An important inspirational back to school episode…
Just in time for back to school, join the IC gang and guest victim, Hollis Pierce, as we discuss the film I Am Potential (2015). The movie is based on the true story of Patrick Henry Hughes, exploring the struggles and triumphs of Patrick and his family, particularly his father, who had to adjust his (beer league basketball) expectations and dreams for his son.
Our conversation discusses the film’s portrayal of disability, the performances of the actors, and the film’s context within the broader landscape of disability representation in media. We also discuss the film’s focus on the father’s involvement in a local basketball league, the family’s financial struggles and wrap with a discussion about the film’s depiction of a charity telethon.
Listen at…
Grading the Film
As always, this film is reviewed with scores recorded in four main categories, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst. Like the game of golf, the lower the score the better.
How accurate is the representation?
Jeff – 4 / 5
sar – 3 / 5
Hollis – 4.5 / 5
Total – 11.5 / 15
How difficult was it to watch the movie?
sar – 4 / 5
Jeff – 2.5 / 5
Hollis – 4 / 5
Total – 10.5 / 15
How often were things unintentionally funny?
sar – 2 / 5
Jeff – 5 / 5
Hollis – 3.5 / 5
Total – 10.5 / 15
How far back has it put disabled people?
Jeff – 4 / 5
sar – 2 / 5
Hollis – 5 / 5
Total – 10 / 15
The Verdict
A Crime May Have Been Committed
Transcript – Part 1
[Episode begins with the youtube trailer for I Am Potential]
[Theme song: Mvll Crimes – Arguing With Strangers on the Internet]
Jeff:
You are listening to invalid Culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid. I’m arguing with strangers on the in internet, not going out today
sar:
Because I’m feeling too upset with strangers on the internet and I’m winning
Jeff:
And I’m winning. Welcome back to another thrilling edition of Invalid Culture Back to School Edition. As always, I am your host tired, Dr. Jeff Preston trying to survive the start of turn and I am joined of course by our co victim Sarah Curry. How you doing, Sarah?
sar:
I am doing pretty great. This is the first fall. I’m not going back, so that’s pretty neat. But I have a niece and a nephew starting junior and senior kindergarten and I’ve taken some responsibilities there, so that’s nerve wracking.
Jeff:
How about you? That’s why you look so right now.
sar:
That’s right. That’s right. You
Jeff:
Don’t have to.
sar:
I’m on my third coffee, but don’t worry about it.
Jeff:
Okay. I don’t even know what coffee is anymore. I just inject it as an iv. That’s where I’m at right now. Welcome to September, folks. We are of course not the only people here though because I’m a bad person and I like to torture others. We are joined today by public intellectual wheelchair honky phenom and the host of the 21st Century Disability Podcast, Ottawa own Hols Pierce. How you doing Hols?
Hollis:
Hello, Jeff. Dr. Preston, I apologize.
Jeff:
Oh yeah, no, Jeff is great. I’m good with Jeff.
Hollis:
I know you as Jeff. I know when I am torturing you on the hockey on the court. I know you as Jeff.
Jeff:
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, so tell us…not everyone knows you as well as I do. Yeah, but what should people know about your Hollis?
Hollis:
Well, Jeff, you gave me a very generous introduction there, but as you say, my name’s Hollis Pierce. I am the host of 21st Century Disability. I had my master’s degree at Carleton in history where my thesis was on academic accessibility and yeah, that’s about it. That’s about it.
sar:
Did everyone say you predicted the future afterwards?
Hollis:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff:
It’s always great being right in that way, isn’t it? Finally, yeah. Finally,
sar:
Hollis woke up, just went outside and started shouting to no one in particular. I told you all. I told you so.
Hollis:
Exactly.
Jeff:
Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. While trying not to catch a virus.
sar:
Yeah,
Jeff:
So we had a real special treat put before us. It’s back to school, as I said, so I thought we should do a back to school movie and back to school really is all about the unknown, right? You’re going back into the classroom and all you’re thinking about is about the potential that lays ahead of you. Is this the year you get a’s is this the year that you get a boyfriend or a girlfriend? Is this the year that you don’t vomit on your teacher? All of these potentialities exist, and so I thought we should watch a movie that is full of potential or is it the movie is I Am Potential. Now, what is this movie about? From the box: Patrick Henry Hughes was a talented musician who always wanted to be part of something bigger than himself. He dreamed of one day joining the University of Louisville Marching Band, but there was one problem. Patrick Henry was born without eyes or the ability to walk before he was born. His father, Patrick John had his own goals of athletic glory for Patrick Henry. Now, will he be willing to truly sacrifice for his son to achieve his dreams? I am Potential is the inspiring true story of sacrifice, perseverance, and realize it one’s God given potential.
sar:
I didn’t put it together until you actually read the box because we watched it on Tubby, so we didn’t have a box. Is I am Potential speaking to the dad?
Jeff:
No, the son, the son is the potential. I believe Patrick Henry is the potential Patrick John,
sar:
But Patrick Henry is Patrick Henry the second, right?
Jeff:
No, the dad is Patrick. John, this is going to be a big problem in this episode, so I’m going to say going forward, if we say Patrick, we mean the Disabled Boy, child,
sar:
Teenager, Patrick Junior.
Jeff:
If we say Papa Patrick, we mean the dad.
sar:
Gotcha. I feel like most of the journey was actually the journey of Papa Patrick from Beer League basketball to the potential of helping his son in the, what was it, standup band. It was
Jeff:
A marching band. Marching band.
sar:
Marching band,
Jeff:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also thought when I first read this, I wondered, well, wait, the dad was a musician. How was that not articulated? And then I realized no, Patrick Henry is in the musician. Of course, despite the fact that the movie does appear to center on the bad, but that is neither here nor there. The other thing I should note before we go any further in this discussion is that this is of course based on a true story. This is real Patrick Henry Hughes, his dad, Patrick John Hughes. All of these people exist or so were told. The Illuminati says that they exist, and this is not the first time that they’ve been in media. They actually had their first media breakthrough on the fifth season of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. You might remember them as the family whose house was not accessible, and so they brought the family on, they renovated the house, made it accessible, and during the episode Patrick got to go and play some music in London, England.
He played Ray Charles, “what’d I say”, because of course, to the cast of the Lion King in London, England. The other shout out, I very rarely would make a shout out to Extreme Makeover, but this episode was quite some time ago, and I want to note that at the end of the episode, the Extreme Makeover team made a tactile model of the home that they renovated so that Patrick Henry was able to feel the exterior of the home to quote, see what the new house looks like, which I thought was actually a pretty interesting accessibility feature in a show that is predicated on seeing the difference, right? It’s all about before or after. So I was like, you know what? Shout out of Stream makeover for being like actually go. We’re going to show you.
sar:
That’s actually pretty neat. That accommodation is a cool accommodation. Instead of move that bus, move that hand around our board,
Jeff:
Move that hand. They not only did move that bus, they also did move that band, the band block, the field that they also renovated to make it well, nothing. They just made it a better field. That’s it. So anyway, the whole episode was really inspiration porny, but I’m going to give them one point for their tactile model. So shout out out to them. What about you, Hollis? How does this description, does this description match what you watched?
Hollis:
Yes, I think it is because I found the whole movie to have potential, but it never really reached its potential,
Jeff:
Not unlike myself,
Hollis:
And I think one of the main reasons, well yes, as you say Jeff, it had a lot of holes in the story, but also the actors that were cast were not very effective. Papa was not good and Patrick was a bit rich also.
sar:
That was the kindest burning down of a film I think I’ve ever heard.
Jeff:
Well, let’s attach some names to it. So who in the world made this film? So I think first and foremost you’ll notice that on the box there’s this shout out to God’s will, which is maybe a bit odd for those of you who watched it because it’s not a particularly religious film, but it is produced by a religious film company. So I think that’s probably where that comes from.
Hollis:
Oh, I didn’t know that,
Jeff:
But more interestingly, the film was written and directed by a man named Zach Minors who’s had a very quiet career. He’s young, he’s directed a few shorts and some other very poorly rated movies. His first movie, which he made before he was 21, was called Pivot Point and it was topical about a school shooting. This was I Am Potential was his follow-up film going from school shooting to inspiration porn. I suspect he did this story because he also is from Kentucky and his film profession company is actually based out of Louisville, so he would probably have known the Hughes. He may have gone to school with the Hughes, I’m not sure. Other interesting note. His most recent movie is a documentary, it’s called Conversion, and the plot of this film is he took an ex Mormon mom, he paired them with a drag queen and they explored the dangers of the conversion therapy industry, which is actually kind of rad given the religious bend of this film. So shout Zach. That’s pretty cool. I’m going to check that film out. I think
sar:
I was somewhat convinced that this film was at least partially funded by the University of Louisville or whatever the institution is down there because if you watch the film, which don’t, the first 20, 30 minutes are all ad spots for Louisville. It’s wild.
Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely. I honestly feel like if Louisville did not pay heavily for this film, Zach, take them to court. You need to sue them for what you’re owed. Absolutely. Now Daddy Patrick who we’ve mentioned probably the most recognizable star, sorry, second most recognizable star in this film, thank You, is played by of course Respect is played by Purchase Jenkins. You probably recognize him as Ray Birds from Remember The Titans or perhaps as Billy Abbott in the Young and the Restless. I did not know this and I love that fact. He was in many episodes of the Young and the Restless, which melodrama that kind of fits in this script. Perhaps
sar:
He gives young and the restless energy for sure.
Jeff:
Yeah, a little bit, absolutely. Yeah. The son Patrick is played by Jimmy Bellinger, who I actually looked it up and he does look quite a bit like the person that he’s playing, so this might be a situation where they cast purely based on looks. He’s also a fairly accomplished actor. He’s had a lot of TV roles over the last 15 years. His biggest role, and I put that in the biggest air quotes possible, was that he played the character Chad in the movie, I believe it’s technically called Blockers, but there’s always a rooster in front of the word blockers. It’s a comedy also don’t watch. It also appeared, and this is true in one episode of the TV show Glee, so
sar:
Yikes.
Jeff:
The other recognizable actor in this movie is of course Judge Reinhold, and if you don’t know who Judge Reinhold is, you are no friend of mine and I am not going to tell you
sar:
The most recognizable actor.
Jeff:
There were some names in this film actually, surprisingly.
sar:
Yeah, I don’t know how they did it. Maybe because of the Louisville funding, they funneled that right into the actor salaries.
Hollis:
I found the mom to be fairly recognizable also.
Jeff:
Yeah, the mom was played by Jana Williamson, who you probably recognize from Parks and Rec
sar:
Ahhhhh.
Hollis:
That’s it.
Jeff:
That’s it. Also in the Good Place or my personal favorite played the principle in the TV adaptation of School of Rock. Not the principal in School of Rock, but rather the TV version of School of Rock.
sar:
That would be the antagonist then, wouldn’t it?
Jeff:
Depending on what side you are on fascism. Yes.
sar:
Fair.
Jeff:
Now we of course have our own opinions of this film, but there are many other people far more qualified than us that have watched it and shared some ideas. Now the good news, bad news is there actually was not a lot of critical response from this film as you probably could imagine, but I did find one really interesting deep dive that was written on a website called Catholic Lane, and this was written by Sister Hana Burns. Shout out sister. I enjoyed your review of this film, but I want to read one little blip that actually caught my eye, which I thought was an interesting thing to talk about. So Sister Burns says about I’m potential, I’m just going to have to tell you a little bit of the plot here, but the joy of watching the film, it is a joy will be the well-executed details.
Do you want to witness a conversion? The depths of a father’s love observe, slowly bonding with his namesake who will never be an athlete but whom dad recognizes has a love and talent for music from his youngest years. These scenes could melt boulders and can be applied to any dad who has the eyes to see and appreciate who his child really is to give up trying to fill his own ideas and dreams through his progeny. I really thought dad was going to walk out for the whole first part of the movie, but just the opposite.
sar:
I mean it feels kind of cheap blaming this movie for the whole, and I want to say it’s an American film dynamic of washed up middle-aged dad who has a favorite sport and hopes that his firstborn son becomes like an Olympic athlete in that sport. I don’t want to blame this film for that, but I think the extent to which they take the melancholic scenes of him looking at footballs or looking at baseballs, these extended medium shots, I thought it was a little bit ridiculous.
Jeff:
Yeah, they really hammered that home. My question for you, Holli, did you believe that the dad was going to walk out on this family at any moment in this film?
Hollis:
Yes.
Jeff:
Really?
Hollis:
Yeah.
sar:
Tell me more.
Hollis:
Yes, I truly believed, especially up until that one night when he came home and the mom was saying, I’m learning too. I’m learning too, and you’re never here. And then Papa Patrick said, I am here, and then he looked at his watch and he is like, oh, I have basketball in 30 minutes basketball.
sar:
It was hilarious because I was watching it with Jeff and he called that at the beginning of the eighties, like this guy’s definitely about to go out to his beer league basketball game
Hollis:
And then the life is just like my point. Exactly. You’re never here.
sar:
Yeah. The dad, for as much interest as he had in his first born son, future Olympian, track, star, football star, et cetera, he really had no interest in the baby.
Jeff:
No he was checked out.
sar:
He was absent for that face.
Hollis:
And also one thing that blew my mind is no interest for the baby’s safety as well because he perched a newborn up on the top of a piano and it’s not even a Dred piano, so he doesn’t have space to roll around on. It’s very thin piano against a wall that’s like barely bigger than him. So if he throws a hissy fit, the baby is falling.
sar:
I love that you specified the prop that they got for that. It’s like the classic suburban kind of baby’s first piano. It’s wood, it kind of looks organ like and yeah, you’re right. The baby barely fits on top of it because their proletarian piano is just not suited for six month old children.
Hollis:
Exactly.
Jeff:
Are you guys telling me that you weren’t raised atop a piano? That’s not a normal baby experience. You’re telling me. Okay.
sar:
I wish.
Jeff:
Okay.
Hollis:
But also I found that up until as well as you guys mentioned how she was hoping for her pulled her back from Louisville or a star pitcher. I found that, is it just me or did they mention in the movie that the Pop Patrick had a degree in music?
Jeff:
So that’s an interesting question. They do seem to imply in the movie that there is sort of music in the family that is a thing, but I think they actually undersell in this film how much music is a thing in the Hughes household because we learn, if you are like me and you’ve watched that episode of Extreme Makeover that all of the children play multiple instruments. Their living room is basically a recorded studio. They have multiple guitars, drums, everything.
sar:
Well, that’s weird because there’s that detail where they’re kind of making a big minor plot detail out of, oh, we really don’t want to buy you the trumpet. We already have this perfectly good piano over here. You’re kind stressing us out. So to hear after the fact that it’s a whole musical inclined family kind of doesn’t check out as far as the screenplay goes.
Jeff:
There’s a whole menagerie and I think it draws into question this other argument that the sister bless her heart makes, which is this notion that the father isn’t out his dreams through the child, and I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but put it in your minds folks. Was it maybe just that the dream changed if you couldn’t do the sports dream, maybe you could do the music dream instead. There’s a bit of a family band kind of thing going on here, but you Hollis and the sister were not the only ones that tapped into this question of divorce. So too the Amazon user, JEK teacher, which I’m hoping doesn’t mean junior kindergarten, but JUK teacher gave this film a five stars. It was titled Inspiring. This is the whole review. I did not edit this. What a child with major handicaps is born into a family. It often leads to the parent’s divorce and an unhealthy family and this family, everyone overcame something and everyone in the family grew and thrived. When you watch this movie, you’ll be glad you did it’s keeper.
sar:
I think the youngest child, at least from the screenplay perspective, overcame being completely and entirely forgotten and not even being introduced to the audience. He just appeared at the breakfast table one day halfway through the film and we were like, oh, there’s three of them.
Jeff:
I don’t even know the brother’s names. No, that is how little that are mentioned in this film.
Hollis:
They barely, they’re at the dinner table one time and then they’re in the backyard with the grandpa and the swing breaks,
sar:
So they overcame total obliteration of identity, which I think is fairly remarkable.
Jeff:
It is important for us to know. We do know that one of the children liked video games because in one scene he is playing on Game Boy and wearing a T-shirt that says video games. We know that
sar:
It was an SP too, which felt, because this was supposed to be the nineties kind of turn of the two thousands. I think that’s inaccurate. When did the SP come out?
Jeff:
I’m going to blow your mind. Well, okay, we’re going to jump forward because I am going to come back to this question of when in the hell is this film set because it will shock you
sar:
Really? Okay.
Jeff:
Okay, so that is the JEK teacher. I want to dig a little bit into this thing though about children with major handicaps often lead into divorce. Now, I don’t want to call anyone into the chat here inappropriately, but this is actually something that my parents were told when I was diagnosed. They were told You’re probably going to get a divorce, so be ready for that.
sar:
Really?
Hollis:
Oh Wow. Okay.
Jeff:
Spoil alert: they didn’t.
Hollis:
My parents were just told that I wouldn’t live past one.
Jeff:
Okay, I got four. They told me I was going to make it to four
sar:
Hollis. Did your parents divorce though?
Hollis:
Mine?
sar:
Yeah.
Hollis:
Yes, my parents did divorce.
sar:
Oh, they did? Okay, so we got one-to-one. Our pool isn’t big enough.
Jeff:
50%.
Hollis:
Your parents did not?
Jeff:
They did not. Mine did not. They made it through. They made it through. But I always find this such an interesting thing because I wonder, do we basically precognition these divorces? If you’ve just had a disabled child and then you’re told, oh, by the way, these always had the divorce, how many of the divorces are caused by a seeding? This notion that the relationship is going to fall apart anyways
sar:
And it becomes kind of the Sandra Bullock premonition where once you’ve seen it you’re like, well, now this is destiny. This is happening.
Hollis:
That’s a very good point.
