Billy the Kid
Recommended
Billy the Kid is a documentary about 15-year-old Billy Price, an adorable, hollow-chested eccentric who rules the downtown strip of a small town in Maine. If the camera is to be believed, he’s cheerily tolerated by his mainstream peers at school, and he easily befriends the twerps who ride their bikes in circles in front of the local diner. It’s only when he tries to date the twerps’ older sister that his program of systematic chivalry falters and his basic weirdness carries the day. Billy was diagnosed with Asperger’s after the film wrapped, and if you know anything about the autism spectrum, this will not come as a surprise. So were the filmmakers somehow exploiting Billy by not acknowledging they had a real disorder on their hands? I think not. This documentary is a totally refreshing look at a person dealing with autism. ANNIE WAGNER