Out of Tune

by Margaret Helfgott

  The use of study guides and “teaching through film” has become widespread in recent years. Such guides include those for Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Gorillas in the Mist, and Gulliver’s Travels. If this is the only way in today’s television age of encouraging students to familiarize themselves with otherwise difficult classics, so be it. But to the best of my knowledge, the study guide for Shine is unique in that it is the only one accompanying a film passing itself off as fact when it is nothing of the sort. None of the other guides submitted as part of the school curriculum use real people with their real names, most of whom are still alive.

  No one had bothered to inform us, let alone ask our permission about what can only be described as a gross violation of the Helfgott family’s privacy, going beyond all bounds of sensitivity and decency.

  Research by marketing companies indicates that guides are more likely to be used if sent to teachers directly, thus bypassing the school bureaucracy. Some packs had already been sent to schools, but widespread distribution throughout Australia was due to begin in early 1997. Realizing that there was no time to waste, Leslie, aided by his wife, leaped into action. He immediately called Andrew Pike of Ronin Films, and pleaded with him to withdraw the Shine Study Guide from schools. He explained to Pike everything that was wrong with Shine and why the Helfgott family found it so offensive. Shocked at what he heard, Pike was sympathetic to our plight from the very beginning. He said he would look into the problem and see if it could be resolved.

  Leslie then contacted ATOM, but was told they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do anything to stop the study kit going to schools. In desperation, he next turned to the superintendent of the Education Department, but was told that they, too, were unable to stop the study guide’s distribution.

  Leslie and Marie, who were spending sleepless nights worrying about what could be done, then contacted Barbara Hocking of SANE (the Schizophrenia Australia Foundation). “We were amazed that such a study guide concerning a well-known mentally ill person was being distributed without professional review and approval by SANE or a similar mental health organization,” Barbara told me on the telephone a short while later. “We were concerned that while there was much discussion about parenting styles, with the clear implication that these were the cause of David’s ‘psychological setback,’ there was no mention that David has schizo-affective disorder. A whole generation of school students were to be misinformed about the causes of psychotic illness.”

  Hocking contacted Ronin Films and told them in no uncertain terms that all SANE’s work would go to waste if inaccurate information about mental illness was issued to school children ignorant of the issues.

  Leslie and Marie’s task was not confined to Australia. We heard that the Shine Study Guide was to be distributed in other countries, too. Margaret Leggatt, president of the World Schizophrenia Fellowship, who lives in Australia, wrote to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), in Arlington, Virginia, and to schizophrenia support groups in Canada and England, saying that she was gravely concerned that “the guide for school students … perpetuates the idea of the father’s brutality causing the schizo-affective breakdown.” Dr. Fuller Torrey of NAMI, author of Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual, replied that they would do “whatever we can to correct the grossly mistaken etiological implications of Shine.”

  In January, there was the first sign that the campaign was making some headway. Andrew Pike told Leslie that he had read Gillian’s book and that it would be removed from the study guide. The other materials, however, would remain.

  Leslie and Marie intensified their efforts, managing to speak to a member of parliament about their anxieties. Meanwhile, SANE prepared a special flier for insertion into the Shine Study Guide, giving factual explanations about the nature and causes of mental illness. They attempted to get hold of a list of schools that had already received copies of the guide, in order to send them the fliers and counteract the damage done.

  Throughout this time, SANE not only did valuable work but, in marked contrast to the makers of Shine, they kept in constant touch with the Helfgott family, including myself, keeping us informed of any developments and offering reassuring and sympathetic words. These were of great comfort. At that time we really felt that it was us against the world: the film industry, the media, and the publishing industry.

  On May 15, 1997, Andrew Pike wrote to Leslie, saying that the flier prepared by SANE would be incorporated in the guides and that a prominent disclaimer sticker would be placed on the front of the guide; this would point out that the guide was not meant to relate to real persons or actual events. He also told Leslie how much he regretted the fact that a disclaimer had not been put at the beginning of the film.

