What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?
by James Roland
Twenty-somethings beware: The quarter-life crisis is real. It’s even on Wikipedia.
Symptoms include depression, financial stress, and extreme bouts of 80s nostalgia. Or, in the case of four Canadian men, it might manifest itself through a documentary called The Buried Life.
Ben Nemtin, Dave Lingwood, and brothers Jonnie and Duncan Penn met in February 2006. Through a series of random conversations they uncovered a similar passion for adventure, oddball sense of humor, and the same nagging question lurking in their minds: “What do you want to do before you die?”
Slowly they formed a plan that took its name from a 150-year-old poem by Matthew Arnold:
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets
But often, in the din of strife
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life
The team compiled a list of 50 things
to do before they died and hit the road that summer, planning to cross off as many as possible and help 50 other people to do the same. In two weeks they accomplished 26 items and helped 24 strangers.
The guys filmed their adventures for a seven-part video journal that they posted to their website and YouTube. Suddenly strangers began to call and e-mail, some offering help, others asking the Buried Life team for help accomplishing their own goals. Clearly one road-trip wasn’t enough, so the boys plotted their second journey for summer, 2007.
The four friends joined forces in Victoria, British Columbia. A local business donated office space and they set out to plan their American road-trip, this time with a full list of 100 items.
The longer trip demanded a larger project; the boys decided to make a documentary. Paying their expenses out of pocket, with help from private donations and local businesses who threw fundraisers, they worked long hours to find the right director, equipment, and all the contacts they would need to help them cross things off their list. Then, just weeks before they were set to leave, they found Los Angeles-based documentarian Brad Tiemann and the Levi Strauss Company made a major donation, allowing The Buried Life crew to buy the final element of their plan: Penelope, a thirty-year-old touring bus.
They left Canada in August, 2007, and drove Penelope two straight days to the Burning Man festival in Nevada. There they joined Tiemann
and his three-person documentary crew, who traveled with them for the rest of the trip.
Along the way they took children with cancer on a toy store shopping spree, rode bulls, infiltrated the MTV Movie Awards, and sang the National Anthem in front of a crowded stadium.
The final film is being edited for a Spring 2009 release, and will document the team’s 6,000 mile journey in a bright purple bus with no speedometer, no odometer, no gas gauge, and over two million miles on its Detroit-built engine.
Professionalism and a certain amateurish charm infuse every aspect of The Buried Life project. All four guys are young, energetic, and completely justified in all of their wide-eyed optimism. They never seem annoying, there is no bubbly Richard Simmons-esque self-help, but they seem to succeed in all of their tasks by sheer will and a belief in humanity that many would label naive.
Their major tour ended in September, 2008, but they still have over twenty entries to cross off their list. And with strangers still calling and offering them help with items such as #68: swim with sharks, there is a lot more life waiting to be unearthed.
Photos by Kyle Jewell, courtesy of Buried Life.
Watch The Buried Life crew take over eBay.
