

When he leaves Della Bea's house, regardless of whether or not he's using a cane, this is an iconic moment and personally I think if you're new to blindness and you never met a lot of blind people, having a blind person walk away from you down the street by themself and say, "No, I'm good," and just leave the way that anybody else would, makes a big impression on you because I remember when I was new to blindness and I didn't consider myself blind and the first time I met a blind person who said, "All right, see you later," and they just walked off into the night, and just started whacking bushes with their cane and just fearlessly trod off make a big impression on me.

Will Butler:

I think that that scene where he walks down the sidewalk, regardless of whether or not he's got a cane, I think it it's an important part of the movie.

Byron Harden:

Yeah, in these venues it shows them.... There's some things the like I said, these are all things that I see that got nailed. When he's down in the hallway trying to get in and do drugs with the guys in the band that was doing drugs or when they were done and he had to come back to the piano and I think this is when he came up with... No, it wasn't that point. This was a point where the crowd was like, "Ah, this is whatever, get out of here," they was kind of disagreeing with the performance, and when he came back to the piano because he had moved the microphone away I believe and when he came back he kind of fumbled around to get the mic and I thought that that was a really good moment. It was pretty accurate because blind cats who sing and play piano at the same time, once they get that orientation they good to go.

Byron Harden:

Steven Wonder is another one that does it very well. They know how to approach the mic, how to address it, but then when he got up, he moved the mic away, it's like, "Okay, that orientation. Now I got to get reoriented. Now I got to get repositioned." So when he came back to the piano because I think he was heading off the stage and when he came back that's when he fumbled to get to it, he forgot that it wasn't there in the excitement and I was just like, "Oh man, this is... and kind of [inaudible 00:46:21] Yeah, I got a moment [inaudible 00:46:26], but I don't think that was the song, but I thought that that was another great moment that probably snuck past people.

Will Butler:

Just because the cane is so nonexistent in the movie I think we can sit on this for another minute here of like what are the cases in which you don't need a cane? Obviously in your own home, but thinking outside of your own home, when do find yourself setting down the cane, putting it away, leaning it against a wall when you're not at home? Andrew, what are your thoughts? You probably take it out and put it away the most of all.

Andrew Leland:

No, actually. I bought a non collapsible cane that I've been using for a couple months now, which prevents me from ever putting it away because there's nothing to put that thing away in. It's big and doesn't fold.

Will Butler:

Cool.

Andrew Leland:

Part of that is intentional because I think I'd be tempted to do it more, but I'm all in on the cane, even though I've got maybe 5% of my visual field left, but I'm at the point where I'm realizing more and more that that vision that I have is not doing me any favors or that I put more stock in it than I should. Like I'll cross a street and look to see if there are any cars there and be like, "Cool, I'm good to go," and then halfway across the street be like, "Oh right, except for the giant Ford F150 that's idling right there that I somehow missed when I went to check the street."

Andrew Leland:

So I'm all in on the cane, but still if I'm walking home I turn my corner to my block, which is my block and it's quiet and I've walked it a billion times and there can still be things but maybe half the time I'll... I feel like it's like one of the trucks raising the snow plow to drive down the street, I'll raise the cane up and not do the full tapping technique but I was doing some blindfold, some sleep shade training recently and then I would, in an indoor environment, if I knew I was just hanging out in a one or two rooms, I wouldn't bring my can everywhere I went because I could just feel around, but that's my cane situation.

Will Butler:

You travel independently to so many parts of the world it just doesn't seem like not having a cane is... anyone who's traveled anywhere outside of their home turf knows that you're going to fall in a hole, you know what I mean? How can you even... What are your thoughts on this whole cane situation?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I've undergone a giant evolution on this throughout my life and I now also have a straight cane because I realized I just like the way it feels in my hand and I like the way it taps better and I like how it doesn't fold up on me. I don't like the wiggle of a folding cane, but I will go across the street to get my mail with no cane, and I've been thinking about this while you guys were talking, partly because I want my hands free, but I always feel like I'm signing a waiver with myself, "Okay, you are going to cross the street with no cane to get your mail. Now if something happens when you're at the mailbox and you need to turn around and run somewhere or I don't know, someone says, 'Hey, come on over here, let's chat,' or anything happens and I'm without my cane," and it's bad, right?

