"compelling is only the beginning... brutally truthful... a movie for anyone with a love for life and the need to celebrate our very existence, it provides hope out of nothing and a display of the ultimate will to succeed. This is a celebration... The spirit of the film brought tears to my eyes."
A new film brings the founder of the world's most celebrated marathon to life. By John Hanc
For New York City Marathon race director Fred Lebow, Marathon Sunday began Saturday night. Following the prerace pasta party, Lebow would be driven on the 26.2-mile course to make sure every pothole was filled, every illegally parked car towed. By 4 a.m., he was at the staging area, barking orders into a bullhorn, straightening barricades, inspecting the tautness of balloons, parrying journalists, and checking weather reports, according to biographer Ron Rubin. Later that afternoon, Lebow would leave the winners' press conference and head to Central Park, where he would high-five the back-of-the-pack finishers until dark.
Grete had told us earlier that she would do this. She is battling cancer herself--she looks and sounds great is about all I know, and all I can tell you--and she said she was worried that the movie would prove too emotional for her. This was probably a good decision. When the lights came back up 90 minutes later, there was scarcely a dry eye in the house.
Mr. Ehrlich has rescued archival footage depicting some of the earliest runners as they cut across the vast Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and trek into Queens, where organizers originally feared no crowds would turn out. This is the city at its very best: Strangers run next to strangers, winding through neighborhoods they wouldn't otherwise see, cheered on by people they would never otherwise meet.
The New York City Marathon has grown from a small event in Central Park involving a few hundred people in 1970 into a citywide extravaganza that attracts top runners from all over the world as well as casual athletes looking to conquer their own personal Everest.
The main reason for that is Fred Lebow, a classic New Yorker whose story is told in the new documentary "Run for Your Life," directed by Judd Ehrlich.
It shows Lebow galvanizing the sport by coming up with crazy promotions like a bagel run, a New Year's Eve Run and a race up the stairs of the Empire State Building, all while helping to give the city a much-needed shot of civic pride.
"The marathon came at a time when the city was in such dire straits," says Ehrlich, who worked on the Ric Burns documentary "New York." "[The marathon] was something that celebrated the city and it not only made New Yorkers feel good about New York, but made the world see it in a different way. It very quickly became a worldwide phenomenon and Fred became an emissary of the sport worldwide."
It was Lebow's genius, says Ehrlich, to build the marathon up into a massive event while keeping the focus on the average competitor."He always said, 'I don't want this to become a business,'" says Ehrlich. "He was at every race and the club was always open and people would be changing in the lobby. It was about making the sport bigger and yet there was this balance of not letting money rule the day."
And yes, Ehrlich feels compelled to tackle the marathon himself - and has cajoled much of his film crew to run it with him.
"It's appropriate that I'm new to running because that's what Fred was all about," says Ehrlich. "He ran like a duck, he was in the back of the pack and for him that didn't matter. He was the right guy to take that populist message out there." - Michael Giltz
"Back in the '60s, the New York Road Runners Club was just a small group of men who ran on the streets of the Bronx. It took one eccentric first-generation Jewish immigrant from Transylvania to turn the NYRR into the largest organization of its kind in the world. Fred Lebow (the erstwhile Fischl Lebowitz) brought the runners to Central Park, where the first New York City Marathon was held in 1970. By the next year New York had two-thirds more runners than the Boston Marathon. But that was just the start for Lebow.
Before "event marketing," when corporate sponsorship was in its infancy, Lebow was cutting deals, getting Playboy bunnies to race in the first women's mini-marathon, and helping to feed the growing popularity of running as a social activity. But it was the 26-mile, five-borough marathon, first held in 1976 during the city's financial crisis, that cemented Lebow's legacy. With a flair for showmanship, Lebow leveraged every opportunity, even the 1980 transit strike, to promote the benefits of running. He also faced scandals, including the Rosie Ruiz incident and revelations that he had paid athletes under the table. With New York City Marathon winners Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar, and Grete Waitz on hand, as well as many of Lebow's former colleagues, filmmaker Judd Ehrlich (the Emmy-nominated Mayor of the West Side) takes an affectionate look at a New York hero who inspired runners worldwide to go the distance. Fred Lebow's story is the story of the New York Marathon, a scrappy race around Central Park that evolved into a five-borough event that attracts thousands of runners from around the world."
