Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Autistic Filmmaker with Scott Klumb
104 Plays2 years ago
How can you make your special interest a job? Is Autism representation in film still an issue? How did Scott escape rock bottom?
Scott Klumb (The Autistic Filmmaker) is a multi-award winning videographer with an inspiring story and a difficult past.
In this episode of the Thoughty Auti Podcast, Thomas Henley talks to Scott about his experience overcoming addiction, finding the autistic community and his rise to glory in the film industry.
Scott recalls back to the time he started his filming career where he made a name for himself as a winter sports videographer... before breaking his back, both arms, knee, hip, wrist, foot and eye socket. Eventually, he followed through with his dream and created 'Autism - One Mans Journey' which received a lot of positive reviews, multiple awards and features at film festivals.
His filming style didn’t fit in during his film course at University, but it’s what made him stand out. He highlights that although he didn't finish his degree, it didn’t affect his job prospects... creating another documentary a few years later called 'Thriving On the Spectrum' which was made in collaboration with the autistic community in Colorado during the COVID-19 pandemic - of course becoming a huge success with even more awards than before.
Scott opens up about his experiences with bullying, isolation, mental health, psych ward visits and self-injury during his adolescence, and how he used drugs as a way to fit in and avoid negative experiences. He was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at 23 y/o instead of Aspergers Syndrome because he made money off his passion/special interest… autism gate-keeping much? - he couldn’t even get benefits due to this incorrect diagnosis.
With 10 years of sobriety as well as his decade long 'rock bottom', he recalls his issues with grieving 4 of his close friends following extreme sports injuries. Due to the horrible events happening to his friends and a shooting which occurred in his local coffee shop, he began to question his beliefs in God and fell into nihilistic despair. He used his extensive supply of medication as a crutch during this time, and highlights just how awful the side-effects and interactions were.
They end by talking about the shockingly low Autistic representation in film and TV, highlighting the recent controversy with Sia's movie... offering hope for aspiring filmmakers, actors, and autistic individuals wanting to make their dream a reality.
Scott's Links:-
Website - https://www.scottklumb.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/smkmedia/?hl=en
Song Of The Day (Listen Here) - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5UDIyN5TSYN4zMcRoQPrG8?si=9255ed3480d840b5
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Website - https://www.thomashenley.co.uk
♫ THOUGHTY AUTI PODCAST - https://open.spotify.com/show/6vjXgCB7Q3FwtQ2YqPjnEV
FOLLOW ME On Social Media ♥ -
☼ Facebook - Thomas Henley
☼ Twitter - @thomashenleyuk
☼ Instagram - @thomashenleyUK
Recommended
Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:07
Speaker
Good day, my lovely listeners. You are listening to The 40 Auti Podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalizing tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show.
Meeting Scott Klum: A Personal Journey
00:00:36
Speaker
Good day and welcome back to the 4TOT podcast with your host, Mr. Thomas Henley. How are you doing today? We have an absolute banger of an episode for you. We are going to be focusing on a more person centered podcast. In contrary to the usual podcast where we talk about a specific topic with our guests, we're going to talk about someone and their life. And that person is Scott Klum.
00:01:05
Speaker
Hi there, thanks for having me. Thank you for agreeing to come on. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to come chat to me. Definitely, I appreciate you having me on. So Scott, how have you been doing lately? Lately, been a kind of rollercoaster of
00:01:27
Speaker
emotions and stuff. The other week I've been dealing with depression and mood swings and then this week I've been offered the potential best film job of my career. Lots of ups and downs then. Lots of ups and downs but like a big part of my life is my sobriety. I am 12 years sober now.
00:01:52
Speaker
And if there's one thing I've learned, it's to just take things one day at a time, sometimes even one hour or one minute at a time. And so I had to do that with my depression. And then today's just been, or this week's been much smoother. So living, living with a longterm mental health condition, it's,
00:02:13
Speaker
It's a bit of a weird one because it never quite gets better in a sense. It doesn't reduce. It's just the ways that you deal with it and work around it and manage it just change over time. Right, yeah.
Therapy and Emotional Growth
00:02:31
Speaker
I've dealt with severe depression since 2006.
00:02:39
Speaker
I lost three grandparents and a friend committed suicide within nine months of each other. And that just threw me for a loop. And it's just like, I was at Rock Bottom for like, a lot of people think of Rock Bottom as an event or like a short time in their life. My Rock Bottom was nearly a decade.
00:03:08
Speaker
And I'm just happy to be where I'm at today and get to the point I'm at because now I'm able to create films about my struggles I've dealt with and be really personal about it because a lot of filmmakers, they may tell a story about depression or something, but they may not directly relate to it. My film, Autism One Man's Journey,
00:03:38
Speaker
was a memoir and a documentary about my hardship, perseverance, and hope. And it just, it connected with so many people because they were able to see how I got through so much. And I mean, I've done therapy for years. I still do therapy. And honestly, I think anyone could benefit from therapy. It's been really helpful to me.
00:04:06
Speaker
Well, some of the strongest people I know, they're always the ones that recognize that there's an issue and have the courage to kind of go out and seek help from other people. Yeah. Kind of goes against the typical sort of idea of strength that we have in our society. It seems to be all geared towards maintaining a center and never being pushed off one way or the other.
00:04:35
Speaker
Exactly and you know it's not realistic and especially if you have mental health conditions it can be very detrimental to the way that you view yourself if you always have that kind of aspiring frame of
Autism and Emotional Challenges
00:04:51
Speaker
mind. Yeah so I was raised in a family where the guys didn't show any emotion and so I learned to bottle up my emotions and part of
00:05:03
Speaker
therapy for me during my like really bad depression was learning to be okay with showing emotion and it's just
00:05:17
Speaker
It took a long time to get to that point, but now being at a point that I'm okay with crying and okay with sharing what's going on in my life with other close friends and family. It's made things so much easier versus internalizing it. I'm a ticking time bomb if I do that.
