Flash of Genius

Flash of Genius

2008

Director: Marc Abraham

Writer: Phillip Railsback and John Seabrook

119 Minutes

Detroit is a tough town. A town created around automobiles, Tiger baseball, and Coney Island dogs. Within that city, there was a story about a man named Bob Kearns who invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Once completed, brought it to the “Big Three Auto,” to make a deal. And after everyone rejected it, Ford and Chrysler started installing Kearns’s invention in 1969.

There’s the problem.

Bob Kearn (Greg Kinnear) had a flash of genius - a term used in patent law that describes someone inventing a product out of nowhere and without any prior knowledge or experience of the subject.

There’s the genius.

In the film, Bob Kearns fight against the U.S. automobile industry, while raising six children is the source of any conflict. He was an average man in an average city, trying to live the American Dream. He invented a great product, it was stolen, and he fought against the system losing everything he cared about in the process.

Losing everything but his integrity. And there’s the rub.

He eventually won over thirty million dollars by suing both Ford and Chrysler – the price of righteousness Bob Kearns wouldn’t back down from.

In the scene above, an automotive engineer explains to the court that their factories had all the pieces to make the intermittent windshield wiper, but hadn’t put it together until after Bob Kearns meeting. In a brilliant move, Kearns pulls out “A Tale of Two Cities…” and explains everyone had the words, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” but it took Charles Dickens to put it together.

That’s the brilliant part.

That line was the entire film – it was the entire case. The auto industry might have had the products to make this invention, but it took Bob Kearns’s flash of genius to create it. He brought it to them and they exploited it. And he knew the correct way to explain to the court that right is right, fair is fair and even Charles Dickens would agree.

But, there is more.

The additional source of conflict in this film was Bob Kearns did not only want money for his stolen invention, he wanted this American automobile companies to admit he created the intermittent windshield wiper – he wanted them to admit what they did was wrong. They offered money and then more money, but Kearns never took it unless they admitted their mistake

He studied the law himself, helped by his son and took down two of the biggest auto names in the business.

He won.

This story is the most American story that can be told. It involves one man’s struggle against a large villain. Yet, it also involves two great American companies - companies we support - which could be why the film was only mildly successful. America has always prided themselves on their automotive industry and this film insults it.

But in the end, Bob Kearns’s invention is carried in over 145 million cars worldwide. And all the credit goes to him. In he won, but this film lost.

In this life, we could all be so lucky to have a flash of genius. In some cases, we already have, but we’re too scared to fight for it.

Don't be.