Will Butler:

Yeah.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Then I think, "Well, you signed up for this by leaving your cane in the house. You signed the waiver when you went out the door without your cane," and the times when I don't have the cane in my hand outside of that are times when I'm carrying stuff, like when we're schlepping gear to a gig actually and I've got the speaker or whatever and my instruments and side of cables and stuff, I can't, so then the cane is a pain in the neck because I got my hands full, but boy, I don't like it.

Will Butler:

You really do have to throw caution to the wind when you put the cane away.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

The thing is like it's fine, it's not like the world is littered with cliffs that we're going to tumble off if we don't have our canes out. So for me, it's just that feeling of, "Okay, I know that I don't really need this cane to cross this parking lot, it's a parking lot. It's a freaking parking lot, there's probably not a hole in the middle of it and that I'm going to fall down and break my leg," but I've got the cane going across the parking lot partly because I'm ready for anything then. So it's not always about the immediate situation that I'm in, it's about what the next thing is that's going to happen. What if a pal of mine pulls up in a car and says, "Hey, you want to go for ice cream?" And then do I want to be like, "Oh, I have to go back to my house and get my cane." I don't want to do that, so it's with me and because it's with me I feel poised, I feel ready.

Will Butler:

I think from my own perspective before I started using the cane I didn't realize how incredibly stressed I was all the time. I didn't know that the cane was the answer yet, but I was in a constant state of being on the defensive because I couldn't explain myself, people didn't understand what was going on with me, this, that and the other thing. So I guess what we see with Ray is that he was signing this waiver every time he walked every day. Where he's kind of signing a waiver with the world where he was saying, "I'm going to charge out there totally blind without an aid and just see what happens," and when you read accounts of Ray comparing him to this movie, they'll say, "Ray was not as amiable and docile as he's portrayed by Jamie Foxx." He was someone, I think, said, "a charging bull." That scene where Ray jumps over the table and tackles the guy who he doesn't think is paying home correctly was I think more Ray than the kind of smiling, reserved Ray that we see in so many of the scenes.

Byron Harden:

I agree with that.

Will Butler:

So moving through the film, we move out of the focus being on Ray's blindness and into his career and how he was just this consistent hit maker all through the '60s and he just ratcheted through friends and lovers and wives. I think there was a wife that wasn't even portrayed in the film, but the focus comes off of his blindness. Did any of you have any scenes that stuck out at you or just thoughts that you wanted to bring to the conversation today if we open it up a little bit and kind of popcorn a little bit here if anyone wants to jump in.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, here's the one thing. I left this movie feeling just incredibly sad. I know he's successful and he had all these great things happen, but I just left feeling heartbroken for him for his path of destruction personally that even... But the thing that bothered me most about the movie was that there was no other disabled people in it.

Will Butler:

Yeah.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

The [inaudible 00:54:43], oh my God, that lack of community was just this yawning chasm of loneliness that he had all these musician friends but were they nice to him? Did they like him? And not that you need disabled people to be your friends because you don't have any other friends. I think that his isolation was one of his characteristics, but the thing that the movie portrayed that I thought was the most destructive beyond whatever about the cane, was that disabled people are isolated and there's only like one in any given situation, and that we can't be a benefit to each other, that we can't lift each other up, support each other and love each other in ways that could really help and that can... like when you're in one of those situations where there's blind of use or people are just alienating you and not being... who's going to understand that? You need your people, you need your community and there was none of that.

Byron Harden:

That's what I was saying about the blind school. I thought it should at least, like I said, I'm beating a dead horse here because it's not in the film. It's implied. The mom says, "This is school is for blind. Other blind people will be there, it's for blind kids," da-da-da-da-da, and that's amazing. I think that's hands down, 100%, for me, has affected my interaction with the world as a blind person in a very positive manner. I sing the praises of Illinois State School for the Visually Impaired. Back in the '80s it was an unbelievable learning ground and those sighted cottage parents and teachers and mobility instructors, they really did care about your wellbeing and what you were going to be in the future.

Byron Harden:

Things were a lot looser back in the '80s as far as that was concerned. They taught us things from counting money to working to proper dining skills, basically really integrating you into society in a way. They had us interacting with other school age kids in the community. They had sighted kids volunteer and come on campus and there was a very innovative and progressive curriculum and overall social programming there at that school, trying to assure inclusion.

