Originally published as Fly a Little Higher and now updated and revised to coincide with the film release of Clouds, Laura Sobiech tells the amazing, true story behind the song and the movie. “Okay, Lord, you can have him. But if he must die, I want it to be for something big. For Laura Sobiech, seeing the last year of her 18-year-old son Zach's life portrayed in Disney+'s new movie Clouds was absolutely surreal. After battling osteosarcoma - a rare type of bone cancer. Spotlight: Clouds by Laura Sobiech October 12, 2020 / Michelle Bowles Originally published as Fly a Little Higher and now updated and revised to coincide with the film release of Clouds, Laura Sobiech tells the amazing, true story behind the song and the movie.
Laura Sobiech sits in her son Zach’s room, which she has left intact since he died in 2013. Cast members of the movie “Clouds” came to the Sobiech home for a visit and got to see Zach’s room. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT
In the opening scene of the movie “Clouds,” a tall, lanky teenager walks into Stillwater Area High School on crutches.
At one time, those crutches belonged to Zach Sobiech of St. Michael in Stillwater, who courageously battled an aggressive form of cancer called osteosarcoma before dying from the disease May 20, 2013.
Scheduled for release by Disney+ Oct. 16, the movie gets its name from the song Zach wrote and recorded about eight months before he died, which went viral on social media and led to an avalanche of publicity about his fight and support from well-wishers around the world.
To make the film more authentic, producer and director Justin Baldoni, who also produced a documentary about Zach’s final days, wanted to bring in meaningful items from Zach’s life, including the crutches, some of his clothing and his guitars. All were used by Fin Argus, who portrayed the remarkable teen from Lakeland, 15 minutes south of Stillwater along the St. Croix River, whose fame and inspiring music has lasted far beyond his final breath.
Baldoni’s strategy worked — at least on Zach’s mother, Laura Sobiech, who attended the first week of filming last fall in Montreal, and was taken aback when she saw Argus walk onto the set dressed as Zach.
“Fin did an amazing job, even down to the way he used the crutches,” said Laura, 51, who noted that the first scene filmed was the opening scene. “That was a hard day, a lot of mixed emotions when he came walking in on Zach’s crutches, with the bald cap on (to signify losing his hair after chemotherapy treatments) and in Zach’s clothes, looking just like Zach. That was hard. I did a lot of crying that day.”
Eventually, other members of the Sobiech family — Rob, 56;Alli (Shoemaker), 30; Sam, 27; and Grace, 22 — got involved. Rob and Grace spent a weekend in November visiting the set and spending time with the actors who portrayed them, and the whole family got to spend time with cast members when they came to Minnesota. Even though some of the cast members had never portrayed a real person before, Laura gave them all high marks, including the woman who played her, Neve Campbell.
“Neve and I got to spend some time together up in Montreal and just really hit it off. I just love her,” Laura said. “She did a great job. I just am thrilled with how she portrayed me, and it’s just been fun to watch.”
The movie coincides with the re-release of a book Laura published in 2014 called “Fly a Little Higher: How God Answered a Mom’s Small Prayer in a Big Way.” It offers an inside look at how the family struggled with Zach’s diagnosis, battled the disease with him, and wrestled with deep life questions and faith. The new title is “Clouds: A Memoir” and it will be released Oct. 13. Laura did not change the original text, just added more content, including an update to the epilogue and more pictures. She started writing the original version just one month after Zach died and released it two weeks before the one-year anniversary of his death.
At that time, she wanted to tell the spiritual side — and the human side — of Zach’s four-year battle with cancer, which she recounts in the book. His story got lots of coverage in the secular media during his struggle, but often faith elements were given minimal or even no coverage at all, Laura noted then.
She wanted people to know how deep and inspiring Zach’s faith was, especially in the last year of his life, when he channeled his thoughts and prayers into inspiring songs that touched millions and offered hope in the midst of suffering. His courage and determination to make the most of his shortened life prompted his girlfriend, Amy Adamle, to make this comment in an article in The Catholic Spirit just weeks before he died: “His faith has made my faith stronger because even in dark times, he still looks to God.”
