A Friend Indeed: The Bill Sackter Story

Speaker: 
Film and Discussion with Producer Lane Wyrick
 
24 Feb 2010
 
7:00 PM
 
Great Hall, Memorial Union

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Add to Calendar

A Friend Indeed: The Bill Sackter Story explores the way we as a society have treated people with disabilities, from institutional abandonment to community embrace. Bill Sackter's life story was made famous by the made-for-TV movie Bill (1981) starring Mickey Rooney as Bill, and Dennis Quaid as the young filmmaker Barry Morrow who had befriended Bill in 1972 and began filming their relationship and adventures. At Morrow's prompting, documentary filmmaker Lane Wyrick took on the project of using his original video footage as well as photographs, film and interviews to produce the documentary A Friend Indeed. Wyrick, who is a graduate of the University of Iowa Film School, worked for four years in Los Angeles before returning to Iowa City to pursue his filmmaking career and start his own production company, Xap Interactive. A discussion with producer Lane Wyrick will follow a screening of the 90-minute documentary film. Part of Disabilities Awareness Week.

[b]Lane Wyrick[/b] Lane Wyrickis a Film School graduate from the University of Iowa. During his college years, he worked extensively in both video and 16mm film production and was the first place winner in the Midwest Regional Competition of the Student Academy Awards for his experimental film [i]Culture Shell.[/i] He was also awarded the Princess Grace Foundation Scholarship for his 40-minute 16mm comedy [i]Life is Eterminal[/i]. After graduating, Wyrick spent four years in Los Angeles working as a production assistant and in various other capacities on feature film productions including [i]True Lies, Man's Best Friend, Dead Connection[/i], as well as on several television projects, music videos and commercials. In 1994, Wyrick worked as head of an Illinois-based Multimedia & Interactive Design Department. Wyrick returned to his hometown of Iowa City in the fall of 1995 and formed Xap Interactive, Inc., a digitally-based video, film, and DVD production company to offer a venue for his creative and entrepreneurial aspirations. Through Xap Interactive, Wyrick has produced a wide variety of projects from event videos, DVD-based touchscreen information systems, surgical procedure videos, commercials, corporate videos and documentaries.