Indestructible


0:00:02
{Title)
ALS Film Fund presents

0:00:04
(Title)
a film by Ben Byer

0:00:10
BEN (voice-over)
I'm having, I'm having a hard time typing. My hands are not working properly. I have like no muscle in my hands right now. I mean, it's difficult for me to even turn on this tape-recorder. It is possible that I, I haven't, I could have any number of things. It could be a pinched nerve in my back, possibly from a car accident I had a while ago. It could be a, it could be a, something. But no, he said something about something in my brain, but, um... He was referring to something in the bottom of my brain, but I have no idea what he was talking about.

0:01:52
(Title)
INDESTRUCTIBLE

0:01:54
(Title)
Year One

0:01:59
BEN (on phone)
Yeah, yeah. Uh, I have Lou Gehrig's Disease.

0:02:06
(Title)
Ben: the filmmaker

BEN
G-E-H-R-I-G, apostrophe S, Disease. It's a fatal neurological disease. The brain and the spinal cord - nervous system - cell death - the nerve cells begin to die - gets worse and worse - no cure for it - life expectancy of two to four years. You know, I assume I qualify. (To camera) Yeah, this might be sweet. I might make a thousand bucks a month for doing nothing.

0:02:48
BEN (to camera)
You know, at first I liked it, and then, because it's nice, you know, attention. It's like having a funeral before you're dead. So, I work in theater. Going bald. Hands. I think my, my left hand is getting worse. The one really - really positive thing about this disease is that you can watch TV all day long and you don't feel bad about it. My fucking ass hurts. I'm a bad boy, you know. I'm a bad ALS patient. You know what I was doing in '98? I was selling beef. (Laughs) Door to door. (Laughs) I was selling beef off the back of a truck.

0:03:49
(Title)
John: my son

JOHN (playing with toy dog)
He licked it, daddy! He licked it! He licked it! Daddy, he licked it!

BEN
He did?

JOHN
Yeah.

BEN
Why?

JOHN
Because he wanted to. (Makes animal noise, then licking noise)

JOEY
What's up little chicken? Chickenbutt!

0:04:20
Title: Josephine: my wife

Joey (to camera)
Hi, I am Mrs. Benjamin Byer. We live in separate locations because my husband's a freak. We are trying very hard to get along and find some kind of medium, but sometimes it's very difficult and, I don't know... Do you have anything to add, John? No? All right. Well, we're doing good now, and um, well, that's probably it, folks.

0:04:55
BEN (V.O.)
My sister, Rebeccah, is probably the most involved in my day-to-day life, because I live with her.

0:05:01
(Title)
Rebeccah: my sister

BEN (VO con’t)
She's someone who understands me, somebody who knows who I am as a person. She just knows exactly how much help I need, and what I don't need help with.

JOHN
You've got to scoot up. There. I'm do it. Up. Now you've got to pull this part, right?

BEN
Yup.

JOHN
Now do it.

BEN (VO)
And also she helps with John and he likes being around her.

REBECCAH
Don't hit Rita!

JOHN
No, I'm not!

BEN (VO)
She's been hugely supportive of the film. She's exactly what I need right now.

REBECCAH (to camera)
I don't like being filmed.

0:06:01
(Title)
Steve: my father

STEVE (to John)
No, you have boogers! (0:05:30, Title: Steve: my father) Ow! You have boogers everywhere!

JOHN
No you have boogers!

STEVE
Booger booger everywhere! Booger booger booger booger!

0:06:05
STEVE (VO)
I've never been faced before with a concern about the death of one of my children. It's a tough thing to deal with, and I decided from the day I realized you had ALS that I wasn't just going to sit around and watch it happen.

JOHN
Aaaah! You got boogers in your eyes and on your stomach. That's your stomach. Gotta go! Hey!

(Ben laughs off-screen)

STEVE (to Ben)
Fuck you.

0:06:53
BARB
Real productive, isn't it? Really cheers you up when your parents are falling apart?

