Taylor Taglianetti was a bit scared of leading off her debut feature “What’s Next” where most filmmakers would surely end it, with the triumph of Dr. Howard Tucker stepping up the mound at Progressive Field in his hometown of Cleveland where the Guardians play to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.
“It was a risk just to open with the first pitch,” said Taglianetti. “But we did [create a version] that told the story very chronologically and it was boring, so we had to get creative.”
In some ways, it seems like Taglianetti was still being true to the chronology of the story even as she was shaking things up when feels as though Dr. Tucker is only just getting started even at the age of 100 and rather than the kind of honor that one receives upon retirement, the Guardians were celebrating his status as the oldest practicing physician in the U.S. Even as the director met Dr. Tucker as much of the world put their lives on pause during the pandemic, she finds him staying busy as a neurologist at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center while his sons Todd, Seth and Peter all worry he may be putting his own health at risk, though the family clearly has remarkable genes. (Dr. Tucker’s younger brother shows up to his century-mark festivities at a spry 96 and his wife Sue also maintains her psychiatry practice at 90.)
Of all possible documentary subjects, Dr. Tucker is surprisingly not one for sit-down interviews, resisting the staircase chair lift that was installed in his home after breaking his neck at 87 while skiing and eager to buzz about in one of his vintage automobiles, but while he clearly hasn’t slowed down and has the mind of twenty-year-old, the world seems more tentative around him as his hospital is threatened by budget cuts and his license to drive is at risk when his age is seen as a liability. Still, his grandson Austin is seen having trouble keeping up with him when he’s obliged to come over and help Dr. Tucker out with any computer matters and the two start chronicling their antics for social media where the neurologist becomes a viral sensation and for as much as Taglianetti is able to capture all he’s up to in the present day, she finds that his 15 minutes of fame now is only the fraction of a remarkable life in which Dr. Tucker has had a career on par with his boyhood idol Satchel Paige, who could only make his debut with Cleveland at 42 when major league baseball was desegregated, saving lives as a doctor and constantly refreshing his own interests with his continual openness to new experiences from trying out food he’s never tasted before to obtaining a law degree in his late sixties.
Given his previous start for a Guardians game, it won’t be Dr. Tucker’s first time playing thousands when “What’s Next” makes its debut at the Cleveland Film Festival this week, followed up by a bow at the Miami Film Festival just after, but the charming doc is bound to introduce the masses to an extraordinarily inspirational figure and recently, Taglianetti spoke about the life lessons she could take away from being by his side for the past three years, the wisdom we’re losing from neglecting stories of older generations and safely navigating a production during the pandemic.
How did this come about?
Dr. Tucker’s grandson Austin and I went to college together, and over the years he would always proudly share all of Howard’s crazy accomplishments. I had graduated NYU and was looking for my first feature and then the pandemic hit, so I didn’t think I was going to have the opportunity to make a movie at all, but Austin called me one day and said, “My grandfather’s been sneaking out of the house to save lives in the hospital during the pandemic.” And I said, “Alright, here’s my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tell this story.” We [conceived of it] as a short first, but we quickly realized that we could not do Howard justice with 15 minutes, so we decided to develop it to feature, and the story really evolved before our eyes.
Was Austin always a part of this as an on-screen facilitator as much as off of it?
Actually, when we did this as a short, Austin wasn’t even on camera at all, but behind the scenes, I had seen these really quirky interactions because Howard always was asking Austin for tech help and being a family friend, that’s how I saw their relationship over the years — Howard just calling Austin constantly, asking him to do something on the computer. So I saw this unique relationship between them — 75 years apart — and I [thought] Howard’s opening up in a totally different way, a lot less formally with Austin than me, so I said, “I have to capture this.” The story is much better seeing it through Austin’s eyes as this millennial who’s really trying to understand how to live a meaningful life through his grandfather’s extraordinary existence.
What was it like getting him out into the world away from his practice? I’ve heard that’s Howard eating his first Reuben sandwich on camera and first burrito, as well.
Every day it was just something new for him. The funny thing about the Reuben is that was the day that we shot in the synagogue, we took a break and I’m just sitting there [thinking], “It’s so funny that even at a hundred years old, we’re having this experience with him and there’s something new to enjoy about life.” And it could be as simple as a burrito or a Reuben sandwich. That’s just a testament to the wonderment that Howard lives with every day and the appreciation he has for just being alive and present and enjoy everything that comes his way. The most fun we had was we’d take him to karaoke or we’d take him to an amusement park for a Tiktok. He’d be up for literally anything.
I understand you were pretty instrumental in setting up his social media presence. How did that interact with the filmmaking?
It’s pretty interesting because what you see in the film is almost three years of filming, but we decided to tell it in a way that doesn’t seem like that. We had been shooting for a year before he became a TikTok sensation, but we decided to start the story there, during his 100th birthday. We couldn’t have anticipated what was to come, but we had been filming and we wanted to launch him on social media and then all of a sudden it just blew up. And it’s so fascinating to see him get recognition at a time when like he feels like he’s actually losing relevancy in his field and feeling lost in what he’s loved and cherished doing and has done so well for 75 years.
And you were led to film during COVID, but it doesn’t become an overwhelming element of the film. Was it behind the scenes?
