Bonus: John Donvan and Caren Zucker Discuss Their PBS Documentary

exciting time for your both. Your documentary In a Different Key debuts on PBS next week Tuesday December at nine pm Eastern eight Central. First off, congratulations, you guys are the big time now. Absolutely, before we go any further, tell people exactly when and how they can watch. So we're playing pretty much in every PBS station across the country as far as we know. As you mentioned at

nine eastern and eight o'clock Central. Just look up your local PBS station and there we will be on that night. So now that we know where and when and how we can watch the document Henery, I want to know what are your plans for that night. Is there a watch party planned? Is there a red carpet that you're gonna be walking on. Can you walk us through that. We think there are groups around the country, especially groups that are connected to autism, that are having watched parties.

We're hearing about those. What we're doing is we're gathering with a group of people who were helped us make the film, either by backing us financially or giving us advice or consultation, or who worked on the movie. We're getting together in an apartment in New York City and we're just going to have some food and wine, and then at nine o'clock we're gonna pause and pop some champagne,

and we're gonna watch the opening credits. But we're we decided not to make people sit and watch the movie, so we're gonna watch the opening credits, and then after the first minute and a half, we're gonna turn down the sound and go back to having our celebration because hopefully everyone who's there will have seen the movie by then. Yeah, of course, I guess that makes sense. It's hard to just sit back and watch something that you worked so

hard on for. I assume you know so many months to a year, But have you guys seen the Obviously you've seen the final product at this point, you don't have to watch it on the night of premiers, right, Yeah. I mean an important part of what we're doing and we're going to continue to do it, is we've spent since March of two we've been going around the country and having screenings for small groups. We've been to twenty three states with it, and we're going to keep going.

Any anybody who wants to bring us in for a screening event for their communities from now on, we're totally open to it. We watched the film to answer your question, We've seen it like ten thousand times and um. And then there's a conversation that follows the screening, which is almost better than the movie, but not quite. It's very powerful,

powerful conversations. They've been honest and intimate and really really meaningful, and they've included people on the spectrum, their families, people who support people with autism through their work, first responders, medical community educators, doctors. Yeah, yeah, which is what was the goal of the film ultimately, was to get it out there. That's incredible. I want to start up by speaking generally to you guys, just about obviously, and I

heard we've worked on the podcast here. Uh, what are some of the differences that the audience can expect between the documentary and the podcast. The obvious difference is that, first of all, you get to see what Donald Triplett looks like, the first child ever diagnosed with autism, who's now living in Mississippi, And many of the other people who appear in the podcast also appear in the film, like Amy Gravino and Amy Lutts and Stephanie Parks and John robeson um, so you get to see what they

look like. The film is much shorter actually than the podcast series, so the podcast there's there's more depth and development of a number of the stories because we had the time to really let people speak and say everything they wanted to say. We're in the film, you know, the whole film is only an hour and forty three minutes, so you don't get as deep inside the characters and

the personalities of the people. Well as exciting as this thing is for you guys, and you guys are going to do your party in New York City with the with the food and the cheese and everything, I imagine that the premiere is going to be really big news down in Forest Mississippi. Have you guys kept in touch with Donald at all or other folks in the town. We've become very close with the whole community, in fact, because we've been there so many times, back and forth,

because before the film was the book. It's it's like a second family down there. What is he up to these days? Do you guys have updates on him at all? Yeah? An interesting thing is Donald finally, after living all of his life in one house, the house that his parents built in the nine twenties, he moved into a much more modern and smaller house that his brother, his deceased

brother owned. His brother Oliver, who was really really became a good friend of ours and and helped us in so many steps of making the book happened and then making the movie happen. He died um a couple of years ago, and Donald has moved into his house. And the house that he lived in, which for us was such an icon and so historic filled with so much history,

was demolished. It was it was knocked down because it was it was quite old, and I guess the feeling was that the it would the land and more value with a new house being put on it. So we were sorry to see that go. But Donald now is in a whole new setting and it's really we in fact visited with I heart. Yeah, yeah, that's when we saw it the first time. So Donald got very quickly acclimated to his new surroundings, which, you know, you don't expect an older person to move into a new place

