Director's Statement | Legacy Film

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT - TONY PRESCOTT

Dr Ian Davis contacted me out of the blue in February 2013, it was a Sunday, and I had just spent a good day in the sun. In the email Ian briefly explained the brutality of Motor Neurone Disease and outlined how he wanted me to document he and Scott Sullivan’s intended charity ride from Brisbane to Sydney. He also attached a very candid article that was published in Melbourne’s ‘The Age’. This article was about the impact of his diagnosis, the fears that struck him, the surrender and eventually the acceptance of his fate. He also spoke about his legacy, what he thought he was going to leave behind had to shift because he now wouldn’t finish his training as a haematologist and he would never have a family.

As I began to explore the disease I found that its origins are almost unknown, and with a 90% non-hereditary rate, it means that it can happen to anyone and in this case, it happened to a 33 year old doctor. This struck me hard. I couldn’t get the idea of being given a time limit out of my head, but more importantly I couldn’t answer the big questions that are asked when facing your mortality; have I done enough with my life? Have I loved enough? Am I on the right path? What is important in life? What would I do if I were given two years to live? What mark would I leave on this world? What would be my Legacy?

These questions wouldn’t leave me but in the same breath I couldn’t answer them, they scared me. Ian Davis and Scott Sullivan are forced to answer these questions I couldn’t. They didn’t get consumed by the fear of these questions, in fact they stood up and screamed in the face of these questions and that is why I wanted to tell this tale of the enduring spirits of these two heroes.

‘Legacy’ will be vitally important to both the MND community and beyond. The MND community needs poster boys, they need characters that are going to evoke empathy, evoke response, and evoke change. Due to the rapid fatality of this disease people don’t live long enough to really impact the wider community, and because it is an undignified degeneration sufferers usually close the blinds and recluse, but Scott and Ian have stated that they will be the voice for all those MND suffers who can’t speak anymore. They are two very different people in the same circumstance; Scott is the family man, loving husband and doting father, whilst Ian is the overachieving genius.

I also want to this film to be a ‘bomb under the ass’ of the wider audience, Carpe Diem; this is a ‘seize the day’ tale. Don’t be consumed by work, make sure you love hard, stop and smell the roses and take stock of what’s important because you don’t know when your time will be up.

Hopefully Legacy will force people to realise that you can’t be consumed by fear and that you need to have answers to those big questions with contentment at any stage of life, and activate a shift.