Jeff:
I wonder, I really wonder because it’s also something that seems hard to wrap your head around that there is a lot of research on this. Lots of people have written, there’s lots of theories as to why this might be the case. What I would love to know is how much of that data is purely based in North American context? Do we see divorces happening in same rates elsewhere? Yeah.
sar:
Yeah?
Jeff:
I would be very curious to know if it’s like that everywhere or if this is another great instance where the data set is heavily biased because it’s all done by Americans predominantly.
sar:
Well, that would be most quant data sets purely produced by Columbia and Duke.
Hollis:
Yeah, also, Americans do not have free healthcare, so
sar:
that’s true.
Hollis:
They’re probably super stressed out of paying for their disabled and child.
Jeff:
Absolutely. I really want, they do say that a main driver in divorce tends to be financial strain and financial disagreements. That’s a big pusher of it. So are we actually seeing parents divorce because of disability or are they divorcing because of the financial burdens that are placed on American families by a complete lack of support for people with disabilities in that fun country to the south? I wonder. Someone should research that. I wonder. I’m on it. I’m
Hollis:
I’m on it.
Jeff:
That’s the follow-up episode. Yeah. Hollis is going to get to the bottom of this by the time I’m on his podcast. Perfect. Now this movie wasn’t well received by pretty much anybody else. IMDB user, I have no idea how to pronounce this. B hogan, I think maybe b Hogan. BBK,Ogan. I’m not sure. This user gave it a five out of 10 with the title Double Whammy, which is now actually the title of my memoir, double Whammy. Okay, so their review, this is a long one, but I have to read it all out because I think there’s a lot of meat here for us to dig into. Okay. B Hogan says, other than a reference by a female friend of the mother who says that God doesn’t give folks more burden than they can handle something I think that the survivors of suicide would disagree with, there is no overt preaching I and potential. It is the story of a couple whose firstborn is born without eyes and a crippling leg condition that requires many surgeries that in the end don’t help. It’s a double whammy for this poor kid, however, with a pair of glass eyes inserted where his real ones should have been.
Young Jimmy Bellinger, I think there’s a cross in the actor’s name there, young Jimmy Bellinger has an ear for music which is developed in an inspiring story. He is courageous. He is a courageous and ucky young lad and his parents played by Burgess Jenkins and Trevor Williamson have the right stuff. I certainly was impressed by the story, but if this had not been produced by the fundamentalist American Family Association, we might’ve had a serious discussion on his healthcare coverage. This kid was born with a preexisting condition and the family finances are strayed to the breaking point. Sounds like they could have used universal healthcare coverage, but this film was not about to take the story in that direction. I Potential is a good story decently, if not greatly acted by its unknown cast with the exception of Judge Reinhold who plays the young man’s doctor, sorry, editor’s note. Judge Reinhold is not his doctor. Judge Reinhold is the doctor who runs the marching band. This film was not made. This film not viewed by a fundamentalist church audience raises more questions than it answers.
sar:
How dare she pick out Judge Reinhold to be the standout?
Jeff:
I know, right?
sar:
In a blatantly below mediocre cast, the only person who was cast in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was the only underperformer. I think not,
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. Also, yeah. But I think this is an interesting point and I’m glad that we got here, which is how there is a part of this story about finances and about the cost of living with a disability, which I actually kind of appreciated. Even if they didn’t dig down super deeply into it in the film,
sar:
It was surface level and even saying surface level is a little bit generous, and I think she’s right. That had a lot to do with the funding authority because I would say maybe not no preaching because a major plot point was his Christian TV performance and he literally wore sweatshirts about Jesus and went to Catholic schools. I guess it’s maybe covert preaching, but I felt pretty preached to in the context of this movie, and I also think that the fact that he is religious, at least in the context of the screenplay, becomes kind of a core tenet of this kid’s personality. He dresses like the kind of Bible banging Christian Mormon, I don’t know. He’s got the performance where he is seen by, we don’t know, they didn’t show a clip of the audience, but they said that the arena held six. It all kind of keeps coming back to that over and over. So then if you’re going to have so much of the film B about how Jesus or God won’t give you loads that you can’t handle A, why is he crawling into the kitchen? B, why does he not go to a school that capitalizes on that instead of where he ends up with this marching band that doesn’t think he can do anything? It didn’t add up for me.
Hollis:
Yeah, no, I would absolutely completely agree with all of those thoughts.
Jeff:
Now, Amazon user, Kate Snell did not agree with some of the praise of this film. They gave it two stars, no title and their review is boring.
sar:
Perfect. Review. Five Star review.
Jeff:
Five star review, two stars. I want to know why they gave it two stars, but only one word.
sar:
It wasn’t worth two words we could have done. Very boring.
Jeff:
Very boring. Sure. Now I’m about to offend every German who listens to this show, and I’m sure there are dozens of you, but letterbox user Nick Un 18 shoots back with a five star view on letterbox stating “So traurig und schön” which apparently translates to “so sad and beautiful.”
sar:
I didn’t think that was terrible German, but Hollis is the one watching dark right now. Hollis?
Hollis:
Das ist gut.
Jeff:
Yes, phenomenal. Unfortunately, the only German I really know are swear words that are not maybe the most appropriate for this moment.
Hollis:
I wouldn’t say it was sad. I would say it’s confusing.
sar:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah. I think that’s fair. I didn’t find it sad really at all, but I also didn’t find it beautiful. Oh God, no.
sar:
No. I think they tried to create some levity and some middle ground and in trying to approach that levity and what is fairly objectively a sad story about a baby born with no Eyes, they kind of overshot it and it became kind of this quirky lifetime film about supposedly sad material that’s supposed to turn good. I don’t know. The tone was off
Hollis:
And I don’t know. I think they really skipped over a lot of potential barriers. Absolutely, and I was absolutely, I only found out it was based on True Story after I watched it and I was like, why? Because I kept on thinking, why is this dad making these decisions?
Jeff:
That is a question that I have had since I’ve watched that film.
Hollis:
Yeah, because just to bring up the idea of financing again, he turned down a major promotion at work that would’ve provided them with plenty of financial resources at home, and also the dad was just way too old and protective of his son.
Jeff:
Yeah. There was a lot of that sort of fragility, like the fragile disabled kid thing going on throughout this film. So those are some of the opinions of it, but I think it’s probably time for us to get a little analytical. Are we ready to unpack the movie I Am Potential,
sar:
Please. It’s a shallow box, but we can do it
Hollis:
Oh no. I’ve got many opinions.
Jeff:
Buckle up friends, because Hollis had more thoughts about this movie than the people who made it.
Our story begins with an aggressive Louisville, Kentucky montage to assure the viewers that we are indeed in Louisville, Kentucky office worker and deeply committed pick up basketball player Patrick John Hughes eagerly awaits the arrival of his first son, who he is sure will be a star football player for the University of Louisville because well, we’re in Louisville. Okay, get it. Spoiler alert. Patrick Henry Hughes will not be a star football player because he’s disabled. The doctors informed the Hughes that their son has a variety of impairments due to a rare condition, including the fact that he has no eyes despite Mama Patrick’s suspicion that the doctors just didn’t notice that their son did in fact have eyes. The doctors are absolutely sure he has no eyes. They checked at least twice and honestly it seems like something that would be kind of tough to miss. The hugs are now confronted with a brutal reality. Their son will require a series of surgeries, may never walk, and will require painful glass eyeballs to be jammed into his bloody eye sockets for the foreseeable future.
This puts an immediate strain on the marriage leaving Papapa to wonder how he will ever manage to be a father while also being a peak performer in casual adult men’s league basketball. Now, before we get into discussion of the first step of this film, I want to note that we get a slightly different origin story from the Extreme Manover Home Edition episode. It’s in this episode that Paul Patrick will explain that he actually quit his day job right away early on in the child’s life working nights instead so that he was able to take care of the baby that has been brought back to their home. We also learned that early in his life he has glass eyes surgically implanted, which also in my opinion perhaps draws into question this weird disclosure around the gross bloody pressing in of the glass eyes. Maybe that conversation happened, maybe it didn’t, but that was not really portrayed on the Extreme Home makeover disclosure of the origin stories of Patrick.
Hollis:
Okay, well, first of all, I think it had a lot of ableism
sar:
Absolutely
Hollis:
In the show itself. Just for one, the idea that he had to have eyes in the first place. It’s like, okay, can you not just leave him as he is or put sunglasses on him or you know what I mean? Or was that a health concern because of it?
Jeff:
Well, so they say in the film that if they don’t put the eyes in that his head won’t form correctly. Apparently that’s the destination of the counter. But
sar:
Counterpoint, Jeff and I did debate that when we watched it. I said, I don’t understand why they need to put something in his head either. He can just have no eyes.
Hollis:
Yeah, I am of the same opinion.
sar:
Yeah, I think if he already can’t walk and he needs several spinal surgeries, having minor facial deformities would be the absolute least of this baby’s problems.
