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IDAHO VETERAN IS INSPIRATION FOR NEW MOVIE --

"Music Within" now in limited release

around the country.

Richard Pimentel works from his portable office at a local coffee shop in Nampa. Pimentel's life story is the inspiration behind the new movie "Music Within." (photo: Matt Cilley / AP)

Story here... http://www.idaho
press.com/news/?id=1419

Story below:

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Nampa veteran inspiration for new movie

The Associated Press
 

NAMPA — Bounced between a mentally ill mother and an orphanage for much of his childhood, Richard Pimentel had plenty to struggle with long before he became disabled.

So when, as a soldier in Vietnam, Pimentel suffered profound hearing loss when a bomb exploded nearby, it would have been easy to sink into the despair suffered by so many other vets. Instead, Pimentel was galvanized, fighting for equality in a nation that barely deigned to notice its own disabled citizens.

His efforts launched a program used around the country to train companies about hiring and working with disabled people, and he helped lead the push for the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Pimentel’s story is the inspiration behind the new movie “Music Within.”

“When I told my friends they were making a movie about me they thought it was 22 minutes long on the Discovery Channel,” Pimentel said.

Not exactly. It’s a full-length film with a limited release in nine major cities on Friday. It will go to 11 more cities starting Nov. 9, with more to be added if audiences respond well.

After growing up in Portland, Ore., Pimentel now lives in Nampa and is a motivational speaker and disability management expert. It also may be one of the few Hollywood film portrayals of disabled Vietnam veterans that doesn’t rely on overused stereotypes.

“Hollywood, in general, when you say ‘disabled film’ people start running or shoot you right to ‘Movie of the Week,”’ said Steven Sawalich, who directed and produced “Music Within,” a movie inspired by Vietnam veteran Richard Pimentel. “I wanted to have the characters in the film be portrayed not by their disability but by their characteristics,” he said.

Sawalich met Pimentel about eight years ago. Sawalich’s stepfather, Bill Austin, is the head of hearing aid manufacturer Starkey Laboratories, and years earlier Austin had fit Pimentel with his first hearing aids. When Pimentel was speaking at a nearby conference, Sawalich decided to attend.

“The story he told was his life story,” Sawalich said. “He has this amazing ability to take the audience on a roller coaster of emotion, and one minute people were laughing and the next people were crying.”

Sawalich decided then to make Pimentel’s life into a movie. It took a few years to get the script written, and a few more for the movie to get picked up for production. It is Sawalich’s first film, made on a budget of less than $5 million.

Pimentel wrote out much of his own life story to be used as a framework by the screenwriters.

“When I first started, I thought, you know, I don’t want to be the hero of my own life. That’s just wrong,” Pimentel said.

The more he wrote, however, the more he discovered something: “Being the hero wasn’t even an option. Then I struggled not to be the villain of my own life,” he said. “Finally, I realized I’m not even the protagonist. Ultimately, your life isn’t about you. It’s about all the people around you.”

Pimentel is quick to list his strengths and his weaknesses as well. But he shies away from any suggestion that he was the leader of the disability movement.

Pimentel’s hearing loss left his upper register totally blown, with high sounds vanishing from his hearing except for a constant ringing that never goes away. For years, he battled another disability: Fierce anger, spawned from his difficult upbringing.

Pimentel’s mother had schizophrenia and postpartum depression, compounded by a series of miscarriages. Unable to cope with her own illness, Pimentel’s mother dropped him off at an orphanage. When his grandmother later discovered the abandonment, she took the young boy in and raised him — at least until his mother decided she wanted to try again.

The turmoil left a wound that still seems hard for Pimentel to talk about. As a little boy, he coped with his anxiety by refusing to speak, becoming a selective mute during his stay in the orphanage.

“I spent the first six years in school diagnosed as retarded. I was in special education because I figured out if I didn’t talk people would ignore me,” he says.

Pimentel eventually began talking again and found he had a gift for public speaking. He hoped to attend college on a speech scholarship, but was turned down. Instead, he joined the military — lured by the promise of the GI bill — only to have the promise of a free education yanked away by officials who didn’t think a deaf man could succeed in college.

Undaunted, Pimentel got his college education and found work helping others who were disabled get jobs in an unaccomodating world. He may be his own best example. Pimentel has written several training programs designed to help employers hire people suffering from physical and mental disabilities. Now he has a successful career as a motivational speaker, despite a slight lisp that developed after years of being unable to hear himself speak.

Hearing aids have drastically improved his hearing, Pimentel said. But the only fix for his anger was years of daily effort.

“Apartheid made me angry; people who don’t know how to count change made me angry. The day the ADA was signed I was angry because I didn’t have something to be angry about anymore and I was mad,” he said. “I never want to be angry again. If I had to pick between hearing and anger, the sound would be cut off.”

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Larry Scott  --

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