On Super Bowl Sunday in February, a series of thoughts were mish-mashing in Kevin Polowy’s mind: It had been 30 years since the Buffalo Bills appeared in a Super Bowl. Back when he was a Buffalo kid in the early ‘90s, the team went to four straight but won none. Would the Bills ever make it back? Could this day – Super Bowl Sunday – once again belong to the Bills Mafia? Would the Bills ever win one? Buffalo natives Kevin Polowy, left, and Addison Henderson are co-directors on the feature film about the Buffalo Bills, "Just One Before I Die.
" His father used to wear a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “Just One Before I Die” – and, as is heartbreakingly familiar to so many families who embrace the Bills as an extension of themselves, his father died before seeing the team win. In the midst of his thoughts, Polowy’s phone rang. It was his cousin Clayton Polowy, an oncologist who, like Kevin, grew up a Bills fan in Buffalo and then left.
Left the town, not the fandom. Kevin, now a Los Angeles-based producer and entertainment journalist, and Clayton, an oncologist in Arizona, had a bit of a cousinly Bills-fan therapy call, commiserating about Super Bowls lost and hoping for one to come. Then Clayton shared an idea.
“I’ve had this thought,” he said. “I feel like this needs to be a movie. We need to tell the story of Bills fans.
” Clayton offered to finance the film. Kevin, whose producing credits include the Billy Crystal comedy “Standing Up, Falling .