Hollis:
Yeah, exactly. And I have not watched the Extreme makeover. Holman didn’t show, but was he in the movie? He quit his job as an accountant or something like that and he then became a luggage carrier cursing, and so was that an accurate depict or
Jeff:
If you believe Home Makeover? Absolutely not. So we will talk about this in a moment, but in the movie he quit his job when his son is in university in the Home makeover version of the story. He quit his job when Patrick was a baby to take care of him. That was the point. Was it still to become a luggage handler? It’s just said that he works overnight, which you presumably could do if you were a baggage person and that he wasn’t making a lot of money. Sorry, that was the other part of the Home Makeover episode is there is a big part about how Father Patrick Patrick and has a lot of guilt that he hasn’t been able to provide for his family financially as well as he had hoped that he would be able to for his son. I doubt whether or not that’s just a part of the in Extreme Home Makeover, the device of that show that you have to, they’re not going to go in and renovate Kanye’s home,
sar:
But you’ve kind of got two competing devices here. So I’m kind of inclined to believe the truth is somewhere in the middle because I felt the film kind of went overboard in portraying this single income earner. Even if he is an accountant at Warren Buffet’s company, there’s no way he’s making the kind of money where they’re picturing him with the Victorian style multi bedroom home with the huge backyard. He’s got three kids and they’re all in sports. His kid with no eyes has had umpteen surgeries. It just didn’t make sense. The wife says multiple times, she’s not working. This is America. It doesn’t check out. So you’ve got the Tai Pennington take on the one hand where he’s like, oh, they didn’t have two nickels to rub together and they skipped so many surgeries and two of their kids are currently starving and the screenplay take of finances are tough, but we’re still managing to have all of these luxuries that look great on film and I think maybe the truth is they were living lower middle class and kind of scraping by. Would that be accurate?
Jeff:
Potentially, yeah. I mean it should be noted that they are in Kentucky and cost of living is lower in the South depending on where you are. Obviously,
sar:
I imagine access to healthcare is also lower in the South
Jeff:
Depending on where you are. Again, they’re in Louisville and University cities tend to have better access because often there’s hospitals associated with university. But yeah, so there is a lot of focus though at the first third of the movie really is this expose of all of its medical problems. That’s really the main focus of the first bit of the film. Now you might be wondering, well, how long do they spend on this? It’s about 10 minutes. It feels like three hours.
sar:
It’s excruciating for sure.
Jeff:
It’s just on and on and on. So let’s move forward then in our story because that’s kind of boring.
sar:
Patrick was six months old in this film for almost half the film
Jeff:
And then immediately jumps forward to university. So life at home is almost immediately rocky for the Hughes family. Papa Patrick is working long hours doing some sort of office work, something to do with computers and PowerPoint slides, maybe a calculator.
sar:
I think Holli is right. It gave the vibe of accountant.
Jeff:
Something? Yes, and he’s working even longer hours at his pickup basketball league, often leaving his wife Patricia to feel as though she is fully responsible for raising the profound disabled child. I’m not joking. He routine and comes home at the start of the film and is like, babe, and you assume that this is high stakes. He’s on his way to the NBA. No, it is a Jersey list, pickup league. They don’t have jerseys.
sar:
Jeff. He’s point guard. He’s the backbone of the team. Disabled son or not.
Jeff:
You have to be there for the boys.
Hollis:
They spent more time focusing in on his beer league basketball than they did on his son’s education.
sar:
Absolutely. Yeah. The beer league basketball was a solid B plot of this film and unsurprisingly it went nowhere. There was no development whatsoever.
Jeff:
I really hope that this was the director that Zach had heard these stories like I’m imagining he interviewed the mom and the dad separately and the dad was like, I was at work and it was busy and I was playing sports and stuff, and then the mom was just like, he would not stop it with the basketball. He would not stop talking about it. He would not stop playing it. I am just trying to survive and he’s playing this minute and so I’m wondering if he was like, what if the film also inappropriately focused on basketball Papa? No reason Patrick plays five days a week every night he was in there grinding. I guess that’s
sar:
Okay. Alternate take what if, and this goes back to a conversation that we were having earlier and is definitely giving the film too much credit. What if they meant to have that as an intentional juxtaposition? Because so much of the dad’s character is, oh, my firstborn son is never going to be an Olympic athlete, and he’s trying to live that dream up until the point where he kind of has that not so triumphant throw of the basketball against his office net. And he goes like, okay, forget it. Sports is over. It’s all music for me now. But it lines up in the context of the screenplay that so much of his acting time is him playing the sports and dealing with his grief through sports and dealing with the collapse of his marriage, which doesn’t actually collapse through sports and only when he releases two the music gods. So therapy could have helped here. Does he give up the five days a week pickup basketball? So maybe it was a point about the characterization of the dad and it just doesn’t translate. You really have to sit here and think about this. Yeah,
Jeff:
I think it was one of those situations where it was so aggressive in your face that then you started to wonder why that you started to think, well, maybe this is leading somewhere else. It can’t be that straightforward. It can’t just be a motif if they’re constantly going back to this basketball game and then it
sar:
And then it was…just a motif.
Jeff:
It is just a motif.
sar:
You were hood winged to the entire time. Pick up basketball just like in real life is going nowhere.
Jeff:
It will end and it ends because mama Patricia puts her foot down and she forces Papa Patrick to become an actual father, to miss basketball for once in his life and to stay home and take care of his son. During this time, Patrick Clearance that his son is actually kind of cool, although he takes the nasty poops and his animal nature appears to be soothed by the dulcet notes of the piano. We then jumped forward an indeterminate amount of time with Patrick now and grown child who has navigated the world with a manual wheelchair and is RACA in the piano hard. Patrick also has two new brothers, one of which we knew was coming, one of which magically appeared, and the only thing we ever learned about them is that one runs fast and did the other live video games. Patrick’s musical talents are immediately put to the test when he was invited in front of a live studio audience to perform his song, the Crusade Canon Ball during a televised edition of the 40th annual WHAS Crusade for Children Peon. Okay, so I want to come back to a question that Sarah asked earlier, which is when do you think this movie was set?
sar:
It was really difficult to determine, honestly.
Jeff:
Do you have a guess? Hollis? Do you have a guess? When do you think this movie was set?
Hollis:
Man judging by his dream car. I would say early nineties.
sar:
Yeah, that was going to be my guess. Set design looked very heavily nineties inspired. That was definitely the kind of lower class income home I grew up in.
Jeff:
Right. Yep. Okay. Early nineties. Okay, buckle up. Buckle up. Despite the broadcast looking like it was filmed in the 1960s with people from the 1990s, this Crusade for Children telethon actually happened on June 4th, 2005. A decade later.
sar:
Okay.
Hollis:
What??
Jeff:
Yeah. It would raise over $5 million and gave grants to 148 agencies in the Kentucky and Indiana areas
Hollis:
Sorry for my ‘wow’d surprise there.
sar:
That’s amazing. So the SP actually is not anachronistic. The SP is totally accurate and it’s just filmed ridiculously.
Jeff:
Yes. Now, I also wanted to share this because I read this and I’m not ashamed to admit I almost peed myself. Okay. This is a quote from the WHAS website about this year’s telethon
sar:
You dug deep for this.
Jeff:
I always do. I can’t stopped. Okay. And I quote “for the first time in recent memory there was a standin room only crowd on hand for the free kickoff variety show at the Kentucky Center’s Bombard Theater. Many think that it was because of the talented trio who returned to their hometown to headline the show, Lance Burton, max Finn and Marty Polio. Others speculated it was because of the free glowing star necklaces that was given to everyone in attendance.”
sar:
I would a hundred percent go to a concert if they were giving me a glowing star necklace. I would go see bands I actively hate to get that.
Jeff:
I love just this complete the dichotomy of it’s like either it was because of the hometown heroes or it was the free giveaway.
sar:
We’re not sure. It was definitely the giveaway. Sorry, Marty Polio.
Jeff:
Marty Polio will never recover from this.
sar:
Sorry man, you’re not a pull.
Jeff:
Yeah, they raised a lot of money. I will say it wasn’t the most that they’ve raised. It was actually a bit of a downed year old, but it was a lot of money and it was, as I said, the first time in recent memory that there was a standing room only in crowd. So it was a pretty big deal. 2005, not 1991.
sar:
Contrast that with the cinematography where I kept making fun during that scene. They would never give us a wide shot of the audience. They just showed us two or three audience members at a time and I was like, they’re not going to do it. They’re not going to give me the wide shot. And they never did. So we actually come out of the film not knowing if this event was even attended. He just did it
Hollis:
Unless the only reason, and I highly doubt that the screenplay was this…?
sar:
Savvy?
Hollis:
Creativity is that it might have been in order to exemplify his experience of it as he was never seeing the crowd. He was only hearing the crowd.
Jeff:
I got you just say that in the script, right? They’re like, is that how many people are there? And he is like, just imagine that they’re on their underwear and he is like, what does that look like? Yeah,
sar:
That says some dipshit comment about picturing them and we’re like, dad, the entire movie is about me not having is.
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s sort of the point here. I think that’s probably, that might be what the director writer says. I think that’s what Zach might say if you ask them. I think probably the real answer is they couldn’t afford that many extras. They afford that many people in a building for one shot. So they scrap it.
sar:
You know what they should have done? They should have done a giveaway.