and adapt so quickly. And then there's a whole thing that you know, it's just it's always sort of said that people with autism don't like change, and that's true of a lot of people with thoughts, and it was definitely true of Donald when he was a child. But he's adapted to the new place really really well. The only thing that's changed really is that we think he has finally stopped driving. That's a big change. Yeah, and do what we're actually relieved, um, because it was time

for him to stop driving. And it's hard to stop driving if you've been driving your whole life. Yeah. Yeah, man, Well, I mean sorry to hear about the house, but it's great that he, you know, adapting to change. I think change is hard for just anybody in general. Yeah, he's very proud of the house, and he gave us a tour and he's very happy there and he's still getting out and around. You know, he he worked for his

families bank for most of his life. And there's a group called the Mississippi Young Bankers Association and they have an annual convention and Donald started going when he was young, but he kept going every year till till I believe this year. I saw something on a Twitter post about Hey, Donald Triplet's coming again, guys, you know, and so it's all of these thirty five forty year old bankers and

Donald Trippling and they love him and welcome him. And he loves going because it was, you know, is one of his habits of going. So he's still getting out and he's still traveling. He's so so, as we make clear in in the podcast, he likes to go out and travel the world. It's a really important thing for him, and he's still doing that. Let's go back to the actual documentary itself and you guys, obviously you've mentioned you've

been screening at a bunch. In these conversations that you're having with fans and people that have seen the movie of the documentary, have you gotten reactions to the podcast itself? Are people coming up to you and saying like, man, that hooked me, and then you know, now I had to see this documentary and and and continue this journey. We haven't had that connection. We haven't had people say I saw that, I heard the podcast, now I want to see the movie. We really would like that to happen.

But we met many people at the screenings who had heard the podcast really really love it. And um, we heard from you know, Amy Gravino, who uh is appears prominently in the podcast. I'll just remind folks she's a woman with on an autism spectrum who deals with sexuality and was bullied and she's just one of our favorite people in the world. Um. She heard from people around the world. Um, very early on she was getting emails from people in Ireland who had heard the podcast and

and others. And she tells us that it still keeps coming in for her. So, um, we really really do sense the podcast being out there, and um, I think of it, you know, maybe more Karen that it's complementary to the film, that the two work together really really well. Yeah, And sticking with the sort of tour of these screenings that you guys are going on, Karen, one of the themes that you talked about specifically in the podcast is that we should stand up for people who are different

and meet people more than halfway. That's what happened with Donald and Forest his whole life. But have you guys been given anecdotes from people um like that from their communities when you go and if so, can you share any So the very first time we showed the film in public was in Mississippi. There's a film festival in the town of Oxford, where the University of Mississippi has its home, and there's an annual film festival, which really is the state film festival from Mississippi. And what was

really interesting for two things that are interesting. One is that Donald came in his family and many people from his town of Forest, drove like two and a half hour to come to this film festival and they overnight it and Donald got to be in the audience when the film was shown in public for the first time and came up on stage and took about But the other thing that happened there was that the next day we were we were going to lunch and and Oxford

to small town. It's basically got one main street and their seven or eight really nice restaurants there and we were looking for one of them for lunch. And Karen appears very prominently in the film. I do in a little bit, but Karen's very prominent as the main storyteller to the film. And Um, somebody walked up to her and said, I was at the screening yesterday, and again, this was not an audience made up of people connected to autism. This was an audience of people who like movies.

So she comes up to Karen and says, I saw you in the movie yesterday, and I just want to say I didn't know anything about autism before and I'm never going to be the same having seen the film. And John and I looked at each other and thought, that's it. That that's the goal of the film. That's what we wanted is to touch people who didn't know, who didn't necessarily care, and we're changed by seeing the film. I mean, that was the ultimate we did it moment

for us. And we've seen we we've also seen in screenings like moments of community happened. So we did an event UM in Bentonville, Arkansas, UM, which is you know, a really really lovely community. It's the home of the Walmart Corporation. So, um, they have an incredibly well endowed public school system with a fantastic auditorium that you know, world class auditorium facility at the local high school. And that's where the screening was. And they're about three people there.