0:06:58
(Title)
Barbara: my mother


BARB
Yeah? Yeah. It's so hard to know, Ben. You know? It tears me up. I worry about you all the time, but I put a stiff upper-lip on it because I don't want you to really know that. I don't want you to know that I'm worried about you. And so you never know what to do. I usually count on denial, that carries me a really long way, and it's just - works pretty good a lot of the time, but sometimes it just doesn't. Like today, it just doesn't, you know. As good as you're looking, and you are looking good, it's not about how you look to me, you do look good to me, it's just being afraid of the unknown.

0:07:59
(Title)
Teepu Siddique, M.D.
Professor of Neurology
Northwestern University

SIDDIQUE
ALS is a disease that paralyzes muscles, and the reason is thought to be that the neurons of the motor system and the brain and the spinal core degenerate.

BEN
So from the time you saw me a year ago, just over a year ago, I mean, is there, do you have any impressions?

SIDDIQUE
Well, your voice has changed.

BEN
Yeah?

SIDDIQUE
More so. But you're still clearly intelligible. And so it hasn't been that rapid. There are some mutations in which some people don't survive nine months. When the diaphragm is affected, it's a question of life and death.

BEN
If you're able to assess other-

SIDDIQUE
I think your hands are weaker. You're still walking, which is a good thing. We know that people don't survive six years, ninety percent do not, ten percent do. One has to try and focus, and people do, on what the thing is the most important thing in their lives.

0:09:10
BEN (to camera)
I go in there, they look at me, they give me a couple of strength tests to see if I've, how much I've gone downhill, and then they say, "See you in six months." They have more treatment for the flu than they do for this disease. I find that to be not only funny, but incredibly sad, especially when you're in my position.

0:09:47
(Title)
Robert Miller, M.D.
Neurologist and Medical Director
Forbes Norris MDA/ALS Research Center

MILLER (to camera)
It's the grim reaper of neurological disease. It's the toughest of the neurodegenerative diseases. It is the most daunting and the most horrible disease that I encounter.

0:09:59
(Title)
Frustrated with the lack of information about ALS, I began to interview other patients. I hired my friend Jake to shoot some of it for me.

0:10:11
(Title)
Sue Zuckerman
Vermont

SUE
It seems like just when you figure it out, how to adapt, it changes a little more. This is a hard disease to give advice about. Each person has to find it for himself.

BEN
Do you think about death at all?

0:10:31
(Title)
Cary Smith
Georgia

CARY
Sometimes, I've thought about it. Sometimes I think it's a joke. Death will be a relief.

0:10:44
BEN (VO)
I knew that a lot of people with the disease were a lot worse off than me, I knew that people's mind was intact.

RONNIE
I don't deal with it.

0:10:56
(Title)
Ronnie Abdinoor
New Hampshire

RONNIE
I try not to think of it. I think that's where you're getting into-

BEN
Yeah, it's just like-

RONNIE
Yeah, I try not to think of it, I try to not go there.

BEN (to Jake)
You may even want to tape down those volume buttons if you’re bumping them at a routine- (Jake rubs microphone against Ben's face) Dude. Yeah. That's getting me hot.

0:11:04
(Title)
Barry Coughlin
Illinois

BEN (VO)
You know you're living.

(Title)
Elio Marzullo
Illinois

BEN (VO)
You know you're awake, but everything seems different. It just seems like the life I knew was now changed.

0:11:42
(Title)
Steven Albert, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences
Columbia University

ALBERT
These are diseases that are progressive, long-term, inescapable and very very disabling. So, for example, something like of all the ALS deaths in the Netherlands, twenty percent involve assisted suicide or euthanasia.

0:11:56
(Title)
Howard Bergert
Iowa

HOWARD
Have you ever contemplated suicide?

BEN
Yeah.

HOWARD
Recently? All the time? Never? Once in a while?

BEN
Probably the thought runs through my mind once a day. How about you?

HOWARD

Well, I'll tell you, I have. I was in my wheelchair and they had me out on the dock and I was all by myself, and I was saying, "All I got to do is wheel off here and I'll be down and there won't be anybody getting me and I can't swim now, so... I was, I've thought about it quite often, but I don't now how I'd do it now, because I can't do shit right now, so I don't think I could kill myself!