  Although we were obviously happy that some progress had been made, we were still far from satisfied. If there had been a prominent disclaimer at the start of the film, the whole audience would have had the opportunity to read it; teachers and school children may well look at individual sheets and components of the guide, however, without properly registering the statement on the cover. Our real names were still being used in the guide, and this, together with the influence of the film itself and all the surrounding publicity, made us fear that children would still be left with the impression that the events were true. At the very least, Leslie wanted a disclaimer on every individual sheet clearly stating that Shine was a work of fiction and that the family portrayed in the film bore no resemblance to the real Helfgott family. “For God’s sake, have some compassion,” he told Pike. “My mother’s still alive.”

  Leslie and Marie didn’t let up, and their valiant and determined efforts finally paid off. Despite the fact that his business was distribution, Andrew Pike came to the conclusion that the privacy of our family was being violated in a completely unacceptable way. When he phoned Leslie in early June to tell him that the guide would be withdrawn, the whole family was overjoyed. Pike said Ronin Films would also try to recall the guides from the more than 1,000 schools that had already received them. He confirmed Ronin Films’s abandonment of the Shine Study Guide by letter to Leslie on June 16, 1997. Although it wasn’t made clear exactly what had changed his mind, we were all immensely relieved.

  Unfortunately, as I write, the Shine Study Guide is still available elsewhere in the world. An article in the New York Times confirmed that in the United States, Shine Study Guides had already been sent to “teachers of music, psychology, sociology and history.” Vincent Nebrida, senior manager for marketing and special projects at Fine Line Features, Shines U.S. distributors, was quoted as saying that history teachers were included on the distribution list because “Shine touches on the whole Holocaust aspect.”

  In addition to normal distribution channels, we also have today’s new technologies to contend with when trying to prevent the guide’s dispersal. The guide is also available for downloading free of charge on the Internet from the Fine Line Features web site. “ … Nor did it stop with the movie,” it says on the web site. “Download the free Shine Study Guide! Lifetime Learning Systems, in cooperation with Momentum Films and Fine Line Features, has created a special educational study guide based on Shine, titled Shine: The Triumph of Self-Expression. This educational program—designed for older high school students and college students—builds upon the many themes explored in the film, including the development of human personality, family dynamics, and the music in the film. Although the material is copyrighted, you have permission to photocopy as many sets of the study guide as you may need for educational purposes.”

  (Regrettably, there is also a “student study assignment” on the Internet for “Love You to Bits and Pieces,” full of nonsense about “the psychological illnesses that can come from playing the piano,” and statements such as “Shine took a lot of effort to make everything as accurate as possible.”)

  As I write this, I am still unsure what the future position will be regarding the Shine Study Guides in America and other countries,
but at least we now know that Peter Helfgott’s six grandchildren won’t have to sit in class in Australia and hear teachers and fellow students discuss their grandfather and all the lies concocted about him by Scott Hicks’s film.

  22

  RIGHTING THE WRONGS

  Anyone living in western society knows that the film industry and the media are extremely powerful. However, until you’ve experienced their full weight at firsthand, it is difficult to appreciate just how much influence they wield. At times during the struggle to present the truth over Shine, we felt that we were battling against the whole world. When an Oscar-winning film, backed by a massive publicity and marketing operation, feeds myths to an eager media, it is almost impossible for private individuals with limited resources to set the record straight. Once the “story” is picked up you feel as ineffective as a Lilliputian in the land of the giants, a tiny voice drowned out by the surrounding clamor.

