Edna Everage behaving like someone’s doting grandmother always felt more like the wolf from Red Riding Hood dressed in grandma’s clothes.

Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage 1970s

Les Patterson seemed synonymous with the drunks at the many parties held by my criminal family in the 1970s.

Barry Humphries as early Les Patterson

As an adult when I saw pictures of Barry Humphries I felt dread. I couldn’t help but see a leering, macabre clown. So I’m not at all surprised to find he’s now been cast in Peter Jackson’s film, The Hobbit as The Goblin King.

Goblins, described in Wikipedia, are legendary evil or mischievous creature, described as a grotesquely evil.

Barry Humphries as Les Patterson in the 1970s

I had nightmares of such a grotesque clown, the hungry eyes, the leering smirk like smile broadening into teeth. I was one of those kids who was wary of clowns, all I saw were dressed up men.

Perhaps my own experiences colored that. My father was friends with entrepreneur and TV host Kevin Dennis since the 60s and entertainer Smacka Fitzgibbon in the early 70s, both of them mutual friends of Barry Humphries, who my older brother told me came to the parties too.

barry humphries 1970s

I’m sure, rhe parties in the early 70s would fit in the film, The Hobbit. Our parties were places of wild decadence and extravagance, places of no boundaries, the stuff of film really. Our parties had the very lack of boundaries so openly celebrated, enjoyed and written about in the diaries of self confessed pedophile, Donald Friend, a close friend of Barry Humphries whose lifestyle Humphries refers to as ‘benevolent pedophilia’.

I’m sure you could find many a Goblin King at our parties back then. As for Hobbits, as an almost eight year old around the adults swanning it at our parties, I felt like a hobbit, seeking out places to feel safe. But those parties were never safe for children.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Barry Humphries as The Goblin King in a world of Hobbits

Barry Humphries on Pedophilia

Donald Friend

Australian film maker, Kerry Negara, who produced a film on the subject, ‘A Loving Friend‘. According to Negara, who interviewed the boys, now adults, the Australian art establishment kept silent on the issue, essentially sanctioning it.

Actor, comedian, writer, Barry Humphries AO CBE (aka Edna Everage/Les Patterson)

Barry Humphries as Edna Everage in the early 1970s

Donald Friend gave the boys money to attend school, gave them work, and lodging but clearly not without ‘cost’.

Donald Friend

If a white child of 9-12 was school fees and pocket money in exchange for sex, I doubt we’d consider the pedophile doing this ‘benevolent’.

Barry Humphries is now set to play The Goblin King in the upcoming film, The Hobbit.

Barry Humphries in the early 1970s

A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, described as a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.

I wonder if Barry Humphries’ Goblin King will be somehow ‘benevolent’ in a world of small Hobbits.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.

This item originally posted here:

Barry Humphries views on ‘benevolent pedophilia’

Type of Ticket

Adult $15.00 Concession $10.00

Type of Ticket

Adult $7.50 Child $5.00

This item originally posted here:

Donna Williams’ upcoming events for 2010

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com

This item originally posted here:

It’s In The Can

Donna Williams presents…Jam Jar

Here they live according to a different culture and rules that are taken for granted in the world beyond their own. Donna becomes our tour guide showing us the person beyond the labels on the ‘jam jar’. Poetic and artistic, the film explores Donna’s meaning deafness and meaning blindness in the context of autism and the social, emotional and communication bridges she uses to navigate with the world showing us the person beyond the labels on the ‘jam jar’.

Jam Jar went on to be nominated for the UK’s Mental Health Media Award, and became captured in the book, Everyday Heaven. This exclusive screening of Jam Jar, followed by a question-answer session with the audience, is Australia’s premiere screening and precedes Donna’s upcoming show, Footsteps of a Nobody written and performed by her with Aspinauts Players to be performed at Woodbin Theatre on Saturday Jan 23rd.

Cost: Gold Coin Donation

Friday 15th Jan

10am-1pm

Geelong West Town Hall

53 Pakington St

Geelong West

Enquiries: bookings@donnawilliams.net

More info:

http://www.donnawilliams.net/events0.0.html

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com

UPDATE: Jam Jar can now be purchased online here

This item originally posted here:

Jam Jar autism documentary has an Australian debut screening

Jam Jar; the classic 1995 autism documentary featuring Donna Williams has just be released on DVD.

