In the new movie, Flash of Genius, family man, college professor and inventor Robert Kearns takes on the Detroit automakers who he claims stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper. The movie is based on a true story of a man fighting for recognition and refusing to back down.  He becomes so obsessed with fighting for his cause, his efforts end up costing him his family.  The stars of the film, Greg Kinnear, who plays Kearns, and Lauren Graham, who plays his wife Phyllis, share their own opinions about the real Robert Kearns and his fight for justice. 
 
Q: As much as you want Bob Kearns to snap out of it, get his family back and get on with his life, there is something great about how he fought for this. Can you talk about that?

Greg Kinnear: Yeah, I know. I found him to be a very prickly guy. He was uncompromising and stubborn and not the most, as Alan Alder says, "charming guy in the room." And yet I really did find myself wanting him to find some satisfaction in this journey.  I did understand his need to have some sort of recognition.  I think it’s very relevant to the era we live in, where more and more of us work for fewer and fewer people. He was marginalized and that’s the most disturbing thing. I think that can happen to a person and obviously it cost him his family and his wife, and he leaves a lot on the table. But watching it from my vantage point, my sense was he had to do this. There was no off switch.

Q: You’ve met the family.  Obviously, it was very traumatic for them to go through this when they were growing up.  But now is there a sort of great love for him, kind of a crazy artist in a way? How do they react to this now?

Greg Kinnear: We showed the family the movie, and obviously it was very emotional for them. I think in a way maybe this movie is more of a catharsis, maybe even more than the law suit was, because I’m not sure even at the end of the film that you have any sense of how everyone really felt.  It’s a little ambiguous whether or not this man ever found the satisfaction he was looking for. I do think that the movie, in a way, can tell the whole story in a way that the law suit couldn’t, about their father and who he was. I think as difficult of a time as they went through, that at least now they do certainly have a great deal of respect for him, and also maybe a little healing about everything that took place.

Q: Lauren, how do you think the kids feel now? You come across in the movie that you just love the guy, you feel for him, and you feel that he loved his kids. How was everyone affected by that?

Lauren Graham: I don’t know, and I wouldn’t presume to get into their personal lives. I know that they’ve been part of the journey of making this movie. They’ve seen it. Our director did a screening for them and has taken good care of them in terms of really honoring the vulnerability that they must feel. I don’t know how they feel now, but I think the movie does a good job of presenting the turmoil and also the heroism of what their father was trying to do.  And so I would hope that it is a healing thing, or at the very least interesting to them. 

Q: Do you think Phyllis still loves him?

Lauren Graham: My sense is yes, that she does.  In talking to her, she spoke very fondly of him and you could feel this force. I mean, he was just such a life-force and kind of all consuming.  Not only with the law suit, but just even when they were coming up through the ranks, and when he first had Ford on the line, and they were gonna have this big deal. She told me that he came up to her and said I’m gonna buy you a Cadillac for each foot.   I mean he was a larger than life guy, he was excited and passionate, and all those qualities that you hate to see kind of marginalized in a case like this. He’s complicated.

Q: So I what was it about Phyllis Kearns' struggle that made this role so attractive to you?

Lauren Graham: I just thought this was a really good story and very well told, and an interesting drama and it just raises interesting thematic questions about how far would you go for something you believe in.  I think to some degree we all relate to that.  And in this case, this is about a family who is deeply affected by one man’s journey and it’s sort of ilike an addiction. When someone is so obsessed or affected by with whatever it is they believe in, it affects the whole family.  And that’s my part in this movie--feeling powerless to some degree to help the person I love, and that’s tough. 

Q: What’s the overall thing that you want people to take away from the movie?

Lauren Graham: Well, what I want in a movie is to get very engaged in the story and have it sort of connect to me in a personal way. I also want it to be entertaining.  I think that’s really what the story is.  To me it’s like a classic American story, it’s Death of a Salesman. It’s man against a corporation, man against himself, and I think it’s just beautifully done.