Hasta La Gadget!

So, I finally steeled myself and went with my wife to see Still Alice. I had been avoiding it, because I’m of the quaint view that movies should be fun and escapist. I enjoy fantasies like James Bond, Indiana Jones and even RED.

But I was also avoiding Still Alice because of how it cast the role of Alice. I disliked that she was played by Julianne Moore, a young 50-something who, by virtue of her age, distorts the sweep of Alzheimer’s Disease. This disease, which increases in prevalence exponentially in older adults, is becoming the seminal public health problem of our time as the population ages. Because so many of us are now living longer, so much longer.

It is true, of course, that the rare cases of Alzheimer’s in the young are serious, tragic and indeed heart-wrenching. But because of the far-smaller prevalence in middle-aged adults, it is a matter of less public importance. Public health is about numbers — hence the attention to communicable diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, ebola or the more recent focus on non-communicable diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Yet, against my better judgment (and with secret resentfulness), I did go see it this last weekend. I was so wrong. I found Still Alice to be a truly breathtaking film, and Ms. Moore’s performance made me cry many times. It is no wonder she won the Oscar. And the film magnificently integrates Moore’s emotional power with medical fact.

In the course of Alice learning to manage the disease, we learn some of the science of Alzheimer’s. She and her doctor discuss the amyloid theory of causation, and they suggest creative uses of technology in the early stages to assist memory loss. We also learn about what little medicines are available, and how ravaging it becomes for people to achieve basic human functions, like bathing and cleaning. We are also treated to the stigma of Alzheimer’s; stigma which causes Alice to keep quiet: she blurts out early in the film that she wishes she had cancer because for cancer people walk and wear ribbons. So, Still Alice also dramatizes the social isolation caused by the relative ignorance of and still profound stigma of the disease, both of which are very much related the preciously small amount of funding dedicated to finding a cure.

But perhaps most gripping effect of Still Alice is the sense that it will elevate focus and attention on this disease that is rapidly and inexorably becoming the public health, social and fiscal nightmare of our 21st century. Already, Alzheimer’s consumes $604 billion annually — roughly 1% of global GDP — and rates are projected to skyrocket.

And here’s where my initial misgivings about the casting of the film reveal one of its greatest strengths.

Brilliantly, emotionally and with rare genius and subtlety, Still Alice promises to not only raise awareness of, but provoke passion for Alzheimer’s, precisely because it is not a story about someone’s grandmother. Still Alice is not a public health poster. It is the powerful story of a young, smart, witty, vivacious, and beautiful Columbia University linguistics professor.

And this is precisely why we must watch it — and why so many already have.

Consider the scene as Alice takes herself to a “care home.” At this point, she is still cognizant and competent and, through her, we see the more common picture of the disease: old people who are on the slow march to death anyway. It is a sad and lonely image, sure, but also one that does not shock. Then, in contradistinction, we see Alzheimer’s devastate someone in the prime of her life — a life of a scientist and an Ivy League professor, no less.

For the “seniors” in the care home, we are inured and even hardened to the devastation of Alzheimer’s, and we tend to see it as an inevitable stage in our aging. For Alice, we are deeply touched, troubled, motivated to great emotional heights of despair and anguish.

And here is the genius of the film: it balances the wreckage we feel for Alice with the public health crisis that is emerging globally. Alzheimer’s demands attention not only because of the horror of its disease, which we feel from its effect on the small number of people like Alice, but also because of the numbers it will affect if we don’t find a cure. It’s not just the Alices of the world, but by the rest of us as well.

Until now, we have been lucky that Alzheimer’s has been one of those “rare diseases.” But now, with the dawn of our 21st century and the global mega-trend of all of us living decades longer — those 30 years added to life in the last century with more to come in this one — the “rare” phase of the disease is over. So, while Still Alice is about a rare occurrence, it is also metaphor for the progression of the disease across society, which we fail to understand at our peril.

Still Alice is a rare film that strikes a delicate balance. In dramatizing the genetics of Alzheimer’s — and articulating how a mother’s Alzheimer’s impacts the children and the children’s children — it manages to position a tiny slice of the “at-risk” population to show how, in this 21st century, we are all, in fact, at risk.

