'State Boys Rebellion' Has Spielberg On Their Side

[Monday, May 10th, 2004]
DreamWorks are to adapt Michael D'Antonio's book The State Boys Rebellion, they bought the rights after a report on the book was aired on "60 Minutes," according to Variety.

The book has picked up interest from Steven Spielberg, which reveals the history of a government program that locked poor or uneducated children into mental institutions from the early 1900s through the 1970s.

Follows the true story of Frederick Boyce and his friends, now in their 60s, whose childhoods were spent in the Walter E. Fernald School for the Feebleminded in Massachusetts.

The children were neglected, abused and used for scientific experiments as part of the eugenics movement that tried to separate people considered to be genetically inferior from the rest of society in order to prevent them from reproducing.

Title refers to a violent uprising by the children in 1957 at the prisonlike institution to garner media attention to their situation and enable them to escape.

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