00:05:41
Speaker
I think it's really interesting you you mentioned that cuz I imagine that there's there's also some sort of input from being from being autistic you know with the with Alexa fire me I always rest along about Alexa fire me but it's it's such a.
00:05:57
Speaker
I think it's such a core thing that a lot of people are not paying enough attention to when it comes to autism. And it can have impacts on the way that you understand, manage, or even feel mental health conditions. It's always kind of on that.
00:06:18
Speaker
baseline level all the time that you can't really see until it gets up to a point and it kind of affects your life in multiple negative ways. Yeah, I mean my therapist always reminds my family and stuff that like autistic people oftentimes feel things three to five times more intensely than a neurotypical does and so what may be just like a
00:06:47
Speaker
simple change to their day or something that just kind of eked them wrong, but they can brush it off. Maybe something really intense to me.
00:06:58
Speaker
Like there are specific things that we tend to struggle with more. Some things that we struggle with less as well, but it tends to be like all this stuff that's about, you know, life. Like the executive functioning, the cooking, the cleaning, the emotional regulation, things of that nature seems to be
00:07:26
Speaker
seems to be a lot more difficult to us. But I guess, I guess what I want to do, because I'm really enjoying the fact that we've just jumped on and immediately started talking about the topic. I like that. Yeah, I mean, it's very relevant in my life right now. So I'm happy we could dive
Filmmaking: From Passion to Purpose
00:07:45
Speaker
in. Well, could you tell us a little bit about the work that you do around your filmmaking, just kind of give us a taster?
00:07:53
Speaker
I've been doing filmmaking since I found my passion in 2004. So I've been doing this for 18 years now. I started as a filmmaker and
00:08:10
Speaker
the ski industry. Originally, I just wanted to make movies of my friends and I, and then I broke way too many bones. And I've had some very severe injuries, including breaking my back and both arms at the same time.
00:08:24
Speaker
your back and both arms. Yeah. Is this from skiing? Skiing. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I was in the hospital for like two or three weeks. I shattered my left wrist and had to have reconstructive surgery. And I was doing physical therapy for about six months. And yeah, great times. But that's just crazy because when I think of skiing accidents, I always think the knee or the hip or the foot.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, I've done those too. Yeah, my list of injuries is like, I've broken my back and both arms, broke my right wrist again and had to have surgery on that. I dislocated my kneecap. I broke my leg. I tore three or four muscles in my upper leg.
00:09:20
Speaker
I broke my eye socket, so I have a plate in my eye now instead of a bone. The more that you keep talking about this, the more that I get where you come from about not doing that stuff anymore.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I ended up my parents are like, we can't afford the medical bills anymore. And you're really going to regret these injuries as you get older. So instead of being filmed, I ended up becoming the one behind the camera. And I started filming my friends at the time and they
00:09:56
Speaker
I mean, they are some of the top pro skiers in the world right now. They compete in the Olympics, the X Games. They're in big ski movies. And I developed a name for myself in the ski industry. And I kind of got tired of the ski industry, because there's not much of a career in that. It's just more fun. But I ended up
00:10:19
Speaker
finding myself doing documentary work. And that's when I made my first film, Autism One Man's Journey. And that connected with a lot of people. It made it into like 10 film festivals or something, as well as winning a few awards. And then, thank you. And then I did the,
00:10:45
Speaker
disability film challenge in 2020. And the theme was documentary and I won best editor out of like 87 films. Nice. And then you need to, you need to come out at my videos. Yeah. Can you do it for free, please? I can't do it for free, but I can definitely be for hire and help out. I did a few films for disability film challenge. And then I made a newer documentary this past year.
00:11:15
Speaker
and it was called thriving on the spectrum.
00:11:19
Speaker
and it was about what it was like to be autistic in the autism community in Colorado during the pandemic and how there were so many struggles with like I lost all my supports almost in the beginning and just lost so much structure and I had to find new supports and it ended up working out in the end but just
00:11:46
Speaker
There were so many changes that just made everything so rough and that film has won, I think, three or four awards and been in 20 film festivals now.
Family, Loss, and Mental Health
00:11:59
Speaker
I mean, here's some of my awards right here. Wowie, is that an Oscar at the top?
00:12:04
Speaker
It looks like an Oscar. So that was for this other film festival in LA, and it's actually the same company that makes the Oscar trophy. But it's 24 karat gold, so that's pretty cool. As you can see, I'm in my office right now.
00:12:26
Speaker
i obviously like film i've got the film poster behind me i even have it tattooed on my arm like a film reel there nice and um i'm wanting i'm wanting to get my get into tattoos more the issue the issue that i find with with
00:12:43
Speaker
tattoos is when I was younger, I was really, really, really super against a lot of things. I wouldn't talk to people who smoked. I wouldn't, you know, if someone mentioned that they did any recreational drugs, I would immediately just drop all contact with them. And one of those things was also tattoos and piercings. I was like, why do you have to put that, put it on your body? It's going to be there forever. It's such a bad idea.
00:13:14
Speaker
And my granddad passed away when I was in Thailand. I was researching mosquitoes in Thailand. He passed away and I was like, you know what, I've heard a lot about these steel needle tattoos that monks do in Thailand. So I was like, that could be a really, really great sort of cathartic thing just to get like a tattoo. I got one in there, got it in the center of my back. They did like a whole ceremony. Yeah, I saw a picture of that in one of your weightlifting pictures.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's really important with tattoos to choose something that's meaningful to you. I know too many people that have just gotten random tattoos and that's not me. But I have the three main points of the Serenity Prayer to represent my sobriety. I have the film reel that goes up to here.