Produced by Charlie Stuart for Channel 4 TV in association with Fresh Film UK and directed by Simon Everson, Jam Jar was filmed in Wales in 1995.  After years of the public seeking to buy it on DVD, finally, it is available for general release on DVD.

Bestselling author Donna Williams lives on a farm in rural Wales with her first husband, a man on the autistic spectrum.   Here they live according to a different culture and rules that are taken for granted in the world beyond their own.  Donna becomes a tour guide showing us the person beyond the labels on the ‘jam jar’.   Poetic and artistic, Jam Jar explores Donna’s meaning deafness, meaning blindness in the context of autism and the social, emotional and communication bridges she uses to navigate with the world.

But there was a richer story behind the story.  The original script for Jam Jar was presented to Donna before filming. The storyline for it was focused on ‘autistic marriage’.  She declined the outline for the documentary and presented her own, a tour guide of her world at the time.  Simon Everson came on board as director and appointed a technician who had been involved in a previous documentary made of her so she would feel at ease with the six week shoot. With two person crew, Donna accepted the filming and the crew arrived in rural Wales.

During the shoot, Donna’s father, who had battled cancer, found that at the age of 59 he had two weeks to live.  Filming happened amidst Donna’s long distance calls to her father in hospital in Australia.  He died two weeks before the end of filming and it was the crew who helped her come to terms with her loss.

The two person crew halted filming and helped her through these events but more was to come.   Within ten days of her father’s death and on the eve of her second wedding anniversary, her first husband, featured in this documentary, then announced he was leaving.  The crew were in shock but at Donna’s request continued to complete the documentary as her husband packed up the furniture around them and moved out.  The opening footage of Donna spinning beads in a window was taken in their now emptied bedroom.

Jam Jar not only went on to be nominated for the Mental Health Media Award, it became captured in the book, Everyday Heaven in which we get behind the scenes and eventually become introduced to her second husband, Chris Samuel.

You can buy a DVD of Jam Jar here.

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com

This item originally posted here:

Autism documentary – Jam Jar, featuring Donna Williams

Next, we take the show to Geelong West’s Woodbin Theatre on Jan 23rd 2010.

All future Aspinauts shows can be found at http://www.aspinauts.com

Warmly,
Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com

This item originally posted here:

Footsteps of A Nobody on Halloween.

It’s a work in progress and updates will be posted there.  But feel free to join and you’ll get all the latest info.

Warmly,

Donna Williams *)

http://www.donnawilliams.net

This item originally posted here:

Nobody Nowhere, the film, has a My Space page

I’d been invited to attend a Short Film Celebration by Film Victoria this week and they were kind enough to allow me to bring Chris along. It featured two poignant, wonderful short Australian films, Poetry (about teens, compromise, alienation and self honesty), and Dugong (about homecoming and reconciling) and announced the two short films which succeeded in gaining development funding in the 2007 rounds.

It was just as well that they allowed Chris along, because I think I’d have wandered in like the local bag lady (but better dressed), dropped a few social clangers as befits a person with autism whose language issues fit with Semantic Pragmatic Language Disorder.

I’m the type to introduce myself to your earrings, say you have pretty eyes or funny colored hair. Sounds tame enough? That’s because I am chanting silently “don’t mention their height, their age or ask if they’re a man or a woman”.

I did pretty well really, I didn’t even mention earrings, eyes or hair (but a woman with bright red hair kept jumping out like a beacon saying ‘chandeliers over here’).
In fact considering my butt was glued to a space on the quiet and solitary peripheries, we did manage to meet 5 people in this room of about 200.

The first was a kindly, sweet young woman called Jen. She was an actress, 17, and pretty as a magazine cutout. I held back from conversation starters about her strikingly unusual beauty or her strange wristband (or was it a bangle, I have no idea) and instead we talked a bit about acting, from an actors perspective and from a writers. Eventually, off into the throng she went, eaten up by noise and movement somewhere in the chatty chicken coop.

Next we met a lovely lady, friendly, down to earth. Oh, ‘I’m just a mum’, she said. Well, this was a good catch, I thought, I have language skills many mothers would forgive.