Jeff:
If they had had some necklaces, some star necklaces,
sar:
I would get some butts in seats.
Jeff:
Come on, bro. Now, I was actually really interested to see the Crusade for Children mentioned in this film because of course the Crusade for Children actually plays a fairly significant role in disability history. It was a major part of the charity world that we understand today. Not specifically the WHAS, but this broader Crusade for Children thing was a big deal in say, Britain. And some scholars would point back to these types of activities as really playing that formative role in how we understand disabled people through things like the telethon. And so I thought this is actually an interesting little piece of disability history that was included in this hall. Do you want to opine for us on telethons and charity and disability?
Hollis:
Honestly have never been my stitch and having muscular dystrophy, I have been told so much about that American muscular dystrophy telethon and how many people are so dedicated to that thing and me saying, yeah, that’s not, I don’t know. I really didn’t identify, I never identified with any kind of telephone
sar:
Context question. If we’re talking about classic mid eighties, early nineties telethons, that kind of predates my TV watching by quite a bit. Would that be kind of like the two thousands live aid? Is that the spectrum of comparison here? No,
Jeff:
No. Nowhere near
sar:
No. Bigger?
Jeff:
No. So I can actually directly speak to this because I was on the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.
sar:
Hell yeah. Hell yeah.
Jeff:
I was the first national campaign assistant for MTC, which is the Canadian version that runs the thing that Jerry Lewis was running in the States. And so I was actually on the early nineties versions of the Canadian Telethon.
sar:
Oh yeah, dude.
Jeff:
Which would have satellite pieces from the Jerry Lewis that was brought in. So it really was a variety show. So the idea was bring in a bunch of celebrities of some variety that would be sort of mid-tier celebrities. So in modern day, you’re not getting Chapel Rowan in, but you might be getting in some 41 people that were big at one point but aren’t big at all anymore. But the studio audience is not big. When we were doing it in Toronto, when I was there in the early nineties, there would’ve been maybe 50 people in the studio audience.
sar:
Oh wow.
Jeff:
But the objective was make cheap television and have people call in donations. That’s the name of the game. And so you get a lot of local flare as well. So you’d get Fear is a local kid who’s really good at Hula hoop or Fear is a local savant musician that everyone knows in Toronto for whatever reason. So it’d be sort of that type of thing. And then celebrities were people like Kurt Browning or Doug Gilmore who was at the center for the Maple Leafs at the time. It was kind of that sort of vibe and they would just run these things and you’d be told to call in. So really the better comparison is not live aid, it’s the PBS telethons. Those like call-a-thons that PBS dide
sar:
I forgot that.
Jeff:
That’s the vibe. That’s the vibe that would…
sar:
PBS telethon because of viewers like you.
Jeff:
Precisely. You fill in and you might get to be on TV when you call and donate. That was sort of the schtick.
sar:
So the point is not really the actual shtick that’s happening on screen. It’s going viral in today’s terms. The point was to produce viral content
Jeff:
Parade a bunch of people’s eyes so that they phone in and donate.
Hollis:
Exactly. Interesting.
Jeff:
And so in Canada, we did it different in the States. So in Canada it was largely about entertainment that we were trying to entertain people. I was trying to entertain people. I did it for the art.
Hollis:
Well, I don’t think you’re trying to entertain people. You entertain people, period.
sar:
And he still does to this day.
Jeff:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
sar:
Hell yeah. Hollis.
Jeff:
Yeah, Hollis coming up big. I’ll pay you later. In the States, they also entertained, but I think a lot more life, the Crusade for Children, the entertainment as has been written by authors like, okay, Longow in the lovely book telethon, the telethon was all about the Pity parade.
sar:
Right.
Jeff:
It was about rolling out sort of sad, pathetic, disabled people and saying, imagine if this was you, are you sad? Donate. And so Paul k Longmore referred to it as basically a annual Tiny Tim event in which the viewer is Scrooge and they have to decide whether or not they will part with their pennies and help the Crotchet family, these disabled people on tv, or are they going to be greedy and hold onto their pennies.
sar:
This is actually the format that Sarah McLaughlin perfected, right?
Jeff:
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. She was making the soundtrack for this stuff.
sar:
Yeah,
Jeff:
Right. Yeah. And so this is really what’s going on here. And so what I find for the interesting about this is that this moment is shown as the coming out party in a lot of ways for Patrick Hughes to play his song and to vet the charity that has helped him and his family presumably. But what’s actually going on in this telethon, I don’t want to say it’s more sinister, but it’s certainly a lot more about the pity and the inspiration porn as we would call it now, or actually kind of did then. This is 2005. It’s not that long ago that when this was happening. Yeah.
sar:
Okay. So would you say based on the information you have, so Courteously given me, that kind of puts the film itself as written in this kind of super positional role as yet another telethon. It’s a movie about how he went on the telethon and then went on to become some minor student in a college marching band. But the writing and the cinematography and the positioning of the narrative kind of creates another telethon because the point wasn’t the story. It was what you do after the story. How bad do you feel right now? So I got Sarah McLaughlin yet again.
Hollis:
I would completely agree.
sar:
Interesting. So if you position this movie as a telethon, I actually think the movie’s a lot more interesting. I think if you take it at face value, it is a boring piece of garbage. If you super position it to, this was a 1.5 hour attempt to get you to Google conditions like this and donate money. This is kind of an interesting marketing strategy.
Jeff:
No. So I think that theory is dead on. I think that’s what this is trying to do. I think that’s what this movie is trying to do. It’s translating the telethon experience into a 90 minute film. Now, I want to put an important editor’s note here, which is that it is possible that the Handball crusade happened at a much earlier date. It may actually have been in the nineties because the performance of the Canal Crusade may have happened on an earlier date. But the 2005 is the date that’s listed on the WHAS as in performant. However, if you’ve done the math, you will notice that this is actually the year before he will attend the University of Louisville. What the movie doesn’t include is a variety of other performances that, in my opinion, are actually a lot more interesting. For instance, he attended and performed a song, amazing Children on an episode of Maury Povich in 1990. He also performed numerous times at the Grand Old Opry. He also performed, yeah, if you go to his website, he has been performing all over the place at some of the biggest stages, even before he arrives on Instream Home Makeover. I’m curious why then they focused in on the Children’s Crusade and not any of these other big things that he was doing. And the answer perhaps is exactly what you just said, Sarah.
sar:
Well, I think funding is also a big one. I think it’s a combination of the telethon and the fact that a clearly Christian organization has purchased the rights to this film.
Jeff:
Sure, fair enough.
sar:
I don’t think they’re going to show his performance on Maury Povich, however, I would’ve loved that cut.
Jeff:
I’m assuming that it ends with someone throwing a chair at him, right?
sar:
Yeah. I think the movie would be a lot more interesting had they gone with the Maury Povich cut. But to get the funding they had to do the Christian summer camp
Hollis:
Or having Maury Povich tell him, you are not the father. He is not the father. So good.
Jeff:
Oh, it’s a super different movie. If you go down that rabbit hole,
Hollis:
See, if Papa Patrick was told that he is not the father, he would’ve been like, I’m out. I’m focusing on Beer League.
Jeff:
I’m going back to basketball.
sar:
That would’ve led to the divorce. It all comes full circle.
Jeff:
It all comes together. Yeah, it all comes together. Divorce, not because of disability, but because of infidelity,
sar:
Maury Povich…
Jeff:
Maury Povich.
Jeff:
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast? Go onto our website, invalid culture.com, submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie. Have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the trash. Be sure to tune in again next week for part two where we will start to dig into the movie and find out whether or not it wins. The coveted Jerry Lewis seal of approval.
[Theme song: Mvll Crimes – Arguing With Strangers on the Internet]
Transcript – Part 2
[A clip from the film plays to start the podcast]
Doctor:
We discovered some anomalies. What do you mean anomalies? Patrick Henry was born with a rare condition. It’s called bilateral an ophthalmia. He was born without eyes. I mean there must be some kind. The ultrasound said that he was healthy. I’m sorry, it’s easily missed. I’m afraid there’s more.
[Intro theme song, “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet” by Mvll Crimes plays]
Jeff:
You are listening to Invalid Culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid.
