"We'll show them!" Take 1: "Flash of Genius"
Here's the first of two movies that were barely in theaters but turned out to be decent, not the least because of the good casts and Everymen at their respective centers.
To start, here's something I never thought I'd say: I am a Greg Kinnear fan.
Seriously, it seems like I like the guy in just about everything. Not sure when it started. With "Mystery Men," maybe? (And that was a small but hilarious role.) In any case, a quick check of his IMDB page reveals a buttload of movies where I thought he was OK if not great: "Auto Focus," "Stuck on You," "The Matador," "Little Miss Sunshine," "Fast Food Nation." Heck, he was fine even in "The Gift, "Invincible" and "Baby Mama." Of course, it helps tremendously that I've never seen "Dear God."
So it goes without saying that when My Forever Radiance had "Flash of Genius" delivered to our home, I said, "Sure!" In a nutshell, Kinnear plays a guy who does what the major automakers couldn't: invent the intermittent windshield wiper. Alas, those Detroit bad guys steal his technology, and our hero spends much of his life battling them for money and, more important, recognition.
Kinnear, who really does have the harried Everyman thing down pat now, is solid. Lauren Graham is comely as his frustrated wife. Alan Alda and Skinner from "The X-Files" nail their brief supporting roles. And -- you better sit down for this -- Dermot Mulroney is actually all right as Kinnear's business partner. Yeah, I know!
No question this story requires some patience, and I certainly wanted to knock some sense into our protagonist more than once. (Even if it was a true story.) But how can you not root for the guy, especially when it's clear he's not a perfect fella? This inspired me to resume my battle with Bill Gates. I mean, he totally ripped off my Nanolite Portals operating system ...
posted by Jefferson @ 10:32 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
My Dad, Robert Kearns, worked on the film for about 5 years before his death. Greg never got a opportunity to meet him, but did a magnificent job of becoming him.
Perhaps more would have seen this movie in the US had it not come out just as the Automotive Industry started whining about about their inability to manage their businesses without Billions of OUR dollars?
I noticed Universal had put it on their Oscar Contenders website. Then removed it a few days later. I'm not sure which Automotive Exec accomplished this?
I'm proud to have been a consultant on the movie and to have participated in the reality.
Bob Kearns won 5 jury trials against some of the biggest corporations in the world. It was what he had learned in school, it was what he as an engineering professor taught. Patents were granted to protect the inventors rights.
Perhaps his idealism was from his Jesuit training at the University of Detroit.
His U.S. Marine Corps training taught him when a bully picks a fight you don't back down. No matter the odds.
As for the other players:
The law firm HDP.com that started the suits on our behalf represented Chrysler against us.
Federal Judge Avern Cohn and his former silk-stocking law partners along with Henry Ford II's friend Max Fisher, were estimated to have made a 2000% profit on the sale of property for Chrysler's World Headquarters (Detroit: Race and Uneven Development 1990)
I'm very happy to have been a part of the Real story and the film version.
Dennis Kearns
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http://Dennis-Kearns.com
The arrow that hits the bull’s eye is the result of 100 misses.
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