A still from 'No Packers, No Life.'
No Packers, No Life is about the Wisconsin tradition of opening your door, and your heart, to your neighbors. Even the ones that live 6,000 miles away.
The documentary, which screens April 6 at The Barrymore, spotlights the Japanese Packers Cheering Team — a group of diehard Japanese Packers fans who get together in a Tokyo karaoke bar at 2 a.m. to watch Packers games live.
Ty Morse, one of the producers of the film and a businessman from Milwaukee, discovered the group while on a business trip to Tokyo — it’s not every day you see people wearing Packers jerseys in a karaoke bar. A friendship ensued, and in 2017 Morse and some of his friends decided to host the Japanese Packers Cheering Team for a trip to Lambeau Field.
“It’s life, you’re a human being on a planet,” says Jay DeMerit, another pal and producer on the film. “What else can [you] do that’s interesting and exciting?”
An interesting and exciting time ensued. The Green Bay community opened their homes to the guests, hosting a barbecue cookout and sharing their love with their Japanese Packers fan counterparts. They share shotskis, throw around footballs, dance together, and tailgate hard.
Two years later, the Japanese Packers Cheering Team came back for a true Wisconsin experience: a winter game. While in town they polar-plunged and experienced the freezing cold Lambeau Field.
The film is directed by Craig Benzine, a YouTube star known as WheezyWaiter. A friend of Morse’s, Benzine was intrigued by the project and a promise that he could travel to Japan to film. It is his first feature-length documentary.
In Tokyo, he filmed the cheering team watching a pre-recorded game. “They knew what was going to happen, that’s what superfans they are,” said Benzine. “It was incredibly fun and bizarre to see how excited they all were — more excited than I’ve seen people I watch games with here.” Benzine was blown away by their passion. “I wish I had that much devotion to anything,” he says.
Benzine took four months off from producing content on YouTube (and a pay cut) to begin work on the film in 2018. He finished it in 2024.
Morse and Benzine learned much about Japanese culture while creating this film. Benzine says that they had both perceived Japanese culture as reserved and formal, but “when they find something they’re passionate about and they’re able to let loose, they just go all in and it’s organized chaos.”
Ultimately, says Benzine, the film is about “shared passion all across the world. That passion happens to be the Green Bay Packers.”
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