Playwright, screenwriter, director, and Princeton resident James Christy Jr. has created a film, Love and Communication, based on his family’s experience in raising an autistic child. A press release summarizes: “Love and Communication follows the surreal journey of parents desperate to find the right treatment for their son, only to find their efforts putting their marriage at risk.”
The story told in Love and Communication was previously depicted in Christy’s play of the same title, which was presented in 2010 at Passage Theatre in Trenton. That production received the Brown Martin Barrymore Award.
In 2022 the film was the official selection at the Arizona International Film Festival, the New Hope Film Festival, and Louisville’s International Festival of Film. In a review for Film Threat Peter Ng writes that the film “doesn’t attempt to simplify or solve autism but instead focuses on how far two parents will go, even crossing ethical lines, to give their son the best chance. Thanks to smart writing and compelling performances, the film offers a sincere, sometimes uncomfortable, and always honest portrait of what it takes to advocate for your child in a world full of uncertainty.”
Love and Communication has won an Audience Award and Indie Spirit award from a sold out East Coast Premiere at the New Hope Film Festival. Its website quotes the parent of a child with autism from Montclair: “Every scenario in the movie I have experienced, or I know someone else who has experienced. And this film has captured that journey in a way I don’t think anything else could.”
In 2023 Love and Communication was presented at the Princeton Garden Theatre; screenings at other independent theaters followed. This year the film has become available for streaming on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and Apple TV+.
Love and Communication is “about a couple that is trying to navigate an autism diagnosis” Christy explains in an interview held via Zoom, adding that the parents are “having a serious conflict with their school about the best way to get care for their child. At the same time they are struggling, between themselves, to agree on the best form of treatment for the child. They’re both taking pretty extreme actions to try to do what they think is the right thing for their child; and those actions that they take start to put their family — and their marriage — at risk.”
Silverman (Lev Gorn, left) and Megan (Briana Evigan) in “Love and Communication.”
Cast of Characters
Megan, the child’s mother — portrayed by Briana Evigan — is the main protagonist. Describing Megan as “the story’s heart and soul to an extent,” Christy explains that Megan feels isolated, and is “struggling with how to handle this diagnosis herself, and how to handle the fact that her husband is single-minded about his solution.”
Christy says of Evigan’s performance: “Megan is going through a lot emotionally, and Brianna has an ability to get that across with subtle looks, gestures — things that, when I was filming, I didn’t notice at first.”
Rob, Megan’s husband, is played by Ryan Kennedy. “Rob is almost the opposite of Megan in a lot of ways,” Christy says. “He’s almost in denial about the emotional impact that this is having on this family. There is an element of disconnection to Rob, with what’s going on. He’s not denying that his son has autism, but he’s denying the emotional impact it’s having on himself, and his family. His anger, at the idea that he has to fight for resources, comes across.”
Sammy, the boy who is diagnosed with autism, is portrayed by two actors: twins Copley and Hammond Lord. Christy reveals that the twins didn’t have any prior acting experience, but “they looked the part. The fact that they were twins, and pretty indistinguishable at that time, was hugely helpful for the film.”
This proved invaluable in maximizing flexibility in scheduling, given the strict regulations limiting the number of hours a director can work with child actors. “The twins’ mother, Anne Lord, was incredibly supportive throughout the process,” Christy adds. The boys’ sister Lavinia also acts in the film.
Lev Gorn plays Silverman, who runs a company that provides services to parents of children with autism to improve their relationship with their child. “I met Lev back when I was trying to be an actor in New York City; we were in an acting class together,” Christy recalls. “He brought amazing warmth and energy to this character, who is a bit hard to figure.” He adds, “Silverman is a compelling speaker. He’s delivering a pretty devastating critique of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), the scientifically-based, primary therapy for autism, and advocating a different approach.”
Character actor Ariel Shafir plays Ephraim, whom the filmmaker describes as an “on-the-ground person in touch with the main characters. We don’t really understand who he is, or why he’s doing what he’s doing for quite a while, but Shafir is able to bring amazing oddball humor to that role.”
Nikkole Salter plays Regina, the family’s case manager. Describing Salter as an “incredible actress,” Christy adds that she “also is a very accomplished playwright and is a member of the board of directors for the Theatre Communications Group. I was thrilled for her to be a part of this project. It’s a difficult role, because on the surface she comes across as kind of harsh to our central characters, but she also brings a real warmth. Regina is more relatable than our primary characters in certain ways — in particular, her relationship with her sister, who is a single mother of a child with autism.”