Jeff:
Welcome back to another episode of Invalid Culture, part two of I Am Potential. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and I’m here again with Sarah Curry, co-host and our special guest victim Hollis. Alright, let’s get right to it. Okay, so let’s flash forward. Fat Trick has now grown up and I want to note that we literally do flash forward. This movie has a series of blackout jump cuts in which suddenly people are just older and we are expected to understand that. So Patrick has grown up and despite a few surgical and swim related setbacks has now entered high school. He has developed a new musical passion in part because of his swing related injury. The trumpet and marching bands, things are still tough for the hues though as Papa Patrick is being absolutely ridden at work by his boss, who is never satisfied and he even will have to sell his beloved car to help pay for Patrick’s escalated medical bills. As Patrick moves toward graduation from high school with his new best friend Bryce, he has set his eyes on a noom goal,
Got him joining the University of Louisville marching band Patch is accepted to the U of L to study something who knows, doesn’t matter, but he is confronted with a bigger problem marching band leader Dr. Greg Byrne, who I assume has a PhD in PET and a postdoc in funk is worried about the manual wheelchair moving around the field and thinks that it just might not be possible. Luckily, after some modifications to his chair, which basically consists of putting bigger tires on the front, that problem is resolved. But who will push him around the field when he plays? Obviously it’s his high school friend Bryce, right? Of course not. Papa Patrick has a crisis of faith in corporate capitalism. He quits his job despite being offered a full control of the company as the next regional manager, CEO, unclear, and he will take up a night job working as a baggage handler at the local airport and goes full time on the marching band. Our film eventually concludes with the father and son duo achieving their dream, taking the field at Allan Federal Credit Union Stadium and playing at the University of Illinois football game and the movie is over. Praise be.
sar:
I think I said when we were watching it that the movie could have honestly started when he was in high school. We learned precious little from the first 45 minutes of the film, we learned that he is disabled. His parents are kind of sad about it. His dad really fucking loves basketball, and that’s about it. That’s half the film’s runtime,
Jeff:
And Patrick appears to have had a wildly more interesting life in the late nineties and early two thousands that could have been great cover for this film.
Hollis:
I’m very happy that we’re getting into this part of the film because these are what my major thoughts are is that this film would’ve been so much better had they had more than two scenes of him in high school.
sar:
Yeah,
Hollis:
Fair.
sar:
It’s true.
Hollis:
Because day one, he gets there and the popular kid is making fun of him. Day two, him and the popular kid are best friends and they’re running around the hallway and then suddenly he turns the corner falls out of his chair and suddenly Papa Patrick is so over their jet of him that he decides no one else will ever push my son around. Excuse my language, put a fucking seatbelt on the guy, right? Yeah. And put it by your seatbelt on a guy. Take the job promotion, have the opportunity to pay for a full-time attendant and provide for your family.
Jeff:
Yeah, it is a baffling turn in the story, which makes a lot more sense in the context of it probably didn’t happen this way.
sar:
Yeah, I seriously doubt it. I don’t think this guy quit his job to be a pusher in a varsity marching band
Jeff:
Unless this is actually the dream. If he had two dreams, either football star or musician star, and the musician one really did pan out, maybe people have done less to become a stage mom. Right?
Hollis:
Yeah.
sar:
I could not understand, and this is going off Hollis’s earlier point, why they introduced Bryce only to have him play a totally non-committal role as an occasional audience member. I thought that they were introducing Bryce to be kind of his principal assistant in this varsity marching band,
Jeff:
And I’m so glad you brought that up, Sarah, because I think I might actually have an answer to that question.
sar:
Excellent.
Jeff:
Now, in the Extreme Makeover Home edition episode, Patrick Henry often refers to his blindness as an ability that it provides him with different kinds of sight, and one of those types of sight he explains is that he does not see race literally and therefore does not discriminate. He says, those as in race have no meaning to me whatsoever. I just see what’s within a person. So I don’t want to say that Patrick was the first, I don’t see race, but also he literally doesn’t see race.
sar:
Yeah. He’s actually innovating in this argument.
Jeff:
A little bit perhaps? But it also maybe glosses over a little bit what race is as three white people are about to enter into a conversation on race and what it means. So this should be great and not at all.
sar:
Totally inappropriate.
Jeff:
That is why I fully believe this is why that is in there is because this is a thing that Patrick Henry has been saying. He said it on the actually blank over home edition. I’m guessing it’s something that he’s been brought up in other contexts, whether it’s interviews or what have you…
Hollis:
They do briefly mention it in high school as in the cafeteria. The friend was like, oh, so you only see black? And then he says, I don’t know what black is.
Jeff:
Right, exactly. And so I think that’s literally the reason that this was placed today. I think that might be the only reason that Bryce is there was for them to play this heartwarming turn of phrase that he doesn’t see race.
sar:
Well, I mean the whole film is disappointing, but it’s kind of a disappointing addition in what is already a disappointing film because, and I’m sorry Patrick, if you ever hear this, the kind of foe enlightenment around, oh, I call my disabilities abilities and Special Olympics and I don’t see race or see color. It’s something we teach children, and then as you develop context and history and basic intersectionality, you come to the realization that, okay, there are some very legitimate things that get in the way of some people having more and less than others. So if you want to be a truly compassionate person, you can’t get on the telephone telephone, not telephone both and say, I don’t see rays, but all black people are the same, all disablement is the same. It doesn’t work, but it works in the context of this telethon. For the same reason that Sarah McLaughlin holding up puppies with two broken legs and says, give me money or adopt. It works in that you’re kind of glossing over the moral incongruity there to get to the money,
Jeff:
Right? Yeah. It flattens it, right? It flattens everything down, which I know is the thing that happens when it’s a 90 minute film, things get flattened in the process of 90 minutes.
sar:
I’m not sure his entire moral outlook should have been flattened for a 90 minute film about him as a person, but otherwise I concur.
Jeff:
Yeah. What other the thoughts did you have about the school system, Hollis?
Hollis:
Some of it was very relatable, other parts of it or that is not…No, no. The fact that high school was enjoyable to him as a disabled student was baffling to me because there’s no way he, he did not ever experience any kind of bullying. That cafeteria scene I thought was about to jump into a series of bullying that he experienced in high school, but then the next scene, they were best friends somehow that it didn’t really skip, it didn’t transition.
sar:
Yeah. I got the sense, and Jeff can correct me if he got a different sense that the movie was trying pretty hard not to disparage the very living person, Patrick. So if there were too many scenes dedicated to embarrassing parts of his persona or episodes of his life, he would rather not relive. There’s this ya trope where a bunch of the characters become fast friends by way of these canny insults toward one another that then get executed in real life a lot more messily and less successfully than they do in stuff like Fault in our stars. And I think they were kind of drawing on that narrative in my mind to try to make him and what’s it, Bryce Fast friends. I don’t think he actually had a stunning quip in the moment of his bullying, but for the movie he did, and I think it’s because it’s servicing the narrative and the telethon of cult of personality of Mini Patrick.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well, yeah. I think that this is all about the notion of his charisma is enough to win over anybody, even a staunchest critic, a bully in high school,
sar:
Yeah. And we’ve all been to high school, that doesn’t work.
Jeff:
I won over none of my bullies. My stunning charisma was useless in the face of bullying.
Hollis:
Exactly.
Jeff:
Yeah. But it is interesting, this notion, and this is perhaps where unintentionally the film is maybe a bit religious in that Patrick does have this sort of messianic nature about him being risen up and a moral paragon. He works hard, he’s dedicated to what he does. There are no half measures here. He wins over people, he finds solutions, he inspires people. But this is exactly what Bill Peace, I think would describe as the good cripple that he’s performing the proper way to be a disabled boy at this time, sort of turn of the century millennial babies.
sar:
Yeah. I don’t even think he tosses out an insult now that I think about it. Right. He doesn’t even do that.
Jeff:
No, he doesn’t. Which it could have been interesting. Like you said, if this movie started with him entering high school, you could’ve actually gotten into some of this messy stuff. I mean, the race politics of Louisville is going to be far more complicated than it was addressed in this film. I would imagine. It’s true. I’m not from Louisville, but I would imagine in Kentucky there’s some fun stuff going on in this.
sar:
I want to know Patrick’s arc of telling other high school kids, 15, 16 year olds, I don’t see rice. I wanted to see that play out on screen. I
Hollis:
Know. Yeah. Again, it had so much potential.
sar:
So much potential, Hollis.
Jeff:
Yeah, Yeah.
Hollis:
Yeah.
Jeff:
So I think this actually brings us, I’m sorry, but we should probably talk about the fact that this movie does fall into a couple interesting tropes, and I think the one really interesting trope that we should talk about is the trope of making a biopic about a disabled person that accidentally is about the non-disabled person. I would argue this movie is about the dad, it’s not about Patrick.
Hollis:
Yeah, I would completely agree with you with that. I almost said without hypnosis.
Jeff:
Yes. Yeah. The medium is the message as we all know. Yeah. The other one that I wanted to talk a little bit about is what I call the pain parade. This is the desire, the urgent need to talk constantly about surgeries, injuries, rehab, struggle. We actually don’t know a lot about Patrick. I know lots of other surgeries, but I don’t know really anything else about him other than he likes music and he’s had a rough go with his body.
sar:
We don’t even really see the struggle. The struggle of this film was him trying to make band and for whatever reason, there’s a whole five minute scene dedicated to the head of this marching band saying, well, no, you can’t join because half of the premise here is March this Ken does march. He really could not let that go.
Hollis:
Yeah.
sar:
There’s a cool ableism point to be made there about how do we envision accommodations. But I think it was actually a much simpler point about this is one of the biggest hardships in this guy’s life with some fairly well off parents, and the only real hardship we’re getting in the context of the screenplay is him crawling to the kitchen inexplicably, still looking for an explanation on that. They had a ramp,
Jeff:
I will say that is actually accurate to their world. So this ramp crawling scene is also a part of the Extreme Makeover episode. Wild. This is one of the issues. There is a ramp to get into their kitchen that he is unable to push himself up. It’s too steep for him to push up. So he has to get out of his chair, crawl up, and reel it in.
sar:
Gotcha.
