Among the key interview subjects in “Requiem for a Running Back,” a documentary now showing at the Gene Siskel Film Center, is Mike Ditka, a man whose professional path frequently crossed that of Lew Carpenter, the legendary Green Bay Packer player and coach at the center of the film.
“I knew he was a hard-nosed guy,” said Rebecca Carpenter, director of the film about her father. “I knew he saw football as a meritocracy. He believed you had to be tough to survive in the sport.”
When she learned Ditka had taken over Gridiron Greats, an organization focused on helping ex-players in dire need of medical services for financial assistance, it was a “big deal. If Mike Ditka was actually getting involved in philanthropy to help former players, I knew I had to speak to him.”
Though her father displayed signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy as his behavior deteriorated, Carpenter began the “Requiem” project hoping to discover CTE was not a solid thing — that perhaps the neurological disorder “was greatly over-reported by both the mainstream and medical press.”
Her many, many conversations with ex-players, their family members, her own mother and sisters and key medical professionals convinced Carpenter that “while we don’t know the exact chemical and mechanical events that cause CTE — that causes the toxicity that doesn’t clear out of the brain after injury — we do now know approximately what that process is.”
As for Ditka, there is no longer any question. In the film, at a critical moment, the NFL icon is asked, “Would you let your 8-year-old kid play football?” Without hesitation, Ditka affirms, “No.”