Laura wanted spiritual themes in the movie, too. There are unmistakable Catholic expressions in the film, including scenes from a family trip to Lourdes, France, which are based on a trip the Sobiechs actually took to visit the shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes while Zach was sick. Laura said including Lourdes in the movie actually was Baldoni’s idea, but she got plenty of chances to add her feedback on many parts of the screenplay as it was being written.
One example came during a read-through of the script. There was a scene in which she and Rob were having an argument as Zach was getting sicker. The scene didn’t feel right, so she sat down with Campbell, Tom Everett Scott — who played Rob — Baldoni and screenplay writer Kara Holden.
“We reworked that (scene) and I think it really paid off because I feel like it rang true,” Laura said. “That was kind of an unusual thing, probably one of the weirder things I’ve done in my life is write a fight scene between my husband and me with the actors that play us.”
She has a joke she tells people about the disagreement portrayed in that scene: “I win.”
LISTEN NOW: Laura Sobiech visits the Rediscover: Hour
https://thecatholicspirit.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/RediscoverClouds.mp3On the serious side, she is hoping the real winners of all the efforts behind the film and her book will be children who suffer with osteosarcoma and their families. It is a form of bone cancer that typically affects teenagers.
All of the proceeds from Zach’s music go to a fund set up in his name, the Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund, which is part of the Children’s Cancer Research Fund, a national nonprofit that began at the University of Minnesota in the 1970s. More than $2 million has been donated to Zach’s fund, Laura said, and every penny goes to research. On top of that, Laura now works as a community outreach coordinator for Children’s Cancer Research Fund, giving her another way to help defeat the disease that took her son’s life.
Laura said both her family and Zach’s friends are doing well these days. Adamle pursued a TV news career and worked at a station in Duluth until July, when she returned to the Twin Cities to take a job in public relations. Sammy Brown, Zach’s music partner and childhood friend, works for a children’s book publisher in New York. And, another friend, Mitchell Kluesner, works in cancer research and wants to go to medical school and be a pediatric oncologist. All three made brief appearances in the movie as extras.
As for the Sobiechs, Laura and Rob are now grandparents. Alli got married shortly after Zach died and now has two children. She and her husband, Collin, live in River Falls, Wisconsin, while the two youngest Sobiech siblings, Sam and Grace, live in the Twin Cities. Taking part in the filming of the movie and spending time with cast members, including one time at their Lakeland home, has been healing for the entire family, Laura said — and inspiring to their faith.
“It’s just been really fun, in a lot of ways, to watch God’s hand in this,” she said of the movie project. It also has been a period of deep reflection and growth in understanding how God works, using even deep pain and suffering for good.
“I’m learning to trust God,” she said. “It’s an ongoing thing, for sure. I remember when all my kids were really little and just thinking about what it would be like to lose a child. And, it was terrifying. It was just this gut-wrenching thing to think about, and I really struggled with trusting God with my life. … It’s a scary thing.
“And so, I’ve lived through my worst nightmare … and I got to see God’s hand in it. And, there’s comfort in that. Certainly, it’s not easy to watch a loved one suffer and die. You have to go through all the emotional turmoil of that. But there is a peace and there’s even a joy in it, knowing that God’s hand is in it and he’s in control. He’s there. He knows what’s going on, he knows what he’s doing. And, just to have the peace that comes with that is a gift.”
This well-seasoned trust in God gives her encouragement even though the release of the movie and her book takes places during tumultuous times, with a global pandemic, widespread natural disasters and racial tensions leading to hostility and even violence in cities across the U.S.
“The phrase keeps popping into my mind — ‘for such a time as this,’” she said.
In the midst of today’s turmoil, she believes the movie can be “this little shining light of hope.”
The movie will be available on Disney+ starting Oct. 16. The book will be available starting Oct. 13 at thecloudsbook.com, or by pre-order now at Amazon.com.
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×Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Entertainment/Disney
Laura Sobiech Instagram
Fin Argus as Zach Sobiech
Fin Argus as Zach Sobiech in Clouds, coming this fall to Disney+.
Laura Sobiech last held her son Zach on May 20, 2013. On that Monday, barely two weeks after his 18th birthday, the high school senior passed away due to complications from osteosarcoma at home in Lakeland. It was a bittersweet end to a divine story, and it’s why you’ll have to forgive Zach’s usually unflappable mom for breaking down years later on a movie set in Montreal.
