Kim Campbell laughs at jokes, dodges punches

Andy Williams duets with Glen Campbell in a scene from the documentary, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, which has just been released on DVD.
Andy Williams duets with Glen Campbell in a scene from the documentary, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, which has just been released on DVD.

"Even though he's in the late stages of Alzheimer's, and he's lost most of his ability to communicate verbally, he's still trying to entertain," says Kim Campbell of her husband, Glen Campbell.

"He will sit there. You can tell he's trying to make a joke. You can't make much sense of what he's saying, but he thinks it's hysterical. And then it makes you laugh because he's laughing, and it brings him so much joy that it made you laugh. So he's just a natural entertainer."

The 79-year-old, Billstown-born Campbell topped the country and pop charts with hits like "Gentle on My Mind," "Wichita Lineman," "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Southern Nights." He also shared the big screen with John Wayne in True Grit and hosted The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS from 1969 through 1972.

When the singer-guitarist publicly revealed his diagnosis in 2011, he was still a formidable concert draw despite having to use a teleprompter to remember song lyrics.

LESS OF ME

That tour provides a backbone for James Keach's documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me, this week. When the film was broadcast on CNN, 2.76 million viewers tuned in, making it the most watched documentary in the channel's history. In addition, Campbell and Julian Raymond earned an Oscar nomination for their song "I'm Not Gonna Miss You," which may be his last composition.

Keach, who's probably best known as Stacy Keach's brother and for playing Jesse James in The Long Riders, achieves an astonishing intimacy with Campbell and his family as they deal with his condition in sometimes surprising ways. Near the beginning, Campbell almost cajoles his way out of admitting that he can't remember the name of our nation's first president.

Kim, who has been Campbell's fourth wife for 32 years, says her spouse often found ingenious ways of getting around his memory issues.

"I was taking him to get his driver's license, and he had to take the written part and kept failing it and failing it and failing it. He failed it three times even though we'd go back in between and try to study. I'd go online and sit there with him and try to get him to do the online quizzes, and we'd go back, and they offered to give him a verbal test," she says.

"They wouldn't let me go in there with him, but when he came out he had his driver's license. He had charmed her, and I think he has a way of asking her to repeat the question enough times that she gave him enough hints that he could answer it. So people find ways to compensate."

Similarly, the film shows that Glen's guitar picking on the final tour remained formidable even if he sometimes had trouble getting through songs that once came easily for him.

"Music just came from somewhere deep within. He didn't have to think about it at all. It just flowed out of him. It was just like a miracle," says Kim, a former Radio City Music Hall Rockette. "Any kind of distraction was becoming something he couldn't deal with. If the air conditioning was making him too cold, if he didn't like the sound of something, it would send him over the edge. Before, he'd be able to blow it off and keep going. Toward the end, it preoccupied him so much that it would actually stop the show."

"That very last show [in Napa, Calif.], just the first 15 minutes were really rough, and then he pulled it out. The audience didn't care. They loved him no matter what. By the end of the show, it was a good experience."

If Keach's film demonstrates how Glen Campbell was able to get past some of his difficulties, it also reveals in vivid detail how devastating Alzheimer's can be for the people who have it and their families. The film begins with Glen unable to recognize his own children in home video footage. When he sees a handsome young guitar player, he has no idea the man on the screen is himself.

TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS

I'll Be Me also reveals how, in their frustration, people with Alzheimer's can become paranoid and even violent. Kim explains, "Dr. Peter Rabins from Johns Hopkins [with Nancy L. Mace] wrote a book called The 36-Hour Day. That's how your day feels. I don't get much sleep. I have a motion detector on Glen the moment he sits up. I run his errands. I help him to use the bathroom or whatever he's up trying to do. He gets combative if I try to change his clothes and bathe him.

"In fact, he punched me in the eye. I've got a black eye right now. I've been dodging punches for two years. He finally got me," she says with a laugh.

"These are the kinds of things that historically people didn't talk about. Caregivers didn't talk about it because they were trying to protect the dignity of their loved ones, but I don't think it's a matter of dignity. It's the disease. He's the sweetest, most loving guy in the world, but he can't communicate. He doesn't know what he's doing half the time. And you're doing something he doesn't want you to do; the natural reaction is to lash out."

If caring for him has been stressful for Kim and her children with Campbell (Cal, Shannon and Ashley), it has also been expensive. I'll Be Me features Ashley testifying in front of Congress about how much more must be done to fight the disease.

"We have seen results, which we are really thankful for. They have increased funding for neurological disease with the NIH. So we're thankful for that. When we started, they had allocated $400 million a year for all neurological diseases. And now I think it's up to $650 million a year for neurological diseases.

"But it's still minuscule compared to cancer at $6 billion and heart disease at $5 billion and AIDS at $3 billion. That includes Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ataxia. That's not very much proportionally to the amount of people that are affected by it. You've 5.4 million Americans with Alzheimer's," Kim says.

"Glen has private health insurance and has Medicare, but when you're dealing with dementia, really all it covers is your medicine. It does not cover any kind of in-home care or memory support communities or anything like that. It's all out-of-pocket. It's very expensive. If you're a veteran or if you qualify for Medicaid, then you can get some help. With everybody else, it's out of pocket because insurance will not cover it."

I'll Be Me also reveals that there might be a good side to her husband's diagnosis. "I think our son Shannon talked about that in the film. In a way it's kind of a blessing because you know that things are winding down and it gives you the opportunity to share some quality time with the person you love. We have the memories of the tour that we'll be able to take with us forever. It was a really close time for us as a family. It was beautiful," she says.

"It's very therapeutic for me to talk about it, and it's helping millions of Americans to tell their stories and bring it out of the shadows. And that's what Glen wants me to do. So, I'm just continuing his quest to find a cure and to de-stigmatize the disease," Kim says.

MovieStyle on 09/04/2015

Upcoming Events