It never hurts to say “thank you.”

Bethanie, an appreciative flyer who splits her time between Spain and England, apparently knows this better than most. The passenger reportedly slipped this thank-you note to the pilots on her flight home. One then showed it to a friend who posted the message to Twitter on Monday:

A letter given to a colleague from a passenger onboard his aircraft.. Providing proof that we’re all in this together pic.twitter.com/a0NrT3LAtT

— Jai Dillon (@jaidillon) March 30, 2015

Bethanie’s kind words follow last week’s Germanwings plane crash in the French Alps. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz is believed to have deliberately crashed the aircraft. All 150 people on board died.

Jai Dillon, the man who sent the tweet, confirmed the note was real to BuzzFeed but declined to give more details, including the flight Bethanie was on, due to security reasons. According to the London Evening Standard, he said he wanted to “share the positive message.”

The letter reads:

Dear pilots of the plane taking me home,

In light of the very recent tragedy in the French Alps and the loss of those poor 150 people, I feel the need to reach out to you and extend a compassionate hand. At the end of the day, we are all humans just trying to live this rollercoaster of a life we have been handed. I understand an event so horrific as this one affects those with your responsibility more than others, and maybe sometimes a kind word, random but heartfelt, can make a difference. I’m hoping to create a ripple effect and spread some compassion and understanding.

Thank you for taking me home. Thank you for doing so safely. Thank you for allowing me to live the life I do in Spain and split my time with my family in England too. You make the excitement I feel now to see my family possible. I hope you get to see your families soon. I’ve had a wonderful flight and hope you have too.

You’re making a massive difference and you’re the reason I can smile tonight.

Take care and spread love. Kindest regards,
Bethanie.

H/T Mashable

So I’m chatting with Freddie Wong, producer of the wildly popular online series Video Game High School, whose company Rocket Jump is launching a new series this year with Hulu and Lionsgate. I’m an Atari 2600 guy who learned to edit with VHS, and teeny-tiny bits of film plus Scotch tape, so I dive headlong for our common ground: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. It turns out that Mr. Wong also cut actual film there — in 2008, their penultimate class to do so — but he offers further practical insight:

“When you break it down,” says Freddie, “I think the fundamentals of filmmaking, of storytelling, haven’t changed — since, arguably, 1905. But in terms of the side of it that I think film schools are a little bit lagging behind is the idea of audience engagement; it’s the idea of film as a populist medium. But the idea of film online, and video, is more populist than I think anybody could have ever conceived of. And this sort of world where building an audience is a very important thing, and it enables you to do a lot of stuff creatively, and enables you to get viewership for your projects. That’s something that we’ve found, having left school, that we sort of figured out on our own.”

Freddie Wong and Amber J. Lawson
photo by Oscar Torres

The context is CONNECT L.A., last week’s storytellers market that connected content producers, broadcasters, distributors and executives. The event featured face-to-face meetings for attendees with development executives from ABC, Disney, BET, CBS, CW, Sony, TNT, and others. Forgathering within West Hollywood’s London Hotel were writers and business folk aplenty, including Community creator Dan Harmon, speaking with Yahoo’s head of programming Ian Moffitt, and Sony’s VP of Development Max Aronson, about moving his show (formerly at NBC) to a new audience at Yahoo. Similarly, Mr. Wong spoke with Beatrice Springborn of Hulu, and Jordan Gilbert of Lionsgate. CONNECT L.A.. serves as a SoCal lead-in to the huge annual Banff World Media Festival, way up in the Canadian Rockies, spearheaded by Robert Montgomery and Amber J. Lawson, CEO and Executive Producer with Achilles Media, respectively.

“It’s really about deals,” says Toronto-based entrepreneur Mr. Montgomery. “And one of the key focuses of Connect L.A. is in the meeting rooms, where we facilitate tons of relationships. One of the key deliverables that we see — which emanated from the Banff World Media Festival, which is the biggest dedicated production and development market in the world — the whole purpose and function of that is to profile key people who are making a difference in the industry, and connect them.” Robert adds that, while they have developed a software platform, it’s the face-to-face meetings (especially in the mountains, 90 minutes from an airport) that make their market work. “It’s incredibly successful, and it’s perfect for the future of entertainment.”