“For the first time in my life, I sobbed in the arms of a stranger,” Laura says, describing the surreal whirlwind that blew her over when she first walked onto the set of a film about her son’s life. “Her name was Pamela. She was the makeup artist who made Fin Argus look exactly like Zach. I shipped all of Zach’s clothes up, his crutches, his beddings, the decorations in the room. And so, when Fin walked in, he’s on Zach’s crutches, he’s built like Zach, he moves like Zach. It was like seeing Zach alive again.”
And when Zach Sobiech was alive, boy, did he live. Despite aggressive bone cancer churning in Zach’s body since he was 14, anyone outside of the Sobiech house would have been hard-pressed to guess that the optimistic, always-grinning teen was sick at all. That was the side of Zach the whole world came to know when, in June 2012, the doctors told him the cancer would prevail and he had six months to a year left.
Instead of wallowing, Zach put the pedal to the metal. He and two friends formed a band, A Firm Handshake, and slid their first single, a folksy pop tune Zach wrote, “Clouds,” onto YouTube. There, the effervescent earworm, in which Zach turned staring down death into an unabashed celebration of the precious time he had left to live, changed everything. It went viral, and before long Zach was everywhere. Meanwhile, “Clouds” eased its way onto the Billboard charts—it peaked at number three on the Hot Rock and Alternative Songs chart—and into regular rotation on radio stations around the country.
Truly, the last year of Zach’s life was the best and, of course, the worst. “It was kind of like running on a ball,” Laura says. “You just didn’t have time to stop. And, holy cow, it was remarkable that he was able to set his physical suffering aside and really just focus on his art and his heart. He was in the middle of being so sick when he did that.”
Zach inspired lots of folks as he squeezed every last little drop of joy out of his final days. One of the most prominent was The Office star Rainn Wilson, who wanted to include Zach in his online reality series My Last Days, which aired on Wilson’s YouTube channel, SoulPancake. Zach’s 22-minute episode netted more than 15 million views and sparked the relationship that, nearly seven years later, would bring Laura to the set of Clouds.
That’s because the director of “My Last Days: Meet Zach Sobiech,” Justin Baldoni, stayed close with the family. When he heard Laura was writing a memoir—Fly a Little Higher: How God Answered a Mom’s Small Prayer in a Big Way—Baldoni told her we wanted to turn it into a studio movie and to include the Sobiechs every step of the way. Laura says that included Baldoni randomly texting her to verify exactly how Zach would do or say something or the nuances of a certain moment or interaction. He even flew the family and a bunch of Zach’s friends to Montreal to be in one of the penultimate scenes in the film. Laura admits that seeing Fin Argus, the actor who plays Zach, portray the final moments of Zach’s life, take after take, while they were there, was a “weird knot of emotions,” but also that being on set was not without upside.
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Laura Sobiech and Zach Sobiech
Laura Sobiech and Zach.
“Neve Campbell is me in the movie,” Laura gushes. “She’s amazing. I adore her. We had so much fun together. She’s a beautiful person.”
Warner Brothers produced the film, and the family was looking forward to a major theatrical release. But when the pandemic hit and theaters shuttered, Disney+ acquired the distribution rights and plans to release it later this fall, in conjunction with the rerelease of Laura’s memoir—now titled Clouds to match the film. For Laura, it’s just another sudden detour in a story that’s been full of them. And not only is she embracing it, she thinks that the timing of the film’s release might just be the most divine part of Zach’s story yet.
“I can’t help but think that this story was reserved for such a time as this,” she says. “We are in the thick of this pandemic; it’s an election year. There’s so much division, so much pain, and there’s so much tension and stress—and that’s what Zach had to live with that last year of his life. We’re all facing mortality in this heightened way.”
Clouds Book Sobiech
Laura pauses for a moment, clearly still in awe of how Zach approached his final days. Then, she continues. “How are we going to choose to do this?”
Regardless of how we choose to face this moment, for a couple hours soon, Laura Sobiech will once again have the privilege of watching her youngest son so courageously live his choice.
Look for Clouds coming to Disney+ on Oct. 16, and watch the trailer below.
Zach Sobiech Family