BEN (VO)
This was not the way I planned it, not the life I planned on living.

MILLER
There’s no doubt that the decline in strength is steady and relentless, and that is something that none of us have been able to stop so far, or to improve.



0:13:02
(Title)
After searching the Internet for hundreds of hours, my father found BuNaoGao (BNG), a Chinese herbal medicine.

BEN (VO)
From March, when I began the treatment that I'm own now, BuNaoGao, my voice and my speech is better, my arms and my hands are about the same and everything else is about the same. So, in the world of ALS, this is, could be good. This might be something that works.

0:13:31

BEN
Shut up! Shut up, you're cattle!

STEVE
You ready? You have say, you have to say, "Roll 'em." Or something like that.

BEN
Uh, roll 'em.

STEVE (laughs)
Well, here we are in the central distribution center for BuNaoGao. This is our Dodgeville, Wisconsin facility, which ships to ... everywhere. Our goal here, and we're very close to it, is to try BuNaoGao with forty Western patients, and we're in the mid-thirties right now.

0:14:26
BEN
Getting used to the fact that I have this. It's more the weakness, just the weakness. I'd say my body is about fifteen percent dead, but I'm also about eighty-five percent alive.


0:14:55
(Title)
Over the internet, my father became friends with Tony Papoulias, the husband of an ALS patient who was using BuNaoGao.
He invited us to visit his family in Greece.
Roko my childhood friend, filmed for me.



0:15:07
TONY (kissing Barb)
Thank you for coming. (To Ben) Roko?

BEN
No, I'm Ben.

TONY
Ben! (Hugs Ben)

BEN
Hey.

0:16:07
(Title)
Annie Papoulias

TONY
You've got so much in common. With pain being the common factor.

BEN
Yeah, yeah, we got the screwed-up genes. People with this are so often hidden away so that they never see each other, or help one another, and it seems like that is the opposite of what really needs to happen. For a while, I felt like I was the only one.

0:16:52
(Title)
Oliver Sacks, M.D.
Neurologist and Author
Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

SACKS
A culture is partly to be judged by its tenderness and understanding and response to those who are unfortunate and who are hurt. I think some cultures do a lot better than the US of A. When I was in Guam, people were never, however disabled they were, they were never put away, they were never stigmatized. One was a person, right to the end.



0:17:28
TONY (to Steve)
I've learned so many things. I had to educate myself on ALS to be able to help Annie, and the only means of my doing so was the internet, of course. It has been of tremendous help to me.

STEVE
Now, you've got to understand something. Seriously, and I'm not just saying this: I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I'm an art dealer. I don't know muscles from dog food.

TONY
You seem to have delved into the mysteries, a lot, behind ALS.

0:17:57
STEVE
So, the one other thing that has to happen is for there to be some stimulant that causes the chromosomal damage. And the stimulant can be food additives, it could be a neurological insult, such as fainting, a head injury, falling. Growth hormones in food probably is one of the factors. Among construction workers who use heavy vibration equipment. Boxers, professional boxers-

TONY
Cassius Clay!

STEVE
Organo-phosphates-

TONY
The auto-immune system-

STEVE
An allergic reaction-

TONY
A virus-

STEVE
Bacterial-

TONY
Poisonous gases-

STEVE
Excito-toxicity - traumatic shock - tear apart – predisposition – the fumes – spiro – toxic - glut – damage – jackhammers – insul - mosome - vibrations - here, there are many people who feel that ALS is frequently caused by what is called "Leaky Gut Syndrome."


You can't exercise like that; you need some of these. You need some of these, Dada.

BEN
Oh yeah?

JOHN
Yeah. Here, you need some of these.

BEN
Oh, thanks.

JOHN
Wheee! Stop! I'm looking for your boobies! (Squeals)

BEN
What?

JOHN
Stop!

0:20:03
BEN
I was looking at the, the bones and the indentation in my shoulder. I've lost some, some muscle up here. My right shoulder is pretty fucked up. It's a real bitch.