And at the end of the film, we're up on the stage and we're doing Q and A and a woman starts talking from the audience and she starts to cry. And I stopped and I say, ma'am, you know we we can. You don't have to keep going. We can chat maybe afterwards. And she said, no, no, no, I I don't want to stop talking. But it's just I'm I'm speaking now because I'm I'm the mother of somebody

who was just diagnosed. I have a small challenge who was just diagnosed a month or two ago, and I'm so scared because I don't know what to do, and I have nobody to talk to and no support at that moment, Like all around her, the other people in the audience said, yes, you do, you have us. We're here, We're here for you. And and and that's because there were a lot of families there who have children on the spectrum, and they had been organized and they were.

They basically welcomed her into their organization, and that was such a such a beautiful and powerful moment. And there's been many many other things like that in our screenings. We've had events where the mayor of the town came and the police department came and there you know, there's as in the story that we tell in the podcast series about bad interactions between police and people on the

spectrum because of misunderstanding of what autism is. Um. That's in the film also, and we've had like really powerful conversations happened when the police are in the audience and families want to talk with them, and the police want to say, how do we do better? What do we do better? And those have been really really powerful conversations. Also, the work is so affecting the podcast and and I have yet to to watch the documentary, but I'm very

excited to get a chance to watch it. But um, this is a great segue to the next thing that I wanted to ask you guys about Donald's story being the first case diagnosed with this. Um, I think that there is uh my interpretation of it when I when I really dove into the story, I didn't feel like it was something that could happen if it wasn't in

a small town with a community like that. UM. And I was wondering if you guys feel the same way that the fact that at that time in history, if the idea that you're in this community that has sort of a front facing UM identity with everybody that you you see around town, if that actually really made a difference in the development of this first autism case. I actually think there's two answers to that question. One is, you know absolutely that the fact that the community embraced

Donald we think had a huge impact on his life. UM. Some of that is because they were very prominent family, the triplets in Forest, but I don't believe that it was all of it. I believe so much of it was that the community embraced him, and the community will say, the people that we've met UM will tell us that it wasn't them, that it was him. So the whole

idea of it being a small town was critical. But I would also argue and I and I think we we've told the story one of these stories in the podcast as well, But you can have a community anywhere UM embracing somebody who's different can happen um and it can happen in a restaurant, It can happen in a a bus, it can happen in the city. It's just it can happen in the neighborhood within a city, or in an apartment building within a city that could be the community. You know. There's a story that I love

about Karen's son, Mickey, who lives in Phoenix. He has certain routines and habits, and one of them is that he likes to go to Starbucks to walk every morning to the nearest Starbucks, which is about like an eight minute walk, I guess. And he doesn't drink coffee, and he doesn't spend money to freely, so he orders water. And you know, there's no business, there's no percentage in it for that Starbucks to serve him water every day.

But we were in Phoenix to do some some work on the movie, and Karen and I, you know, we were sitting there, but we we let's go to that Starbucks this morning get a cup of coffee. And we went to that Starbucks and there was a cup of water on the counter with Mickey's name that apparently, like every day they put out that cup of water because they know his routine, and that's that's like really really

small gesture, that's a big deal. And some of that has to do just as with Donald, who's really charming. Mickey is really charming, and I guess he charmed them. But there's also some heart in that little place, so that little Starbucks is a community, we would say also, and speaking of that, I think that the story of the podcast specifically really documents the evolution of acceptance and understanding from the gross ideology of eugenics to Donald's high

school days. I personally like to think that every generation makes a little progress on issues like this in society. How far do you feel we've come in your lifetime and what still needs to be done to support people with autism properly my lifetime, I I can say gigantically in my lifetime. I was born in nineteen fifty five, and when I was going to elementary school, which would put that in the middle of the nineteen sixties, people who have the challenges of autism were not in school.

They had no right to go to school, they were not protected, so the school systems could just say we don't want you and legally. Legally, that's what they did, even for special ed. Special ed can't handle you, You're out and there was no recourse. So so that changed. That changed legally, I mean, parents fought for the right so of a free public education and they won, and

people who are really different and disabled were put in institutions. Yeah. Yeah, so we're just not in that world at all anymore. So there's been a gigantic change. I also think that you know, I'm saying this now as a boomer, I I increasingly think that gen Z represents an embodiment of a kind of acceptance and tolerance of diversity that that that previous generations didn't quite get to. And I have I put a lot of hope in that. You know, gen Z. My kids are gen Z, so that generation.