00:14:07
Speaker
to represent my passion for film and creativity. And then the Flatirons Mountains on the lower part of my arm to represent my love for the outdoors. I had one other thing just related to the film.
00:14:24
Speaker
One story that my mom always loves is at first I went to college for just to do my general studies and then I went to film school for almost three semesters. I had to drop out because of mental health. My freshman
00:14:40
Speaker
year or first year of film school the very first big project we're going through every student's project and I'm watching these things I'm like crap I did this project so wrong because everyone's project was just cookie cutter the same yeah I'm just like please like don't show mine and then all of a sudden mine's playing and the teacher pauses the project in the middle I'm like
00:15:05
Speaker
Crap, what did I do wrong? And the teacher says, class, take note. This project right here is better than any of our graduate students. And from that day forward, from my first year in film school, I became that guy that everyone wanted on their projects. And it's just like, to me, that's kind of...
00:15:30
Speaker
When I look back at it, it's just like, that's kind of an autistic trait to me. Like I think a lot of autistic people within their passions or their special interests are so talented at what they do that for me, that was film. And it's just, yeah, I mean, it was a great feeling to hear that from my teacher. Cause I've never had that kind of just positive. Yeah. And
00:15:57
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, I never finished film school. I don't have a degree in it. But honestly, where I'm at today, I've done more in film than any of my friends with graduate degrees. Because when it comes down to it, like, people are more interested in the talent and the skill set than they are whether you have a degree or not. You can't teach creativity.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because I guess for some people it could be a way in to learn the skills and stuff. But, you know, for example, with myself, I've never done any training or I've never done it. Well, I've looked most of my editing skills and my presenting skills and
00:16:45
Speaker
Things of that nature all come from YouTube. You can go to college on YouTube. The University of YouTube. The University of YouTube. It's great. It's free.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess, you know, today we're here to kind of talk about you and your life and the things that you found hard, the ways that you've progressed, the things that you've learned. So I guess the best place to start would be, what was your childhood like?
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah. And what was your adult or adult adolescence? Yeah, adolescence. From your perspective now, more kind of looking back after a diagnosis, do you think that, you know, your experiences are different as well? Like your perception of them? My perception of my experiences have certainly changed since I got my diagnosis, because now when I just so everyone knows I was diagnosed late in life, I wasn't
00:17:46
Speaker
I was diagnosed when I was 23, almost 24. And so when I look back on my life, I can point out things that that was me being autistic. That was autism like that. It's like those things make sense now. But it was tough because
00:18:07
Speaker
I felt a lot of pressure growing up because everything came easy to my brother and I felt like I had to be like my brother. He partied all the time. He played varsity sports throughout high school and still gets valedictorian. Then he goes to college, still parties, and then also gets into dental school and just everything came easy. I really struggled in even elementary and middle school and high school. It's just like
00:18:36
Speaker
I would come home with panic attacks every day just like not knowing how to manage my time at the moment. I would be assigned a project that was doing six weeks. I would finish it that night and just have just this bottled up panic for
00:18:56
Speaker
and chaos for one night. And I mean, I was also bullied, basically elementary school through my junior year of high school. And I mean, there were instances where I had to present my mom remembers this story specifically. It's just like,
00:19:16
Speaker
middle school I had to present a project and I ran out of the classroom when it was my term and people were trying to catch up to me and I just ran around the school avoiding them and looking back on that it's like that's a meltdown.
00:19:31
Speaker
There were instances where it's just like, we used to go to Hawaii all the time. And then one year my parents decided, we're going to a cruise this year. Any kid will be excited about that. Me, I broke down in tears and just got really upset. Is it kind of like a routine thing with Hawaii? Exactly.
00:19:54
Speaker
It was like a radical change in what I was used to. I used to have something similar to
Routine and Relaxation
00:20:02
Speaker
that. Me and my family used to go to this place called Center Parks. It's like a UK sort of holiday destination thing. I don't know if you've heard of Robin Hood or like things of that nature.
00:20:18
Speaker
Sherwood Forest, that's the place that Centre Parks is in. And it's such a nice place. You can bike everywhere. There's so many trees around that it just feels all cozy. You get little bungalows.
00:20:34
Speaker
It's not like I'm trying to do an advert to Center Parks, but it's really cool. And in the UK, we used to have red squirrels in the UK until I think some ambassador to a different country introduced a grey squirrel into the population of squirrels. And they just absolutely took over. And Center Parks is like one of the only places that has these red squirrels.
00:21:03
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah. But I get what you mean. It was really important to me to have that sort of routine because one of the things you go away on holiday to do is to relax. Exactly. You can relax much, much more when you know exactly what to expect. Right. When it's your comfort place, it's like you have your routine, you know what you're getting involved with. And like over the years, I've gotten
00:21:30
Speaker
more and more flexible just over time but... Well I wanted to sort of jump back on something you said because I feel like we kind of brushed over it a little bit. Yep. You were telling me about the difficulties that you had in secondary school or what were the days like for you? What were the week to weeks like? I mean each week I didn't want to go to school
00:21:58
Speaker
Mostly, not so much the academics. I was like, I hated being bullied. I hated being picked on.
