Yahoo News ‘Let Me Be Me’ Shows Kyle Westphal’s Journey From Isolated Autistic Youth To Fashion Designer: “A Very Robust And Beautiful Story”
At age 29, Kyle Westphal is an emerging fashion designer with a degree in design from Drexel University, a vast knowledge of fashion history, and work that has been featured on Refinery 29 and Instyle.com.
But there was a time when his parents couldn’t imagine such a bright future for him, back when Kyle was a child of six first diagnosed with autism. At that time, as revealed in the documentary Let Me Be Me, Jenifer and Jeff Westphal struggled with how best to support Kyle, who had gone from being an outgoing toddler to a hypersensitive young boy.
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“They feared they might never develop a real connection to their child,” notes a description of the film, directed by Dan Crane and Katie Taber. “Withdrawn and constantly wrapping himself in fabric and blankets, Kyle was retreating from the world around him.”
In the 1990s when Kyle was growing up, relatively little was understood about autism or the optimal ways to help children on the spectrum. Most therapies centered on behavior modification which, in essence, attempted to force autistic kids to conform to societal expectations of how they should act.
As the film explains, a turning point came for the Westphals when they learned about Son-Rise, a program with a novel approach to treating autism.
“We ran into the program by accident,” Jenifer Westphal says. “I met a woman with a child who was diagnosed as autistic… That’s when I started to connect the dots. When she talked about her child’s behaviors, really, I would say, ‘Wow, Kyle does that!’ And that’s kind of how this whole thing came to fruition.”
Son-Rise is “different than — even opposite to — almost everything you’ve been told to do to help your child,” the program’s website says. “Our program shows how joining children in their own unique worlds before asking them to join us in ours makes it possible for these special children to reach new heights!”
Let Me Be Me documents how the Westphals put the Son-Rise Program into practical effect for Kyle, and the immense effort that required. They started by creating a sanctuary for him, a sort of “boy cave” where Kyle could keep all of the things around him that gave him comfort, including toys and blankets.
At the time he couldn’t really verbalize his emotions, but he was taking it all in. “Literally, I saw this playroom being built for me,” Kyle tells Deadline, “and that was a really cool experience.”
A succession of volunteers came in daily to work with Kyle, engaging with him in his world instead of compelling him to adapt to theirs. On one side of the room was a one-way mirror, which permitted Kyle’s parents to observe the sessions and to videotape them for the purpose of training future volunteers.
Kyle remembers the process as rigorous and often draining.
Wavelength/Greenwich Entertainment
“A lot of that ‘play’ was all work,” he says. “It was starting in the morning at 9, 9:30 to around late afternoon, around 4:30-5, pretty intensively five days a week. It’s almost like a kaleidoscope because there was such a range of personalities that entered the room. I would start to figure out who was more, not necessarily ‘fun’ or ‘not fun’ because that’s not really the right term, but who was going to challenge me in a more constructive way, who’s going to have a little more fun and be a little more playful.”
Jenifer remembers her son “wasn’t good at telling you how he felt.” But there were hints at how Kyle was feeling.
“One of the things that was really, really sweet is that when he was really happy about something his ears would go bright red,” she says. “You could just tell, ‘Oh, he’s happy about something!” On those occasions, his parents would show him flashcards with faces that indicated emotions. “’Kyle, are you feeling this?’ And eventually he could tell us that he was feeling happy… There was a lot of work you do as a parent to read the signs, and then we would build on that to try to help him express himself.”
Wavelength/Greenwich Entertainment
The film recounts that as a child Kyle developed an obsession with the classic Disney animated film Cinderella. He identified with the story’s Fairy Godmother who possessed the power to transform with a flick of her wand, spreading magic with the incantation Biddibi-Bobbidi-Boo. It’s the key to understanding Kyle’s gravitation towards fashion.
“For me, fashion was kind of this realm — very similar to Cinderella, which was something I always connected with — of how to make someone feel great,” Kyle says. “Just like with a magic wand [creating] the dress, I was like, how cool would that be to do that in your life? Now that I look back on it I’m like, Of course I went into fashion because that’s exactly what I was doing when I was a kid. It was the next elevation, the next step. It’s something that I love to do to this day.”
The film features stop-motion animated sequences made entirely out of textiles that illustrate scenes from Kyle’s childhood. The animation style also gestures towards the world Kyle inhabited.
Wavelength/Greenwich Entertainment
“When [co-director] Dan Crane came along and started rewriting the story, he got the idea of trying to find animation that would be about fabric. And he found this company in New Zealand called Yukfoo, and we started working with them,” Jenifer says. “The sofas, the sky, everything in fabric. As Dan explained it to us and as we absorbed it, it really felt like you were in the blanket with Kyle.”
Let Me Be Me is available on VOD, as well as at Kino Now and on DVD through Kino Lorber; screenings can also be arranged through Kinema.com. The film continues to make the festival circuit, with an awards push expected in the fall. Jenifer Westphal, who executive produced the film, has become a leading figure in documentary with credits that include Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Athlete A, and Where’s My Roy Cohn? Westphal says she wasn’t eager to be on camera herself.
“It did take the filmmakers a very long time to convince me that the [whole] family should really be in the film too,” Jenifer concedes. “I really thought we could get away with telling Kyle’s story [alone] because it was obviously a very robust and beautiful story. But too many times people would look at what we had and say, ‘Where is the family?’”
Participating in the film as a subject became a profound experience.
“The first weekend we sat down and did interviews with Katie Taber and her crew was the first time the family talked about the whole story. It was more cathartic than I ever expected because I really just had ‘filmmaker hat’ on going, ‘This is a great story,’” Jenifer recalls. “Turning that hat around and being mom for that weekend was emotional.”
Kyle Westphal is now living in Philadelphia, where he went to college. “Things are good,” he says. “I’m doing some independent fashion projects.” He has spent much of the past year helping to spread the word about the film.
“As my mom says, this is one story of autism, it is not the story,” Kyle underscores. “We hope it inspires hope in your story. The journey from the room to the real world, it’s really about connection. And I always say, it’s the Yellow Brick Road. It’s finding — if you’re Dorothy, it’s like you’ve got your Scarecrow, your Tin Man. You bring the people along and you build it.”
Jenifer doesn’t minimize the enormous energy needed to craft a nurturing environment for Kyle that allowed him over time to form bonds with people and find his creative calling. Nor does she insist the Son-Rise Program is the guaranteed right fit for every family. But it was for hers.
“As a parent I’m so pleased that we get to experience and know Kyle, who he is and what he’s all about,” she says. “I’m also really grateful that some of the behaviors that kept him so isolated in the room we’ve been able to help him overcome so that he can go out and build a life on his own. It’s a journey.”
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