Maybe it drives me crazy sometimes, but on this point, I really really think that they're they're the teachers, as a parent would say, we still have a really long way to go that UM, when my son was young, UM, teaching and educating children with autism was you know, the major focus. And we have now sort of, to to

a large degree, come so far in doing that. And you know, bringing children UM up and educating them in the system, and they grow up into adults and that can be somewhat independent, but we what we do is once they become adults, we sort of let them fall off a cliff and we have not figured out the adults yet by any means for places where they're going to live and and still in the workplace. It's it's still really a struggle for people who are different to

be part of society as adults. In your opinion, if people want to get involved, is there anything that they can do directly to support people with autism. Yeah, it's

very direct. Um. What we try to do with the stories that we tell, and you know, the story of Autism's first Child in the podcast and the story retell in the film in a different key in our book of the same name, is that while you know, the scientists are doing research and the educators are developing therapies, there's another part that relates to all of us, and that is too really step up to the notion that people on the spectrum are not so meaningfully different they

were all different. Yeah, we're all we're all we're all different, and some people have more challenges than others. But that people on this on the spectrum there us and um, they may need a little bit of help here and there, as we all need a little bit of help here and there, and some may need a lot of help here and there. Are some of us need a lot of help here and there, and so it comes down

to what can we do it. It means that if you encounter a person who, um, who is having a challenge of some kind, to to consider for a moment, maybe what I'm seeing there is maybe I'm encountering an autistic person. Maybe I'm encountering somebody who's on the autism spectrum who's having a moment that's that's a little bit of a challenge, and what can I do about it? I can be not a jerk. I can be the

person who just rolls with it. I can be you know, one of the people that appears in the podcast in our movie, Amy Lutts said, you know what I would really like is when when my child was little, and if he knocked over the whole stack of ritz crackers in the supermarket, instead of being surrounded by a bunch of people standing there with their mouths open while he had a meltdown, I would have liked it if somebody had come up and said, you know what, I'll take

care of the crackers. I got that you take care of your kid. So these we have the opportunity. What we can all do is on the small scale, but it's such an important scale because it's day to day. Is just in the little interactions. Be a little bit knowledgeable, be accepting, be a friend, have the back of somebody who's different and might be struggling a little bit in some situation or another. On the bigger scale, it can be you know, support programs that are going to involve

using government resources to provide education. Um So, port the the home in your community, in your neighborhood, on your block. Um that's the home to like three or four people on the spectrum who are living on your block. Don't isolate them, but welcome them to the barbecue. Um So

that's on slightly bigger scale. But we really think on the day to day basis, we all have a role to play and if we play that role well those of us who are not on the spectrum, it can have a huge impact on whether the person who is on the spectrum gets the chance to belong. Karen, one question I'm sure, you get a lot from people. Is is just general regards about your son Mickey. People will get to spend some time, some quality time with him and his story in the documentary. How is he doing

and is he excited to be a star. He's doing great. He has good days, he has you know, not so good days like everybody, but he's very excited. My movie is going to air next week, so that's what he called. He calls it my movie. So I think there's a

certain amount of pride in being part of it. Just in closing here, is there a message that you guys are both hoping something maybe that you haven't touched yet in this interview that people are are taking away from the documentary, Well, I think John said the most important point, and so I would just almost want to reiterate it, which is that it really isn't so hard to have

the back of someone who's different. It doesn't take that much from you to do that, but it makes a huge impact on the lives of people who are different to just reach out and be their friends. Yeah, we just love that this all happened with my heart. When we got the call about a year and a half ago to do a podcast. We just couldn't believe it, and it came to pass and it's been a great experience, and we would just love folks to know that we're still out there and we can bring this the movie

to your community. Our website is in a different key, the movie dot com and our book is still out there in a different key, the story of autism. Tell everybody about that, and tell everybody about this podcast, Autisms First Child. Well, once again, guys, i'd like to thank you both for joining us today. It's been so great talking to both of you. Reminder to the audience that it's called in a different key and you can watch it on PBS on Tuesday, December at nine pm Eastern

eight pm Central. I am so excited to watch. Thank you guys again so much. Thank you for having us. We appreciate it.