the real rain man dies at 58

Kim Peek, the savant who inspired Rain Man, dies at the age of 58
By Mail Foreign Service
www.dailymail.co.uk/news

* Kim Peek

The man who inspired the title character in the Oscar-winning movie Rain Man has died. Kim Peek was 58. His father, Fran, says Peek had a major heart attack on Saturday morning and was pronounced dead at a hospital in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray.

*hoffman and cruise

Peek was a savant with a remarkable memory and inspired writer Barry Morrow when he wrote Rain Man, the 1988 movie that won four Academy Awards and took £100million at the box office.


Fran Peek said his son met Morrow at a convention in the early 1980s and the writer was taken with Peek's knack for retaining everything he heard.

Morrow wrote the script, and the movie went on to win Oscars for best film and best actor for Dustin Hoffman, whose repetitive rants about being an excellent driver and the TV show People's Court were a hit with moviegoers.

Although the character was technically fictional, Fran Peek said his son was every bit as amazing as Hoffman's portrayal of him.

And Kim's true character showed when he toured the world, helping dispel misconceptions about mental disabilities. 'It was just unbelievable, all the things that he knew. He travelled 5,500 miles short of three million air miles and talked to 60million people.' Fran said.

After his birth in 1951, Peek's parents were advised to place him in an institution for the mentally disabled. They refused and he was brought up alongside his brother and sister in Utah.

In his later years, Peek was classified as a 'mega-savant' who was a genius in about 15 different subjects, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates. But his motor skills were limited; he couldn't perform simple tasks such as dressing himself.


National Public Radio's Howard Berkes reported for the American broadcaster from Salt Lake City about the 58-year-old. He said: 'Peek had severe mental handicaps but reportedly remembered everything he read and heard. He had difficulty with simple things like turning on lights or dressing himself, but his memory was legendary.

'Give him a date and he'd describe its events. Name a place and he'd name the zip code. Rain Man made Peek so famous he travelled the globe, displaying his talents as the real "Rain Man",' he added.

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