THE TV COLUMN : Deaf couple take a leap to hear in Hear and Now
Posted on Thursday, May 8, 2008
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Imagine living your life deaf since birth.
Imagine meeting and falling in love with your spouse, who is also deaf, and living decades of happy, productive lives in silence.
Imagine finally having the chance to hear. Would you do it ? How would it change you and your relationship ? That’s the basis for a deeply personal documentary today on HBO.
Hear and Now debuts at 7 p. m. and tells the tale of Paul and Sally Taylor, a married couple who undergo risky cochlearimplant surgery.
The intimate account of their journey comes from their daughter, Irene Taylor Brodsky. The film won an Audience Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Why is the tale so moving ? The Taylors had spent their entire lives in silence. It was a comfortable life, a rich life, “filled with jobs, hobbies, passions and the support of a devoted four-generation family, including their own three hearing children.”
To be able to hear would be a profoundly life-altering experience.
Paul and Sally had both been pioneers in the deaf community. Sally was a teacher and secretary and used her skill at lipreading to aid law enforcement investigations.
Paul is an engineer and retired professor who helped develop the TTY, or text telephone, a telecommunication device for the hearing-impaired.
When they were 65, Paul and Sally announced they were going to get cochlear implants. The new technology could restore their hearing, but their announcement was met with mixed feelings by Irene.
“After this surgery, who will they be ?” Irene asks in the special. “Will they still be deaf people, or hearing people, or will they be something in between ? What if the implant doesn’t work ? What if one of them can hear and the other one can’t ?”
At its heart, the film is a love story about two people who found each other and grew together and made a life together and decided to take one final leap of faith together. It was a leap into the great unknown.
Irene brings her parents ’ younger years to life in the film. She shows how they learned to communicate in a special school, survived the stigma of being so different in a mainstream high school and overcame the challenges of being deaf parents of hearing children.
A cochlear operation takes three hours and places a tiny computer into a recess carved out of the skull. Silicone transmitters are threaded into the cochlea like so many microphone cables.
A month after the operations, the couple visit their audiologist to have the implants turned on and to learn if they can hear.
The film then explores the psychological aspects of adapting to a restored sense of hearing and lets viewers marvel at how subjective and delightful something so basic as hearing can be.
For example, Sally delights in the sound of water flowing over rocks and waves. She loves the sound of a light switch flipping on and off and the flushing of a toilet.
Still, the surgery is not perfect and the documentary covers the resulting highs and lows. The final question to be answered for Paul and Sally: Is it better to stay in their comfortable, familiar, silent world or face the challenges and frustrations of a new one filled with sound ?
Hear and Now will encore on HBO several times, including 6: 30 p. m. Sunday; 8: 30 a. m. and 11 p. m. May 15; 9: 15 p. m. May 19; and 5: 30 p. m. May 27.
New Monk member. Fans of Monk were saddened by the recent heart-attack death of Stanley Kamel, who played the key role of Monk’s long-suffering therapist, Dr. Charles Kroger. USA Network has tapped veteran actor Hector Elizondo to replace Kamel when the series returns for its seventh season July 18. Elizondo’s career has spanned 40 years. Many remember him from his role as the hotel manager in Pretty Woman or his brief stint on the last season’s doomed Cane. But Elizondo is best-known on TV for his Emmy-winning role as Dr. Phillip Watters on Chicago Hope. ER adds one. Oscar and Emmy nominee Angela Bassett will join ER for its 15 th and final season in the fall. She’ll be portraying a doctor who returns to the hospital after several years abroad. This will be Bassett’s first time as a series regular.
In other ER news, Noah Wyle will reprise his role as Dr. John Carter in at least four episodes.
Now, if they can only get George Clooney and Julianna Margulies to reprise Doug and Carol in the series’ final scene, life would be good. TNT news. Several readers have asked what TNT (home of The Closer ) has on the horizon. The answer is the cable outfit has more promising stuff in development. The goal is to have alloriginal programming on three nights of the week by 2010.
In a bold and daring, in-yourface move, TNT plans to hold its own fall preview presentation to advertisers on Monday — right in the middle of usual broadcastnetwork presentations.
Does TNT have the goods to back it up ? We’ll see.
The two new original TNT series are a Steven Bochco legal drama, Raising the Bar, with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Gloria Reuben, and Leverage, starring Timothy Hutton.
Hutton plays a former insurance investigator who’s a sort of modern Robin Hood with his team of hackers and ne’er-dowells. I’m all for any new show that doesn’t feature the grisly murder of the week and bodies splayed out for autopsy. Back in the development lab (not ready for prime time ) are a number of other TNT shows. They include Truth in Advertising, with Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack playing guys in a giant ad firm; an unnamed family drama, and a crime drama based on the novels of Tess Gerritsen. The TV column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
mstorey@arkansasonline. com