JOHN
Do this to your booby. Gonna do this to your booby!

0:20:52
ANNIE
(unintelligible)

TONY
He said to her in a categorical way that "You'll be able to live at most at Christmas," and she cannot overcome, right, his words. They're still echoing in her ears, "You've only got two more months."

STEVE
Well, Annie, first of all, he was wrong, obviously.


0:21:22
(Title)
Anastasia: Annie's daughter

ANASTASIA (to camera)
The second doctor said that she would die the previous Christmas, and that she would become like forty kilos, very very skinny, and that we need to do that and that, and she, you see her, she hasn't done any of these things.

BEN
She isn't dead.

ANASTASIA
She is not – exactly! She's not dead. Because they think that, you know, that is what's going to happen, that's it, you're finished. They say that to you, as they did to my mom. They say, "You're going to die, just a little bit after Christmas, maybe before the New Year's Eve, so start getting ready."

TONY
It's a good fact that she is still alive, but quite often, she has to find a way to stop thinking about the words of those two doctors. She knows she'll get well and she believes that one day she'll go and smack him.

STEVE (with Tony translating into Greek)
But the point is, you both know that they were wrong. You don't have the feeding tube. You don't have a respirator, you don't have a tracheotomy, and you're alive.

0:22:41
JOHN
Six ... seven ... blast off!

BEN
Oh yeah! Woohoo!

0:22:50
ALBERT (VO)
The old Hollywood image of death and dying is just that, it's a myth. You have to go back to Tolstoi, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" to really understand it. He talks about the embarrassment of dying, that here you are, not able to do what everybody else is doing, and everybody is avoiding you because it's unpleasant and difficult, and no-one wants to recognize that we're all mortal and this might happen to us eventually. There's the famous syllogism: so and so is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, so and so is mortal. He said "This is absolutely true, but could is really apply to me?"

JOHN
Stop that! Stop throwing snow I say!

0:23:45
(Title)
Year Two

0:23:48
(Title)
I hired a small crew to travel with me to China to film Dr. Xia, the inventor of BuNaoGao.

0:23:56
(Title)
Miriam: my assistant

0:24:08
BEN (VO)
BuNaoGao is not a cure. What it is is an oasis, it’s like an oasis in the desert of ALS.


0:24:41
BEN (VO)
Dr. Xia knows something that no-one else seems to be able to apply. BuNaoGao is the only thing that we have found. That's it. There's nothing else.

0:24:58
(Title)
Dr. YongChao Xia
Professor of Neurology (Ret.)
Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Gansu, P.R. China

XIA
Judging from now, BuNaoGao, this medicine, will be effective to some patients. To treat a disease, the doctor is like a politician. The politician also looks to achieve balance. If you balance it well, the society is harmonious. If the conflict gets big, problems occur, even wars. You have to have confidence; judging from now, you are already seeing the effect.

0:25:38
BEN
We're going to meet Todd vanBodegom-Smith.

ROKO
And how did you find out about him?

BEN
Todd e-mailed me about five months ago, saying that he was living in China, here in Kunming, and doing herbs and Tai Chi and massage and improving.

TODD
Hi!

FANFAN
Hi, Ben!

BEN
Hello!

BEN
How are you?

TODD
Good.

BEN
Good to meet you.

TODD
Nice to meet you.

BEN
How've you been?

(Title)
Todd vanBodegom-Smith

0:26:10
TODD
Everyone that I've talked to on the internet that has ALS in America, they're not doing too well, talking about new wheelchairs and talking about ways to manage their life, you know, as it continues to decline.

BEN
Right, right.

TODD
And I'm trying to manage progress from here to - going the other way.

0:26:44
(Title)
In college, I was a three-time All-American power-lifter.

TODD
I'm not accepting ALS as a diagnosis of what is going to happen to me, and what Western medicine says, "This is the way you're going to go." When I arrived in China, I couldn't hold my bowl, I couldn't use chopsticks, I was shaking, I couldn't really lift my hands over my head. My speech was really really hard to understand. And it's, it's, it's, you know, mentally you can say, "I'm going to beat this thing," but there's something deeper behind that that's really a feeling of your spirit that's saying, "I don't know. I hear you, I hear your mental - you're going to beat this," but there's something deeper saying, "Are you or aren't you?"

