Flash of Genius (film)

On his wedding night in 1953, an errant champagne cork renders Detroit college engineering professor Robert Kearns almost completely blind in his left eye. Ten years later, he is happily married to Phyllis 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, 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 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, and then waits for their response. Time passes, and when nobody contacts Kearns, he begins placing phone calls that are never returned.

Frustrated, Kearns attends a Ford dealers' convention at which the latest model of the Mustang is unveiled, promoting the intermittent wiper as a selling point. Realizing the company has used his idea without giving him credit or payment for it, Kearns begins his descent into a despair so deep he boards a Greyhound bus and heads for Washington, D.C., where he apparently hopes to find legal recourse. Instead, Maryland state troopers remove him from the bus and escort him to a psychiatric hospital, where he is treated for a nervous breakdown. Finally released when doctors decide his obsession has subsided, he returns home a broken man, determined to receive public acknowledgement for his accomplishment. Thus begins years of legal battles, during which time his wife leaves him, and he becomes estranged from his children.

At trial, Kearns represents himself after attorney Gregory Lawson withdraws from the case, because Kearns refuses to settle. Eventually Kearns' ex-wife and children support him in his endeavor. Toward the end of the trial, Ford offers Kearns a $30 million settlement, but without admitting wrongdoing. Kearns decides to leave his fate in the hands of the jury, who determine that Ford infringed his patents, but that the infringement was not deliberate. The jury awards him $10.1 million. The closing credits indicate that Kearns later wins an $18.7 million judgement from Chrysler Corporation as well.

Marc Abraham, who previously had produced The Road to Wellville (1994), Air Force One (1997), and Children of Men (2006), among many films, had long been drawn to the Robert Kearns saga for his directorial debut because the inventor believed more in fairness and honesty than the money offered to make him drop his lawsuit. "That's the reason I was passionate about it. It was about principle", the director said. "And principle is a very gray idea. And that's what I thought was exciting."^[3] He submitted numerous revisions of the screenplay to Universal Studios chief Stacey Snider, who repeatedly told him, "This is not an easy script, and he's not a likable guy". Abraham believed what many might find unlikable in Kearns, with whom he consulted while developing the film, is what made him a distinctive character. When Universal underwent a change of management, the project finally was greenlit.^[3]

The film was shot on location in Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario.^{[citation needed]}

The scene when Ford's new line of cars with the intermittent wiper is shown for the first time was shot in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia.^{[citation needed]}

The soundtrack includes "Too Many Fish In The Sea" by Liam Titcomb, "Green Onions" by Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and "Tennessee Waltz" by Aaron Zigman.

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival^[3] and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival before going into theatrical release in the United States.^[4]