Ms. Lawson, a mega-multihyphenate who is comedy-based and serious about it (she’s CEO of charitable organization Comedy Gives Back) further opines about how new media and old studios are mixing it up:

“It’s interesting,” Amber J. states. “One of my friends is running the digital division at Warner Bros., and their whole goal is to create short-form content, leveraging the Warner Bros. library — so their partnerships they’re creating are with Google, and with the various platforms that are out there. It’s something that I don’t think they took very seriously, until now. It’s happening. And they’re aware of it. Because they can’t be left out. They have to evolve, just like everybody else.

“I would say that this year we’ve seen a major uptick in that: in studios, this is a huge acquisition year! I know that Freddie Wong wasn’t ‘acquired’ by Lionsgate, but huge pacts are forming, with production companies, with studios, with influencers: that’s a big trend happening.” Amber J. further suggests a win-win approach: “These are major media companies that are coming together, and they’re not — we don’t live in a time where they’re necessarily competitors, although there is competition, of course, there always will be. But it is more about collaboration, and that is more the ideal attitude of the business today.”

The point, of course, is that these days, non-traditional distribution methods are taking off big time. Using two words rarely employed in polite parlance, I ask Freddie if he can cite a Gestalt behind his Internet success, or if he and his crew simply planned from the beginning to “pwn” it (pronounced “pone,” he assures fledgling-hipster me).

“It was in 2010 that we started with YouTube,” Freddie notes. “I was working on direct-to-TV, direct-to-DVD feature films [including Bear: which he kindly informs me features not insane CGI but a real grizzly bear], and at that time it was very clear: YouTube is a place where people are watching stuff; and YouTube is a place where you can build and grow an audience. And we had looked at guys like Kevin Smith, and these directors who — hey, they can do whatever they want! They have an audience, and the audience will go and see their stuff! And so, for us, the goal was: Let’s build an audience. Let’s create cool content. Let’s get people behind us as creators — and behind the content itself. And then continue to serve the audience and grow the audience from there.”

It was this “if a tree falls in the forest” perception of media (as he puts it: “If a show launches without an audience, will anybody stick around to watch it?”) which turned Freddie’s company Rocket Jump’s germ of an idea with Video Game High School into a hit, and he’s comfortable with the basic formula:

“The fundamental time-length formats — and what I mean by that is a television show being 22 minutes long, or in that range; or a movie being in that 80-90-minute range — we’ve experimented with that, in Video Game High School season one — and what we eventually arrived at, with seasons two and three, is doing things television-length. There’s a lot of reasons for it. It’s about the right amount of time to be able to tell a longer-form story. I think 11 minutes, and 22 and 44, and 90-minute features are a thing, and they’re a thing that works: they work on a script level; they work on a story level. It gives you time to engage with characters — and that doesn’t change.” Internet sensation Freddie adds knowingly: “What does change is where you see things.”

Robert Montgomery, Randy Sklar, Freddie Wong, and Jason Sklar
photo by Oscar Torres

Mr. Montgomery elaborates, with a note on “monetization”: “To the extent that digital storytellers are telling stories on video, there is no difference. All television is video, but not all video is television. I think a key take-away is that there’s an honesty around that, that consumers are accepting of: no longer are people going, ‘Oh, that’s sponsored content.’ If it has legitimacy, if it adds value to the experience of the consumer, they’re good.”

Adds Amber J.: “Being a digital native myself, I’ve seen the evolution of content: from short-form content, to broadcast-quality content, just starting on a different platform. Really it’s just a matter of where the content is premiering. And as you can tell, by the numbers, it can cost little amounts of money, and that could be a licensed show around the globe. Or it could be a hundred million dollars, with House of Cards, on Netflix. It’s been a democratization of content, in my opinion.”