0:28:34
BEN
I heard about this guy in Beijing using fetal cells to treat people with ALS. (Reading computer screen) "My husband could barely walk, swallow or drink. Now he can do all of that." We're in the right place.

0:29:12
(Sign)
Destination
Beijing

0:29:21
STEVE
These cells are extracted from inside of the bridge of the nose, right at the base of the brain from these fetuses, these aborted fetuses. They are the only cells in the body that are known to regenerate on a continuing basis, these olfactory stem-cells. There seems to be, at least for the three to six month period, some good reversals that he's achieving. This is a big, big potential break.

BEN
What I read is that he doesn't even know why it works.

STEVE
I should tell you that I have many, many questions about the procedure, questions as to whether or not it should be done, whether or not it's worth doing. There's some questions as to whether or not in lab animals such a procedure has caused brain lesions. I don't want you just blindly walking in there and saying, "Do me."

BEN
My instinct is that there is something to it. Otherwise I don't think that we'd be here.

STEVE
Well, that's kind of my instinct, too. You know, listen: Fate and the Gods and everything else leads people in reasonably mysterious ways. And I think there's some guts to it.

BEN
I'm very much at peace with the prospect of going home and waiting for another year or something if it's not the right decision. You know, human beings are amazing in their capacity to adjust, and I have adjusted to this really well. But - to the point that I often forget what it's like- (Cries.)


0:31:35
STEVE (VO)
Just this morning I've been thinking in terms of trying to serve as an expeditor of those with whom I work to have them get here and have the procedure.

0:31:42
(Title)
Dr. Hongyun Huang
Neurosurgeon
Chaoyang Hospital

HUANG
I don't think that this method can cure this disease, but I believe that it can make the patients survive longer. After we do the cell transplantation, he feel, "Oh, I become normal." Right now, he can play tennis. But, you know, before surgery he couldn't do this.

STEVE
Is it true that the implantation of these cells somehow acts on the myelinization of the neurons?

0:32:18
HUANG
The mechanism is not very clear. If the O.E.C. cell, the O.E.C cells transplant that change this environment, that means they can change the environment and make the, the cells feel better. I mean, for ... that makes the neuron can... Very simple.

DANNY
ALS?

BEN
From Belgium?

DANNY
I am.

BEN
Uh-huh. I've heard lots about you.

DANNY
Well, I'm doing very good.

0:32:50
(Title)
Danny Vyvey

BEN
Oh yeah?

DANNY
You should try it.

BEN
Yeah?

DANNY
It's a miracle.

BEN
Yeah?

DANNY (shows Ben his hand)
It will change you completely.



0:33:08
BEN (VO)
Why do I have this? I want answers, and no-one is able to give them. I've asked doctors and religious people and friends and family and no-one knows. All I know is that I want it to be gone. I don't like it. I don't like having to, having to focus to speak. I'm tired of not being able to eat properly and not being able to wash myself the way I should. I'm tired of not being able to dress, I'm tired of it. I'm, I'm physically tired and I'm mentally tired. I just want it to be gone.

0:34:25
BEN (to surgeon holding camera)
Hey, hey! Hey man, you have make sure that you keep that very steady. You have a surgeon's hands, don't ya? Close-ups. Make sure to get lots of close-up shots. (to other doctor) It's not going very well right now. My marriage, my wife and I, how do you say, "Marital problems?"


0:35:30
(Title)
One month after the operation

0:35:30
REBECCAH
So, are you disappointed?

BEN
Yeah, I mean, I was disappointed. I wanted to be cured. You know? I wanted to be back to the way I was.

REBECCAH
Do you support other ALS patients getting the OEC transplant?

BEN
If they want to. I don't want to be the one they call after they, after they come home and don't have the response that they wanted.

REBECCAH
There are some people who are putting you in that role, or Dad in that role.

BEN
Well, Dad, maybe. Don't blame me.