Byron Harden:

Of course, I wasn't around in the '30s, but I know things were much different as far as knowledge of or the experience of being around someone with a unique ability. I don't think it was uncommon for you to be the only blind person running around at that time, especially in the manner that he did because a lot of them probably was highly sheltered. You ain't going to see them, they tucked away and for somebody to do what he was doing, I think of a lot of blind musicians doing it as well on the same token, right?

Will Butler:

Right, he was the not the first blind musician here, right?

Byron Harden:

No, that running around.

Will Butler:

Ray is from a long, long line of well known blind musicians who did just fine.

Byron Harden:

Yep, absolutely.

Will Butler:

I think I want to point out that part of what our conversations on this podcast aim to do is to help not just unpack but to prescribe a little bit how these portrayals could be improved and I think to your guys' point, imagine the good that could be done in a film like this, that's viewed by so many people and so highly rated, to just do a little bit of extra research... Remember, Ray was alive when this film was being made. They were talking to him, he was advising on this film. So everything you see in the film Ray decided that it was okay or even pushed for it, and that's why it's such a sad but also very highly flattering version of his life.

Will Butler:

To do the research and just pull out a three minute scene about Ray's blindness education, about what community Ray came from, about who really did teach Ray to be so independent as a blind person. Was it his mother? I don't know if his sighted mother teaches those sort of blind skills. It could have made a big difference in a lot of people's perceptions of blindness, as opposed to this somber scene where he gets on the bus, he says, "I can keep up with the other sighted kids, Mom, please let me stay," and she says, "No," and she pushes back tears and puts him on the bus and then he goes off into darkness for the next 10 years.

Byron Harden:

I'm only saying this because I'm experienced. I think his mom was kind of like my mom in a sense. She didn't really coddle at all. She's like, "No, you're going to be..." I'm looking for a good word, but "You're going to have the socialization of a 'normal' child." So I was riding bikes, I was running, I was playing soccer, I was busting my head on the wall while playing these sports and obviously I had different injuries. I wasn't getting injured from the actual sport itself, it was the other side of it, navigating it. So that to me as a child is a very easy thing to jump into obviously because again, like I said earlier, you're just fearless, and I think she really instilled that from the top of the game for him. Once again, that's why I say I don't know, this thing just takes me back to disconnect of, "I'm in the dark here." Like come on now, no you're not, you're totally in the light.

Byron Harden:

I did not see this... I know I'm jumping all over the place, but I didn't see this as a sad story. I saw this as a very triumphant thing, the next 40 years where they left off at, he obviously was still successful and getting off drugs and being able to continue on with his career in a way that anybody who [inaudible 01:02:41]... he was performing and he was still relevant till the day that he passed away, this guy could still sell out an arena something. I'm a huge Ray Charles fan, so I felt really... I thought they did a really good job.

Will Butler:

Yeah. I wonder if there are any other... recognizing that this movie won awards, this movie was a commercial success by every measure, but from the standpoint of portraying blindness what else would we throw in the mix that we would like to have seen, that we appreciated seeing, that we'd like to see more of? How can we put that on our friendly constructive criticism hat. Andrew do you got any-

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

It's hard. Yeah, go ahead Andrew. Andrew has been too quiet.

Will Butler:

He's always so polite. He politely he sits back there, but then he says something erudite.

Andrew Leland:

Hey, I'll try to be less erudite, that doesn't sound good. I guess one thing that bugged me about, beyond the, "I'm in the dark here," and again, I get caught up in was that coming from Ray's autobiography, in which case who am I to say otherwise, but there was an interesting thing the movie did where his reticence to innovate musically was tied to his blindness, where he, even like explicitly I think says like, "I'm blind and I don't want to be like having a tin cup selling pencils or doing the blind trades." I think he talks about wicker baskets.

Andrew Leland:

So, "I have to play it safe and make music that I know people are going to like," and there was this whole thread through the movie of Atlantic Records guys and Bea and others saying like, "Be yourself, Ray. You've got to be authentic," and then that led to his combining gospel and R&B and then going back to the country thing and they call these like genre busting innovations that he made that sort of, the movie anyway, directly ties to his blockbuster success. It was just interesting to see that blindness was a part of that artistic limitation that he felt, and I'd be curious to hear about where that fit in for his actual autobiography.

Andrew Leland:

If I can go back a little bit, there was something I was thinking about just talking about the way that he was the only disabled character in the movie, thinking about there was a little person, Oberon, was the kind of MC, he's like on the very early gigs that he got, who's the guy who, I think, notably pulls him aside and says, "They're cheating you. Here's the card of the guy who's going to actually launch your career." And that felt like one little gesture towards a disability solidarity to me where it's like, "I'm also disabled. Let me tell you how it really is. These guys don't have your best interest in mind."

