Pimping His Ride--and the Push to Cure a Fatal Disease
BY Jeff Chu Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 3:47 PM
DoSomething, headed by Fast Company columnist
Nancy Lublin, has recognized four young social
entrepreneurs with $10,000 grants--and one with a
prize of $100,000. Fast Company will profile one of
these enterprising youth each day this week.
It's the morning after the night before, and Darius
Weems can't get over his red-carpet experience.
"Russell Simmons!" he says in awe. "Russell
Simmons! He was standing there, shoulder to
shoulder with me." And later, during the Do
Something awards ceremony at the Apollo Theater in
Harlem, Simmons had presented Weems with
$10,000 and honored him for his work raising
awareness for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal
genetic disorder that took his brother's life and will
eventually claim his too.
For this small-town, wheelchair-bound kid from Georgia, the awards were the latest stop
in a wild journey that began with a fantastic question posed by Weems and a group of his
buddies: Do you think we could get MTV to pimp my ride?
"I was just chilling at home—didn't know nothing but
my hometown," Weems says. Then, in the summer of
2005, he and his friends got that idea, boarded an RV,
and set out for L.A. They stopped in Florida, where he
saw the ocean for the first time. ("I'd heard people talk
about the beach. Years and years, I was wondering how
something that beautiful would look," he says. "It was
amazing.") They visited New Orleans, Carlsbad
Caverns, the Grand Canyon, San Diego, and finally,
L.A. There, (spoiler alert) MTV rejected his request—
and became the ultimate villain of the affecting,
effective documentary that recorded the trip, "Darius
Goes West." (The movie's subtitle: "The Roll of His
Life.")

The film, which came out in 2006, won awards at dozens of film festivals and became the
platform for Weems to raise thousands of dollars for Duchenne research. "Not a lot of
people know about [the disease]—too many people don't know," Weems says. "But they
see the movie, they're down with the cause."
After seeing the movie, kids have organized dance marathons, held bake sales, given their
savings to aid research into the 100% fatal disease, which kills more young boys than any
other genetic disorder. Students at one Georgia high school teamed up to send a DVD of
"Darius Goes West" and a handwritten letter to every other high school in America; a
Syracuse, New York, junior high did the same for middle schools. Adults, too, have
embraced his cause: Weems and Logan Smalley, the director of the documentary, were
made TED fellows, and Volvo gave Weems $25,000 as part of a program honoring
America's hometown heroes.
The outpouring of goodwill—which has been
accompanied by plenty of criticism of MTV—has
encouraged Weems to keep talking about his
condition. "I've got to use my mouth for
something," he says. His new goal is to sell 1
million DVDs by the end of September.
(Seventeen dollars from each sale goes to
Duchenne research.)
But the constant travel—speeches, public appearances, as many as three screenings per
day—"has kind of tired me out," he says. He logged more than 30,000 miles between
September and March, which prompted his doctor to force him to slow down, worried
that the work was overtaxing Weems's ever-frailer body. He is now 19, the same age as
his brother Mario was when he died.
At the Do Something awards, Weems got an additional prize to remind him that the work
he has started will continue even if he can't be on the road himself. MTV announced that
it will air his movie on MTV2 and MTVu.