LITTLE EMPTY BOXES

If you’ve ever watched dementia slowly ravage a loved one, Max Lugavere and Chris Newhard‘s raw documentary LITTLE EMPTY BOXES will hit you square in the chest. The film follows Lugavere’s coast-to-coast quest to find answers about his mother’s rare form of the disease. Kathy is only 63, but she is displaying the neurodegeneration of someone much older.

One of the most surprising aspects of dementia is the unfiltered confessions of an exhausted brain. Kathy is an open book, always willing to share her innermost thoughts with Max on camera. Max is an angel in her presence. His unconditional love and relentless patience are the things we can only hope to instill in our children. And because he is the primary caretaker, he must suffer the brunt of Kathy’s sporadic disdain.

Twenty-five minutes in, the audience gets their first glimpse at what dementia can do to a person and how it takes over the body and brain. Throughout the tests Kathy endures throughout the film, one of the doctors reveals that her diagnosis looks like Lewy Body disease, the same disease that Robin Williams had.

Delving into the science behind the rise and cause of Alzheimer’s is fascinating. Food is a major player in our likelihood, as is the occurrence of surgery. The scenes of medical talking heads go down easy with the addition of quirky 2D animation. The film features childhood home videos shot by Max and his father, intercut with his research.

The heaviness of the film is inescapable. We are witnessing real-time grief as Kathy’s health declines. It mourns the great losses and celebrates the small wins. It is a film about the inflicted individual and the ripple effects on family members. The film creates an intimacy that invites you to be a family member along for the ride, for better or worse. LITTLE EMPTY BOXES is essential viewing in educating the masses and offering hope that maybe, just maybe, we can do something about it.

LITTLE EMPTY BOXES will be released theatrically in New York at LOOK Cinemas on 4/19

and in LA on 4/26 at the Laemmle Monica.

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SYNOPSIS:Robin’s Wishtells the powerful true story of actor/comedian Robin Williams’ final days. For the first time, Robin’s fight against a deadly neurodegenerative disorder, known as Lewy Body Dementia, is shown in stunning detail. Through a gripping journalistic lens, this incredible story sheds entirely new light on the tragedy, beauty, and power behind the mind of one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

The name Robin Williams is a household name. From his early standup days to his iconic voiceover work for Genie in Aladdin to perhaps one of his most quotable film Mrs. Doubtfire, we all desperately miss this talented man and his gentle heart. We felt like we knew him. We understood that if he was booked as a guest on a late-night show, there was no script. The host might as well put their requisite question cards down because Robin was going to take the segment so far off the rails, there was little point in preparing. He could make us belly laugh but also mesmerize us with his ability to master heavier roles like Dead Poets Society and his Oscar-winning performance in Good Will Hunting. He was a god. He wore his heart on his sleeve, always. What we didn’t get to see in private was more than we can imagine.

“An emotional avalanche of mourning and celebration” is perhaps the best way to describe the viewing experience. Director Tylor Norwood has mixed intimate sit down interviews with neighbors, friends, and Robin’s wife Susan, with television appearances, personal photographs, and most notably to the subject at hand, Robin’s doctors. As someone who’s grandmother recently passed from the same disorder, this hurt just a bit more. To have an inside view of the pain and fear and confusion that Williams (and his loved ones) must have been feeling, it makes this all the sadder. His doctors agree that his high level of cognitive function, much higher than the average person, is most likely what made the diagnosis so elusive. The man was nothing short of brilliant. Weaved into the film is his love story with Susan. She has become an advocate for the disorder. When you think of soulmates, these two are it. It is beautiful to watch. For the cinephile, Robin’s Wish is also a fantastic insight into his work and mindset from some of his most iconic career moments. But it is the personal asides, the conversations with injured troops from his USO tour days that will solidify him as one of the most treasured human beings of our time. To see him celebrated properly and more fully understood feels like vindication from the tabloid mess that initially ensued following his death. It was not deserved. It was shameful. This film is both a tribute and an education for so many suffering in silence. Robin’s Wish can come true in this documentary.

