I'm very grateful to my old friend, Stu Bykofsky, for the article on my present condition (see the Daily News article below), but I feel the need to reiterate that I am not feeling sorry for myself and am "hanging in there" for the long haul.

While it's true that I have end-stage renal failure, I have boundless energy which I am channeling into my work: specifically, a book called:

DEAF, DUMB & BLIND: DISABILITIES IN THE MOVIES

Alcoholism, Deformities, Drug Addiction, Mental Retardation, Blindness, Deafness, Physical and Emotional Breakdown, Dyslexia and everything in between.

For untold thousands of years, mankind has lived with disabilities, anomalies and deformities of every imaginable kind, occasionally embracing and even worshipping them, but most often shunning them and abandoning them to the darkness of fear, misunderstanding and ignorance.

But, from their humble beginnings, the movies have given a presence, a prominence and an inner dignity to those who are different from the rest of us. From The Hunchback of Notre Dame to The Elephant Man, from the lepers of Ben Hur to the blindess of Ray Charles, we have been given the chance to see the world through other eyes. We have been given the gift of enlightenment, education and even, on occasion, inspiration.

From actual issue-oriented films to misguided tales that used infirmities as the accessories of evil, it has been a long and bumpy road from the melodramas of the 20's, 30's and 40's to the political correctness of today and attitudes about the disabled have fortunately come a full 180 degrees to the right over the years. But a retrospective look at the way they've been portrayed in films has much to teach us about the disabled among us and, even more important, about ourselves.

I feel blessed to have been able to get the word out to help other people and, if you will just go to: NKFDV.org (National Kidney Foundation Delaware Valley), you can find out how to get yourself and your family screened for kidney disease FOR FREE. In other words, you don't have to let yourself develop this dreaded condition, so please protect yourself and your loved ones.

So please don't worry about me and, if you can, take a moment to say a prayer for those who are going through much worse than I am. Many of them are alone and frightened, neither of which I am. I have a loving family and wonderful friends and a positive attitude which enables me to smile through the bad times and hope for better times to come.

- Mr. Movie

* * * * * * * *

Article in Philadelphia Daily News, August 14, 2006:

For Steve Friedman, movies are a life-and-death thing
by Stu Bykofsky

MR. MOVIE is dying.

For the past two years, Steve Friedman - best known as Mr. Movie - has been dying of kidney failure. If he doesn't get a new kidney, he will die.

Which reminds him of a funny story.

He was coming out of intensive care, after one of the serious illnesses - migraines, high-blood pressure, a stroke - that have plagued but not embittered him throughout his life, when a gloomy doctor droned, "You have end-stage renal failure. That means you're going to die of kidney failure unless you get a transplant."

Mr. Movie burst out laughing.

The doctor "turned to Michelle, who was a wreck," Steve says, and said, "'Doesn't he understand?' "

Michelle, who is Friedman's wife, replied, "He's seen 20,000 films in which the doctor says you're going to die in front of you."

Then they both started to laugh, according to Steve.

I interrupt this anecdote to report that Michelle, an art director by trade, doesn't remember laughing at all.

At the time they had been married 20 years and had a 12-year-old daughter, Darragh. "I was horrified," says Michelle, now 54. "It was devastating to me."

She agrees Steve probably laughed, "but he was sad, because deep down he didn't see how he could fit things in."

Things that include teaching at Temple and Rosemont, hosting his popular Saturday 10 p.m.-1 a.m. movie show on WPHT (1210-AM), reading and writing about movies. (You can check his work on MrMovie.com)

Dialysis takes a minimum of 3 ? hours and he drives into town to have his blood cleansed of impurities every single Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Mr. Movie doesn't dwell on the negative, but admits the treatment is "excruciating."

Hidden under his right shirt sleeve, under the flesh of his biceps, Mr. Movie has a fistula, sort of a raised tube of flesh in which a vein and artery are joined to facilitate dialysis. His blood flows so closely to the surface you can feel it with a light finger's touch.

It's kind of grotesque and cool at the same time.

In his den, as you might expect, there are a lot of movie posters, plus DVDs, memorabilia, general tchochkes and a full-size Robby the Robot from the 1956 classic "Forbidden Planet." (Classic to me, anyway, because of Anne Francis.)

A fountain splashes in the pool outside his sprawling rancher in a corner of Malvern that's hard to find even with MapQuest.

Mr. Movie doesn't dwell on death and says he doesn't fear it.

"I don't feel sorry for myself, I really don't," says Mr. Movie (the nickname was hung on him by then-radio host Wally Kennedy).

"Nobody knows how much time they have. On my show, I always end it by saying go hug somebody because you never know when it's going to be too late."

Darragh is "the light of my life" and "I would love to embarrass myself by trying to dance at her wedding. I may not."

Given that he is dying, Mr. Movie looks healthy. He's always been thin as a straw - 140 pounds on a 6-foot frame - and for a guy of 59 he still has a bushy hedge of hair.

Mr. Movie remains upbeat because a lot of the other dialysis patients he sees three times a week are much worse off.

They are among the 68,000 Americans literally dying for a kidney, 4,093 of them in Pennsylvania, according to Cheryl Ross, director of patient advocacy for the National Kidney Foundation of the Delaware Valley. Herself a kidney transplant recipient, Ross says 18 people on the transplant waiting list die each day.

Mr. Movie has been waiting for two years; the average wait is five years. More than 13,000 Pennsylvanians currently are suffering through painful, life-sustaining dialysis treatments.

The easiest way to become a donor upon death is to check that option on your driver's license, as I have done. Your eyes could give sight to two blind people, your heart could save one person, your lungs could save two, two kidneys, one liver, large intestine, skin... OK, I don't want to gross you out.

About a dozen of Mr. Movie's listeners volunteered to give him a kidney if they were compatible.

None were, but the offers were stunning.

"What an incredibly, overwhelmingly emotional thing that is" to have a stranger offer an organ, Friedman said.

"But they don't consider themselves strangers because they have been listening to me so long on the radio."

And they will continue to hear him as he waits for a compatible kidney.

While he waits, Mr. Movie is dying.