  Scott Hicks is well aware of the overwhelming force of the media. This is why I find it so reprehensible that, not content with the damage done by his film, he has decided to continue hurting the Helfgott family and perpetrating his fraud on an unsuspecting public by making use of newspapers and television. It is no coincidence that time and again Shine is called a “true story” in media around the world. Hicks does everything he can to suggest it is. He adds insult to injury by repeatedly telling journalists that he has been sensitive to the feelings of the Helfgott family. He called a pre-Oscar press conference in Los Angeles to inform the New York Times and other major newspapers and TV networks that in his “ten-year odyssey” to make Shine, he had undertaken “meticulous research” to ensure that “everything in the film” was based on fact. And, as if to demonstrate that he had the full support of the Helfgott family, Gillian (but not David) stood resolutely by his side.

  Hicks’s claim that his film was based on testimony “not just from David’s memory but from the people who knew him” is patent nonsense. Tom Gross and I did not have ten years to research and write this book. We had only a few weeks. Yet in that time we managed to speak to almost all the key players in David’s life. We found that Hicks had talked to almost none of them. They were all readily available and easy to track down. All had clear memories of David that they were more than willing to share with us; they were, without exception, surprised, angered, and upset by the way Shine had misled the public.

  After twenty-one chapters in which I have, as best I could, tried to right the wrongs shown in his film, I would like to ask some questions of Hicks. Why did he feel it necessary, after referring to David as “a stray dog” in the film, to further defame people with whom he hasn’t even had the courtesy to speak, by telling a large gathering of journalists that David was “lying and dying on the floor” before he met Gillian? Why did he deny the existence of David’s first wife, Claire, who did so much for David? Why doesn’t his film pay tribute to the Reverend Robert Fairman, who has received parliamentary citations for his tireless work for the mentally ill and the excellent standards he has maintained at his lodges? Why did he not show David’s close friend of eight years, Dot, taking David to concerts, as she often did?

  Scott Hicks should ask himself how it is possible for an acclaimed film director to make a movie about a real human being without speaking to most of the key players in his life. How is it that most of the film focuses on David as a music student and yet neither of David’s main music teachers, Frank Arndt and Madame Carrard, were consulted? Or Professor Sir Frank Callaway, a highly respected figure in classical music circles around the world, who could have told Hicks that Peter Helfgott had not opposed David’s going to London? What about Phyllis Sellick or Professor Immelman, who were present during David’s 1969 London performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto? Or Sir Keith Falkner, director of the Royal College of Music, who could have related how David described his Pop as “a super human being”?

  If his film is “rooted clearly in fact” and “paints a very honest picture of David,” as Hicks has told journalists, then why not mention the history of mental illness in the Helfgott family? Why conceal the fact that David played the “Rach 3” many times before he left for London and gave other triumphant performances after his return? Why not make clear that David was being cared for at home by my father until his death in 1975? Why discard David’s tribute to Dad in the newspaper after he died? Why not confirm with Isaac Stern his offer of bringing David to America? Wouldn’t it have been a courtesy if Hicks had found a few minutes during the ten years he took to make Shine to speak to Phyllis Sellick before presenting her internationally renowned husband as a doddery old fool who says you have to be “mad” to attempt the “Rach 3”?

  Apart from recognizing that he has caused the Helfgott family and our friends incalculable distress, I feel that Hicks should think long and hard about the fact that psychiatrists and medical organizations in at least three continents have had to divert their time from their valuable work with the mentally ill to take a public stand against what is after all a mere movie. He should also think long and hard about why many people find his treatment of Jews and Judaism, and of Holocaust survivors in particular, deeply offensive.

  If Hicks had been the slightest bit interested in telling a true story he would have spoken to myself, my mother, and Leslie; he would have been fascinated by all the wonderful letters we have that my father and David exchanged, which show their warmth and affection for each other and the vitality of the atmosphere in our house. But, of course, Hicks wasn’t interested. He seems to have taken rather too seriously Sam Goldwyn’s quip: “My mind is made up! Don’t confuse me with the facts!”

  If his motives in making this film were purely artistic, if he was merely interested in the story line he had created, rather than playing around with the lives of the Helfgott family, he could have made virtually the same film simply by using fictional names and changing a few details. This would not have affected its impact as a work of art. The story would still have been powerful and imaginative, with a villain for the audience to boo and a heroine to save the day. But Hicks rejected this option, and it is clear that his motives were not purely artistic. He was determined to abuse the truth and use the real David Helfgott for commercial exploitation.

