Flash of Genius (film)
| Flash of Genius | |
|---|---|
Original poster
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| Directed by | Marc Abraham |
| Produced by |
Roger Birnbaum Gary Barber Thomas Bliss Michael Lieber |
| Written by | Philip Railsback |
| Starring |
Greg Kinnear Lauren Graham Dermot Mulroney Alan Alda |
| Music by | Aaron Zigman |
| Cinematography | Dante Spinotti |
| Edited by | Jill Savitt |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by |
Universal Pictures Optimum Releasing (now StudioCanal UK) (United Kingdom) |
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Release date
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October 3, 2008 |
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Running time
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119 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $4,802,953 |
Flash of Genius is a 2008 American biographical film directed by Marc Abraham. The screenplay by Philip Railsback, based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook, focuses on Robert Kearns and his legal battle against the Ford Motor Company when they developed an intermittent windshield wiper based on ideas the inventor had patented.
The phrase "flash of genius", after which the film is titled, is patent law terminology which was in effect from 1941 to 1952, which held that the inventive act must come into the mind of an inventor as a kind of and not as a result of tinkering.
On his wedding night in 1953, an errant champagne cork renders college engineering professor Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear) almost completely blind in his left eye. A decade later, he is happily married to Phyllis (Lauren Graham) and the father of six children. As he drives his Ford Galaxie through a light rain, the constant movement of the windshield wipers irritates his troubled vision. The incident inspires him to create a wiper blade mechanism modeled on the human eye, which blinks every few seconds rather than continuously.
With financial support from Gil Previck (Dermot Mulroney), Kearns converts his basement into a laboratory and develops a prototype he tests in a fish tank before installing it in his car. He patents his invention and demonstrates it for Ford researchers, who had been working on a similar project without success. Kearns refuses to explain how his mechanism works until he hammers out a favorable deal with the corporation. Impressed with Kearns' results, executive Macklin Tyler (Mitch Pileggi) asks him to prepare a business plan detailing the cost of the individual units, which Kearns intends to manufacture himself. Considering this to be sufficient commitment from the company, Kearns rents a warehouse he plans to use as a factory and forges ahead. He presents Ford with the pricing information it requested along with a sample unit, then waits for their response. Time passes, and when nobody contacts Kearns, he begins placing phone calls that are never returned.
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