Andrew Leland:

For me I thought it was totally believable, like Byron is saying, that he probably very well was the only blind guy in the room and I think if you look at the experience of, particularly like you said, people in these industries where sure there are other blind musicians, but I don't think it's such a stretch to imagine Atlantic Records in the '60s is not going to have a bunch of blind engineers running around.

Andrew Leland:

The thing for me that was really interesting was that the most powerful part of the movie for me was the way he backed out of the concern in Georgia saying that he wouldn't play unless they desegregated the concert and there was this scene of huge civil rights moment that was so powerful that led him to being banned, that led him to becoming... it got folded into his success and sort of black civil rights historically in reality it has such a presence in his life and around the same time there is this idea of disability civil rights or blind civil rights. Like the NFB is founded in 1940 and is doing their thing through this period, but certainly has a much lower profile.

Andrew Leland:

So just thinking about critiquing the movie or critiquing Ray for not having a blind entourage with him like we would like him to have maybe or like hiring a blind manager or a blind engineer, I just feel like there's a historical element to that that's interesting that we weren't there yet and in some ways we're not even there yet now. Certainly a lot of progress has been made and we have the ADA and we have these various consumer organization pushing for political change, but I still feel like disability is catching up the civil rights movement in terms of being organized and being effective and that was and interesting tension being played out in the film, which emphasized his blindness at least as much as his blackness, but to very different ends.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, that's all really well said and I'm thinking there's that line between the professional and the personal also, right? So he couldn't hire... like he wasn't going to hire a blind engineer because maybe there wasn't one, but then like where... But see part of it is... I was about to say, but then where did he go when he needed people? But that was part of his whole thing, right, was he was just not going to need people.

Will Butler:

I think it's also important to recognize that when you embrace blindness and learn to value of community you very, very quickly forget what it's like to feel like the only blind person that exists. I don't know, probably all of us have felt that in some way at some point. I certainly felt that way and I think we probably have listeners who are the only blind person in their own life.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

And I don't think that it's fair to assume that every blind person knows another blind person. So I think we have to acknowledge that we're speaking to those people as well, and for some people, they're never going to plug into a large community of blind and visually impaired people.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I lived that way for the first, I don't know, decades, decades, decades, and the disabled people I met didn't seem like they were fun to hang out with, so I didn't early on. They're just like, "Oh." You don't want to do anything cool, so why should I hang out with you?" So I get that. It's just it has made such a difference to me when I finally figured out, "Oh my God, look at all these brilliant, loving, fantastic other disabled people that there are in this world," and it was a huge transformation for me when I met people like me, people who are like me and it was amazing. That's what I want people to know because although you can be really super successful and perfectly happy in your life as the only disabled person and that could work out, it was working out for me, but just that there's this whole other world that you can have.

Will Butler:

Frankly, I don't want to be bleak, but there's a unique kind of loneliness that comes from never being able to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with someone who also knows what it's like to be blind.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

Andrew Leland:

I feel like I just want to acknowledge that for me Will Butler, you're that guy. You're definitely the first cool blind person I met and our early conversations, I was like, "Oh, okay," like everything Sheri just said, like, "Yeah," because I had had the experience of going to a local organization when I was living in Missouri and being like, "Nope, definitely not. Everybody is very old and I don't feel like I have anything in common," and now I think going back I would... I think I was just totally just passing judgment on these people that I didn't give chance to, but-

Will Butler:

Yeah, you apply a level of scrutiny-

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Oh, me too, yeah.

Will Butler:

... that's not really fair. Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Leland:

But still, I just think like even this podcast and a lot of work, Will, it seems like you've made it your job and your mission to be the cool blind guy and to just be the cheerleader for that kind of community building and it's awesome that you're doing it, and I think it's important work.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Shit, you guys are on to me. No, the mission is not just to be cool, it's about being relatable, and it's about being like, "Oh, here's some who sort of thinks the way I do or who sort of has similar values or just has interests in general that resonate with mine," and we're just trying to show all the different flavors of it.

Will Butler:

Before we wrap things up, I have a question. Have any of you ever caught a grasshopper?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I noticed that scene.

Byron Harden:

Okay, dude. Okay, all right. Let's talk about this real quick.

