NEW England Patriots icon Lonie Paxton is thriving in his new career as a documentary-maker.
Paxton, 46, won three Super Bowls in an illustrious stint as a long snapper for the Patriots.
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Since retiring in 2013 after a spell with the Denver Broncos, the Californian has been involved in a number of business ventures, including a senior sports marketing role at action camera firm GoPro.
Now, among other jobs, he is the executive producer of an upcoming documentary provisionally entitled Thrive, which examines athletes’ traumatic brain injuries in detail.
The 90-minute film is being co-produced by former Aussie Rules star Koby Stevens, whose career was cut short at age 28 after he suffered 10 concussions.
Other athletes set to feature include surfer Owen Wright, snowboarder Kevin Pearce, NHL stars Sidney Crosby and Dan Carcillo, cyclist Ian Boswell and Australian Rules footballer Paddy McMartin.
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Bill McCullough, an Emmy-winning former NFL, HBO, and GoPro Entertainment executive, is its director.
Thrive, which aims to push meaningful change around concussion, has been a passion project for Paxton.
“It’s a story of three athletes’ journeys on the comeback from brain injuries,” Paxton told The U.S. Sun.
“CTE is the dirty word that is used so loosely nowadays in association with head injuries but that’s not the case [here].
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“What we’re really trying to show is you hurt your knee, you walk with a limp and you get your knee fixed…you get a head injury, you don’t really see what’s happening inside.
“So people are either embarrassed to talk about it or the right care isn’t available and doctors don’t send you in the right direction.
“We want to show that you can come back from these things, you can come back better, we have proof that it can be fixed.”
Paxton revealed that the documentary is roughly 75% completed, and it is hoped that it will be accepted at international film festivals before finding a distributor.
“Playing a contact sport for over half my life and seeing a lot of my former teammates, close friends take the easy way out and shoot themselves in the chest and donate their brains to science…,” he added.
“We want to be a different voice in the epidemic that is brain injuries. People think of CTE when they think of concussions, we know they can lead to bad things.
“I played with a handful of guys who took that [fatal] route and I want to let the next generation of athletes know that it’s not the answer.
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“There are tools out there for you to fix your brain.”
The film has an international feel, which tells the stories of male and female athletes from a number of sports.
“We have a whole gamut of stories that we’re trying to tell,” he said.
Stevens, who had approximately 10 major concussions and 20 minor ones in his injury-plagued career, recently explained his role in taking part in the documentary.
“I hope this does help players,” he told the West Australian.
“But for me it’s more about giving people hope. Because a lot of people need it at the moment.”
Elsewhere, Paxton has joined the national nonprofit The High Fives Foundation on its Board of Trustees.
The High Fives Foundation provides resources for those suffering from life-altering injuries, a subject close to Paxton’s heart.
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“Back in 1999, one of my best friends from high school broke his back in a snowboarding accident and was airlifted to Reno Hospital where I went to visit him,” Paxton said.
“I saw the process from injury to news that he’s going to be in a wheelchair the rest of his life and really trying to stay active.”
In 2003, Paxton co-founded the Active Force Foundation, which designs and donates specialized sports equipment to physically-impaired athletes and veterans.
This work led to a meeting and subsequent partnership with High Fives founder Roy Tuscany, which has now been expanded upon.
“As I transitioned from GoPro into entrepreneurial fields, Roy and I touched base again and thought it was the perfect opportunity to not only use football and my business background as a vehicle to drive sponsorships and awareness….” Paxton said.
“But also use my background with a foundation that was developing four-wheel mountain bikes for adaptive sports and how could help see what we did, what went wrong, the challenges involved and be an extra set of eyes and ears.
“I was honored and humbled to be asked to sit on the Board of Trustees and look forward to scaling [the company] globally.”
