Local filmmaker gets notice
CITYWIDE When Steven Barber was forced out of an advertising company two years ago after more than two decades in the field, the last place he imagined landing was on “Good Morning America.”
But the media promotion circuit is exactly what the Santa Monican has been doing since his documentary film about the world’s longest wheelchair race has drawn buzz in Hollywood circles, attracting support from the likes of Pamela Anderson, Steve Forbes and Oprah Winfrey.
“The Alaskan Challenge 2007” documents the journey of a team of three local paraplegic men who participated in a 267-mile, seven-day marathon on wheel-chairs and handcycles through Alaska this summer.
The film is currently in post-production and Barber is in the process of raising the approximately $211,000 budget necessary to put the finishing touches on the documentary. The Santa Monica film-maker recently got a boost to his fundrais-ing efforts when funnyman Dan Aykroyd donated not only his money, but his voice to the film, signing on as narrator.
“I almost hung up on him and I was like ‘yeah, who is this really?’” Barber said of his recent phone conversation with Aykroyd.
Barber has enjoyed a short, yet successful film journey since he left the advertising world, took his severance package and purchased $50,000 worth of camera equipment to chase his lifelong dream. In the past two years, he has directed two other documentaries — “Punchin’ Pat,” which depicts a boxer, and “The Eddie Albert Story,” a film about the late “Green Acres” actor, filmed shortly before his death in 2005.
The filmmaker claims that none of these documentary ideas came from him, but the subjects rather found him through chance — he ran into the boxer in “Punchin’ Pat” at the “Tonight Show” a few years ago and met Albert on a bike ride a decade ago.
The subject of “The Alaskan Challenge 2007” came to him at his rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica.
For years, the filmmaker would see a man on his wheelchair repairing cars at Barber’s apartment. The two men knew each other only by face, and not by name. It wasn’t until about a year ago that Barber learned that the mechanic, Geoffrey Erickson, had been trying to raise money to participate in the Alaskan wheelchair marathon.
Seeing the opportunity for a documentary, Barber asked his good friend, J.P. Dejoria, one of the founders of John Paul Mitchell Systems, to kick in the $12,000 necessary to sign up Erickson and fellow paraplegic men, Chris Kohler and Edwin Figuerora, for the marathon. The three formed the John Paul Mitchell team.
“I was blown away nobody had ever done (a documentary on the race),” Barber said. “I like the biggests, baddests, the ‘ever’ kind of stuff.”
The crew began filming the team’s preparation for the event and this summer, traveled to Alaska where they spent a week capturing the challenges the team faced throughout the course and its achievements at race’s end.
“This gives them an opportunity to be whole again for a week,” Barber said. “It turns them back.”
The film also includes interviews with some of the other competitors, including a man who became paralyzed after a forklift at a big box store struck him in the back. Another competitor has been in a wheel-chair since he fell out of a tree while bear-hunting.
The duration of the course is the same as a trip from Santa Monica to Las Vegas, equivalent to doing more than one marathon a day for an entire week.
Cameraman Robert Farrell, who introduced Barber to Erickson, recalls realizing how rigorous the course was after the crew jumped ahead to the end of the course for filming purposes, driving up and down hills, through mountains out in the middle of nowhere.
“You realize how far these guys have to go every day,” Farrell said. “It looks terrible to go through this race.”
Barber hopes to complete the film by May in order to make the submission deadline for the Sundance Film Festival. Though documentaries are known not to make much money, Barber is confident he’ll land a distribution deal.
“Everybody is moved by this story,” he said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 7, 2007. Read the original PDF.