Will Butler:

Everybody calm down. I knew this was going to be-

Andrew Leland:

Here we go.

Will Butler:

... controversial, it's why I saved it for the end.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Woo.

Byron Harden:

I'm going to go last on that one, okay?

Will Butler:

Okay, Sheri, then Andrew, then Byron.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Thing one, do I want to catch a grasshopper? It's a grasshopper after all, do I want that?

Will Butler:

Tell us about your relationship with insects, Sheri?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah, I don't have a relationship with insects. I swat them away when they get near me.

Will Butler:

Okay, so there's a scene where he's a child and this is to symbolize his new connection with blindness, he's crawling around the ground and he hears a grasshopper and he reaches out and he cups it in little hands and he puts his hands to his ear and he listens to it, "Mamma, I know you're here too." It's this very poignant scene. He's catching a... So, I really do think it's important to explore blind people's relationship with insects because to me this is actually one of the more perplexing and vexing parts about being blind to this day. I think I figured out a lot of things about being blind, but I do not think I have figured out my relationship with insects.

Andrew Leland:

I think you got to go first, Will. What's your relationship?

Will Butler:

Well, that's what I'm saying, I'm a little... on some days I feel at peace with all the living creatures on earth and as long as I don't have to feel them on me, they don't have to feel me on them, but at the same time some days I'm like paranoid as hell that I'm going to get bit by a spider and when that fly is buzzing in the middle of the night, even if the Be My Eyes app can help me find it, it can't help me catch it, and that's frustrating. So I want to know have any of you ever caught a grasshopper the way that Ray did in this movie and is this a skill that I'm missing out on?

Andrew Leland:

Byron, I really want to hear Byron's answer.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Me too.

Andrew Leland:

I'll answer the question by saying this just quickly. I'm going to not comment on the insect question, but I will say it reminds me of the scene where he hears the hummingbird out the window and when that happened I was just like, "Oh, give me a flipping break." It was like Scent of a Woman, where he smells perfume over 35 plates of steaming filet mignon, it's just not real, but then it totally redeemed itself for me because he was like, "No, listen," and then she heard it and then it was like okay, there's a sound that was like wherever they were sitting was audible to anybody and he just happened to notice it and was using his hearing differently, didn't have super hearing, high fives, good stuff. Now I want to hear about Byron catching a cricket or grasshopper.

Byron Harden:

Oh, man, or not because I was totally a kid that did that stuff, lightening bugs and catching them in the jar, holding them captive. What a brute I was, but here's the thing. Come on now. And then you left out the scene about the blind school? Again, that's the disconnect for me. The hummingbird was a disconnect for me. To this day I sit on deck and we have a hummingbird, he hangs out. I can't hear that guy, and I'm told that he is around, so I can then pay attention more closely. I cannot hear that guy, I'm sorry, I just can't and especially in a restaurant. Now I'm sitting on a deck where it's quiet. A restaurant with clanging plates and people talking, conversation and it's like, "Ah, I'm not biting. I'm not biting." I thought that that scene could have definitely been left out.

Byron Harden:

Now, what his mom did by being quiet purposefully and being like, "Okay, you got to find it." "Mommy, I need help. I need you, Mommy," and she's just standing there like, "Hmm, okay," and she wants to help but she knows that if she coddles the situation this is going to compromise him later on down the line and I know that's what they were shooting at, but this super hero catching this cricket, no. Because let me tell you something. When you hear a cricket they have this amazing ability to sound like they're somewhere where they're not.

Will Butler:

Oh yeah, those reflections, those high frequency reflections will bounce off of anything.

Byron Harden:

Ooh, and try to locate that. Your isolation is just... you have to be off the charts to pinpoint as far as your ability is concerned. To hear the cricket coming across the floor, maybe so, if he's hopping high enough, but a cricket walking? No. No.

Will Butler:

And what it says to the audience is there's-

Byron Harden:

Blind people have this super power. They can [crosstalk 01:18:37] that's not true.

Will Butler:

Yeah, and it's not about skills or community or practice, it's about just feeling in touch... it's a mentality. There's only like...

Byron Harden:

Yeah.

Andrew Leland:

He's entering the blindness like this is the world and the sound has opened [crosstalk 01:18:59]

Will Butler:

And let's be clear. A parent's job, a parent is not going to help a blind kid succeed by holding their breath while they stumble around. A parent is going to help a blind kid succeed by showing them how to succeed and I get that it's symbolic of not getting in the way of the kid experiencing the world, that's important, but parents of blind kids, please don't hide from them when they hurt themselves.