Ellen Adair plays Julia, who runs the school to which Sammy eventually comes. Remarking that Adair “brings amazing emotional vulnerability,” Christy adds, “Julia is probably the most far-fetched character in certain ways. As the one who runs an autism school, she makes decisions that are unprofessional to a high degree. I think she comes off as motivated and real, but certainly people in the school community might shake their heads a little bit at some extreme actions she takes.” But Christy credits Adair’s performance with making Julia’s actions appear as plausible as possible in the film.
From left: Silverman (Lev Gorn), Megan (Briana Evigan), and Ephraim (Ariel Shafir).
Inspiration and Invention
Christy is married to web and graphic designer Mary Phillipuk. Their oldest son was diagnosed with autism. Christy recalls that the boy initially “progressed fairly normally — a little bit behind schedule on certain things, in terms of walking and talking — but not far off,” Christy says. Because the boy was able to make eye contact, his doctor initially ruled out an autism diagnosis. “But then, around 2-and-a half years old, my son started to lose some of his speech,” Christy continues. “Around that same time, we noticed hand-slapping and other types of things associated with classic autism.”
He adds, “When he turned 3 years old, his education was then determined by the school system. It means that there is a huge variation on the level of services you can get, depending on where you live. When we lived in Jersey City, they said that they had an autism program, but in fact there was one teacher with eight students at different age levels and different special needs. We just didn’t feel it was right for our kid.”
Attempting to persuade the family’s school system to allow their son to transfer to a private school cost time and legal fees, and “we ran out of money,” Christy recalls. “We moved to another school system, where we ended up finding a good situation.” He emphasizes that since the family moved to Princeton, they have had a positive experience with the school district and are grateful for the support it has provided.
One challenge that remains sharp in Christy’s mind is discovering the high competition for available services. “Even if the school will support an outside placement, a lot of schools are full,” he says. He recalls an experience that inspired Love and Communication, “I attended an open house at a high-end, well-respected autism school. When I got there, the parking lot was full — there were all of these parents in the same situation. I remember this moment of revelation: ‘Wow, we’re in this group of parents who are desperate people.’ That stayed with me.”
“Three or four years after this all happened, I started working on a concept for a play about parents going through this fairly desperate time,” Christy recalls. He says, “My wife and I went through this with our relationship very much intact. This [experience] brings some couples closer together, and drives others apart. For us, it was more the former.”
Of the proximate motivation for turning his experiences into a play and film, Christy says, “People say, ‘write what you know,’ and I don’t a lot of times. A lot of the things that I’ve written about are unrelated to personal experience, such as a Jewish German soldier in World War I.” But the inception of Love and Communication “was something where so much in my head was around this topic for so long.”
He conceived a play about a couple that was experiencing a widening rift, “with the father single-mindedly driven toward getting his son into this great school: ‘This is going to fix it, I’ll do anything,’” Christy explains. “The wife is pursuing a more relationship-based therapy; she wanted to have this emotional connection with her child. In both cases, there is an emotional distance between these parents that’s separate from their issue with their child.”
There comes a situation where “their relationship is imperiled by the parents not communicating with each other; feeling lost and grasping at a solution for what’s happening to them,” he adds. He reiterates that this character element is not autobiographical. What is more factual is the battle with the school system, and “this need for finding answers — and the best result.”
He adds, “Technology becomes a part of it, especially for the mother’s plotline, because there becomes this thing where a computer is the way that she’s interfacing with this therapy that’s teaching her to try to better connect with her son — and to an extent, becomes therapy for her. In terms of the relationship with the person who’s helping her, that clouds her judgment.”
A scarifying real-life moment, when Christy’s son ventured out of the house on his own, becomes a scene in the film when a student wanders off of school property. “That was writing what you know,” says Christy. He reflects on that “incredible terror when a child, who is helpless, is out and unprotected.”
“So there are a lot of different impetuses,” Christy says. “That’s what spurs you to write a full-length project of any kind … you keep on picturing scenes and characters, and it starts to come together.”
Megan (Briana Evigan) at her computer.
From Stage to Screen
“I was artist-in-residence at the Arts Council of Princeton when I was first writing this play; they agreed to host a reading of the play when it was being developed,” Christy recalls. “They hired a director and brought good actors in from New York City. Grant Shaud, who played Miles in Murphy Brown, was in it. It was a helpful experience for me.”
