SALT LAKE CITY, UT – The prodigious savant who inspired the classic film “Rain Man” passed away this weekend.
Kim Peek, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man”, died of a heart attack on Saturday. He had been suffering from an upper respiratory infection for the past few weeks.
Peek was born in 1951. Doctors believed he was so severely mentally retarded that they told his parents to institutionalize him for life. They refused. By 16 months, Peek was already proving the doctors wrong by reading and memorizing stacks of books, including Shakespeare and the Bible!
It was eventually discovered that Peek was missing the corpus callosum in his brain, which connects the left and right hemispheres. It usually acts as a filter in human brains, causing us to retain only 45% of what we take in. Instead, Peek retained 95%, essentially everything he came in contact with!
Screenwriter Barry Morrow met Peek in 1984, and he decided to write a script inspired by him. Peek’s life was forever changed when the film “Rain Man” became a huge success, with Dustin Hoffman even thanking him in his acceptance speech for Best Actor at the Academy Awards! Peek began to tour the world speaking to audiences about his condition.
He is survived by his father, mother, one brother and one sister.
Watch the video below to see Peek’s astounding recall abilities:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfDEAIszuQI]
95% efficiency? Few natural things are so profoundly complete. Near perfection, minus the social skills.
Dear KPM,
Clearly your personal experiences with Kim were very different from mine. His social skills were actually much better than most people without the label of any kind of disability. He was polite, respectful of others, and gentle when he came to speak at a conference in Toledo. He had an emerging sense of humor, which his dad was delighted to see him display with a group of junior high students. No, he wasn't perfectly behaved 100% of the time, but who is? I'm honored to have spent 2 days with him once upon a time, and miss him already.
It is a pleasure to know of a human like Kim. It is funny that mankind was ready to put Kim away for life. These same folks were of small mind when Kim's mind was so large.