MySpace 

BEN BYER
DIRECTOR / WRITER / PRODUCER
Ben Byer was born in Chicago in 1971.  He was diagnosed with ALS in 2002.  During the 31 years between these two occasions he has done many things, mostly legal.  After graduating from Evanston Township High School he studied Journalism at Indiana University and Film Theory at The University of Paris where he made short films on 8mm.  A job as a translator at the Cannes Film Festival led him to Hollywood where he worked for a producer of B-movies.  Returning to Chicago he took up acting and has since performed on many of that city's notable stages including Steppenwolf Theatre, Organic Theatre, Trap Door Theatre, European Repertory Company, Circle Theatre, Café Voltaire and the Staddschowburg Theatre in Amsterdam.  Like all struggling actors he left for Los Angeles and found himself selling beef out of the back of a truck.  This unsavory experience inspired him to write his first play, Take it Deep, which was produced to much success shortly before being diagnosed with a fatal neurodegenerative disease.  Unable to write or perform, Ben turned his attention towards film directing, a vocation more suited to the disabled.  In 2003 he co-founded ALS Film Fund with his sister Rebeccah Rush to produce original works of art, whether film, theatre, sculpture or other intended to create positive change for ALS sufferers around the world. Ben Byer died of ALS on July 3, 2008.