00:22:07
Speaker
And it's like I was at public school through seventh grade and then we realized like I was struggling a lot. So I went to a school in Denver that was for learning disabilities. Prior to being diagnosed long before being diagnosed as autistic, I was diagnosed with central auditory processing disorder and just learning disabilities in general. And I mean,
00:22:35
Speaker
I believe I still may have central auditory processing disorder, but that could also be the communication barrier with autism. I think one of the immediate tests that people do on kids is when they're asking the question, is this child autistic? One of the first things that they do is doing a hearing test.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yep, that's one of the first tests. Academics was always hard for me, but I felt like I had to get straight A's and nothing lasts because that's what my brother got. I pushed myself too hard every single week to the point of what I would consider now being a burnout. When I was in college, my parents were like,
00:23:24
Speaker
What kind of grades do you think we expect you to get? I'm like, straight A's like Ryan. They're like, no, we just want you
Sobriety and Self-Realization
00:23:29
Speaker
to do your best. I'm like, that would have been nice to know 10 years ago. It's hard, isn't it, with siblings? I mean, I don't have the experience of having an older sibling. I've always been the older one, and it is true. You kind of, from my experience specifically with my brother, he always sort of looked up at me and compared himself to me all the time.
00:23:53
Speaker
So I, I, I did, I did pretty well in school. I wasn't a straight A student, but I, you know, it's quite a lot of A's and I did, I did quite well in sports. I did, I guess, I guess a lot of similarities between just being myself and your brother. Oh yeah. I mean, there's similarities between you and I too. Like I, I was good at sports as well. I played basketball in high school. I played varsity golf for four years and
00:24:23
Speaker
I won tournaments and stuff like that. That's cool. And then the other thing with high school for me, because of the bullying, it led to me just reaching my tipping point. And really the only way for me to get away from being bullied was to be quote unquote cool like everyone else and start going to parties, trying drugs, trying alcohol. And being that I have an addictive personality,
00:24:53
Speaker
That didn't turn out well and that went downhill for quite a while. I'm sorry to hear that. Eventually, I realized I needed to get clean and sober and I went to drug and alcohol rehab and then
00:25:11
Speaker
I've been sober ever since. Congrats. There's no easy feat to be addicted to a drug and then to come out of the other side sober. Exactly. And stay sober for that long. It's a massive, massive achievement.
00:25:29
Speaker
In the first season of my podcast, I did an episode with an autistic lady called Francesca. She's Mexican and she had her drug of choice, which was crystal meth. She was kind of describing it to me and like,
00:25:48
Speaker
She obviously really struggled in school and sort of making friends and connections and stuff and she said that the drug scene doing these drugs was like one of the only ways that she could always know that she has someone to socialize with.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah. Although obviously under the influence, it's, you know, it's, it's connection is something that humans crave. Definitely is. And I mean, that reminds me of like one of the other topics we were going to talk about, which was relationships. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we all crave just connection with people in some way. And
00:26:25
Speaker
I don't know, like for me, I'm an introvert, but I consider myself to be an extroverted introvert sometimes where it's just like, if I'm with the right people, if I'm with the right friends, I am very social. But I also need time to just like,
00:26:45
Speaker
sit back and recuperate or just downtime. I think it's interesting you say that because whenever anyone asks me about improving social skills or going out and doing extraverted things, it's either important to have a place that you know that you're going to.
Social Dynamics and Autism
00:27:08
Speaker
or have people that you're comfortable with and that you know. And we kind of need that. Right. Need that focus or we need some kind of control of the situation and being aware of the place that you usually go to. It's kind of like a grounding thing. And on the other side, if you have someone that you're really close to, it can be easy to sort of get into the flow of conversation just by like starting off talking to them and maybe drifting around if you feel comfortable.
00:27:37
Speaker
right yeah I found when I was like my close friends I can interact really well but then another a couple weeks ago I went and saw the new Doctor Strange movie with my friend Mariah and then she had like five or six of her friends that they know of me but I've never met yeah it's just like
00:28:01
Speaker
That there was almost too much for me because when it's a group like that, I'm good with maybe three people. I feel like I can interact on that level and feel like I know when to jump into a conversation, relatively know how to jump in. It's a struggle to jump into conversations for me sometimes.
00:28:26
Speaker
When it's a big group, I have no chance of getting involved in that conversation. So I try at first, but then a person interrupts me and then I try to jump into the next part, but then another person interrupts me. And then eventually I find myself just looking straight at the ground and just like standing there doing nothing. Yeah. No, I am fizz with that.
00:28:50
Speaker
Most of the time, I'm quite introverted. I like to say that I'm an extroverted autistic person because we tend to be a little bit, just through our behaviours and the way that we struggle with socialising and the social anxiety, we tend to be a bit more introverted.
00:29:09
Speaker
I like that. For an autistic person, if you are sort of going out there and socializing, most of the time, if I was to go into a social situation, like if someone just randomly came and talked to me while I was out in the street doing shopping or something and strike up a conversation that I am absolutely flabbergasted by that, I just can't do it. Yeah.
00:29:34
Speaker
It's like it's like my brains not prime to be in social mode But as soon as I know that I'm gonna be in this place with it with these people It's gonna be this kind of thing then I can kind of be okay. I've done this before I'm comfortable with this. I just kind of need to ease into it slowly. I like the term extroverted autistic person
00:29:57
Speaker
And the other one I heard recently was social introvert and that kind of stuck with me as well. Well, the introvert-extrovert thing is basically just based on whether you recharge in a company of others or you recharge in the company of yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're not a sociable person. No.
00:30:21
Speaker
You kind of your management of the time that you're socializing is a little bit more strict when you're introverted Yeah, that's very true. I I appreciate that you've you've opened up about your experiences in You know adolescent secondary school. I I can 100% relate to the absolute torment of bullies and That sort of daily
00:30:46
Speaker
daily, sort of trying to cope in that environment. It's a very stressful thing. And I took a lot of days off school just because of anxiety and the sensory environment and the people. And it's something that I hope that will be normalized as something that's kind of like a reasonable adjustment sometimes. I'll bore you when you were diagnosed.
00:31:09
Speaker
I was 10 years old at the time, so I was diagnosed fairly early in comparison to yourself, but it was only until I got into my 20s when I sort of
00:31:25
Speaker
Was able to conceptualize autism as you know not just as social differences and sensory Difficulties cuz that was kind of my that there was the things that I I really understood about autism in my 20s. That was kind of like my
00:31:42
Speaker
my in-depth diagnosis of myself basically understanding myself and I guess that that sort of leads us on to Our next question. Could you could you tell us about your journey through the diagnostic pathway? And some of the sort of the the key moments that stood out to you originally This was during the time I lost so many people and then was severely depressed and my psychiatrist at the time was just like
00:32:11
Speaker
There's something more going on here than just the depression. She said to my mom, I think your child has autism, but there's really no reason to get him diagnosed because there's nothing out there that he would benefit from or get from
Navigating Diagnosis and Support Systems
00:32:32
Speaker
it. And this was back in 2000, I don't know.
00:32:39
Speaker
Nine maybe. A while ago. A while ago. And it's just like, at the time they didn't have the supports in place that were needed. And I mean, over the last decade, autism has become the most sought, just one of the most thought of diagnosis these days. And it's just, things have really changed over the last decade. But at the time I was struggling so much.
00:33:07
Speaker
And I think my words to my mom at the time were, I want to get tested because I want to know what's wrong with me. At that point, I was so far into my rock bottom that I was so depressed that things to me was what's wrong with me. These days, I don't think anything's wrong with me. Me being autistic, that's who I am. It's okay.
00:33:35
Speaker
certain parts of it and it's made me who I am as a person but it's just back then I wanted to know what's wrong with me and originally I got this testing done and the person testing me decided not to give me it would have been Asperger's back then but
00:33:58
Speaker
She decided not to give me the Asperger's label and gave me pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified instead because she decided to
00:34:12
Speaker
make her own judgment. She decided to say that I couldn't possibly be autistic or have Asperger's because I make money off of my special interest and passion. And so she said, I am now PDDNOS because I make money off of my film work.
00:34:34
Speaker
And I just want to warn people getting their diagnosis. I know it's expensive to get tested. I know it's a pain. But be prepared that you may not get the diagnosis you want the first time around. I had to get pay the money all over again to get tested a second time. And it's just like all because of this ridiculous testers judgment.
00:34:59
Speaker
which isn't even written in any DSM book or anything that because you make money off your special interest, you couldn't possibly have Asperger's or be autistic. Thanks, I'm kind of cruel sort of gatekeeping. Yeah, pretty much. So then I got tested something like
00:35:21
Speaker
three years later again. And also because I got the PDD-NOS diagnosis, it made it so I couldn't get certain disability help. So kind of the support around it and the disability payments and stuff like that is all not applicable to PDD-NOS. A lot of the time it's not and it really depends on how they see it in the court. So then we went to
00:35:51
Speaker
this professional in Denver and she's really good. When she heard that the person made the judgment about me not getting the diagnosis I needed because of me making money off my special interest, she said, that was absolutely ridiculous. And it's just like, how is that even a thing? And that is her just being judgmental and it's just like,
00:36:21
Speaker
You may, I just want to warn people, you may run into people like that during the testing and just keep your head up and keep fighting for what you need.
00:36:34
Speaker
While we're on the topic of diagnosis, I guess, what kind of pathway did you take through the mental health side of things? Because for me, it was initially, you know, I'd been picked up by my school because I'd been self-harming.
00:36:53
Speaker
You know, it kind of started with anxiety and then depression and then I think a lot of dissociative disorders that took a long time for me to get over. I have a form of body dysmorphia. At the time I was like, I was bulimic when I was younger.
00:37:16
Speaker
not like hardcore like every time all the time it was more of a sporadic thing but it definitely did sort of withstand through the entirety of
00:37:28
Speaker
Well, my life, I've been up until this point where I decided not to do that anymore. And now I've got a binging disorder. Sorry, I went off a bit of a danger there. No, I'm happy you spoke to that because I can relate. I struggled with anxiety for most of school. Then came the severe depression when
00:37:51
Speaker
I lost those four people in nine months and that made it so difficult because I could never go through the grieving process with any of the individuals. As soon as I started one grieving process, I lost another person and it's just, I could never process it. That's awful.
00:38:09
Speaker
So that led to the severe depression and in 2006 or seven, I self-harmed for the first time and that was like throwing gasoline into a fire. I have scars just up and down my arms, legs and I haven't self-harmed them.
00:38:36
Speaker
four years or so. It's not on my finger right now, but I have a ring that I usually wear that represents me trying to stay, stay clean and stay away from self-harm. And it's just like something I look at. It also gives me something to fidget with when I get those thoughts. And it's like, even to this day when
00:38:58
Speaker
I haven't self-harm for that long. There's times I still get thoughts on a daily basis. That was honestly the hardest addiction for me to break of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, anything. Self-harm took the longest. I was in and out of psych hospitals for many years. I was queen of self-harm.
00:39:28
Speaker
for about a year in between 2009 and 2010. But I was using drugs and alcohol and then when I got sober, assault harm came back. This is a really important sort of issue because autism and drug or addictive addiction seem to be very highly correlated and the same could be said for mental health as well.
Mental Health Misconceptions and Medication
00:39:54
Speaker
Yep, it is.
00:39:55
Speaker
No like one thing that a lot of people don't know about their relationship to an anxiety and depression is you know depression usually it comes on for one of you know four reasons which is you have like the situation we have the existential the cognitive the you know things of that nature.
