Announcing the official release of Let’s Do This: Facing Hodgkin Lymphoma
On March 7, 2012, in the early days of my journey through a type of cancer called Hodgkin lymphoma, my friend Nathan Matta and I hit publish on a Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary about my story. Support for the campaign was immediate and astounding—150 people pledged over $10,000 to help make our dream a reality. What was our dream? To document my particular cancer journey with transparency and humanity in order to bring hope, clarity, and comfort to the 81,000 people diagnosed with lymphoma in the United States every year.
After years of work (turns out making a documentary isn’t a walk in the park), I’m thrilled to announce that Let’s Do This: Facing Hodgkin Lymphoma is now available to the public. We released the movie on Vimeo, where it can be rented for just $2.99 or purchased (DRM-free) for $9.99. Check out the trailer in the video below.
Here’s the thing: After I was diagnosed, my wife Libby and I searched high and low for a documentary that would give us some sense of what we were in for. The only one we could find (a film called Not As I Pictured) was good, but not as enlightening or relatable as we’d hoped. One of the main reasons we created Let’s Do This was ultimately to fill that gap—to be the film my wife and I were looking for as we desperately sought clarity in the midst of the dark, disorienting cloud of cancer.
At the conclusion of my blog post announcing the Kickstarter campaign, I wrote: “We’re not sure exactly where this will take us, but we’re hoping it ends up having an impact much larger than we can dream.” So here’s hoping that anyone searching for an honest, intimate insight into the life of a Hodgkin lymphoma patient—whether cancer patients, caregivers, families, or friends—will find and benefit from this humble documentary.
Bonus: The Soundtrack
Since its release, several folks have requested of a list of songs of that appear throughout the film. Honestly, the soundtrack is one of the things I’m most proud of—part of my role as Producer was to select various songs for use in the film and then secure the rights from any artists whose music we wanted to use. In the end, all of the artists below were gracious enough to grant us permission to feature their music in the film royalty-free—a massive gift for an indie project like ours. Anyway, here’s the list:
- The Farewell Circuit — “Brother’s Eyes (Instrumental)”
- The Farewell Circuit — “Run for the Hills (Instrumental)”
- The Farewell Circuit — “Good Winter (Run, Run, Run) (Instrumental)”
- The Farewell Circuit — “Salt (Instrumental)”
- The Farewell Circuit—“The Inexorable March of Time (Instrumental)”
- The Farewell Circuit — “Admission”
- Joshua Michael Robinson — “Heavy”
- Green River Ordinance — “Dark Night”
- The Damnwells — “Down with the Ship”
- The Farewell Circuit — “Guard”
Here’s a Spotify playlist¹ of the soundtrack (none of the instrumental tracks are available on Spotify, so the regular versions are included instead):
Additionally, the film includes two original tracks written and recorded by me and my good friend Mike Lang. They appear during the head shaving montage and the “good news” scene. Just because, here’s a video of us working on the good news song.
For further updates, follow Let’s Do This: Facing Hodgkin Lymphoma on Facebook.
¹ I’m an Music man myself, but sadly many of the tracks are unavailable in their library.
