ABOUT

My dad, Ben Spitzer, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s over 11 years ago at age 52. The diagnosis came out of nowhere and completely changed his life.

I felt helpless. There is no cure for Parkinson’s and there was nothing I could do but simply support him but I was moving to Los Angeles to pursue comedy and acting. He encouraged me to go so I went along with my then-girlfriend, now wife, Britta. Through the years we kept in touch often through calls visits and Facetime.

In March of 2020, we were planning to visit my parents in Michigan but the pandemic hit. Our trip was cancelled and the world seemingly stopped. I had recently got my real estate license and was a few months into that job, of course, the pandemic halted that as well. I was at home with not much to do and wanted to make use of my time in a healthy way. I was perusing Instagram and saw that The Kirk Gibson Foundation was a charity partner for the Detroit Free Press Marathon. There it was!

I had been meaning to run a marathon for years and there was never going to be a better time. I signed up for the Detroit Free Press Marathon and chose Kirk Gibson Foundation as my charity. Finally, I felt I could do something to help. I set up my donation site with GivenGain and let everyone know I was going to be running a marathon in honor of my dad and to help fight Parkinson’s. I downloaded Hal Higdon’s marathon training plan and got to training for the 26.2-mile run.

During the training, I lost 30 lbs by eating healthy and running A LOT! The Kirk Gibson Foundation reached out to me via social media and thanked me for running and raising money. I would speak with them more often as the 15 weeks of training continued.

During the last couple of months of training, I decided that I would like to document the training and perhaps make a small short about the run, my dad, Kirk Gibson Foundation, and the pandemic. I reached out to my buddy, Mike Piccorillo — we were already working on a screenplay together dealing with a character like myself whose dad was dealing with Parkinson’s — I told him that I was thinking of taking a short detour to do this short documentary and wondered if he’d be interested in collaborating. He was excited about the idea so we got to work!

The Documentary

That small idea turned into a much larger project. The Detroit Free Press Marathon went virtual as the pandemic stretched out longer than any of us had thought it would. More friends in LA and Detroit joined the project to help out. Kirk Gibson Foundation heard about the project and was incredibly supportive, even Kirk Gibsons himself joined in to help! What?! This little idea was gaining a lot of steam! Mike and I just kept going with it. You never know what will happen when you say YES!

We were working on editing and building the story after I ran the virtual Detroit Free Press Marathon in October in Los Angeles, CA. I was out for a run one day and thought, “You know what? I think this documentary has to end with running the 2021 Detroit Free Press Marathon in-person in Detroit!” I called up Mike again and told him about this idea I had while running, he agreed. It was the fitting end after this crazy year. The training began… again! And again. And again.

Four marathons later, we have finally wrapped shooting on RUN4BEN and are now in post-production.

I ask that you help us complete post-production so that we can get our documentary out into the world. We think it is special and it is going to bring some more attention to this terrible disease and, hopefully, help others to not feel so alone. We have more coming and can’t wait to show you this beautiful documentary about a father and his son.