John Frizzell always had a feeling he was different.
The Hollywood film score composer could rattle off facts about chess puzzles, Immanuel Kant’s synthetic a priori knowledge and other esoteric subjects. He could go down philosophical rabbit holes and regale friends and family members with anecdotes about David Hume. His friends playfully referred to him as “Useless Information Man.”
In 2021, when one of his friends suggested that Frizzell get evaluated for autism, he decided he had nothing to lose. Several weeks later, a positive diagnosis provided an answer to the question with which he had wrestled for years.
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“If you can imagine a mountain without a path, somehow I now have made the inklings of a road,” said Frizzell, who has scored films including “Office Space” and “Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe.”
He also has composed music for “Understanding Autism,” a documentary film about autism coming out later this year. “It was the first time in my life that I felt that someone liked the parts about me that were hard for me.”
The catharsis that Frizzell experienced is common among adults who are diagnosed with autism later in life.