“I want to help people be less afraid.” ~ Robin Williams

Vertical Entertainment will release the documentary film ROBIN’S WISH on Demand and Digital on September 1, 2020.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: https://www.robinswishfilm.com/

ROBIN’S WISH features interviews with Susan Schneider Williams, Shawn Levy, John R. Montgomery, Rick Overton, and David E. Kelly. The film is directed by Tylor Norwood (directorial feature debut) who co-wrote the film with Scott Fitzloff (The United States of Detroit).

SUSAN SCHNEIDER WILLIAMS STATEMENT:

When my husband Robin Williams died, the whole world grieved. It’s enough to grieve personally over this type of loss, and then to have the entire world grieving with you—that pushed it into a different realm altogether. Robin was one of the most beloved artists in the world, a comic genius, whose mind functioned on a mighty level. Yet in the end, it was a little known disease in his beautifully gifted brain that became his greatest and final battle.

During the last year of his life, Robin was confronted with anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, scary altered realities and a roller coaster of hope and despair. With our medical team’s care we chased a relentless parade of symptoms but with very little gain. It wasn’t until after Robin’s passing, in autopsy, that the source of his terror was revealed: he had diffuse Lewy body disease. It was one of the worst cases medical professionals had seen.

Armed with the name of a brain disease I’d never heard of, I set out on a mission to understand it, and that led me down my unchosen path of advocacy. With invaluable help from leading medical experts, I saw that what Robin and I had gone through, finally made sense — our experience matched up with the science. And what I discovered along the way was bigger than me, and bigger than Robin. The full story was revealed during the making of this film and it holds the truth that Robin and I had been searching for.

Robin’s Wish is Robin’s story, it’s our story, and in some ways it’s a universal one — as we all understand what it means to search for answers, to experience love and loss and the power of healing that keeps us going.

Finally, a note about the film title: Robin wanted to help all of us be less afraid. That was Robin’s wish. We had been discussing what we wanted our legacies to be in life; when it was our time to go, how we wanted to have made people feel. Without missing a beat, Robin said, “I want to help people be less afraid.”

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

Robin’s Wish is the retelling of an ending to a story that was never done the justice it deserved. Robin Williams was very much an influence on my life and so when he passed with such violence and general uncertainty it affected me deeply. However, like most people, I quickly buried that uncertainty as I went about my life, too busy with my day to day affairs to treat the questions around Robin’s passing as much more than a place I’d rather not go — telling myself instead that I would remember him only as the man who made me laugh and feel so much in my life. This process of denial of Robin as a man instead of a string of characters was interrupted when his widow, Susan, reached out to me to ask if I’d have any interest in making a science documentary about a neurological disease I’d never heard of — Lewy body dementia. I told her no, and that it would take years until we’d be sitting in a theater and watching any movie I agreed to make, so I asked her what would sustain her in that. She began telling me about herself and Robin, and what they went through in the last year and a half of his life. I told her if that was the film, I was in.

What followed was years of tracking down the facts of Robin’s case from his friends, neighbors, co-workers, widow and medical professionals that gave me a clear view of a compelling story I’d never heard before about one of the greatest entertainers to ever live. In the end I think we’ve done the work of restoring a legacy that had been tainted by a fundamental misunderstanding. It was in the spirit of completing the record, and honoring Robin with giving the world the truth of what took him from us that I think this film shines, and can serve as a moment for the world to look deeper into this beautiful man’s story. It is a moment for us to understand the pain he felt as his talents and faculties rapidly slipped away, and moreover how in the face of that terrifying reality, he was more heroic, more compassionate than any character he ever played in any of his movies. So I hope this film rights a wrong that was done to him, and takes away a cloud that has unjustly hung over his legacy for far too long.

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