Although his documentary subject was once a defining part of pop culture including face, fitness guides and Stop the madness! Infomercials were a must in the 1990s, filmmaker Zeberiah Newman spent an entire year trying to track down the wellness guru Susan Power. When he tracked her down, he discovered the 66-year-old was living in poverty and surviving by delivering meals for Uber Eats. Soon, Newman and his producer friend Jamie Lee Curtis began turning his story into a feature-length documentary intended to serve as an “indictment” of the “incredible cruelty” that society inflicts on older Americans.

“(Newman) then became obsessed with this idea of ​​how can someone (get here) become the first influencer?” Curtis says Weekly Entertainment of the film. “How do you go from having this kind of mega-career and this kind of success story to being discarded and living on the fringes of society in this incredibly harsh environment of Las Vegas, driving Uber Eats in a car broken down?

Newman’s film will apparently explore this topic among many others, after Powter previously spoke about losing his former company’s $300 million empire to poor business dealings, alleged lawsuits and the incorporation of a team of people who, she revealed to PEOPLEled her on a “mortifying” path to produce his image to the point of inauthenticity, largely at the center of its ephemerality Susan Powerter Show discussion series.

Still, Newman says Powter hasn’t changed much since her time in the spotlight, and her struggles haven’t dimmed the brilliance that Americans fell in love with more than 30 years ago, whether through her. Stop the madness! infomercial (which was usurped on Saturday evening live) or its popular Shopping with Susan VHS guidewhich has since gone viral on TikTok.

“Being with Susan for two minutes, you know that she is a very rare human being and one that is most perfectly made for cinema. Everything about her: she speaks in sound bites, she has unstoppable energy and she is great original. It is undeniable,” he explains. “She’s still as adamant about her beliefs and still as joyous and over-the-top as she was when we first saw her in 1993. She’s just a 66-year-old version of that now. All her circumstances have not changed. “It’s not an act: Susan Powter is exactly who you think she is. ”

That raw energy also lends itself to the very real themes tackled by the film, with Curtis – who financed the director’s first Vegas shoot with money from his own pocket – emphasizing that the project is not intended to exploit the perceived downfall by Powter, but to highlight her as an example of the cultural system that works against people of a certain age.

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“It was an indictment of the way we discard human beings as they age in this country. It’s an exploration of the incredible cruelty we inflict on older people and the lack of resources and lack of dignity offered to these human beings who “I lived before us and we were of service to us and gave us the life that we all live now. It is an indictment of all the families who locked away the elderly in this forgotten and horrible way. how we treat older people in our professional lives,” explains the 65-year-old.

Curtis continues: “That’s what we do to old people: we pass them by. To me, even though it’s a fun, nostalgic look at a time that was insane… it’s an act of accusation, an exploration and a challenge for all of us to see how complicit we are as individuals in this story, and that’s what the film is about.”

Newman, known for his short documentaries like Relight the candles: the story of Tim Sullivan And Unexpectedagrees, speculating that just as Powter “caught fire because she lost weight and women trusted her” through her personal fitness experience, her influence will translate again when audiences see her face new struggles.

“She found this power,” he says of her success story after losing a lot of weight as a 260-pound single mother raising two sons. “Now, in her 60s, living in this life of poverty, surviving it and coming out of it, she has a very similar story to tell to the masses and to women because she lived it.”

The film shows her after being “knocked to the ground and picked up,” Newman finishes, careful not to spoil too much of what’s happening in the project as he and his team work to finish it before a potential rollout next year. next. “And who doesn’t want to see someone get back up after being hit that hard?”