"Murderball" Speaks to Viewers Worldwide
by Maryann Brinley

	Steve Kirshblum

Starring shockingly honest men who have been forced to live life sitting down, it’s a film that easily dismantles all stereotypical thinking about what it means to be paralyzed. That’s a goal Kirshblum keenly espouses as the director of the Spinal Cord Injury Program at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation and a Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS). “I was thrilled to be involved in this movie and have segments filmed at Kessler.” Yet, it’s not surprising that the three young film-makers — Dana Adam Shapiro, Henry-Alex Rubin and Jeffrey Mandel — found their way to Kirshblum in West Orange. Patients from all over the world, including the late Christopher Reeve, have sought his expertise.

“Getting involved in a movie is not something we ordinarily do but I believe it’s a film that will have an impact for now as well as for future generations of persons who sustain spinal cord injury. It was also exciting for me. You know, acting is tough,” he adds. For his part as the real doctor caring for Keith Cavill, a young man newly paralyzed after a motorbike accident, Kirshblum was required to do “25 to 30 camera takes using all different mannerisms. The lines were my own but boy did they coach me. Do I really have that Brooklyn accent?” he laughs.

	Movie reviewer Roger Ebert, in the Chicago Sun-Times, called Murderball: “Amazing. It’s not really a sports film… it’s a way to see into lives, hopes and fears.” Variety described the film as “Powered by a fantastic subject and real-life characters who would be difficult to invent.” And in Rolling Stone, this documentary was said to “create a new definition of courage.”

Eventually, in one scene, he was filmed wearing his white coat — a jacket that had been hanging in his office, virtually untouched, since 1990. “I had decided when I was a medical student that I wasn’t going to wear a white coat.” Holding a coffee cup taken from his book shelf and looking sternly serious but playful and right into the camera, Kirshblum was supposed to resemble the host on the old PBS Masterpiece Theater episodes. “All I needed was a pipe,” he says. “We couldn’t find one here.” In this somewhat comic scene, he offers advice to patients on sex.

“Sex is a topic that is important to bring up with patients because they may be embarrassed to do so themselves,” Kirshblum explains. When hospitalized after a spinal cord injury, the first question someone has is: Will I walk again? Yet, not far below that concern are questions in their minds about sexuality. “Married couples, single guys, girls, almost everyone wants to know what they can expect. And they are always surprised to know that sex can still be fun.” To help patients handle this aspect of their recovery, Kessler Institute produced its own video years ago called Sexuality Reborn with actor/dancer Ben Vereen narrating. In fact, scenes from the Kessler movie, which has worldwide distribution and has been reproduced in German, were used in Murderball.

“A lot of stories about people overcoming obstacles are unintentionally condescending,” explains Shapiro. “We never wanted to make one of those pat-on-the-back, good-for-you films,” the kind that says, “‘Look at the inspiring cripples.’ The guys we got to know while making this movie get up earlier, exercise longer, eat healthier, travel more, get hotter girlfriends, and most of them can kick our asses.” One star, Mark Zupan, “looks as if he were straight out of a Mad Max film,” explains co-producer Rubin. His competitive edge on the murderball court is so powerful that it’s almost malevolent, but Zupan, covered in tattoos, sporting a buzz cut and goatee, also appears on screen flirting with his pretty girlfriend. Meanwhile, “the wheelchairs become seamless parts of the characters, like signature pieces of clothing,” Mandel explains.

According to Kirshblum, one of the great things about competitive sports — whether it’s quad rugby, bowling, wheelchair racing, or sled hockey — is that his patients gain self-confidence, get peer support, and can go back into a mainstream of life. Kessler even sponsors its own wheelchair racing team. “When they feel good about themselves, it carries over into other aspects, like dating, marriage and family. This is what you see in the movie.”

Visually, what you also get is how hard the real work of recovery can be. Scenes with Cavill — learning to put on velcro-sneakers, struggling through rehab sessions and joking with staffers while opening a card and exchanging emails during his discharge from Kessler — “anchor the film,” Shapiro explains, showing the “transition from able-body to quad.” Without Cavill, viewers wouldn’t have been able to understand what the other players had already gone through years
earlier. This film actually took five years to complete, Kirshblum explains, so by the time the New York premiere of Murderball arrived, Cavill had gained strength as well as confidence. At that event, he was presented with his own special wheelchair.
“You can be witty, sexy, intelligent — and all these things in a wheelchair,” Kirshblum says. “Your personality doesn’t change.” According to old pals interviewed in Murderball, foul-mouthed Zupan, who was injured as a teenager, was always a jerk. But he “was also great when interacting with patients. He was sweet, comfortable and
comforting,” the doctor recalls. What comes out in the movie is that every person in a wheelchair is just like anybody else. There is no such thing as a typical spinal cord patient. More importantly, “It’s not something to hide anymore. Some people look at rehabilitation medicine and what I do and groan. ‘You work with patients who have spinal cord and brain injuries. How depressing,’ they’ll say to me.

“I perform a lot of clinical research,” Kirshblum explains, “but the most important thing here at Kessler Institute is that we make patients better. We may not be able to cure them because there is no cure at this time. What people forget is that it is good care that will allow patients to move back into the real world, to their families and communities. So, if I can take someone who is as depressed as can be, get him back up medically, physically and emotionally, going to work, and maybe even being a role model, well then,” he says, “there is nothing that could be more rewarding in medicine than what I do.”