The reading encouraged Christy to continue working and pitching the play, as did a subsequent reading at PlayPenn. The production at Passage Theatre that followed enabled him to meet audience members who also were parents of children with autism and other special needs. “That spurred me to want to make it into a film, to give it a wider audience,” Christy says.
Asked about the process of adapting the play into a film, Christy — who played a small roll as a student in Dead Poets Society (1989) — explains, “The first thing that you have to think about is how to make it visual … and more active. In a play it is acceptable, even expected, to have chunks of dialogue with different characters in the same space for amounts of time that can run 10-15 minutes. You can’t do that in a film … 10 seconds is a long time for a shot.”
“One visual moment that stays with me, that is true to life, is when my son was at the top of a slide at a park,” he continues. “It was one of those dual slides that two kids can go down at the same time. Another kid asked if my son wanted to go down the slide together. My son just ignored him, and the other kid shrugged. This was a moment that stayed with me. If my son was different, he might have engaged in a social interaction. It seemed like he was missing an opportunity. That is a moment that we put in the film, which we couldn’t put in a play.”
He gives an example of a theatrical concept that would be challenging to adapt to film. The child character is never seen onstage, because the audience represents him. “So, any time other characters talk to the child, they’re talking to the audience. I thought that was powerful … but I didn’t think that would work well in the film.”
The film does “take the child’s perspective; there are small moments in which we see and hear the world a little differently,” Christy observes, “For example, the child hears the whirring of the fan differently than we do — it’s louder and more abrasive to him. You try to find ways to engage the audience visually, in ways we couldn’t do in a play.”
Technology has also become more prominent in the 15 years since the play’s premiere, “so there’s a lot more technology in the film,” he notes. “There’s an online chat to help with relationship-based therapy, and that becomes a big part of the experience of the film.”
Scenes involving the parents “were filmed in my home,” Christy says. “Fitting the actors and crew in the house for about 10 days was challenging, but also kind of fun.”
While Christy says that there are no shots of iconic Princeton locations that establish the protagonists as living in Princeton, some sequences were filmed in local law offices. Tiger Labs and Bell Labs made spaces available, as did schools in Somerset Hills and Morristown. He adds, “Local Greek was really supportive. They fed our crew for one or two nights.”
Christy is also grateful to Princeton Public Library, which facilitated a meeting with Renew Theaters’ Christopher Collier. Renew Theaters manages the Princeton Garden Theatre, so it is through Collier that the film was screened there. “As a film person, I am grateful to have that movie theater in town,” Christy says. “The experience of having my film shown in my community, with a pretty full house, was profoundly memorable and satisfying. The people closest in my life were there, but a lot of people I didn’t know came out as well.”
Although streaming services remove much of the communal aspect of the film version, for Christy it has been “heartwarming to hear people’s experiences with viewing it. My niece lives in Hoboken, and was getting ice cream. She mentioned talking about the film with her friend, and the person scooping her ice cream said, ‘I just saw that movie last night.’ It’s exciting that the film can be seen by anyone. The algorithms that get the movie up there in the streaming services are tricky to follow, but I’m gratified that there is this conduit. We’re going to keep working to get it out there, especially in this community.”
“What I am also pursuing, separate from having the film on streaming services, is having it be made available in schools,” adds Christy. “That’s a process that’s ongoing. Rutgers University has bought the film for their library. I was told that it was used as part of a class on social work. Now, any teacher at Rutgers who wants to show the film, or assign it to students, can do that. Separately, a Rutgers professor who’s a researcher on autism has used the film in presentations about how a diagnosis affects real families. That’s been gratifying.”
Asked what he hopes that audiences take away from the film, Christy says that he did not undertake the project with a message in mind. “When I approach a story, it’s about connecting to the characters,” he emphasizes. “It’s not that I aim to change audiences or make them take action. For a person who has been through a situation similar to the one portrayed in the film, I do hope that there is recognition of how difficult this process can be.”
He adds that at various screenings “perfect strangers have expressed that they have not seen an experience like this. There is a lot more information, resources, and knowledge about autism in general, but I don’t think there is a lot that focuses on the parents’ experience — particularly around the diagnosis, and how difficult it can be for families and relationships. My hope is that people who have not had experiences with autism get a sense of what it is like for parents” of children with situations similar to that of Sammy.”
In one scene of the film Silverman — making a point about the benefits of different types of therapies — remarks, “You can try to find your way into their brain. But what you want is the heart. If you start there, the rest will follow.”
Love and Communication may be opening audiences’ minds, and finding its way into their hearts.
For more information, visit loveandcommunication.com