Jeff:
I will say that I do not understand
Hollis:
Use a power chair?
Jeff:
They did not make the ramp longer to make the slope less. There was room, you can see in both the film there was tons of room makeover. There is room for them to extend that rant if that was the real problem.
sar:
And they did two different of it. So they really wanted to hone in on this trouble getting to the kitchen thing. And I don’t know if they were just at a complete loss for other troubles to give this kid, but it really felt truly bizarre.
Jeff:
My theory is this is the She makeover viral effect, but it was lose bit afterwards and that scene I did was particularly evocative to audiences of that show.
sar:
That’s what got Ty Pennington on the phone. He was like, that’s it.
Jeff:
He’s like, not, can’t even get into the kitchen. Invite America. You can get into the kitchen when you can tell your mom know what to make to you. So that might be it, but it’s wild. This movie spends a ton of time about how hard it is, how painful it is, but as our reviewer earlier explains, there really isn’t a whole lot of real deep engagement with there has to be a better way. What if there was funding?
sar:
Well, they don’t even show it, which I think might’ve also increased the narrative intrigue had they shown him in pain or him recovering after a surgery or not to make it more pain parade, but all of the dialogue kind of felt like an after effects add in where they’ll change the color of your eyes after the fact. They just had these script throw ins like, oh, he had seven surgeries this year and he’s just sitting there playing the trumpet and I’m like, I don’t think he had seven surgeries this year. What the fuck?
Hollis:
There’s no way he’s playing trumpet after seven fucking surgeries.
Jeff:
Yeah. So he has a spinal cord surgery for scoliosis. I also had that surgery. Hollis also had that surgery.
sar:
Holy hell.
Jeff:
After the surgery, were you sitting up in a bed talking to people?
Hollis:
Fuck no.
sar:
Were you playing the trumpet?
Hollis:
I was half conscious.
Jeff:
Yeah. I was not conscious for three days after the surgery.
sar:
Yeah, yeah. So you’re telling me the stage show is untrue.
Jeff:
They lied to you, Sarah.
sar:
Unbelievable.
Hollis:
I honestly, I barely remember coming out of that surgery.
Jeff:
No, not at all.
Hollis:
Yeah,
sar:
You didn’t go to AP bio the next day.
Hollis:
Oh yeah. And I remember basically I remember that surgery is the pain when they were removing 18 staples.
Jeff:
Yep. Yeah. I was about six months in recovery where I was basically on my back. I was on the couch taking a lot of codeine and falling in love with Rosie O’Donnell.
sar:
Nice.
Jeff:
And then the codeine went away and I suddenly didn’t like Rosie O’Donnell. So funny how that works. Surely there’s no connection.
sar:
No.
Jeff:
The other one, obviously this is what we probably don’t need to talk about, but with loss comes a special gift in this case because he doesn’t have eyes. He has music and apparently anti-racism.
sar:
It kind of just felt like, and I don’t even know if I can blame the film for this because I’m sure this church or organization wasn’t made of money, but it felt like the no-frills version of every trope we had the inspiration porn, we had the Pan Olympics, we had him having unconscionable troubles, we had his entire life story, all the hits, but it was all done badly and totally unmoving. And even when I’m saying it’s hard to talk about, I wanted to see more of the pain while still saying, I don’t want to see only pain because I’m just not buying the version you’re giving me. The version you’re giving me is so no frills as for me to not believe the entire telethon you needed to commit to one or two of these tropes instead of doing 10 or 12 of ’em in the explain like I’m five budget version.
Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely.
sar:
Does that make sense?
Jeff:
No, absolutely. Absolutely.
sar:
It just ended up, I felt like I wasn’t understanding the plot and then I’m looking it up and I’m like, no, that was the plot. That’s what they were trying to get across. I just don’t get it.
Jeff:
Now, listeners of the show will know that we have a fully empirical, completely scientific and rigorous method in which we rate all of our films titled The Invalid Culture Scale, which we will put this movie to the test to determine where it falls on our scale, whether or not it maybe is actually art or if it will win the coveted Jerry Lewis seal of approval. So on a scale of one to five, with five being the least accurate, how accurate does this film portray disability?
Hollis:
I want to say four. Four and a half. Four and a half.
sar:
Four and a half.
Hollis:
Because yes, he does have a lot of surgeries as a kid with his fairly relatable because he goes for scoliosis, he brace his leg and a number other surgeries for his disorder and he has, the one thing that I found even more relatable was the fact that he had an EA sitting beside him in every class in high school.
Jeff:
That doesn’t happen.
sar:
Maybe it does in Louisville. Maybe they have unprecedented funding.
Hollis:
It happened for me. I don’t know about you.
Jeff:
Definitely not for me. I was allowed one third of an attendant.
Hollis:
Really?
Jeff:
They chopped that guy up. Yes.
Hollis:
Yes. Oh, maybe it’s a London rule.
Jeff:
I was in London, I was in a different town, but I had one third of an attendant, damnit Hollis.
sar:
So we are 1-to-1 again. It’s interesting to me that you guys have a lot of the same disablement as what’s being depicted here and oftentimes in the context of this episode, very opposite experiences of it, which is fun for me as a third party observer because now I believe nothing. Yeah,
Jeff:
Yea it’s all made up basically “Disability is, whose line is line is it anyway? It’s all random. It’s all made up.
sar:
Yeah. We’re all just atoms floating in the universe and how much help you receive is just completely random,
Jeff:
Totally arbitrary. Depends on how good you are at piano.
sar:
So I’m not as helpful for this film because Jeff keeps picking physical disability films and I’m a mental disability expert, so color me useless, but I’m going to go with three.
Hollis:
Jeff was being selfish in his choices.
sar:
Yeah, Jeff is being real selfish with the film selection right now.
Jeff:
So, Two points. There’re just all disabled physically, always one heavy content in that side and yeah, that’s why. And they’re mostly men. That’s the other fun thing. It’s so cool.
sar:
They’re mostly men. Perfect. Alright. I went with three and I went with three because of the conversation we were having toward the end about, I felt like they were doing a lot of typical disability on film devices, but in not committing to any of them. And I wonder how much of this is because or if they consulted with the family on the screenplay and I think that would change my answer if they had writing credit on the screenplay, but if they didn’t, the depiction is so flimsy in all of the trope making that none of them get pulled off. If they made kind of a builder basic inspiration porn film like the Hill, I would’ve actually given it a lower score, lower being better because it at least committed to the inspiration for an angle. This film didn’t even do that.
Jeff:
I’m pretty much right in the middle. I gave it a four. I was going to say it might be accurate to Patrick Henry’s life. I actually don’t think that that’s necessarily the case, but I also think that it’s not super accurate in terms of what life with disability is like. There’s all the highlights. They have all the buzzwords, the things that you have probably heard if you talk to a disabled person for a few minutes around concerns around access, concerns around bills, concerns around surgeries. They’ve got all the elements there, but it’s all just so glossed, just completely glossed over. And there’s really no attempt to engage critically with what this means, with what it means that his family isn’t able to afford healthcare, what it means that he’s working his way through element or through high school and then eventually goes on into university. I think there’s the major focus on these high level points in a biography as opposed to the real things that make a human. I’m going to give it a four. On a scale of one to five, with five being the hardest, how hard was it for you to get through this film?
Hollis:
I’m going to say four because I did not watch it on, I watched it on YouTube premium so I didn’t have two miracles.
sar:
Oh hell yeah.
Hollis:
So that’s why it was shorter, so it was easier to get through. That’s why I gave it the four out of five and not vital.
sar:
You saw the YouTube cut?
Hollis:
Yeah.
sar:
Maybe we should have watched that.
Jeff:
We boned that one. Sorry folks.
sar:
I did find this harder to get through than a lot of the more entertaining I see films, so I’m going to agree with Hollis on four. I think part of the value of it, if you go to watch it, which you shouldn’t, is it really is kind of like a K-pop drama slice of life where you really do get the kind of me entering day-to-day style. And if that’s genuinely your thing, I think you might actually enjoy this film, but it’s not my thing at all. I’m not big on slice of life, so I found it quite difficult combined with the obvious screenplay problems.
Jeff:
So I’m the outlier on this one. I gave it a 2.5. This is by no means the worst that I’ve ever had to sit through. It wasn’t terrible filmmaking. I mean it wasn’t great filmmaking, but by the context of this podcast, this was not the worst thing I’ve had to sit through. I remember it ending and not feeling like I had ruined my life. Absolutely. And that to me feels like I wasn’t exhausted afterwards. And this might be tip of my hand a little bit, but also my answer to the next question also kind of explains why I gave this a 2.5. So the next question is on a scale of one to five, with five being the maximum, how often did you laugh at things that were not supposed to be funny?
Hollis:
I’d say three and a half.
sar:
Okay.
