Reflecting on the eve of the Oscars, I am blessed in the flight against Alzheimer’s to have crossed paths with several individuals in the queue for an Academy Award or the reflection of an Oscar. Still Alice author Lisa Genova, film Executive Producer Maria Shriver and Best Actress nominated Julianne Moore have moved heads and hearts worldwide. Your film is beautiful, stirring, yet haunting in a way that will help move the world to action. I will never forget Still Alice; you have shown me and others with Alzheimer’s that we are not alone.
In my serpentine path in the last year, I’ve also had the privilege of knowing the director and producer of the Oscar worthy film Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me. James Keach and Trevor Albert, with Campbell’s dedicated wife Kim and their exceedingly talented children, are soldiers on the front line of this lonely fight. The genius of the Keach/Albert film is in its portrayal of a man willing to “be me” with the gut instincts and core spirit of a prizefighter battling to the final bell. This film is not a misery memoir; it’s a bold, shake your fist at Alzheimer’s from heroic Campbell and his family on final tour, a journey that ends with Campbell singing the Grammy award winning and Oscar nominated song, I’m Not Gonna Miss You, produced and co-written with Julian Raymond.
My prayer is that the planet will stand up and take notice of these extraordinary films, and collectively sing on cue that we must find cure for this demon of a disease poised to strike a generation of Baby Boomers and their families. We all need to be heroes in this fight. As affirmed in Five for Fighting lyrics, “Even heroes have the right to bleed…even heroes have the right to dream.”
Let us dream!
O’B.