REBECCAH
Well, no, because you're choosing not to let yourself be put in that role.

BEN
Yeah. Don't blame me. I don't want to hear it.

0:36:35
(Title)
In the eight months following the operation, my father scheduled many ALS patients for Dr. Huang.

0:36:43
(Title)
The western medical establishment became extremely critical of Dr. Huang, citing limited benefits, adverse side effects and his $20,000 fee.

0:36:51
(Title)
Some people died of complications following the procedure, including Ronnie Abdinoor, one of the patients I met during the course of the film.

0:37:02
(Title)
Year Three

SACKS
How, what is, what is life like for you when the camera isn't running, when you're not with people? Do you, do you have some very bad times?

BEN (nods his head)
I have an incredibly deep sense of loss from my life.

SACKS
I hope, I hope you can forget for some of the time, for a lot of the time.

BEN
There are times. Oddly enough, when I am working on the film, and I forget with my son.

SACKS
Good, well, Freud is in bad odor at the moment, but when he said that the two great life-sustaining, life-affirming things were work and love, I mean, one can't put it more shortly and one can't put it better than that, and that's what you're finding. So, I think the, what would I say to you? Work and love.

0:38:34
JOHN (helping BEN eat spaghetti)
Whoa. That's a punching - it looks like a punching bag, but instead it's a punching food. (Singing) Go Dad, go! Go, sunglasses, go sunglasses! Go Dad! Go Dad! Go Dad's sunglasses! Go Dad! (Laughs, then singing again)

0:39:03
COX
I feel that ALS is a disease that devastates not only people, but entire families. There doesn't seem to be a lot of new ideas in this field. SOD-1 is the great mutation that was discovered in 1993 and we're learning so much, but many here's a field where we need more ideas rather than less. And then the second reason is, I'm a great admirer of the French philosopher, Camus, as I'm sure you must be, Ben. Camus has this great essay, he writes about the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was the Greek guy who was condemned by the Gods to roll this rock up to the top of the hill everyday, and then at nighttime, it'd roll back down. He rolls it up, it rolls back down. And Camus says, "What do you make of Sisyphus? Why does he keep doing this?" Why do you make a film as an ALS patient? I think we demonstrate our humanity by taking on hopeless causes. And Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus to be happy. You know, I read this essay and I thought, "That's it." Here's this guy rolling this rock up every morning, letting it roll down, but he has a smile on his face. And I look at you, Ben, on the other side of the camera, you have this big grin, this big smile. You're up against desperate odds. So am I, in a different way, but we're both smiling, we're happy. This is what it means to be human, so nothing less than one hundred percent commitment is possible in such a cause.

0:40:41
BEN (VO)
When I was thirteen, I walked away from Judaism, and rarely looked back. I never... I never wanted to be a part of it. But now, here I am, twenty years later, and I find myself wanting to understand what this has to offer me, probably for obvious reasons. Forgive me for being blunt, but what does it have to offer?

0:41:25
(Title)
Daniel Gordis, Ph.D.
Rabbi and Author
God Was Not in the Fire

GORDIS
What does Judaism have to offer, specifically, or what does religion have to offer?

BEN
You decide.

GORDIS
Okay, I'll decide. You know, there's always a danger in a person like you asking a person like me a question like that, because there's something very humbling - it's one thing to pontificate about the profound contributions of religion or the deep insights in a tradition like Judaism in front of a High Holiday congregation of two thousand people who are all just a bunch of little spots out in the congregation - you're not really talking to anybody. You're talking to everybody, but you're also talking to nobody. And then you can say whatever you want. And then somebody like you comes into your office and things take on an immediacy which they don't have, even on Yom Kippur in a big congregation.

0:42:17
ROKO (as JOSH enters)
There he is.

0:42:18
(Title)
Josh: my brother

JOSH
Oh, Jesus.

ROKO
'Sup, Josh?

JOSH (to Ben)
What's up man? How you doin'? Good to see you!

BEN
Hi, man. What's up?

JOSH
Fuck! That was a fucking trip!

