Winning At Life: A Documentary
The Film
"Winning At Life" is a documentary-in-the-making about three brothers — now ages 83, 83, and 85 — going for Gold in 3-on-3 basketball at the 2019 National Senior Games in Albuquerque, N.M. It will also take up the question of how to live well in old age, with science and humor, and God willing, animation.
The Director
"Winning At Life" will be director Matt Twomey's second feature documentary film. His first, "The Duck Diaries," won BEST DIRECTOR at the 2013 New York Independent Film Festival and a Special Jury Award for Archival Storytelling at the Arizona International Film Festival, among other accolades.
His day job is as a senior staff editor at The New York Times.
Spoiler Alert
Oh Yeah! Phase I of this project has been a success! We raised enough money to finance the director and a crew shooting the basketball tournament at the National Senior Games in Birmingham, Ala., in June 2017. We don't want to give away too much here but suffice it to say drama did unfold before our cameras, and we're excited with what we've got.
What the director did not expect was that the three brothers would be taking on the Games AGAIN two years later. So we're gearing up for another round of a shooting, this time in Albuquerque, in June 2019.
Spoiler Alert II
The octogenarian brothers are the director's dad and two uncles.
The Challenge
The Birmingham shoot in June 2017 exhausted the funds we have raised to date.
We could use your help with bearing the costs of shooting another National Senior Games, in June 2019.
Aside from the obvious costs of staging 3-camera shoots at another round of basketball games, and the surrounding events, and travel and lodging, and hiring professional help, more and bigger expenses lie ahead: animation, for one — to explicate lucidly and with humor some of the fascinating latest scientific thinking around aging well. We have a few more days of travel and interview shoots to conduct. Then there are the usual expenses related to production and post-production.
Thank You!
Your interest in and support of this project will be crucial to its completion. The documentary aims to celebrate and advocate for active seniors, and educate about how we all might achieve such vitality in our golden years.
