A Friend Called Lyle

Directed by Bob Markee

"Soon after being diagnosed with breast cancer, 39 year old Lyle Matthews asked her friend, filmmaker Bob Markee, to record her struggle with the disease. His powerful, heartfelt video diary chronicles the last few months of Lyle's life and explores her fear, anger and frustration at her illness and her ultimate surrender into death. "A Friend Called Lyle begins as an intimate account of one woman's battle with breast cancer, and ultimately becomes an extraordinary portrait of the dying process. Lyle's honesty inspires and moves us and encourages viewers to emphasize with her struggle to accept the inevitability of her own mortality. Perhaps for this reason, the program received an unprecedented number of viewer comments after its initial 1995 broadcast by PBS station KCET in Los Angeles."--1995 Peabody Awards entry form.