Set your DVRs: Temple Grandin on HBO

Since reading Oliver Sacks' An Anthropologist on Mars I have been fascinated by Temple Grandin. As many of you know Temple is a woman with autism who has had enormous success in her career as a professor at Colorado State and as one of the foremost authorities on the design on livestock facilities. Her rare ability to share the way her brain works -- thinking in pictures, she calls it -- has always been compelling to me and I have used her writings in every psychology class I've taught.

Among her works:

• Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
• Thinking In Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism
• The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger's
• Emergence: Labeled Autistic
• Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

So I was thrilled today to see that the HBO film "Temple Grandin" debuts Saturday, February 6 at 8 pm. You may be surprised to see that Claire Danes stars as Temple but after viewing the trailers I was convinced that except for the physical differences (the dainty Danes playing the broad-shouldered Grandin) that she did a good job. And I got all verklempt seeing those pictures in the trailers that only lived in my head -- Danes as Grandin down on all fours in a livestock pen, seeing the world from a cow's point of view, for example.

For more info on Temple Grandin check out these links:

• TempleGrandin.com
• A making of the movie interview on Huffington Post
• A 2006 interview with Ira Glass on NPR's Science Friday
• A movie preview from the Missouri Beef Council ("HBO Biopic Features Beef Industry," no lie!)

Check out the trailer and tease below and post your thoughts in the comments. Does she pull it off? Are you as excited as I am?

Trailer

Tease