Gleason

Gleason (2016)

At the age of 34, former New Orleans Saints defensive back Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS and given a life expectancy of two to five years. Weeks later, Gleason found out his wife, Michel, was expecting their first child. A video journal that began as a gift for his unborn son expands to chronicle Steve’s determination to get his relationships in order, build a foundation to provide other ALS patients with purpose, and adapt to his declining physical condition—utilizing medical technologies that offer the means to live as fully as possible.

Date of release
2016-07-30
TMDB
8.4 / 10 (56)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Documentary
Director
J. Clay Tweel

Casting

Interesting facts

Gleason is an American documentary film which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It covers five years in the life of the former New Orleans Saints football defensive back Steve Gleason, who has Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), sometimes known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a rare incurable neurodegenerative condition associated with the former New York Yankees baseball star Lou Gehrig, who died from the disease in 1941.

Production

Gleason and filmmaker Sean Pamphilon, who had directed Run Ricky Run, an ESPN profile of former Saints and Dolphins running back Ricky Williams, agreed to collaborate on a documentary profiling Gleason and his experiences with the illness.

During production, the unit found themselves in the center of a controversy concerning former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who was accused of offering players bounties as a reward for injuring players on opposing teams during games.

Ty and David more or less lived and traveled with us," Gleason wrote Gambit in an email interview "They did caretaking for me, and are like uncles to Rivers. ... Ultimately, they weren't outside filmmakers filming our family. We were a team, working together on a mutual project. Ty and David are family to us.

The film chronicles the progressive stages in Gleason's disease. As his disease advanced, Gleason lost control of most motor functions, including speaking, and he now relies on assistive technology, known as Augmentive/Alternative Communication (AAC), to communicate.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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