In closing, I poignantly reference the South Park episode, “Guitar Queer-O,” wherein Stan’s dad vainly (in both senses of the word) attempts to distract his son and friends from playing Guitar Hero with a real guitar, capably delivering “Carry On Wayward Son” (sans comma, alas; musicians) to the gaggle of stone-faced, apathetic gamers. Even some top musicians, accustomed to the old ways, are getting pissed off at digital royalties (or lack thereof). I ask Freddie how he thinks artists can better meet the new frontiers.

“I think if you were to track one trend that kind of comes throughout the history of art itself — in terms of music, of film, especially music,” replies Freddie, “it’s the idea of authenticity. You see that come and go in waves throughout the entire history of music, be it jazz, be it pop music, or what-have-you. And I think we’re due for another go-round, certainly on the music side — of the idea of authenticity, and true musicianship, and instrumentation. But I think that’s where everyone is! I think that art is a search for the representation of truth in this world. And that approach I don’t think changes.

“I think that the way that you engage with the audience member, and the way that it comes into your eyeballs, and your brain, may be different, and it may change. But from an artistic perspective, I think that that pursuit has been the same since the beginning. And that never changes. What does change is the methodology, and the means — and the craft itself maybe has the addition of technology to it; but technology has always aided an ease or clarity towards that search for truth — and I think that if it doesn’t, then it’s very quickly discarded.”

Official Site: Content Industry CONNECT L.A.

Official Site: Banff World Media Festival

When 49ers inside linebacker Chris Borland announced his early retirement from the NFL after just one season, the league and fans reacted with shock. But as a father, a neuroscientist and a geriatrician, I can imagine all too well the immense relief that Borland’s parents likely felt knowing they would no longer have to watch their son take a beating on Sunday afternoons.

My life’s work is ending Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, the very things that Borland feared developing in his later life. I am deeply committed to strengthening our scientific understanding of the causes of dementia–including untangling the impact of sports-related childhood concussions (the sort that Borland suffered before entering the NFL) on later-life cognitive function.

As a parent, it wouldn’t take much evidence for me to decide to keep my two now grown children out of high-impact sports like football and soccer. But as a scientist and a physician, I have a different perspective: I can see clearly just how much we still don’t know–and how much we need to learn–to make well-founded, smart public health recommendations about childhood sports participation and concussion risks.

When it comes to adult traumatic brain injury and dementia risks, the evidence is more established. Last year, the NFL stated in federal court documents that it expects nearly a third of its retired players to develop long-term cognitive problems and predicted that the conditions are likely to emerge at “notably younger ages” than in the general population.

There’s a key difference, though, between what we know about the link between adult traumatic brain injury and later life dementia, and what we know about childhood concussions and later life dementia. The truth is, we know very little about how childhood concussions influence the risk for dementia in adulthood. We need to accelerate this research so that parents and coaches can make better decisions about youth sport participation, practice policies and competition rules.

This month, I co-authored a consensus statement published in Nature Reviews Neurology about the need to advance research into the short-term and long-term neuropsychological outcomes of youth sports-related concussions. The statement was the result of a meeting convened by Safe Kids Worldwide, the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. The meeting brought together more than 25 experts in a variety of fields including neurology, sports injury reporting, ethics, genetics, biomarkers, dementia and neuroimaging. The group concluded that there is not enough evidence to establish a clear link between early-life repetitive head impacts and adult cognitive decline and dementia. This is contrasted by what is known about similar head impact injuries in adults and the established risk of later-life cognitive decline and dementia.

So how can we get answers about childhood concussions and late life dementia risks? We need to improve our understanding of the fundamental biology of concussions and how factors like age, sex and genetics influence concussion susceptibility and recovery. We need to support continued research and development of brain imaging techniques that shed light on the pathology of pediatric brain injury and have the potential to accelerate the development of novel therapies.

Moreover, we need to improve local and nationwide injury surveillance, eventually tracking youth athletes from the beginning of their athletic careers. According to the CDC, there were 250,000 nonfatal traumatic brain injuries recorded among individuals under the age of 19 in 2009, constituting 65 percent of all sports-related concussions. Many more may have incurred undiagnosed concussions and could suffer consequences in the future.

