Have You Heard About Greg?

Subtitled A Journey Through Alzheimer’s With Faith, Hope, and Humor, this inspirational doc profiles journalist Greg O’Brien’s continued fight with the still-incurable disease that is mercilessly erasing the minds of more than 50 million people on the planet. Diagnosed in 2009 at the age of 59, O’Brien has since become a tireless advocate even as his cognitive powers diminish. An extension of his 2014 memoir, On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s, the film offers a familiar structure of family, friends, and experts speaking of O’Brien’s struggle, of the need for more awareness, and of the growing health care crisis that looms in the not too distant future.

But first and foremost is O’Brien himself: an affable and articulate upper middle-class Mainer who can quite frequently lose 60% of his short-term memory in a mere 30 seconds. These seizures of isolation O’Brien refers to as “going to Pluto,” after that desolate non-planet. Aided by his wife and adult children, along with a support system of local and national proponents, O’Brien speaks at conferences and booksignings about his strategies for dealing with his dementia with a frankness and candor that seek to dispel the stereotypes of Alzheimer’s (the film’s title – a gossipy, whispered inquiry – is presumably a nod to such stigma). Director Steve Ecclesine speaks with neuroscientist and Still Alice author Lisa Genova, and a number of medical professionals; and Ecclesine himself even sits down with O’Brien, the two friends tearfully recalling both of their parents’ tragic surrendering to the disease.

There are two moments in Have You Heard About Greg? however, that stand out with a lasting pathos in this otherwise sentimental journey. The first is when O’Brien relates how a woman gave her father a copy of his book, and how that had finally opened up a dialogue for her father to discuss his illness, illustrating an ingrained belief system in the older generation of not only misplaced pride but the harmful stoicism of “toughing it out” that leads to so many tragic consequences. The second takes place as O’Brien is in conversation with his pastor. A visibly emotional O’Brien grapples with embracing his own mortality as he wonders if he has done enough good in his life. It is a naked moment of reflection, of soul weighing. A truth captured, and free to be revisited, if ever forgotten.