Saturday, May 31, 2014

Have Brain Tumor, Will Document

What do you do if you're diagnosed with a brain tumor? If you're Wisconsin filmmaker Dave Erickson, you soldier on from that moment in 2007 and eventually make a sometimes comical documentary about the topic.

Premiering Sunday June 1st at the Gard Theatre in Spring Green, No Brainer is all about the now-61-year-old Erickson's coming to terms with this new fate. The film mixes documentary interviews with various re-enactments.


From one of Erickson's Kickstarter updates, where he reached a modest fundraising goal of just under $6,000:

We've also been extremely lucky (the ghost of Buster Keaton smiled down upon one shoot, transforming a grim suicide scene into one that's truly hilarious). On another shoot, we were fortunate that the police didn't open fire on us when the Patient (Jim Ridge) ranted "You cops need some empathy training." We've got a long way to go but it looks like we'll end up with a very special experience. Thank you once again for making this possible.

Tomorrow's screening is a fundraiser for a pair of local organizations: the Spring Green Area Arts Coalition and the Wyoming Valley School Cultural Arts Center. The filmmaker hopes to get it into various Wisconsin film festivals.

Although Erickson beat his tumor, he told The Capital Times ' Rob Thomas that there were major side effects and that today, as a result of the treatment and surgery, he still has difficulty walking.

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