I first heard about Chicago playwright, actor and filmmaker Ben Byer last fall, when his autobiographical documentary Indestructible played as part of the Midwest Independent Film Festival. I didn’t have a chance to see it then, but the subject caught my interest: In 2002, Byer was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). He was given two to five years to live. Faced with a degenerative neurological disorder that would make all apsects of his life difficult, Byer decided to chronicle his illness on film. The film won the Midwest Independent Film Fest’s Best Doc award for 2007.

Over the course of this spring, it popped up several times on the calendar, a fact I noticed without much surprise–lots of small films with a local connection get multiple screenings around town, often as fundraising events. A lot of local filmmakers drift in and out of my awareness that way. So, when Indestructible cropped up in the Lake County Film Fest line-up (where it won a Jury Prize for Best Doc) in March and then at the Portage in April, and again at Dearborn Station in June, Byer and the film were still just part of the local screening scene.

Then it showed up on the Gene Siskel Film Center’s calendar for July 18, 21 and 22. Since the Siskel staff are very selective about what they show, it went up a notch in my list of locally-connected projects. I put it in our calendar for review (our review will appear in the issue of July 17). I also noted that Byer, along with producer Rebeccah Rush and editor Tim Baron, would be at the three screenings, and I remember thinking to myself ‘wow, that guy is tough as nails, to be running around the country speaking at screenings.’ Rush, who is also Ben Byer’s sister, is a tireless promoter of the fim–she emailed me about the Siskel screening and sent a screener of the film for review.

Sad news arrived over the holiday weekend in an email from Rush: On July 3rd, Ben Byer died of ALS. Byer and Rush had planned a party at Prairie Moon in Evanston on July 17th, the night before the film premiered at the Siskel, to thank their supporters. Despite his passing, the party will go on, now to celebrate Byer’s life as well as his film. Clearly, Rush shares her brother’s refusal to surrender to the disease. Byer outlived the odds–in 2002 he was given a 90% chance of dying with in five years–and he left behind a film as his legacy.