Owen Suskind

Night of Too Many Stars: America Unites for Autism Programs

Jon Stewart returns to television to host a live show presented from The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York. Benefiting NEXT for Autism, the special features stand-up performances, sketches and short films.

Life, Animated

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.