FIGHT FOR FREEDOM –
Oct. 14, 2022 – The topic of “We Can Be Heroes” is vitally relevant to Genesee County, where there were 184 reported overdose deaths in 2020, and 155 overdose deaths between May 2021 and April 2022, according to Michigan’s Overdose Data to Action Dashboard.
Genesee County has the third highest rate of opioid deaths in the state, behind Wayne and Macomb counties, according to the site.
During their early acquaintance, Duerr was up and down with addiction, still “struggling pretty hard,” Ramsdell said. “He’d be at the gym four or five months, he’d take a fight, he’d be doing great, and then he’d disappear and they’d find him on a street corner in San Francisco, homeless, 50 pounds lighter.”
But as a “hero” narrative, “he’s a great story,” Ramsdell says. “The thing that makes a documentary work is that whoever is the heart of the story, they have to able to carry it, they have to be able to articulate it, the camera has to love them.”
Duerr “checked all those boxes,” Ramsdell recalls. And when Ramsdell approached him to make the film, “He was willing. And the amount of courage it took to go through it — I was up his butt with the camera for a long time.”
“The juxtaposition of addiction and boxing was fascinating to me,” Ramsdell says. “I had no idea what role addiction would play…but addiction showed its head in so many ways.
“Commonly people think of addicts as weak, or as lazy, or they don’t care about anybody else, or they can’t handle the tough part of life,” Ramsdell says, but Duerr cuts through all of those misconceptions.