Definitely behind the scenes, we took a risk making this during COVID. He didn’t have any problems making a movie during COVID and he was going out to the hospital [to work], but for us as human beings just caring about him, we were [asking], “Do you even want to do this?” We took every precaution necessary to make this as safe a set as possible. But it was very challenging because we didn’t have that flexibility of a non-COVID set and we had to make sure that [Howard] rested, even if he didn’t want to. He actually got COVID in the middle of us filming, and it was unrelated to our production. But we were terrified. He also randomly got bit by a bat in the middle of production, and all the things that happened to him and he comes back, we were like, “Come on, Howard, this is just impossible.” When he got COVID, it was like nothing to him, and when I got COVID, I was out for like a week. Howard woke up the next day and he’s just like, “I’m going to work.”
My mind is still reeling from hearing that he was 87 when he survived a ski accident.
He said that he would give up medicine just to go [back] on the slopes one day — that’s how important that skiing is to him. But yeah, he doesn’t stop. This is a guy who was jumping over puddles during production and won’t use a cane. It’s unbelievable.
It leads to one of my favorite sequences in the film where you cut between him and his concerned sons who talk about how they wish he’d observe a few more safety precautions. Was that a fair assessment of the feelings within the family about this?
We had a very different version of the movie where we were going to really dive into [how] everyone’s scared as hell for Howard’s safety, but it wasn’t the lighthearted movie we wanted it to be and that’s just not who Howard is. There are real concerns about a man that age doing those things, but at the same time you say if he’s allowed to practice medicine, how can you say he doesn’t have the ability to say whether or not he should be able to drive? So it’s an interesting consideration because there are older people who want to drive or ski, for instance, and here’s a man who’s incredibly with it mentally, so how do you delicately handle that situation? Especially if it’s coming from your own children. So we took a big chance and decided to say, “Hey, we’re going to make this not necessarily cute, but more of the life-affirming and positive” and I’m proud of it.
Is it hard to organize a story around such a long life, clearly well-lived?
It was absolutely a nightmare. You’re looking at 100 years of someone’s life, and that’s tough on its own. But then you’re looking at someone’s 100 years that he’s filled to the brim. We didn’t even get to fit everything in. He was also the chief of neurology of the Atlantic Fleet during the Korean War and we could have covered his expansive legal career. But we laser focused on this one year of his life that older adults experience when they start aging and he experiencing it more for the first time at 100, which is very peculiar and interesting and sad, because he doesn’t really have anyone to relate to [as his age]. Probably the biggest challenge for us was how do we maximize this man’s story in a very short period of time and how do you tell it in a way that captivates audiences?
Was there anything that changed your ideas of what this could be?
We could have never anticipated that he was going to become famous [while we were filming], so that that definitely changed things and [also] telling it from Austin’s perspective. But on another level for me, I didn’t ever think we were going to deal with faith or mortality and one of the most important scenes, even though people may think it’s derailing from the [main] trajectory of the story, is how he deals with the impermanence of life and doesn’t really accept death. I think that’s what allows him to continue with that youthful spirit, and I was surprised by a lot of the things that he had answered in that section.
From that experience alone, that made me feel more comfortable with the idea of things being impermanent and just taking advantage of the individual moment and [ask myself] how we can put others first to for the betterment of society in a day-to-day way [rather than] thinking about we’re all going to die one day. He’s made me have an appreciation for life in a way that I don’t think I ever would have and I’ve never encountered that kind of perspective from anybody else ever before. It makes me feel grateful to be alive.
The film really has that life-affirming quality and it was interesting to see your background since it didn’t necessarily seem like you were on a directing track. Did you find you were well-prepared for it from your other experiences?
To be honest, I didn’t have much of an ambition to go into directing. But when the pandemic hit, my whole filmmaking philosophy changed where I wanted to be more hands-on in a storytelling capacity and I have a lot of respect and admiration for seniors and older adults. Throughout my life, I’ve just been able to talk to older adults in a way that I can’t talk to my peers and when I saw so many seniors dying during the pandemic, I just [thought], “Look at all those stories that are gonna be lost too.” Without it sounding too trite, I am an old soul and I felt I might be the perfect person to tell a story like this, especially in a time where everyone’s kind of lost, looking for how to live a meaningful life, especially after something so tragic and life-changing as the pandemic, and because I had known Austin as a friend, and I saw the relationship evolve [between him and Howard], I thought I could tell this in a way that no one else could.
So I took a risk given that it was my first feature film and for even a very experienced director, it’s a difficult film, [with] 100 years of someone’s life and it’s not a subject that a lot of people tackle, but I felt a need to go from the person who is very business-oriented and structural to take on the experience of directing and now for this, I did both.
The premiere is still to come, but what’s it like just to have this under your belt?
There were a lot of times when I thought I was going to give up on this project, not because I wanted to, but because it was so difficult. We had to do this in a very untraditional way because of Howard’s age and we didn’t have time to do a comprehensive fundraising strategy in the beginning, so we were funding as we were going on and I was learning as I was doing for every aspect of the production. Austin and I were just absolutely burned out many times and we both sacrificed three years of our lives to this. But to be able to share this with Howard there, that was the goal all along. We wanted to be able to enjoy it with him and I’m overwhelmed that we’re going to be able to get to do that with him on Sunday.
Is it true he hasn’t seen it yet?
He has not. And just how unique of an experience is it to be at this theater [in Cleveland] where he’s grown up, seeing productions, that’s 3,400 seats, and the whole community’s going to come down to see his life on the big screen. I can’t imagine what his reaction’s going to be. I’m really excited.
“What’s Next” will screen at the Cleveland Film Festival at KeyBank State Theatre on April 7th at 2:20 pm and April 9th at 2:25 pm and at the Miami Film Festival on April 13th at noon at the O Cinema South Beach.
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