With better monitoring we can improve our understanding of the scope of the problem by conducting a large, long-term study following youth athletes across their athletic careers to determine the influence of repetitive head impacts on the risk of developing late-life cognitive decline and dementia.

The bottom line: we need to establish and encourage clear lines of research in many different but complementary fields to improve our knowledge and translate that data into actionable guidelines.

Chris Borland did not make his decision lightly, but he had the benefit of stronger research surrounding the link between adult concussions and dementia risk.

“The decision was simple after I had done a lot of research and it was personal,” Borland said on “Face the Natioon” on Sunday, March 25. “I was concerned about neurological diseases down the road if I continued to play football.

It’s not yet a simple decision for the parents of children playing high-impact sports. But with more research and better surveillance, we can ensure that parents, coaches, policymakers and physicians have the information they need to make educated decisions to protect the long-term health of young athletes.

My adult in the making turned 12 earlier this March. Yes, the very last year before she is officially a teen! I asked her to go for a brisk four-mile walk, and she was so excited. I was excited too! What an amazing opportunity to bond. So, I put my 4-year-old in the stroller and the three of us started to walk. The bonding I imagined, never left the imagination stage. My daughter walked ahead of us, and instead of slowing her down, I gave her directions and told her to have fun.

My eyes, surrounded by tall green trees of various shapes and ponds studded with ducks, could not see anything but my young lady’s swift movements. Trees were moved by her confident trajectory, as their leavrs swayed back and forth with her unwavering attitude “I own this world.”

Soon enough, my eyes could only catch her shadow. As the sun departed, her shadow got shorter and shorter. The sun was limiting my view of her! Finally, I arrived with my little one (who did not stop talking) at our parked car. A young, beautiful lady full of accomplishments and relieved to see us was waiting by the car. I asked her if she had fun, she said, “at times, I got worried that I would not find the car.” I looked deep in her eyes and said, “I am sure you would have figured it out.” This was the best bonding moment ever.

To me, the word ‘love’ was not invented by lovers to describe transient passions, but rather by mothers to describe what seems at times as one-sided love for their pre-teen daughters. As desperate as my pre-teen might be to shed her childhood, I am desperately holding on to whatever childish reminders kind moments offer me.

Here is what I wanted to tell her:

You might feel that I am silly at times, and wish I were not. But, I adore you when you are silly, because it reminds me of the child in you. I am so flattered when I see parts of me expressed in the most beautiful manner by you, but what impresses me most about you is how much you are becoming unlike me. Your uniqueness makes you an independent unit, adding to the family instead of duplicating what already existed. Having said all this, I am not your friend and don’t desire to be! Friendships are based on equal memberships, reciprocity and the right to enter and exit.

I want to assure you that when you attempt to push all my buttons, I have no desire to reciprocate, because my focus on how small your hands are and how childish they still look interferes with the ability of your forceful words to push any buttons, except the patience one.

Although some of your friends seem to be situated in the much-coveted place, the chambers of your heart, it is sufficient for me to have once shared the same rhythmic heartbeat with you.

As you change your hair color, ideas and friends, I would like to be recruited as the constant in your ever-changing world. I want to be the past that resides in your mind and obligatorily comes with you everywhere you go, regardless of how profound the changes in your present moment might be. I would like to get promoted from being “just a friend” to a contributor to your evolving mind so it is equipped to sculpt whatever future it dreams of.

I gladly waive all my rights to exit this relationship even in the stormiest of times. I ambitiously hope to remain in this relationship beyond the dissolution of the vessel that temporarily houses my soul.

While I don’t want to be “just a friend” now, I am aiming for something much higher! I am aiming to impress the grown-up who is unfolding in front of me, in ways that only my trained mother eyes could appreciate.

One final thing: I want to confess that the most difficult part of being a parent is discipline. I have to aggregate all my love for you, my strong desire to see you become your very best and not be threatened by my own weaknesses to do that.

My dear adult in the making, in my eyes, the world is a much better place because you exist. I am so confident that your presence in this world will be noticed because of your vigor, perseverance and commitment to the larger good. I am at peace because there are so many like you what a bright future full of potential waiting to be realized by all of you.

With love,

The lady stalking you in the park ☺