Let’s Watch a Documentary About Stephen Hawking

Having recently exhausted my “TV Icons in a Movie of the Week About Schizophrenia” and “Elderly Comedian Tells Jokes About Madonna’s Daughter Being a Hirsute Gay Man” Netflix viewing options, last night I turned to Hawking, a 2013 documentary by Stephen Finnigan in which Stephen Hawking tells the story of his own life.

There is no point in attempting to summarize it—Hawking covers everything so concisely that you might as well watch the zippy 85-minute production yourself—but there are three standout moments I wanted to recap that might get lost in the shuffle of other reviews.

Recollections of Stephen As a Child

His sister Mary Hawking, the funniest presence in the film, recalls:

“I remember Stephen was very bright. Always into things. I remember my father made me a dolls’ house, so Stephen put in both plumbing and lighting. [Laughs] He liked to win. He liked to win in everything. We all learnt to play draughts. I beat Stephen once, once at draughts, and he immediately took up chess and I never beat him at that again. [Laughs]”   

mary hawking, hawking

Sarah Hardenberg, Stephen’s cousin:

“He would spend a lot of time looking at the sky, looking at the stars and wondering where eternity came to an end. He couldn’t conceive that there could be something without a finish.”

sarah hardenberg, hawking

Mary:

“Both my parents were moving in the Highgate-Hampstead intelligentsia, that sort of circle. We always talked, everyone talked and everybody argued. We used to argue theology a lot, it’s a great thing for kids because you don’t need any facts whatsoever.”

mary hawking, hawking

John McClenahan, school friend:

“There were books everywhere. Bookshelves that were double-banked. Bookshelves that had, on top of upright books, rows of other books shoehorned in wherever there was space. It was a less conventional house, one in which the children had a great deal of freedom. And I remember being quite gobsmacked by the conversation over lunch. It was about subjects which were never talked about in my house: sex, homosexuality, arguments for and against abortion, and various other subjects that were quite unusual.”

john mcclenahan, hawking

You Have No Excuse for Not Finishing That Manuscript

The story behind the publication of Hawking’s blockbuster A Brief History of Time is as triumphant as it was dramatic—Hawking, who’d already lost use of his hands to motor neuron disease, wanted to pen an airport bestseller that would introduce a wide audience of readers to physics. Despite the doubts of some around him (including his agent), he landed a publishing deal with ease. It was finishing the book that was the hard part, for Hawking suffered numerous health setbacks and nearly died.

By the time he could resume work on Brief History he had lost the ability to speak and could no longer dictate chapters. He would eventually finish writing it with the assistance of the Equalizer system, developed by Walt Woltosz, which allowed Hawking to select words on a computer screen using a handheld click device that could respond to minimal muscle movement. The book has gone on to sell more than 10 million copies and in a great blink-and-you-miss-it moment a bestseller list is shown with an amusing description of Patricia Neal’s autobiography: “Actress tells how she overcame a stroke and Roald Dahl.” (You can read more about Neal and Dahl here.)

Hawking Has Excellent Comic Timing

Yes, that’s Stephen clowning around with Jim Carrey (his “You would lose” to John Oliver about fighting robots is also fantastic), and that one photo is arguably funnier than any movie Carrey has ever made.