BEN (VO)
This is my brother. He was in Africa working for the U.N. This trip was all his idea as a way to meet up in Israel.


0:42:49
ROKO (to JOSH)
When was the last time you saw Ben?

JOSH
August sixth, I believe.

BEN
Do you think that I've lost weight?

JOSH
Since then? Not a lot. You haven't lost a lot. But I think you've lost some.

BEN
That's why I get so upset at Dad, because he lives in a fantasy, and I really, I just don't have time.

JOSH
No, you don't, but, you know, I know how he feels though. I know how Dad feels, because I felt the same way. When I saw you in May, and we were talking about this trip, and we're driving to Wisconsin, Stacey says to me, "How do you think Ben looks?" I said, "He looks great, I think he's looking terrific, I think he's showing improvement." She says, she says, "Josh-" you know, Ben, I don't want to upset you, but I'm just going to tell you - she says, "He's sick," she says, "He's not doing well." And I'll leave it at that. And I finally came to grips with your situation and realized that you don't have all the time in the world to mess around, and I was just in tears, I couldn't even talk, because that was the first time I really realized what you're going through and what's happening to you. And I'm your brother, and it took me two years to really come to grips with the fact that, that time is not with you right now. How would it be for your father? It's hard. It's really hard.

0:45:21
BEN (at the foot of the stairs leading to Masada)
Just this elbow.

JOSH
Just this elbow?

0:45:28
(Title)
Before dawn, we began the climb up Masada.

0:45:34
(Title)
In 73 CE, the Jews held the fortress on this plateau under siege by the Romans.

0:45:43
(Title)
Rather than be killed or taken prisoner, the one thousand inhabitants committed mass suicide when defeat was imminent.



0:45:55
GORDIS
What you're doing and the way you're living and the story you're telling, it's in a certain way, a statement about smallness. This isn't just about me, the person who happens to have ALS. This is about people thinking and people wondering and people caring and people reaching out. I think that’s a religious act. And therefore, it doesn't, it doesn’t increase your mobility, and it doesn't set back your disease, but it gives your life, I think, extraordinary meaning. Now, I'm not saying that's why it happened. I'm saying in the face of the fact that it did happen, then you have really made your wrestling with this illness a religious wrestling. Now you said a little earlier that you grew up in a certain religious community and at a certain point, because of its hypocrisy, you walked away. Well I'm going to tell you that you've walked right back in. You may not have walked back into that building, and you may not have walked into that exact form of religious expression, but you are in the heart of religious engagement, because I think this is what religious engagement is really all about.


0:47:14
(Title)
Thirteen years earlier

BEN (13 years earlier)
I want to make a movie, a video, about somebody, about trying to get somebody to give me the money so I can have this video blown up into a thirty-five millimeter print so I can watch it on a big screen. That's my goal, man, I want to watch this fucking thing on a big screen and I want to say, "Yes, I made that shit. I fucking did that. I went in, I picked up the camera, I went balls out." Take this and see where it goes. Shit comes up that, right now, sitting in this room, we'll never, we'll never be able to think of some of the stuff that might actually happen. Like, what's one of the twists of fate in your life that you would have just never imagined?

0:48:17
BEN (present-day)
I wish I was a good enough artist to make this movie without having the disease. That would be talent.

0:49:03
(Title)
INDESTRUCTIBLE

0:49:07
(Title)
Almost 6 years after being diagnosed and after seeing this film in theatres and festivals worldwide Ben Byer died on July 3rd 2008


(Title)
director
Ben Byer

(Title)
writer
Ben Byer

(Title)
producer
Ben Byer

(Title)
producer
Rebeccah Rush


(Title)
cinematographer
Roko Belic

(Title)
co-producer
Roko Belic

(Title)
editor
Tim Baron

(Title)
associate producer
Tim Baron

(Title)
with
(in order of appearance)

(Title)
additional camera

(Title)
China Crew

(Title)
Post-Production

(Title)
Production Assistance

(Title)
Indestructible was funded by the generous contributions of the following donors:


0:52:22
(Title)
www.indestructiblefilm.com