Hollis:
I found the idea. Think the thing that I laugh most actually out loud about was how it seemed like a good idea for him to quit his job and become a baggage handler that would’ve paid him maybe a fifth of the salary that he was already earning and then maybe a 10th of the salary that he could have taken.
sar:
I’m going to go high. I’m going to give it a four because I was laughing throughout this movie and some of it might’ve been the margaritas, but at least some of it was outright ridiculous scene composition. You had the theater with him playing and his dad telling him just picture the audience naked or with just their underwear on and he turns around like, dad, I’ve had no eyes my whole life type of thing. Or when the parents come home and there’s, I kid you not, there’s a two or three minute scene that Jeff touched on where the parents are arguing over whether the baby was or was not born with eyes. And Jeff and I were joking. I feel like as a nurse that would be fairly easy to identify on a scale of difficult disorders, checking the eyelid and seeing if there’s anything in it. They’re going to be pretty sure. And there’s just ridiculous moments like that throughout the film. So I was laughing quite a bit, but I don’t think the screenplay was trying to make that funny. I think they were trying to make increasingly dramatic moments and the tonal shift was such that anything that might otherwise have translated as kind of a dramatic lilt instead translated as absurdity.
Jeff:
Yep. I was right there with you. I went higher. I gave it a five. This was objectively a really funny that I don’t think it was intended to be as funny as it was. I laughed at all the things you were mentioning, the Are you sure he doesn’t have eyes? Hilarious. I have to play basketball all the time. Hilarious. I have to sell my car. Hilarious grandpa trying to kill his grandchild. Hilarious. It was all hilarious. I thought it was really, really funny. It was not intended to be. I’m a terrible person and I’m okay with that. And that is why I found it a very watchable film because it was really funny when you really think about it. Yeah. Okay.
sar:
I think it’s not, when you think about it, it’s when you totally release your mind. You choose to think nothing and just let the film wash over you.
Jeff:
Just let it smash against you.
sar:
Like the tide coming in at the end of the day.
Jeff:
Yeah. Rolling up the ramp just to get a glass of water. Okay, scale of one to five, our last question, my favorite one with five being the most, how many steps back has this film put disabled people?
Hollis:
Five being the highest?
sar:
Yes.
Hollis:
A million.
sar:
A million.
Jeff:
So that’s a five. We’re go with a five.
Hollis:
Yeah. We’re going with five. It does not picture the life of a disabled person accurately at all. And it focuses on the woe is me Life of the father way too much.
sar:
When I put it in the context of the other films we’ve watched this year, I think stuff like I can never say it, quid pro quo actually does far more dangerous things for disablement and popular culture than something like this film, which was just kind of a poorly edited, attempted inspiration porn. I think if you’re doing poorly edited, attempted inspiration porn, there is enough of that entrenched in North American society that people pretty much know what to make of it at face value. This isn’t a film that I would give to somebody with a whole bunch of notes about what movements that it’s drawing on unlike some of the other films in Jeff’s because it’s just so bafflingly simplistic and it doesn’t try to achieve anything other than its telethon narrative value. And if that’s all they were going for sure, I respect that. If what you really wanted to do was tell an inspirational quasi story to raise a bunch more money, that’s great.
But I don’t think that’s as damaging to disability culture than films that actively promote disinformation or really harmful opinions about culture. Not that inspiration porn isn’t a harmful opinion, but I’m kind of counting on when I meet a stranger. But that’s an opinion that we’re working on changing. Whereas the Republican fantasy epic was rapidly more dangerous than a film this, you’d have to host a showing after that, showing to discuss the problems with that showing. And I don’t feel that you’d have to do that with this film. You’d just get up on stage and be like, well, that sure was an attempt, right? And everybody would kind of already know what you’re saying. Does that make sense?
Jeff:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I really struggled with this. I’ve changed my score on this multiple times since I saw it. I have oscillated between two and five for days, months even. And I think I’m going to go with four because at the end of the day what I always come back to on this film is that this is a story about a real person who still lives and exists and literally lives where the production company is based. They theoretically have all the access they could ever dream of this person. And they told possibly the most boring part of this kid’s life that they told the story about him surviving childhood, playing in his high school marching band, playing in the university marching band when this dude has been on TV multiple times. He’s been on Moy Povich, he’s been on Oprah, he’s been around the world performing. He’s played on major stages. I’m thinking about a movie like Walk the Line, the bio-pic about Johnny Cash.
Hollis:
And eah
Jeff:
I’m like, can you imagine if Walk the Line was just about Johnny Cash’s childhood to university age? And that’s not to say that Patrick Henry Hughes is like what Johnny Cash level musical performer, but I think it does say that they missed so much interesting stuff about his life and they missed it because it didn’t fit the inspiration poor narrative in a clean and easy way, right?
sar:
Yep.
Jeff:
How could he be a sad disabled person if he’s also performing on Oprah? It doesn’t line up. Right. Sure. And for that reason, I think that even though it’s not intentional, it never is or rarely is I did this film, am punishing it, penalize it because there was a real opportunity here to tell a cool story about a genuinely interesting person. And I don’t think we got that story. I think we were robbed of that story. And instead the record will hold, at least for those who watched the film that Patrick Henry hug is a diamond dozen inspiration porn kid and I don’t think that’s exactly who he is. And for that I’m going to give it a four.
sar:
I think that’s a pretty nuanced review. I like that review.
Hollis:
Yeah. I would say it was a very accurate review
Jeff:
As we get angry on behalf of Patrick Henry here at Hughes. So if he doesn’t come and murder me when he does what I do and stalks me on the internet and finds where I live, so the scores have been tabulated drum roll please, with never have a term roll with shocking 45.5 Im potential comes in with our second highest category. A crime may have been committed, which feels about right I would say.
sar:
That’s accurate. I don’t think it’s the, I was debating whether this would be Jerry Lewis level and I didn’t feel it deserved Jerry Lewis level. It’s not one of the worst ones we saw this year, but it’s extremely problematic if you’re doing a disability or rendering of it.
Hollis:
Well, given the fact that you guys are saying that this is not the worst one that you have watched, I’m very happy that I’m not hosting a podcast.
sar:
You would not believe the bullshit that Jeff has made me watch. You would truly not believe it.
Jeff:
Oh, I’m such a bad person.
sar:
Oh no. This was one of the better ones. Hollis. Jeff clearly likes you as a friend. He gave you one of the better films.
Jeff:
Yeah. You didn’t get adequately punished, which I think means that you need to come back for a future episode.
sar:
Sounds like Hollis is coming up again!
Hollis:
I think I deserve a better punishment apart from putting up conversation with Jeff.
Jeff:
Well, we’ll see how your podcast that I’m going to join goes and we’ll see what level of torture you get after that.
Hollis:
There you go.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well thank you so much Hol, for joining us. It’s been a pleasure.
sar:
Thank you.
Hollis:
I am so happy that this, when you pair with me about making this show, I was super excited and it seems so far away and now it’s here and now it’s done. You did it. You survived.
sar:
We had so much fun with you.
Hollis:
It was a blast. Yeah, it was lovely to meet you as well. And I know at the beginning of the show you guys are saying how it’s September again and it is September and you guys are excited to go back. And I always now feel weird for me in Septembers because I’m not joined back and I have not joined back since before the pandemic. I drove by my old elementary school the other day and seeing the kids coming out of there, it’s like, oh my God, that was yesterday. Right?
Jeff:
Yeah. It’s such a weird loss. I mean, you think about Augusts when you were young and for myself, I always dreaded August because it meant that school was coming and I didn’t want to go back. And now as an adult, I mean I still go back to school. I’m a professor, I forgot to leave. But it’s such a different emotion. You missed the excitement and you missed the coming back together. And now in work lives, you don’t get that. Which is why I believe that capitalism should just shut off for two months in the summer. We should all just go on vacation, hang out, play in the forest together and spit in the woods. The woods, and then go back to work in September,
Hollis:
Be in a campfire singing Dear Abby. Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah exactly. So King of Capitalism, I think that might be Elon Musk or Bezos maybe if you’re listening to this, give the people back summer holidays
sar:
End World Hunger. Just do it for fun. Honestly, if I had that much money, I’d just do it for funsies
Hollis:
And stop capitalism for two months and turned into, you know, part of the conversation was making me remember this, Jeff, do you remember when we used to go to the Easter Seals Camps? The winner is: Friendship. I hated that. Absolutely hated that.
Jeff:
Yeah. Absolutely.
sar:
That could have very easily been a scene in this film. If we were wondering about the tone of this film, the tone is Easter Seals Foundation Marathon.
Jeff:
Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Pretty much. So that wraps up another edition. It’s really the edition, I would say, of invalid culture, but we are not done yet, folks. We have two more films and then a very special Christmas episode. So tune in with us next month in October where things are going to get spooky. And by that I mean terrifying and not in the way the director intended. Have a good one. Enjoy Back to School.
Jeff:
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast? Go on to our website, invalid culture.com, submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie. Have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, invalid culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the Trash with Strangers on the internet. Everyone is wrong, I just haven’t told them yet.
[Outro theme song, “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet” by Mvll Crimes plays]
