Stand Up To Cancer

Show night. We've been waiting nearly a year for this. Preparing, helping in any way we could. Sure, Stand Up To Cancer is where the end of cancer begins, and in a way the show was the start. But it was also the end of the beginning, if that makes any sense. And we were freaking out. We had helped conceive of, helped build a website, been a part of making the show a reality, and now we couldn't of course head into the truck where Director Louis J. Horvitz and producer Laura Ziskin and an amazing tech crew were about to work their magic. Like passengers on a commuter flight, we had to let the pilots take control. Now, on the precipice, we had to resign ourselves to simply going along for the ride. So we snuck into the house at the Kodak and snagged a few seats. And then we looked at each other and smiled. You could feel the electricity in the building, the lump in your throat rising, the work and ideation and sometimes frustration maybe we hoped we hoped we hoped becoming reality and success. Louis got on the loudspeaker to thank the crowd, to thank the networks, and to let us know we were 1 minute from an hour of live tv. We locked eyes again, remembering that getting a show of this magnitude in under an hour wasn't going to be a cakewalk, even for people as world-class qualified as Louis and Laura. The house lights came down, and the Manifesto began to play. Did we mention the Sidney Portier is a Godhead? Ridiculous. As the hour wore on, with Patrick Swayze's appearance propelling a theater and hopefully millions of viewers to rise up out of their chairs, Jamest Taylor and Sheryl Crow delivering a heartbreaking rendition of "Fire and Rain," Errol Morris's film package on survivors, the Simpsons, the Divas, Brad Garret, Dana Delaney. Don't mean to just list every star but we're still awed that this happened (under an hour!) We began to forget the anxiety we felt everytime the crowd applauded and the seconds grew longer, everytime a line was delivered with an extra word, a song sung with an extra chord, and just sank into the show. We couldn't help it. No matter how many times you see Errol's film and we've seen it a lot), you can't help but tear up. Specific to cancer but universal it's about family and community and sadness and finaly empowerment and in a way embodies the whole show, the entire message: this sucks. It's sad. It's terrifying. And we have to do something about it. And it was funny and Jack Black hit the nail on the head and relieved the sometimes tension of rich people asking for your money just by shining a light on it in his Jack Blackian way. Meryl Streep reminded everyone that we (the pubic) have gotten together to beat seemingly unbeatable odds with terrible disease(Polio) before, anf through a confluence of celebrity pleas and public donations, no less. The musical performances were mindnumbing. When Melissa Etheridge delivered her Stand For Life (a special for SU2C version of I Run For Life), we snuck up on stage at the end, along with a few others from the crowd. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was remarking that they'd never been quite so proud to be part of a benefit like this (believe us, this was one of many benefits that these stars get invited to). For many, this was too special, too impactful, and possibly too influential and revolutionary to be anything but exceptional, even in the exceptional world of charity work.

We cried during the show and we cried afterward because it had happened. Because it was an unqualified success. Because now things really begin. We hugged and laughed when we saw Laura. The entire thing was surreal, and after so much planning and work, lighting fast. But it was also unendingly rewarding. We believe this will make a difference. It will because of those of you who watched and donated and continue to build these moments of triumph into a movement and force that doesn't stop until we win, until the need for a show like this and an organization like Stand Up To Cancer no longer exists.

We had so many favorite moments in the show (all of them, really, though finding out we hadn't gotten in on time and not gotten cut off at the hour mark was a pretty startling and gratifying moment in itself), but the fact that the show started, that it happened, that things have really begun, the moment the lights went down and we found out it was really and truly happening, that was our highlight. You?

Julia & Eli