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Reece Daniel Thompson and Anna Kendrick in Rocket Science

The Talking Cure

Teen's victory over stuttering
ignites Rocket Science.

Naomi Pfefferman
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

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46

August 23 • 2007

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West Bloomfield

effrey Blitz was a chronic
stutterer who in high school
won his state's debate cham-
pionship. The 37-year-old writer-
director admits that this background
is ripe for Hollywood humor, so it
should come as no surprise that his
latest film, Rocket Science, spotlights a
teenage stutterer's attempts to become
a debater.
Blitz, in fact, traces his success as a
filmmaker to the challenges of grow-
ing up in a garrulous Conservative
Jewish family in Ridgewood, N.J.
"The sense of being able to discuss
issues and to participate in lively con-
versations felt like such a crucial part
of the Jewish household experience,
and I didn't want to feel sidelined from
that;' he says, sans stutter. "So while I
often felt self-conscious, I would fight
it out to say what I wanted and per-
haps even dominate the conversation
in order to overcompensate'
Reece Daniel Thompson plays Hal
Hefner, the fictional stutterer in this
eccentric tragicomedy, which won the
directing award at the 2007 Sundance
Film Festival.
"Hal is far more put-upon than I
ever was:' Blitz says. Shy and awkward,
Hal's speech impediment is not his

j

only challenge, though it makes even
ordering a slice of pizza an excruciat-
ing exercise. A brutish older brother
and the aftermath of his parents'
divorce also plague him.
Hal's luck seems to change, however,
when the school's debate champion,
Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick),
professes to spot talent in him; the
smitten Hal joins the speech club, with
initially disastrous results.
His eventual victories are less
grand than Blitz's, but they are no
less significant, the filmmaker says.
"Hal's quest is larger than conquering
public speaking; it's trying to achieve
a certain kind of mastery over his life.
He perseveres, even as circumstances
prove more unpredictable than his
stutter, and in doing so he triumphs in
ways that have less to do with winning
a debate than with finding his 'voice."'
Blitz says his own mother was his
role model for perseverance, and she
taught him that it's possible to improve
oneself through hard work. She grew
up in the rural, primitive Argentine
Jewish town of Moises Ville, eking out
a living selling quilts after the death of
her father and dodging anti-Semitic
police.
Despite her travails, she managed
to put herself through medical school
— one of the few women to do so at
the time — and eventually secured