Byron Harden:

But she did say that, "I'm going to show you once and then I'm going to, if you mess up I'll help you, but that third time? You're going to have to get it yourself, baby."

Will Butler:

Yeah, that's a famous line. My friends always say that to me, just to mess with me.

Byron Harden:

Yeah.

Will Butler:

Yeah.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

And I do think we want to walk that middle road between blind people just have skills, but no other cognitive or sensory processing differences. We're not sighted people with blindfolds on, we have both skills and experiences that shape our whole world perception, but also you don't want to go over into the daredevil, "I can hear your heart beating from the next room," kind of thing. "I know there are three people behind me because I can detect their individual breaths and their individual [inaudible 01:20:28]."

Byron Harden:

So I just want to say this last little thing about it because I experienced this in camp. As a blind kid probably at 10 years old I went to camp and this was in the southern part of Illinois down at Carbondale. They let us hold toads. We were able to touch lizards and stuff like that, which I thought was fascinating and you put it up to your ear and like a toad, you can hear him and you could it moving through the grass if you're close enough that you're down there and he's moving around because he's hopping high enough that when he hits the ground we're like, "Oh, okay," and then you hear the second hop, "Okay, he's going in that direction," and I'm not really sure how Ray caught this, the child caught this, this cricket, like I'm not sure if he just clamped down on it and was like, "Oh yeah, got it." But this is a search, it's a search type of thing because these things are trying to get away from you, number one.

Byron Harden:

So the toad, once I put the toad, I can remember this, I could hear him hop away, like trying to get away and I could hear him breathing when I put it up to my ear, really rapid pace of breath, but again, an insect, now come on, man.

Will Butler:

Yeah, I think in the movie he gropes once and then misses and then gets it the second time.

Byron Harden:

Okay.

Will Butler:

But you got to cover a lot of ground really if you want to catch an insect.

Byron Harden:

[inaudible 01:22:25]

Will Butler:

You got to cover a lot, big service area.

Byron Harden:

Yeah.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

I mean I have snatched insects before, but it's because I was flailing like a wild like a, "Bam, bam, bam, bam," all over.

Will Butler:

Exactly.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

That's my relationship with insects.

Byron Harden:

Well Karate Kid... I'm sorry. Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi and catching the fly with chopsticks.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

With the chopsticks. Yeah, I remember that.

Byron Harden:

I was trying that with just killing flies with my hand, clapping my hand together. I'm able to do that actually, but this thing is buzzing, like annoyingly. So you can pinpoint that, you may miss a couple times and they seem to like it when you miss because they come right back. So sometimes I'll clap not exactly where they are, but where I think they're going to go, so it's like [inaudible 01:23:14]

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

No. Byron, you're a zen warrior.

Will Butler:

Thanks so much for the discussion today, guys. Again, we're going to do this again. In the course of the discussion I did find out that Jamie Foxx consulted with The Brail Institute. Of course, the way that many of these actors do, you got to do the research if you want to get the Oscar for being the sighted blind guy and when I looked at The Brail Institute's website about film and TV consulting, I found out about some blind portrayals that I didn't know about, including Woody Harrelson in Seven Pounds, Jessica Alba in The Eye, Nick Nolte in Beautiful Country and Alex Desert in Becker. Any of you guys ever seen any of these?

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

No.

Byron Harden:

No, we should do The Woman next thought. That should be the next film.

Will Butler:

Well, I think The Eye is a horror movie.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

No, we're not watching horror movies. No! No! Not even for you people who I love, I'm not doing it.

Will Butler:

I'm not a big horror fan either, Sheri, so we might have to recruit a different host for the horror movie episode, but we are going to dig in to some other portrayals that are more off the beaten path than Ray and Mr. Pacino, non Oscar winning portrayals, some of the more contemporary portrayals and we'll be back at you within the next couple of months with another episode. In the meantime, please send all of your feedback and thoughts to podcast@BeMyEyes.com and thanks again to all of you for joining in this discussion.

Andrew Leland:

It was fun.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Thank you, guys, it's always wonderful.

Byron Harden:

Yeah.

Andrew Leland:

See you next time.

Will Butler:

Thank you.

Sheri Wells-Jensen:

Yeah.

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