Out of Tune Quotes

“After twenty-one chapters in which I have, as best I could, tried to right the wrongs shown in his film, I would like to ask some questions of Hicks. Why did he feel it necessary, after referring to David as “a stray dog” in the film, to further defame people with whom he hasn’t even had the courtesy to speak, by telling a large gathering of journalists that David was “lying and dying on the floor” before he met Gillian? Why did he deny the existence of David’s first wife, Claire, who did so much for David? Why doesn’t his film pay tribute to the Reverend Robert Fairman, who has received parliamentary citations for his tireless work for the mentally ill and the excellent standards he has maintained at his lodges? Why did he not show David’s close friend of eight years, Dot, taking David to concerts, as she often did?”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“To suggest, as Shine does, that my father was in some way mean-spirited is totally unfair. Holding back David’s career was not in the least my father’s aim. He was extremely proud of his son and nurtured his talent in every way. He was David’s strongest advocate. But allowing any boy who had just turned fourteen to live by himself so far away without proper provisions being made for him would have been irresponsible, to say the least.
In David’s case, it would have been particularly inappropriate. He had never been abroad before; he was completely hopeless in practical matters; and he needed to be looked after, cooked for, and cared for. He was also by that time behaving rather erratically, although of course we did not know then that these may have been the first signs of a serious mental illness. My father’s attitude was proved correct: when David did go to London of his own volition four years later, he fell ill and ended up receiving psychiatric care.
In any case there simply wasn’t enough money available to finance the trip to America. Contrary to what is related in Shine, where my father and Mr. Rosen decide that David should have a bar mitzvah as a method of raising money for this trip, David had already had his bar mitzvah almost a year earlier, when he turned thirteen, the usual age for this ceremony. His bar mitzvah had nothing to do with “digging for gold,” as Mr. Rosen puts it in Shine, in one of several offensive references in the film to Jews or Judaism. My father may not have been an Orthodox Jew himself, but he still had a strong desire to hold onto the basic tenets of Jewish tradition and to pass them on to his children.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“Hicks has admitted his film is not true, which is why his disclaimer reads: “While the characters David and Gillian Helfgott are actual persons, this film also depicts characters and events which are fictional, which do not and are not intended to refer to any real person or any actual event.” But Hicks wants it both ways. He knows that if people believe Shine to be true, it will be a more gripping film, bring in larger financial rewards, and win greater critical acclaim. Consequently he made the disclaimer so small and obscure as to render it virtually meaningless, thereby deceiving the public and the media alike. And to ensure that everything goes to plan, he has continued to feed the media his myths about “meticulous research” and so on, many months after the film’s release.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“The film’s portrayal of David’s father had rekindled the untrue, inaccurate, and destructive myth that parental and family behaviour caused psychotic mental illnesses such as schizo-affective disorder.”
Barbara Hocking said: “This concerns us very much in the mental health field as irresponsible comments by public figures [such as Rush and Mueller-Stahl] further reinforce the preexisting misconceptions. Scientific opinion accepts that psychotic illness does not develop unless there is an underlying biological predisposition.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“In addition to more direct methods of character definition, visual imagery is much used in Shine. It is often raining in the scenes involving my father or scenes when David has been abandoned. This is in spite of the fact that in reality Perth has a very sunny climate.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“A few months ago, Marta Kaczmarek, the actress who plays my mother in Shine, stumbled across Leslie performing the violin in a Perth market. She approached him and actually apologized profusely for the hurt and harm that have been caused to him by what she now knows to have been an utterly fictitious piece of cinema.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“Macpherson told me that the claim made in Gillian’s book that Claire married with a view to making money out of David’s career is preposterous. David did not earn money and was a complete financial burden to Claire throughout their marriage. Her eldest son had to find a job to help out because David wasn’t earning anything.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“cott Hicks chose to leave Claire out of Shine altogether. One reason for this may be that including her would have altered the impression that Gillian was David’s savior, and that David probably remained a virgin into middle age. In the film Gillian injects love, music, and light into what is depicted as David’s otherwise gray and miserable world; then toward the end of the story, they are shown having sex.
But perhaps the real reason for leaving Claire out was that even Hicks could not quite stomach the things that Gillian had to say about her. Of the many cruel, spiteful things included by Gillian in her book, perhaps the most unpardonable is what is written about Claire. Referring to her by her Hungarian name, Clara, Claire is described as “the world’s greatest bitch.” Gillian quotes David as saying that marrying Claire was “the greatest mistake of his life” and that their marriage was “made in hell and consecrated by and presided over by the Devil.” She writes that Claire “would publicly ridicule and bully” David and that “David shivered at the memory” of Claire.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“Undoubtedly, David did give some brilliant performances in London. Among these was his rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in D Minor in July 1969, for which he was awarded the Dannreuther Prize for best performance of a piano concerto at the Royal College of Music for that year. However, the way it is depicted in Shine—as a dramatic scene in which David collapses on stage while playing, causing him to suffer a mental breakdown and then to return directly to Perth—is entirely fictional.
Firstly, David had already played the piece in public several times before, for example, in Perth and Melbourne in 1964. Secondly, David did not collapse. Thirdly, he stayed in London for another year after this performance, giving several other concerts, among them Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto again, on March 24, 1970, at the Duke’s Hall at the Royal Academy of Music in Marylebone Road. Fourthly, the onset of his illness was slow, both predating and postdating this concert, and his condition was almost certainly connected with a history of chronic mental illness in the Helfgott family. And fifthly, he did not blame his “daddy.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“The suggestion made in Shine that there was a total breakdown in communication is preposterous; they wrote to each other regularly. David also wrote to my mother and to all his siblings—and we all wrote back. David’s letters were never sent back unopened by my father marked “Return to Sender,” as is shown in the film. Nor did my father burn his collection of press clippings about David. David himself now has the originals—I borrowed them and made photocopies in the 1980s.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“Scott Hicks, in what he has referred to in interviews as the “ten-year odyssey” it took to research and make Shine, could surely have found out—if not from David or a library, then by speaking to my mother, Leslie, or me—that David had mastered Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto at least five years before the 1969 London performance that, Hicks alleges, caused David to collapse on stage and led to a major breakdown.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“To suggest, as Shine does, that my father had “refused” David permission to go to the States, and to hint that it was what his family had been through during the Holocaust that had led him to make this irrational and unfair decision—one that would ultimately lead to David’s breakdown and institutionalization—is not only a terrible slur on my father but also indirectly on all Holocaust survivors and their descendants.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine

“These reviews of David’s performances come from my father’s collection of David’s clippings, which he certainly never burned as is depicted in Shine. After he died Leslie kept the clippings, and then passed them on to David. I made myself some copies years later.”
― Margaret Helfgott, Out of Tune: David Helfgott and the Myth of Shine