PARTNERS PODCAST 2007 - Benjamin Snow

I'm Patrick Connally and I hope you enjoy this intense interview with a powerful 
young film maker.

Benjamin Snow is a young film maker who talks about his parents being Partners in 
Policymaking, and the barriers he faces being a college student today, and of course, 
about his famous award winning film.


Benjamin Snow: 
I'm 20 years old. I was born in 1987 in Fort Worth, Texas. I've been in Colorado since 
September of 1991. 

I just finished my fifth semester at Pike's Peak Community College, majoring in 
journalism, right now, but I hope to minor in film at a four year university. What I 
really want to do is take Roger Ebert's job whenever he retires.  

Now as far as concerning if my life would be the same or different had I not been like 
this, well I can't say that my life would be different or better if I didn't have 
Cerebral Palsy, because I am who I am. 

Some people learn independently, some people learn socially, and that's perfectly 
fine, but that doesn't give us the right to segregate against people or segregate how 
they get their education from others simply because their body works differently. 

Something that has always bugged me about disability films is that they, most of the 
time, all of the films that I've seen, they basically portray people with disabilities 
in a bad way, and like being pitiful, and I think that is one reason why they gain so 
much attention, and they win a lot of awards, and are looked at as being good movies, 
because they portray such a pitiful message, and something I can't understand is why 
people with disabilities can't be part of the background, I can't understand why 
they're the main star and why they have to be pitied, and why they are the star the 
way they are. 

That's something that you have to put up with, because people do it all the time, 
simply because they don't know any better or they're not aware that that's not the 
correct way to look at people. So that's something you have to put up with and you 
can't be judgmental of people, simply because they're doing something that they don't 
know any better to do. 

In June, 2006, I learned about a contest called "Film Your Issue". It's a national 
contest sponsored by MSNBC, and the USA Today newspaper, and the Toshiba computer 
company. It's a contest for young people eighteen to twenty-five to make a thirty to 
sixty second long film about an issue that concerns them. So I made a short film about 
how people with disabilities are played on screen. It's called "Thumbs Down to Pity" 
as my idol Roger Ebert does. 
 

Patrick Connally: 
Thank you very much for listening. This show was produced by Disability Rights 
Enforcement Education Services, helping you help others, and funded and co produced by 
the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities. And we'd like to thank 
KBT Studio in San Anselmo for making us look good on audio. Thank you very much.