00:40:17
Speaker
And one of the biggest drivers of depression is chronic pain. And, you know, anxieties could be considered another form of chronic pain. It's definitely not the most comfortable thing to live with.
00:40:34
Speaker
and they had this sort of network of different brain injury areas and different sort of hormonal organs called the HPA axis which is like the hippocampus, pituitary, adrenal axis and they found by doing studies on it that
00:40:56
Speaker
people with long-term anxiety conditions, it affects this HPA axis and it makes you more likely to become depressed.
00:41:08
Speaker
Like I can kind of see that, that angle in your story, but I can also, you know, obviously with the passing of your loved ones, you have this situational aspect as well as it, as it be. And I mean, loss and grief has been a big part of my life for years now and between 2013 I lost
00:41:37
Speaker
I think I lost eight friends in six years. And it's just like I lost friends to avalanches. I lost friends to kayaking off a waterfall. It's just all these extreme sports have a lot of death. And it's just like, it's been tough. I mean, two of the deaths
00:41:58
Speaker
I was going to be there those days. I could have died from the avalanche. I've been blamed for certain things. It's just grief has always been so hard for me. And I mean, even last year, another one I've been dealing with.
00:42:15
Speaker
I have survivors remorse because there was a shooting at a grocery store less than five minutes from my condo last March. I was at that Starbucks 20 minutes before the shooter showed up and it's just like it's just like who's to say that shooter
00:42:36
Speaker
did not get stuck in traffic, did not like get out at the time he wanted to. And also, if I was with my caregiver that day, the time the shooter got there is the time I go there every, each week. And it's just like, so I had people texting me, calling me, making sure I was okay. And it's just like, it's tough. And I mean,
00:43:05
Speaker
I feel like mental health is one of the hardest things to deal with and needs to be talked about more. Hmm. Definitely. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm, I really, I really feel for you, um, with, with those experiences it, yeah, I, I guess it could sort of, you know, create a lot of questions in your brain. Like what, why is this stuff happening to me or, you know,
00:43:34
Speaker
It must feel like sometimes the world is against you. I mean, for me, I know I've come from a religious family and because of all the stuff I've gone through, I began to lose belief of God and then I began, then I was spiritual, then like all this other stuff happened, lost any sort of spiritual connection. Those big life events can have such
00:44:03
Speaker
such sort of powerful impacts both on you emotionally and, you know, when something comes along and it's kind of like someone's just like broken the glass on your world. And you feel nihilistic and you're like, what's the point? Why am I doing things? You know, is there any reason for me to do all this stuff if I'm just going to be forgotten in a few years and spirals and... Yeah, it just feels like
00:44:33
Speaker
to me if there was a God or a higher power, it's like why is all this happening to me right now? And my connection to spirituality comes in and out. Right now I have more spiritualness again. I'm in a better place in my life, but it's just like with all those hardships and just pains, those connections ebb and flow a lot.
00:45:02
Speaker
Well, thank you for sharing that with me. It's very open and raw for you to tell me. You're welcome. I appreciate it a lot. I'm sure everybody else is listening and appreciates.
00:45:19
Speaker
you know, being so open about these things. I'm sure it's not something that, you know, there's a lot of people out there who don't really, it's not really acknowledged that mental health in general is kind of, it's become a little bit of a common buzz term. It's like, you know, you've got to keep on tracking your mental wellbeing. And if you get a little bit anxious and a little bit sad, then you have mental health issues. It's good. And it's good that we're having that conversation
00:45:48
Speaker
I think also it's easy for the rest of society to ignore the fact that there's people out there who have clinical depression or treatment resistant depression that they've been they have to fight with like every day of their life basically. Yeah and a big thing for me a big part of that journey with mental health
00:46:10
Speaker
was finding the right medications. It's like when you're on multiple medications, it's not as simple as just here you go, you're done. And it's just like, it took years to find the right medication regimen for me. And it's just like, it could take
00:46:30
Speaker
three months to get a medication into my system, then another couple months to find the right dosage, then find out that it's interfering with another medication, so now you would have to wean off of it. And I mean, I had medications that gave me such bad side effects to the point I had tremors from head to toe and my jaw would literally chatter and I couldn't stop it. And it's like, my parents would go to my psychiatrist and was just like,
00:47:00
Speaker
while this may be helping Scott mentally, how is this actually helping? Because I had such bad tremors that I could no longer hold a camera steady. And so now I get depressed because I can't film. And it's just like, so it took probably maybe seven or eight years to find the right medication regimen. And now
00:47:26
Speaker
Now it's like we finally found the right meds with the least amount of side effects. For a while I needed more heavy meds to just get me by day to day, but they had the bigger side effects. And now I found ways to take meds. And my biggest criteria is I do not want to take meds with severe weight gain and I do not want to take meds with tremors. And it's just like, I've
00:47:51
Speaker
come to accept that I can't just rely on medications to make things better. But I also have to put in effort myself to like, when certain things come up, I have to find ways to cope with it. And it's just, it's been a journey with medications as well.
00:48:10
Speaker
I definitely empathize with you on that. I mean, I started meds when I was, I think, 14. And one thing also that I love GPs and a lot of people don't know is that meds can have very, very different reactions for autistic people. One of the things that seems to prop up a lot is a lot of the medications that are for depression
00:48:34
Speaker
Although they can be prescribed for anxiety as well, they actually, from people I've talked to and my own experiences, they can actually make anxiety worse. So then you have to balance it out with an anti-anxiety medication. And then you've got like two doses of different side effects that you have to try and deal with. And the issue that I have at the moment is my sedative medication.
00:49:03
Speaker
really makes it difficult for me to to get up and be productive in the morning as well as the way again the binge of the binging that I get on the night is I can be absolutely amazing at handling it throughout the entire day I can go on my nutrition on point I've got like protein shakes and like
00:49:28
Speaker
uh, cottage cheese and like, um, different sort of health, healthy things to eat. And then as soon as it gets to a nighttime and take my tablet, I'm like, I'm not going to, not going to do any binging tonight. Yeah. 15, 30 minutes later, I turned into like the, the Hulk. Yeah. I just want to, I just want to consume everything. I'm like the hungry caterpillar. The worst is when you have nightmares and you're like, it's like 10 or 11 at night. And it's like, I'm going to have a bag of chips.
00:49:58
Speaker
It's just like that's really going to help me with weighing in on the scale the next morning. For me, my sensitivity, because of all the traumas and stuff in my life,
00:50:12
Speaker
I deal with insomnia. So I have to take three pretty heavy sedating nightmares to even get me to sleep. So you've done what many autistic people dream of. You've turned your special interest in filmmaking into a job.
00:50:32
Speaker
Yeah. Could you tell us about some of the benefits that this arrangement has on your life? Do you find that it's still as interesting and enjoyable and you can focus just as much as if it wasn't a job? Oh, I'm more interested in it than ever. Even when I do it as a job, I still find myself
00:50:58
Speaker
finding it as a special interest and finding more things to film when I'm not working. It's just because of it being a job, it's made me even more talented than ever at what I do and probably even more passionate because I just want to learn more about it and I continue to grow as a filmmaker.
00:51:20
Speaker
It took many years to get to where I'm at. Filmmaking is not an easy industry to make any sort of money in. You have all the equipment that you've got to buy or hire. I have so much equipment. I have two gimbals. I have three heavy-duty tripods. I have a crane system. I have two really nice cameras, lots of lenses.
00:51:49
Speaker
It's just I have a drone. I have literally everything I could need. I made some money in the ski industry when I did work for ESPN or I did work for another big ski movie and some people might have heard of him but Warren
Career Advice and Industry Insights
00:52:06
Speaker
Miller did a voiceover over some of my shots and that was just really cool because he's one of the guys that started ski films and to have him speak over one of my
00:52:17
Speaker
Clips was just a real honor. And I would do advise other people who are wanting to make their special interest into a job. How do you how do you think that it can go around that when interview skills not too great, maybe degrees or GCSE level is not too great? How do you think people can find a path through that? I would say don't give up and
00:52:47
Speaker
if you really need to. It's just like find people that are doing stuff within your special interests that you admire. And even in the beginning, offer to volunteer your time to them in the beginning. Build up that network, build up the connections. A big part of filmmaking is building a broad network.
00:53:14
Speaker
people. And so if you can show these people how much you love your work and even if you're volunteering your time for a few months, six months, even a year, it will not go unnoticed. They will realize how talented you are and just work your hardest and
00:53:38
Speaker
eventually it will be noticed. And then there was a good chance that either the people there would be like, you know, we've really appreciated your time. We'd like to offer you a job or it could go, we just heard of a job opening in similar work. This might be a great fit for you. Um, the other thing I worked with
00:54:04
Speaker
DVR through disability which they help you get jobs and stuff for a long time. I was very clear that like I don't want to be one of those statistics again that's just sent to a disabled person being sent to a grocery store to bag groceries and push shopping carts. We made very clear to them I wanted to be a filmmaker
00:54:28
Speaker
edit things and at first the people are just like oh yeah we've seen this a lot of people want to do something but then we showed them my work they're like wow he's really talented we have something here so
00:54:42
Speaker
advocate for yourself push yourself to make clear to these people like do not send me to do Just bad groceries. I'm I'm much more than that. I think for some for some people you know working in a grocery store or doing something like that's for some people that's that's Things that they aspire to do. Mm-hmm
00:55:08
Speaker
I suppose what you're saying correct me if I'm wrong is that you need to push for the life that you want to have. You can't expect things just to happen to you. You need to push forward. I've been doing film for 18 years now and things really started to take off and
00:55:35
Speaker
2020. I've done other work before then with freelance stuff. I think with freelance film there are months I'll make thousands of dollars and then I could go three months with no work. So it's like it's hit or miss but I've been very grateful for the work I've done. I mean last year or the year before I did a project for
00:56:01
Speaker
an NBA player, I made his promo video for the NBA draft and he now plays for the Miami Heat. And it's just like these things, it's just, I think the key to it is don't give up on your dream and just continue to push yourself to meet the right connections and
00:56:26
Speaker
Again, don't just sit back and watch and think things are going to happen to you. You need to put in the work as hard as it may be. Seek out the doors. Yep. I like that. Thank you very much for that, Scott. I do have one last question that I wanted to ask before we wrap things up. Sounds good. I guess sort of a key sort of thing in the autistic community is that there is a
00:56:56
Speaker
There's a very big stereotype in the industry around autism.
Representation and Opportunities in Film
00:57:00
Speaker
they're particularly like actors and things of that nature. They tend to box people into different roles based on how they look. And, you know, we've, we've seen a lot of controversies in the media about, you know, that, that movie like Sia, Sia, Sia. Yeah. About, you know, the actors that are supposed to be autistic or not autistic and things of that nature. So, you know, I, I guess the,
00:57:30
Speaker
The key question here would be, what do you want to change about the film industry or society with your films, with your autism-related films? One thing I've learned over the past probably two or three years is there are a lot of good autistic actors in Hollywood and beyond. Sure.
