If you play an instrument, you probably remember the first time that you heard it or how it sunk its sound into you. The relationship between instrument and player is one of intimacy and love but also of frustration and growing pains. What would you do if you saw someone so in tune with an instrument that you had to be part of their journey? In Daniel Persitz’s touching and triumphant short film, Key of Genius, we witness the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Genius centers on the introduction of Adam Ockelford, a London music professor, to Derek Paravicini, a blind, autistic boy with learning disabilities. The first time they meet, Derek bursts into his rehearsal space, with his mother, Mary Ann, trailing behind him. Derek finds the piano as if he was discovering a piece of long lost, buried treasure. I realized very quickly that Persitz was making a film about learning to trust someone.
“My first original accerss points of the story probably stems from that I come from a family of classical musicians, and I have been playing the violin since I was five years old,” Persitz says. “I play in the Santa Monica Symphony just as a high-level hobby, but it’s something that I love and it’s very near and dear to my heart. My mom, who is a professional violinist, is always extending to me YouTube clips of various people who also play, and she sent me a five minute clip of Derek that was pulled, I think, from a 60 Minutes episode. I originally thought it was made up, because it was showing how he could supposedly play any piece he’s never heard before perfectly in any key and in any style. I found the original episode of 60 Minutes, and then I found the book that Adam [Ockelford] wrote which covers a longer period of time.
The book covers the first 18 years of Derek’s life, but as I was reading it, it felt like an underdog sports movie. It’s about this kid who certainly has all these skills, but his parents and family didn’t know what to do with him. They saw great potential, and Derek and Adam ended up doing great things together. The book itself really opened my eyes.”
Some might wonder how they find someone so specific to play Derek, but it should be noted how well the film is cast when it comes to the chemistry between Adam and Mary Ann. The script builds a very careful relationship between the two adults as they discuss and look on towards Derek and his potential.
“With Adam, I knew a fair number of managers and agents in LA, so I just started to reach out to people that I knew,” he admits. “Gavin [Stenhouse] was someone who actually came up quite quickly, and I remember seeing him on one of my favorite Black Mirror episodes, “San Junipero.” He actually looks a little bit like Adam from 30 years ago, so that was a crazy coincidence. He knows how to play some piano, so it felt like that fell in line pretty quickly. We did a casting search for Mary Ann, and there was no question about Lauren [Samuels]. It was all just there, and then I discovered what an insane background she has in musicals.
For Derek, that was always a challenge. How do we find someone to play a blind, autistic piano playing kid? We knew we had to cast as authentically to Derek’s experience as possible, so I brought on a phenomenal casting director named Danielle Pretsfelder Demchick, who very much specializes in casting underrepresented communities. She works a lot with children, and she strongly felt that we needed to a nationwide search. Cannon Wood is from Ohio, and we flew him out with his mom to shoot the film. He was born with Norrie disease, which left him blind at a very, very young age, and he had never played the piano before. During prep, we got him some local piano lessons, put him on Zoom with Adam and Derek in the UK. It’s very hard to teach someone piano over Zoom, but with the help of Cannon’s mom, we were able to get some basics in. His mother transcribed the script into Braille for him, and he knew that script better than anyone on set.”
There are a few sparks of imagery where Persitz places the camera momentarily in Derek’s point of view. He could never make a film entirely from this young boy’s perspective, but it’s crucial to show us to balance the narrative. As he was doing more research, he learned something from Adam that gave him more insight.
“It was so important to me that we put us into Derek’s shoes and into his point of view,” Persitz says. “We didn’t want to dip into black for a giant section of the film, but one of the huge “a-ha!” moments for me came when I was doing research for this film. Adam and Derek still have a very close connection. They perform together, tour the world, and are very much part of each other’s lives. I’ve met them in person a number of times. One of the cool things that came out of [the research] was when Adam and I were talking about Dererk’s disability. He said a few things that changed the way that I thought about autism.
For someone who is quite autistic, I always thought that they lacked a certain sensory input, but Adam actually informed me that it’s quite the opposite. Someone like Derek is almost overstimulated with sensory input. So if we are sitting in a cafe, Derek would be hearing the cars honking outside, the sound of the coffeemaker, the conversations at the next table. It explains that overwhelmed things that can happen to one of these kids where there’s just too much while also having this superhuman-like ability to hear in a way like nobody else.”
One can imagine that Adam’s rehearsal space would feel safe for Derek as he is learning, and the majority of the film is set in that confined area. In one moment, Mary Ann walks in on an unorthodox way of teaching, and, in another, she sees her son playing at a large piano on stage to an empty house. For Persitz, the place was always behind the instrument.
“The piano lessons have always been the core of this film, and we go into more of Derek’s homelife in the feature,” he says. “I had to think about what the essential elements of this short’s story was, so I wanted to tell it over seveal piano lessons. For me, it was always about immersing us into the word of a teacher with his student–that environment of the music room.”
