By Jesse Moreau
AMHERST, N.Y. — Nearly four years after the blizzard, the McDonald’s at Sweet Home Road and Sheridan Drive is about to become one of the most-watched rooms in Western New York.
HBO will debut The Buffalo Miracle, a 36-minute documentary short about the strangers who rode out the December 2022 storm inside that restaurant, on Tuesday, Nov. 24, from 9 to 9:37 p.m. ET. It will also stream on HBO Max, the network said in its Nov. 2 announcement.
The film is directed and produced by Ben Proudfoot, who has won two Academy Awards for documentary shorts, The Queen of Basketball and The Last Repair Shop. Bills quarterback Josh Allen is an executive producer. It had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.
What happened inside the restaurant
The story has been told locally before. Around 2 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23, 2022, three employees, Kristin Kosha, Jeffrey Spangler and Amanda Kendall, were closing the restaurant as the snow and wind took over, WKBW reported at the time.
“It wasn’t safe to drive,” Kosha told the station that week.
“We accepted the fact that we weren’t going home, so we might as well open up,” she said. “We figured someone might need some help.”
Amherst police and firefighters began dropping off stranded motorists. More than 50 people sheltered there over the Christmas weekend, WKBW reported, including a 7-month-old baby.
“I didn’t think it would go as big as it did. I thought 10-15 people, but we were full,” Kosha said then.
To her, the choice was obvious. “You don’t really think about it at the time,” she said. “It’s just common sense. You do what you have to do. You have a warm building and no one is in it…why would you not open it up?”
Spangler said the crew’s focus was on what came next. “We were more worried about helping people and making sure everyone else was okay, and being prepared for what possibly could happen next,” he said.
HBO’s materials spell his name “Spengler.” The 2022 news report used “Spangler.”
How HBO tells it
HBO describes a longtime manager who made “a heroic decision to defy corporate rules and keep her restaurant open.” Its synopsis lists the people she took in: an injured single father caring for his infant daughter, a young man with Down syndrome spending his first Christmas away from his mother, an engaged couple separated from their families, and immigrant nail salon owners who spoke no English.
On Christmas Eve, the group crowded around a laptop to watch the Bills play the Bears in Chicago. Proudfoot pairs survivors’ firsthand accounts with hand-drawn animation.
The film features Kosha and Spengler, Paaché Spikes-Redding, Jimmy Bessing, Maria Alessi Bessing, Tan Zhao, Lili Zhao, Lyndon Hayles, and Amherst police officers Thomas M. Brown and Derek Westbrook. It is the latest entry in HBO’s “NFL Shorts” series. HBO calls it a Skydance Sports Entertainment presentation and a production of Breakwater Studios, Out of Pocket Studios and NFL Films.
HBO’s announcement doesn’t say which “corporate rules” Kosha broke or how McDonald’s or the restaurant’s franchise owner responded. The Buffalo Chronicle is asking the filmmakers and HBO about that.
Why a Nova Scotian director made it
Proudfoot, who grew up in Nova Scotia, told WGRZ the story struck him as a portrait of the country he had moved to.
“As a Canadian living in the United States, I just thought this was a beautiful story about who I know Americans to be,” he said.
He said tracking down everyone who had been inside “was a big project and a big feat to do.” As he did, he said, the story “just started to appear as an incredibly beautiful story and one that I knew needed to be shared with a broad audience.”
He also noticed something only Buffalo would produce. “I feel like everybody had a Buffalo Bills keychain, or hat or jacket or something, and there was actually a cardboard cutout of Josh in the restaurant when I arrived,” Proudfoot told the station.
Allen’s production company
Allen produced the film through Out of Pocket Studios, which ESPN reported he launched this summer and which already makes several programs for Paramount.
“We were totally honored to partner with Josh, who was just starting a production company at the time, to bring the movie to the widest possible audience,” Proudfoot told WGRZ.
The timing suits a football town. The film arrives during Thanksgiving week, when the Bills host the Kansas City Chiefs at Highmark Stadium in prime time, ESPN noted.
Elsewhere on Buffalo screens this week
The North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue is screening La Bola Negra, the Spanish drama from directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi starring Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close, through Nov. 19.
On Wednesday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m., the Medical Society of the County of Erie hosts a North Park screening of Suck It Up, Buttercup, a 2026 documentary about physician burnout and the strain on the health care system. A discussion with the documentary’s producer and the author of the book that inspired it follows the film.
HBO’s announcement lists no Western New York screening of The Buffalo Miracle before the Nov. 24 broadcast. For a film about a community that kept its doors open, a hometown showing would be a fitting gesture. If one is scheduled, we’ll report it.
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