You didn't offend me, the movie did. And as it is an excellent movie, I don't begrudge you recommending it. I might even recommend it myself, though with a disclaimer or two.
I'm not aware of a good movie or book which explains Asperger's Syndrome to normal people, sorry. But I can tell you that if you see a story which presents it as a kind of mental retardation, or a robotic lack of emotions, that's not how it is. I do have intelligence and emotion, in fact I get more emotional about many things than most people; I've just learned from experience that it's not worth trying to share my thoughts and feelings with normal people because I know from experience that they won't be able to relate to them. I imagine it's a similar situation with other people like me, so I can see why popular culture has such a skewed view. If you saw me when I was in school, you'd think I was as robotic as any of these movie caricatures, because it was a really stifling and depressing environment to be surrounded by normal people who didn't care about anything I cared about (and vice versa). Some days I didn't speak a single word, didn't change the expression on my face, didn't betray even the tiniest hint of life. But now that I'm free of that repressive environment, and I'm hanging out with gamers and geeks and actors all the time, I'm as happy and excitable and sociable as anyone else. Everyone knows I'm strange because I actively try to be strange, but I doubt any of the people I hang out with would say I have a disorder of any kind.
I saw an interview with the guy who made Mary and Max. He said that what he meant by "based on a true story" is that Max is based on a guy he's corresponded with by mail. But my understanding from the interview was that he's never actually met this guy face to face. You know what, I'm going to go look for the interview again so I can talk about it more directly.
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