“Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story” is a documentary on the life and work of Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical which holds free weekend clinics to provide medical, dental and vision care to people who otherwise not have any. “My research skills as a filmmaker go no further than checking the newspaper,” he says, laughing. “Here’s somebody doing an incredible humanitarian relief effort, but in the United States, where you might not expect it’s needed.
“Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story” is a documentary on the life and work of Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical which holds free weekend clinics to provide medical, dental and vision care to people who otherwise not have any. “So after reading the article on Sunday evening, I thought, I’m just going to Google this organization. I’m so buzzed up about this I’m going to call them now,” he says. “I call and somebody picks up the phone like, ‘Hello,
It’s clear from the film, and conversations with both Angell and Poppy Green, RAM’s marketing manager, that Brock had a knack for spotting talented people who just needed a nudge to join him on his mission. Then, too, the filmmaker realized there was just too much great material, stories and archival footage, to let the Stan Brock story unspool through the passive medium of observation.
“Can you imagine the moment I discovered that shot existed?” Angell says. “So that’s out of Stan’s personal filing cabinet, an old VHS tape. “I spent years working alongside him,” Green says of what motivated Brock to dedicate the last half of his life to RAM. “I would see him in the morning, going to work out and see him eating out of his single pots that ate from. There was always this element in which he seemed to understand no other way of living.”