 WHAT THE BLEEP DO THEY KNOW?
Three Filmmakers Reflect on Four
Bleeping Good Years!
By MARK VICENTE
There is this old adage that one is taught in many screen-writing seminars which goes something like this: “Find out what everyone is making and then write something that fits in that genre.” I found that when challenging this advice, I was told I was naïve and that I would eventually understand how life and the industry (which presumably they thought was the same thing) worked. One of my great questions was always: “If you always follow a trend, how does anything original ever get created in the film industry?”
The answer of course is: it rarely does.
But here's the great thing I learned. I had concepts burning inside me that never seemed to be doused. For the three of us, making this film was a lifelong culmination of a journey to begin creating trends, which we have always found far more exciting than trying to figure out what trendsetters are doing. In the end, I found it rather silly to try and follow trends when what I most wanted to make films about was the cutting edge of science and mysticism; the future of humanity.
By and large that future will not be found in dramas about victims, tyrants, the ecstasy and agony of melancholy, suffering, sexual triggering, revenge, fear, horror and, of course, revulsion and excitement at moral taboos. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to turn people on or terrify them.
None of these ideas has led to freedom. In thousands of years, we, as a human race, have not solved any significant problems. Our current art (visual media) has, by and large, not supported a way out of anything, let alone the human condition of action and reaction. We are still like animals, responding in a predictable way to stimuli.
But there is a growing awareness in a section of the public that they feel like they have lived the same moments over and over again. And that somehow there must be more to life. These are the people that we made this film for. Despite the fact that they are unrecognized by the mass media, there are millions of them out there. These are not people that should be labeled as tree-huggers or hooky spooky new–agers. They are people with intelligent and logical questions that find no answers in the current paradigm. These people found in our film a thoughtful exercise in self-reflection. They began to, or already did, question the boundaries of their reality and what their connection to their Universe, their God and their friends might be. They asked the great questions: Why am I here? What is God and why would a God (who is supposedly loving) condone the wiping out of millions of people? Am I made in God's image or did I make God in my image? Is there more to my life than birth, taxes, obedience and death? What is suffering? Is it necessary? Why does synchronicity occur? How do I intuitively know the things I do? Why do I keep repeating the same things over and over again? Is there another way of living besides trying to anesthetize myself from my pain?
All of these are great questions.
It has been a truly humbling experience to hear that after seeing our film people have: averted suicide, found hope in its message, re-evaluated their lives, contemplated new ideas and finally, do not feel alone with their secret and profound thoughts. It has been mind-blowing that our struggle as filmmakers to grapple with these ideas and present them on the screen in a coherent and interesting way has produced the enormous phenomenon it has. It seems to have started a quiet little revolution of recognition amongst a great many people. This has been immensely gratifying.
Hopefully, this will pave the way for a great many films addressing this kind of content to be made. And the way this is done is for people of conscience to step up to the plate. My greatest yearning is that those people who are in positions of influence (and understand that the only way out is to present a new paradigm of reality) would develop the courage to be heard. To finally not care about being cool, or accepted or respected for toeing the party line and protecting the status quo, which, in the end, leads to a life of no consequence.
My message to them? Stop being afraid to be brave. Life is slipping away, and soon we find ourselves in old age, when the chemicals of power, position and needing approval have finally faded, wishing we had done more. But by then we will be old and not at all useful in a world that worships skinniness, youthfulness and praises foolishness.
The time is now. There are millions of people waiting for a message that encourages and gives hope and answers beyond the interminable repetition of a rat running on a wheel. A naïve hope? Impractical? Not good for commerce?
On the contrary. We live in perilous times. Everyone yearns for hope… and this message is uplifting and profitable.
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