‘If I can do it, you can do it’

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This article was published 16/09/2017 (3320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jeff Bauman was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he showed up to cheer his then-girlfriend near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013.

After two devastating explosions rocked the event, Bauman woke up in a hospital and was told by his friend he had lost both his legs above the knee.

Bauman couldn’t talk because of the airway that had been placed in his throat. He asked for a paper and pen, and among his very first words, he wrote: “Lt. Dan.”

As it turned out, Bauman, then 27, was a movie fan, so it was probably natural his first connection to the idea of being an amputee was recalling the legless character played by Gary Sinise in the movie Forrest Gump.

Bauman himself has now become a character in a movie. Stronger, directed by David Gordon Green, stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Bauman and Tatiana Maslany as his girlfriend Erin Hurley, the woman who would become Bauman’s wife and the mother to their daughter. (The two have since filed for divorce, but that new chapter of their fractious relationship isn’t covered in the movie.)

The movie had a première at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, where Gyllenhaal and Bauman showed up together to take questions from the press.

It turns out Bauman is a funny guy and, in the course of the film, that humour tends to shine through despite gruelling scenes depicting Bauman’s struggles with rehabilitation, post-traumatic stress and relationship travails.

“The script (written by playwright John Pollono) was so funny,” Gyllenhaal says. “One of the reasons it was so unique was how much I was laughing in a movie that was about such a tragic moment, although it was ultimately inspiring.

“Literally, the first thing he said in real life when he woke up was: ‘Lt. Dan.’”

“Life’s hard and humour deflects a lot,” Bauman says. “It kinda gets you through and it bonds people closer together. When people are laughing, you’re together.

“That’s huge for me, to just laugh,” he says. “I’m glad the movie went there. It’s real.”

But of course, the movie goes to some dark places, too, especially in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, when Bauman confronts his devastating injuries. But even in that specific suffering is a story of universal significance, Gyllenhaal says.

“I think the movie is about anyone who is struggling with anything,” Gyllenhaal explains. “A story like Jeff’s makes you think: ‘you know what? I can get up. I’m going to try to get past that next second, that next minute, that next hour, whatever it might be and I can get there.’

“So it made me look at the world around me a little differently. I don’t know if I would be able to get through what he got through,” Gyllenhaal says. “And every time I say that, he says, ‘If I can do it, you can do it.’

“And I’m stuck,” Gyllenhaal laughs.

For Bauman’s part, after working with Gyllenhaal, Pollono and Green, he felt confident enough about their approach that he chose not to visit the set while the movie was shooting.

“I didn’t want to interfere,” Bauman says. “It wasn’t my business.

“My business was already kind of taken care of,” he says. “I was helping Jake and trying to make the story as true as can be.

“And I trusted everyone that worked on it, I really did,” he says. “I was a huge fan of Jake’s before I met him. I knew he was going to pour his heart into it.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing