Team Size: 4
Timeframe: 1.5 years
Role: Writer, Director, Editor
Date Completed: June 2025
What does it mean, not just to live a long life, but a meaningful life? In this documentary feature, centenarian Jack Weber – community leader, veteran, family man, and lifelong New Yorker – discusses with his filmmaker grandson lessons that we can all take to heart about service, family, resilience, and more, shot during the year of his centennial – 2024.
Check out our full-length website here!!
Our Process
Pre-Production
Our producer of newly-formed independent film company, Weber Floyd Productions, Barbara Weber-Floyd, had just finished completion of her father’s – Jack Weber’s – memoir, “Jack Weber Here,” released in 2023. Published when Jack turned 99, there was now a question of what to do next in the lead-up to his 100th birthday in upcoming 2024.
Around this time, Barbara found via the Washington Post a request for stories of centenarians to be released in a series of articles and the lessons they can bequeath to next generations. Recognizing that Jack’s story indeed was a good story, she contacted me about potentially turning my grandfather’s story into a documentary short film in conjunction with sending his story to the Washington Post.
Coincidentally, I was looking for a next project having ended my time at Nickelodeon a few months prior. I also recognized my grandfather’s story as a great story. In truth, going back to when I was younger, I always saw the path he took – building himself up from nothing via education and hard work, the magic of the way he met my grandmother, Betty, his reslience to many life tragedies that followed, etc. – as an inspiring one that could work in film form.
Especially given the fact that at the time, he was unilaterally active and in substantially good health at 100 – something that is unusual and that we felt could drive interest.
So I signed on for the project.
Production
At the time, the idea was to film daily activities of my grandfather along with interviews of his past life, for the two-month period of time between March and May of 2024, in the build-up to his 100th birthday on May 5th. Some of our desired shot selections included:
- Playing Golf
- Watching the Mets
- Ice cream at 10pm
- Days out in town
- Going to the Movies (Gone with the Wind 85th anniversary)
- Passover and Family Time
- Visiting his Old Neighborhood
- Visiting the Cemetery
- Driving
- 100th Birthday Party
We figured that it would be tight, but that we had the makings of a succinct 40-minute short film, if cut together with Jack’s interviews regarding:
- Meeting my grandmother and love
- Family
- Service with Lions Clubs International
- Time as a WWII Veteran
- Memories as a Kid of Life in NYC in the 1920-30s
- Conversations about Baseball
- Lessons of Loss, Life, and Resilience
Of course, my grandfather is magnetic on camera. When he talks talking, the stories blossom and expand into nigh-novellas. And we realized that one of the lessons of his life is that life goes on, whether it is good or bad, so we continued shooting long after his 100th birthday and decided to create a snapshot of not just his centennial lessons, but his centennial year itself.
Post-Production
Once shooting was completed, we categorized all of our footage based on the location/setting/activity, as well as the lesson being exposited in said shot. We then constructed a script divided into five acts so as to focus on Jack’s life in an interweaving present and past narrative.
It was early in the editing process that followed that we realized that attempting to make a 40-minute film out of our footage would be a grand challenge, so pivoted into the idea simply that Jack Weber’s story is emotionally engaging and universal to the point that a documentary feature was necessary. Jack isn’t one of those grand celebrities who became famous. He is an ordinary man with ordinary values. And that in itself, is magical.
In the end, our documentary ended up being 109 minutes. Or rather, 101 minutes (the age my grandfather was turing in 2025) plus credits.
And yes, Jack ended up in the Washington Post too.
Matthew Floyd 