The cynic in me can’t help but comment, Thank God those days are over, eh?

Here’s the synopsis of The Soloist: “Academy Award-nominated Atonement director Joe Wright teams with screenwriter Susannah Grant to tell the true life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former violin prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a disenchanted journalist stuck in a dead-end job. His marriage to a fellow journalist having recently come to an end, Steve is wandering through Los Angeles’ Skid Row when he notices a bedraggled figure playing a two-stringed violin.

The figure in question is Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a man whose promising career in music was cut short due to a debilitating bout with mental illness. The more Lopez learns about Ayers, the greater his respect grows for the troubled soul. How could a man with such remarkable talent wind up living on the streets, and not be performing on stage with a symphony orchestra?

Later, as Lopez embarks on a quixotic quest to help Ayers pull his life together and launch a career in music, he gradually comes to realize that it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own.”

Ayers was one of those who was dumped on to skid row by Los Angeles hospitals who had exhausted an income stream to deal with sick and elderly. Couldn’t help but recall this story as I read the Fr. Barron’s story of Rose Hawthorne.