Baby boomers are getting old quickly, and while all of them have to struggle to deal with that, at least one has made a movie about it. How To Live Forever is 54 year old Mark Wexler’s latest documentary venture, focusing on the scientific and spiritual work surrounding humanity’s pursuit of longevity. In his personal journey to understand how to fight or accept aging Wexler talks with Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, Jack LaLanne, and many others. Catch a peek at the film in the trailer and clips below. Recently debuted in New York and Los Angeles, How To Live Forever is touring through the US and coming to a city near you. I had a brief chat with Wexler and the writer-director believes that “it’s very likely in the next 20-30 years that there we’ll be able to extend one’s life dramatically.” Perhaps How To Live Forever will help push mainstream culture to consider the possibilities and consequences of that radical lifespan extension before it arrives.
While there are many clips of the documentary available on the YouTube channel for the production company (Wexler’s World), two stand out as my clear favorites. The first is a brief look at Buster Martin, who before his death was Britain’s oldest working man at a ripe age of 101. Smoking fags, drinking pints, and running marathons – you gotta love this guy:
But How To Live Forever is about more than cute moments with geriatric badasses, it’s also an exploration of the science and debate surrounding the possibilities of immortality. In the following clip we get a taste of that debate as Wexler bounces back and forth between the opinions of Aubrey de Grey and Sherwin B. Nuland – two outspoken scientists in the field of health and longevity.
The motivation for creating How To Live Forever came from personal loss and challenge. In short order, Wexler lost his mother and received his AARP card, pushing home the realization that life could be running out. While the film documents Wexler then exploring how he might extend his life indefinitely, ultimately he ends up considering the “wider breadth of the longevity movement and the meaning of life.” Wexler’s journey through How To Live Forever leaves him “probably less concerned about the number of years, and more about the quality of life…though I still pop a lot of supplements.”
The combination of scientific exploration and personal acceptance sounds compelling and I look forward to watching the film when it comes through San Francisco in July. Make sure to check the How To Live Forever website to see when the tour will be headed your way. We’ll all have to take our own path to decide for ourselves if we want to live forever, but Wexler’s film is a great way to get the journey started. Go check it out.
[image and video credits: Wexler’s World Inc.]
[sources: How To Live Forever, Mark Wexler]
