Listen to the PodcastDirector Rebecca Carpenter’s father Lew Carpenter had an illustrious ten-year career in the NFL playing for Cleveland and Detroit and winning three NFL Championships with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. When he died in 2010, his brain was studied by Boston University and found to have symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) —a degenerative neurocognitive disorder that can cause episodes of rage, social withdrawal, and other unusual behaviors. Armed with answers to some of her biggest questions about her father, Carpenter has made an important and groundbreaking documentary chronicling the effects that playing professional football has on the health of the players and residual effects it has on their family members. In REQUIEM FOR A RUNNING BACK, we’re given interviews with Hall of Fame players and coaches, doctors who have dedicated their careers to CTE study, and the families of former players looking for answers as to why the NFL would continue to deny the link between playing football and the demise of once-stoic men. As NFL players continue to make headlines for amnesia, rage-induced attacks on family members, and suicides, this film begins as a tribute and ends up being a testimony to honor those who have sacrificed so much.
