Dying To Be Frozen: The Production of a Cryonics Documentary By Jake McCurdy
off to tell that story with little experience, scant resources and the blind self-assurance that ensured I’d recognize neither. A Tragic Beginning One morning in January of 2013 I received a call from Bill Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation.
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fter a 7-year odyssey, the film Dying To Be Frozen is now available on digital streaming platforms. This 72-minute documentary is the most comprehensive look at cryonics on film to date. The film retells some of the most controversial events in the history of cryonics through the lens of Kim Suozzi, a 23 year old who died of brain cancer after fighting to raise the funds for her cryopreservation. I was its unwitting and naïve director. The story of how Dying To Be Frozen was made is similar to the story of so many cryonics projects where good intentions were waylaid by inexperience and overconfidence. I made nearly every mistake I could directing and producing this film, and this is the story of how it came to fruition in spite of me. Background In the spring of 2011, Kim had been diagnosed with brain cancer. She was a highly intelligent and vibrant young woman and she knew that her diagnosis was likely a death sentence. Over the next two years she set off on a journey that would eventually lead her to where she is today: in ‘suspension,’ floating in liquid nitrogen at Alcor. She embraced cryonics as a means to possibly extend her shortened life and have some hope for the future. The cryonics community would return that embrace and help her fulfill her last wishes. I believe she faced her death with bravery but sought cryonics with the pragmatism of someone with nothing left to lose. But this isn’t a story about Kim. You’ll have to watch the film to see her journey retold along with the history and controversies that make cryonics so fascinating. This is the story of how I set
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Kim Suozzi was in hospice care and would likely die within days if not hours. The Life Extension Foundation was looking for a producer in the area to help capture her story before it was too late. I had a wealth of experience as an interviewer and that’s all I thought this would take. Neither Bill nor I could imagine that this would eventually become a feature length documentary. All I expected was what Bill had asked for, a way to capture some of Kim’s last words for posterity. That afternoon I arrived at Kim’s hospice and met her friends, family, and Josh Schisler, her boyfriend and caregiver. I knew that this was going to be difficult as I set out to convince as many of them as possible to step away from her bedside to give an interview in the coming hours. They had all been living her journey for the last two years and here I was, a complete stranger stepping in to ask for immediate trust at their most vulnerable moment. And perhaps that was my first mistake… The next day, my crew and I had the bittersweet task of filming Kim’s last interview and the last wishes and thoughts of her family and friends who had gathered to see her off. A week later she succumbed to her illness and was transported to Alcor to have her head cryopreserved. A Larger Story to tell After that series of interviews, I waited for a week or two as the first word of her death, then cryopreservation procedure, came. Bill Faloon had asked me to do some additional interviews with those involved in her procedure and other prominent cryonicists with thoughts on her case but we waited as the family grieved and the cryonicists involved recovered from the long standby. As I waited I began to think about what a huge story this really was. All I saw was the opportunity to tell a wider story on this fascinating topic. I couldn’t find any feature length documentaries
Cryonics / 4th Quarter 2020
www.alcor.org
