Rain Man

Barry Levinson’s 1988 drama drives Charlie Babbitt across the country with Raymond, an autistic older brother he never knew he had, who has just inherited their father’s estate. Before Levinson the project passed through Martin Brest, Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack; Spielberg left for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Dustin Hoffman was first approached about Charlie and asked for Raymond instead. Screenwriter Ronald Bass described the rewrite that followed: the brother stopped craving affection and became someone who will not be touched and is not lovable. Charlie carries nearly all the change; Raymond ends close to where he started, so anyone waiting for the brother to soften waits in vain. Hoffman watched his first day of dailies, tried to quit and offered Richard Dreyfuss the part; three weeks later, improvising with Tom Cruise in Oklahoma, he found Raymond through a fixation on underwear. The 1988 writers strike covered nearly all principal photography and shaped the closing scene. Consultant Darold Treffert has said an early draft made Raymond intellectually disabled; autism was chosen to complicate the brothers. A good fit if you accept a film where the disabled brother is the fixed point and the other does the moving. Not for anyone treating it as an introduction to autism: Raymond is a composite, not a portrait of Kim Peek.