Her son was starring with his dog in one of the wonderful short films that night, Dugong (and he was excellent in it, so was the dog). If you’ve ever been the sibling left behind or the one who ‘hit the road’, then Dugong is certainly for you. And it was certainly a film for me, being the estranged loner who left behind a little brother (aged I’d imprinted on and with my departure was left a strange void, a changed life, and one so very unresolved. So the film moved me and the acting was superb. It’s gone into the Aspen Film Festival and it deserves it. I wish all involved wonderful luck with it.

This lovely mum talked about ‘networking’ and I asked for definition, eventually explaining I was autistic. Then she suddenly recognised me from the Insight program (as that autistic woman). She wanted to introduce us to her other two sons, one an engineer and the other an Australian animator, screenwriter, director, and all round ARTism guy, Adam Elliot, who won the Oscar for his fabulously poignant, Harvie Crumpet. Off she pottered into the noisy hub bub and disappeared as if eaten by the crowd or perhaps had become a canape.

She returned telling us Adam had said, ‘bring them over’. She’d
told him, “I’m not sure they can” (because he was in the hub of the noise).
When I heard this I said, no, I can do this, no problem. But as I began to enter the peripheries of the hub my hand covered my ear, I began to struggle and tic, holding my beads in my mouth, my arms pulled into my chest, fingers curled, eyes wide but I kept smiling (this is both useful and problematic depending on the situation).

‘I’m ok’, I said.

‘No you’re not’, said Chris, come on.

So I went back to my seat away from the hub. Eventually, Adam saw us and came over. I told him Harvie Crumpet was fab. Harvey was out in the foyer in a glass cabinet next to Oscar. Adam was a lovely bloke, as tangible and down to earth as his mum. His brother had nice eyes and a nice gentle earthy feel to him. But I didn’t say so and besides, its even more strange for a woman to start conversation with strangers one has no intention of sleeping with by telling them they have nice eyes and a pleasant feel to them! I’ve at least learned THAT much in terms of pragmatics.

The more steps I make in gaining more than scripted social language and relying on stored topic, the more I see I’m worlds apart. Thing is, one can’t opt out of society forever whilst waiting to magically lose a semantic/pragmatic language disorder and information processing challenge… it’s like praying for the moon. Once one is in one’s 40s fact is, its jump in or miss out, so it really doesn’t matter if one fits or functions, all that matters is one was invited. And, sure, such events are pretty inaccessible to people with autism (BYO GF/CF diet, ear protection, conversation translator and intervenor, and advocacy introduction card just in case).

I’m fairly good at controlling myself whilst talking or moving. But standing still and quiet is not my forte. That’s when I switch to all other/no self and the hub bub gets like a tide creeping towards me to engulf me. Low key but present nevertheless, I ticced now and then, I had anxiety postures and I think I stood out a bit because nobody else had these things. This made it a challenge.

Also fear to introduce myself as my pragmatic skills are poor. I’m face blind. If I met someone once and then they met me on the other side of the room wearing a jacket or holding something different to the first meeting, I’d likely not recognize them. I can’t tell when people are busy or talking (can’t process own expression and them simultaneously much), don’t know a smooth way to introduce myself naturally, tend to say strange things.

Spoke to a woman on the escalator, asked about her name, told her I thought her name tag said William, that her name was William… that sort of thing… Its normal for me to thing to tell someone they are pretty, short, old, have nice hair, and I have to remember constantly this is NOT ok to start conversations with… etc.

In the autie world everyone knows I’m Donna so its ok, but in the world of non-autie strangers they don’t, so I intro myself. You can feel them struggling, its their posture and they resemble how dogs look when you converse with them. If I see them perplexed I intro the ‘A’ word. Chris says this is the right thing to do, that I DO have to intro the ‘A’ word or they remain confused about my style. Getting away with it as a teenager or naive 20 something is very different when one is in one’s 40s.

The aftermath is always strange. With little simultaneous capacity to process self and other, one is rather gripped with dread, unable to fathom just how obnoxious or foot-in-mouth one was, so having a ‘reflectee’ is useful to ask whether one managed passably, left an awful impression or an ok one. The debriefing always ends then same. Ultimately one is what one is and who one is. It’s futile to see a successful apple as a failed orange, so the conclusion is always – well, I did my best.

Donna Williams

http://www.donnawilliams.net

author, artist, composer, screenwriter

This item originally posted here:

Watching Dugong and Poetry at Film Victoria.