  Hicks has admitted his film is not true, which is why his disclaimer reads: “While the characters David and Gillian Helfgott are actual persons, this film also depicts characters and events which are fictional, which do not and are not intended to refer to any real person or any actual event.” But Hicks wants it both ways. He knows that if people believe Shine to be true, it will be a more gripping film, bring in larger financial rewards, and win greater critical acclaim. Consequently he made the disclaimer so small and obscure as to render it virtually meaningless, thereby deceiving the public and the media alike. And to ensure that everything goes to plan, he has continued to feed the media his myths about “meticulous research” and so on, many months after the film’s release.

  It is no accident that so many people were taken in by Shine and found its myths so acceptable. It’s not just on account of the fact that it is technically a well-made film, with some very strong performances and a slick publicity machine behind it. It is because Hicks imbued his film with elements that he knew would have widespread appeal to many people, themes that tugged at heartstrings, stirred emotions, and confirmed preexisting myths—a wicked father and a wonderful woman as redeemer; child abuse; a triumph over mental illness. He also exploited the well-known psychological phenomenon of “blaming the victim”—which when the victim is a concentration camp survivor is almost bound to bring unconscious anti-Semitism into play.

  Mix all these together and you have a surefire winner. Who can resist such “a joyous celebration,” as the (London) Daily Telegraph put it, “of the triumph of good over evil, genius over madness, light over darkness … in the form of the radiant astrologer Gillian, who rescues David from the edge of madness, and brings the film to the happiest
of conclusions?” Once the media started, there was no stopping them.

  And for the finale of our “true story” let’s produce the real David Helfgott—on Oscar night no less—although we had better tell everyone he’s only an eccentric and has made a complete recovery from his mysterious illness, otherwise people might suspect that this poor man is still mentally ill and unaware of the way he is being exploited by the circus all around him. The world fell in love with David’s tale. Only David is not Forrest Gump. He is a real person.

  The problem with the impact of Shine and the damage and hurt it has caused myself and my family is a circular one. It is precisely because people believe the film to be true that it is such a moving and gripping piece of cinema. And the more moving and gripping it is, the greater the damage it does.

  For the Helfgott family to succeed in counteracting the media blitz that followed Shine was virtually impossible. It was made even harder by the existence of the new electronic media, which enables anyone with access to a computer to reach a worldwide audience. As I sat at home in Beersheva on Oscar night, I asked myself whether it was a coincidence that Shines official Internet site states that “when David returns to Australia… his father behaves as if his son is dead”—almost the exact same words Billy Crystal used in front of one billion people watching the Oscars.

  What my family has gone through is not an experience I would wish on anyone. Hicks seems to be remarkably pleased with the success his film has brought him. “If it was possible to be killed with praise, I would be long dead,” he told one interviewer modestly. He doesn’t realize and simply doesn’t care what a wonderful man Peter Helfgott was. I doubt whether Hicks knows how many people he has upset by catapulting my father to worldwide infamy. Dr. Jack Morris, a close friend of my father’s, exclaimed: “How dare anyone speak about Peter Helfgott like that? He was one of the greatest men I ever met”; Mrs. Miriam Lemish, who was a bridesmaid at my parents’ wedding, told me she cried after she left the theater; Sam Kras described Peter as a “happy, genial man, a real character, and extremely likable”; Ida Zoltak called Peter “a gentle and lovable man”; Ivan Rostkier described Shine as “a shocking film. Peter was a man with such a good heart, and so wonderful to talk to because he knew so much”; Gertie Granek said: “What a father he was. They should have given him a medal.” These are the people who actually knew my father. But Hicks and Gillian, two people who never met him, seem quite happy to trample on his good name and reap the profits.