00:57:59
Speaker
I believe for these roles, we need to have autistic actors playing these autistic roles. And it's just, it's kind of tough to see when these people that are neurotypicals play an autistic person. And I mean, even with the good doctor, it's like they are good about bringing disabled people on their show. However,
00:58:26
Speaker
the lead role is a neurotypical playing an autistic person. So it's like, why, why it's as if they're trying to compensate for something there isn't in that show, which is they bring in all these other physical disabilities and there was an autistic person playing a patient one time, but it's just like, why couldn't we do that with the lead role? And I've also heard other things too, cause it's like,
00:58:56
Speaker
in the last film I did for the Disability Film Challenge. The person I work with, George Steves, all of his roles are based around playing some sort of autistic person. And he really hopes that one day he will get to a point that he won't be stereotyped in film as an autistic person, but he can play any character. And... There was a particular person that sort of springs to mind.
00:59:26
Speaker
There's a TV show that I watch called Hannibal, which is like a series version of the Hannibal Lecter kind of cases and stuff like that. And the lead role in that, they're autistic. And it was really interesting because the filmmakers are sort of playing with the
00:59:47
Speaker
So the interaction between psychopathy and autism which for me, you know, loving all stuff to do with emotions and empathy and socializing, you know, that was amazing. It's like, let's show the difference between cognitive and adaptive empathy in the film and kind of.
01:00:06
Speaker
It's just so great. It wasn't like autism was the main thing, but he just slot into that role just so well. It was really amazing to see. That's awesome that he played that role so well. You should definitely check it out. It's Hannibal. Yeah, I'll check it out. It's a really good series. A little bit gory, a little bit gruesome.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's okay. I've seen the original films. So I feel like autistic people, whether they're actors or behind the lens, we need to be given just more opportunities in film. There are very few disabled people in the film industry compared to everyone else. And as I was telling you earlier, like I can't speak too much about it, but yesterday morning,
01:00:58
Speaker
I just received this email offering me a potential big job so I'm in the running for a big position and it would be a life-changing
01:01:12
Speaker
job for me and I mean it's the it's the break I've been waiting for and just again going back to like what it takes to make your special interest a job like I have just over two weeks to prepare everything for a presentation with this group to begin the process of getting this work and I have meetings with them this coming Monday and
01:01:38
Speaker
it will be announced whether I get the job or not on July 3rd. Fingers crossed. I mean, as soon as I find out more, I'll let you know what the job is. I would love to hear. Yeah, you'll be amazed what it is. Okay. I'm excited now. You've got me riled up and I want to know. Yeah, it's just like, and that goes just to say,
01:02:06
Speaker
Again, things don't happen overnight, but just keep pushing for what you want and what you're passionate about.
01:02:14
Speaker
I mean, things happen for a reason. Dreams do come true. Thank you very much for that, Scott. That is the end of the questions that I had for you. So Scott, when we last chatted, I asked you to think of a song that can go in our Song of the Day segment for people to listen to that's related to the topic of the podcast or something meaningful to you. So what is your song and why?
01:02:44
Speaker
It's funny that this is brought up because it came up with another friend recently my all time favorite song. Is the artist is white apple tree and the song is snowflakes. The reason this song sticks out to me so much is because.
01:03:07
Speaker
It was the first major ski movie I had footage in, and it was the trailer to their movie. I mean, this came out back in 2008, 2007 or so, and I've been listening to this song on repeat for 14 years now.
01:03:30
Speaker
It just never gets old to me. It brings happy memories. It's pretty nostalgic and it's always a song. Whenever I film snow and stuff, I just always think of that song and I love the snow. Awesome. Thank you very much for that Scott. I will definitely
01:03:50
Speaker
I'll add it to the growing Spotify playlist of different songs from the podcast. But thank you very much for that. We're not going to do any Q&A today because we're a bit strapped for time. But I do want to highlight another profile of the day. This is a lady called Carol Jean Whittington, also called the Social Autie. And she has an account called Mind Your Artistic Brain.
01:04:19
Speaker
which is all underscores between the words, mind your autistic brain. And she does a lot for bringing people from the autistic communities together. She produces a lot of content on how to make it, how to produce good content. And she does a lot of good work in the community and she's definitely worth a follow, especially if you're a creator and you're trying to improve your skills.
01:04:44
Speaker
That is our Profile of the Day, Carole Junior Whittington, the Social Autie at Mind Your Artistic Brain. So this comes to the very end of the podcast. I want to say thank you to my YouTube followers, as well as anyone who's listening to the podcast on a regular basis, listening to season one, all that stuff. And also my patrons, specifically Mr. Patrick Reddy for always
01:05:13
Speaker
supporting me with my work, everything like that. And of course, thank you very much, Scott, for coming on to chat. Have you enjoyed your time on the podcast? Yeah, it was a great time. You've run one of the best podcasts I've been on. So I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah, it's been really easy to talk to you. I've been
01:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's just been nice. It just felt like a conversation this whole time. It didn't feel like, felt less like an interview and more like we were just having a nice conversation. So it made me feel really comfortable and glad we could do this.
01:05:48
Speaker
I'm very glad, Scott. Thank you for your kind words and thank you to everybody else who's tuned in. And just remember that you can find the 4tautie podcast on YouTube under Asperger's growth, or you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, all of the podcasting streaming services.
01:06:08
Speaker
the 4080 podcast you can find out there. I would also point you towards my Instagram. If you want to get in contact, you can DM me on there. You can check out some of the posts that I've been doing. And if you if you want to get involved and you want to ask any of my guests questions, that is the place to go. That's that's all from me. Thank you very much for listening and thank you very much, Scott. I'll see you in another episode of the 4080 podcast. See you later, guys. Bye.