Darius had already gone west.

So for the first few months of this new, yearlong odyssey to raise money to cure the disease that almost certainly will kill him, Darius Weems and his 11-man crew have pointed their RV north, south and east —- screening their movie in Clemson, S.C., and Buffalo, N.Y., Akron, Ohio, and Amelia Island, Fla., Cleveland and Memphis.

They arrive today in Atlanta.

“The traveling doesn’t stop. It’s our job to do this,” says Weems, the 19-year-old from Athens with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and the focal point of “Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life,” an award-winning 2007 documentary about the cross country quest to get his wheelchair customized on MTV’s “Pimp My Ride.”

“I’m doing pretty good. My brother was doing worse than me at this point,” adds Weems, whose older brother Mario died from Duchenne at 19. “The trip keeps me healthy. I’m blessed to be able to do this again.”

MTV never did pimp Weems’ wheelchair. But his story and movie became a grass-roots phenomenon. Never distributed to commercial movie houses, it was seen by thousands at film festivals all over the country, where it won more than two dozen awards, including the audience award at last year’s Atlanta Film Festival.

Its homey, homemade success prompted Logan Smalley, who directed the $70,000 movie while a student at the University of Georgia, to get Weems and everybody else back together for an even more ambitious project: screening “Darius Goes West” anywhere they could in hopes of selling 1 million DVDs and raising $17 million for DMD research.

A screening with Weems and the crew will be held at 4 p.m. today at the D.A.I.R. Project studio, a converted church at 575 Boulevard, in Grant Park near Zoo Atlanta.

There’s also a screening at 7 p.m. Monday at Carver Middle School Auditorium in Monroe, and at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the UGA Tate Student Center in Athens.

“As we went to film festivals and other screenings and saw the reactions of crowds, I knew there was something more to be done,” Smalley says. “I knew that ‘Darius Goes West’ was not something that was just going to wrap up. My best friend —- our best friend —- Darius is still alive.”

The widespread appeal of a movie about a kid with an as-yet incurable disease comes largely from its unscripted blend of good intentions and good times.

Smalley, 26, first met Weems and his older brother more than a decade ago at an Athens summer camp for kids with disabilities. Before Mario died from Duchenne, an inherited disorder that causes the loss of muscle functions, he asked Logan to take care of his little brother.

Duchenne is the most common form of MD affecting children —- they usually die by their late teens or early 20s —- and as Weems’ condition worsened, Smalley decided in 2005 to give him the trip of a lifetime.

He raised money, recruited 10 friends, rented an RV and headed to Los Angeles, where MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” is taped. Weems had never before crossed the state line.

The three-week, 7,000-mile trip morphed into both a college kids’ lark and a moving, heartfelt window onto friendship, courage and the idealism of youth.

Weems is carried by a half-dozen guys down a Florida beach and into the Atlantic Ocean (the first ocean he’s ever seen). He is driven through New Orleans (first big city he’s ever seen). He is wheeled to the edge of the Grand Canyon.

The RV also breaks down, and Weems keeps getting stopped in his tracks because places they visit aren’t wheelchair-accessible.

His wheelchair isn’t pimped in L.A. —- MTV never really gives a satisfactory explanation —- but Weems and his band of friends carry on. He gets dunked in the Pacific Ocean, rides a hot-air balloon in Colorado.

Weems sometimes laughs so hard that crew members have to hold him so he doesn’t fall out of his chair.

“When I die, folks ain’t going to say, ‘Darius is gone,’ ” he says near the end. “They’re going to say, ‘Darius has gone west for the last time.’ “

But Smalley believed Weems and his legacy could keep going. After being honored at a benefit in New York in June, Smalley gathered the crew in a hotel room and laid out his plan to sell a million DVDs for $20 each, with $17 of each sale going to DMD research. They could also make a second documentary.

Crew members were still in school or had jobs. But Smalley, who’d just earned a graduate degree from Harvard, says that, “within 10 minutes, everybody was on board.”

Backed by grants and donations, the crew now usually travels in two- or three-week chunks before returning to Athens. Their goal of 1 million DVD sales is arbitrary, yet its seeming impossibility only drives them. So far they’ve sold about 20,000.

“If you watch the movie, it’s all about the idealism of youth,” says Barbara Smalley, Logan’s mother and manager of the Darius Goes West Foundation. “I’d hate for them to lose that.”

Weems’ mobility has declined since the first film: He now can only move his arms from the wrist down. But he’s seen more sights —- he loved Niagara Falls —- and is energized by the response the screenings have gotten.

“I think I can push it,” Weems says. “I just keep on going. I think I still have a few years. Why not do some good with the few years you got?”

IF YOU GO

“Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life” and Q&A with film’s crew, 4 p.m. today at D.A.I.R. Project studio, 575 Boulevard S.E., in Grant Park. Free. Info: www.thedairproject.org, www.dariusgoeswest.org