METAPHYSICS GOES TO THE MOVIES by Randy Peyser

The scene went like this—The man stewed. His life was the pits. He was in crisis, not the minor kind, but the kind where one lives out their version of the dark night of the soul, that place that ultimately leads to taking a new turn in life simply because the old way won’t work anymore, but also that place before one finds their new path and the struggle still feels like hell.

He had been looking forward to this metaphysical seminar for a long time and now this tall guy had just taken the seat in front of him, successfully blocking his view. To make matters worse, the big guy was also being very affectionate with this absolutely beautiful woman who sat in the chair next to his. The man didn’t have a beautiful woman sitting next to him with whom to be affectionate. This added to his aggravation. He made a mental note to avoid the tall guy at all cost.

At a break in the seminar, however, he was introduced to the tall man by a mutual friend. As they shook hands, a feeling of recognition surged through him as though they had known each other in some other place and time. Instantly his feelings of animousity melted. Later, the two acknowledged that at that moment they became best friends and business partners forever.

They had much in common. Both were in the movie business. The tall man, Barnet Bain, was a talented writer who had completed the highly successful movie version of “Jesus.” The other man, Stephen Simon, (formerly Stephen Deutsch), was a movie executive and producer with a string of hits to his name including, “The Goodbye Girl” starring Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss, as well as the metaphysical classic, “Somewhere In Time” starring Christopher Reeves, among many others.

Simon and Bain formed a partnership and movie-making business called “Metafilmics,” their goal being to bring metaphysical concepts to the movies. Their first film, “What Dreams May Come,” an afterlife love story starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra, and Max Von Sydow is scheduled to be released this coming September. Simon and Bain say that at least 85% of the film, which is based on a novel written by Richard Matheson, author of “Somewhere In Time,” will take place ‘elsewhere’ as the main character, played by Robin Williams, searches for his wife in the afterlife. The talented, Ron Bass, who wrote the screenplay versions of “The Joy Luck Club,” “When A Man Loves A Woman,” and “Rain Man, for which he won an academy award, has written the screenplay.

Although not wanting to reveal too many details about the plot at this point, the one thing that producers Simon and Bain promise movie-goers is that “this movie does not equivocate. It is a powerful love story. It’s about consciousness and it deals with realms of consciousness that have never been dealt with before.”

Simon, who teaches a course through the Learning Annex entitled, “Creating Movies With A Metaphysical Vision,” notes that the movie industry is the only major entertainment industry that is behind the times in recognizing metaphysics and the exploration of consciousness as a genre. He points out that both the publishing and music industries have recognized this for quite some time, with a plethora of New Age publishing and music companies rapidly pumping out personal growth books, and audio tapes, and CDs to an eager audience.

“Traditionally,” says Simon, “the movie business has not truly led anything.  It has always reflected. So while other industries have led, the movie business really hasn’t.” Simon believes that most of the people in the movie industry do not have a recognizably conscious metaphysical nature. Therefore, they tend to look upon metaphysically-based films as risky investments. 

But according to Simon, metaphysical films are really not more risky than other types of films. He believes that they’re actually safer and tout a higher success rate than any other genre, but are rarely copied by other filmmakers, or are rarely made to begin with. For example, the original “Die Hard” movie led to dozens of “Die Hard” rip-offs over the next couple of years, but when movies like “Ghost” or “Forrest Gump” or “Field of Dreams” were made, they were “stand alones.” 

“Metaphysically-based movies have been looked upon as anomalies,” says Simon. “A lot of this is due to the corporatization of Hollywood. Every major studio is now owned by a major international company. This is a change that has occurred only in the last ten years. The days of the entrepreneur, the guys who went from their guts and their hearts and their souls, has for the most part, ended. The courage to go out and push the envelope has somewhat receded in favor of ‘let’s be safe, and copy what’s worked before’.”

Simon and Bain want to produce metaphysically focused films for a number of reasons. Personally, they are each committed to living their lives as “conscious metaphysicians.” They also believe that the public is being underserved by not getting a steady diet of films which deliver conscious content. 

“Almost every time they come out, they work,” says Simon. “As we get closer to the millenium, we sense that there is an enormous yearning for our type of material. There’s so much millenium consciousness, but much of it is negative and frightening, like the ending of the Mayan calendar. Metaphysically motivated movies, which really began with, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” give people hope. They allow you to see yourself as something really extraordinary, and as a human being witnessing the potential of humanity. Everyone wants to see these kinds of films, yet the industry doesn’t want to make them.” Simon and Bain are hoping that “What Dreams May Come” will be a “huge broadside across the bow of that resistance.”

Ted Field who owns the production company, Interscope, is credited for financially enabling the vision of Metafilmics to become a reality, as is Polygram which is also responsible for both the financing and the distribution of “What Dreams May Come.” According to Simon, “Ted is a wildcat. He is a true entrepreneur, the kind that goes from his gut.” After nineteen years of trying to get this film made, Field was the first person to say, “yes,” to Simon from a financing standpoint.

Although nineteen years may seem like a long time to manifest one’s dream, Simon is quick to point out that he is not attached to the “struggle” of how long it took, but rather is grateful that the timing is now. There were times in the past,” says Simon, “when I was sure it was going to be made and times when I lost faith. “When Barnet and I met, the project was in limbo. It was the synergy of our connection and putting our energies together that is making it happen.”

“One of the things that we feel strongly about is that struggling is too much of a respected energy in the world. We really don’t want to glorify the aspect of the struggle,” says Simon. “If I had been in a different place in my consciousness, perhaps it might not have taken this long. But I really think that this film is its own entity, and it wasn’t ready to be born until now. It has been a long gestation period, so it is really ready to be born. I think that the people who didn’t want to make it then were right because the time was not right for it. But now the time is right and it’s being made.”

Even though Simon had produced, “Somewhere In Time,”which was a spiritual love story, he admits that at that time he didn’t relate to that material from a conscious perspective, although he was grateful for the experience because it had launched him into the producer’s role. His immersion into metaphysics and spirituality was actually facilitated by his “dark night” experience four years ago. “It really woke me up as to why I was here and what I was doing here.” To become conscious and to open others to the possibly unexplored aspects of their inner terrain through the medium of film became his priority.

Bain, on the other hand, had originally been introduced to spirituality many years back by a therapist who was helping him get beyond writer’s block. Under the therapist’s supervision, Bain was able to start writing again during his therapy sessions. But because he felt unable to write without the therapist’s facilitation, he wound up buying all of the therapist’s available hours. For those people whose time he couldn’t buy, he’d sit in the waiting room until their forty-minute hour was over, then go back in the therapist’s office with his yellow pad and continue. 

Eventually Bain completed an entire screenplay in the therapist’s office. Laughing, Bain says, “The fee that I got for that screenplay ultimately went to the therapist.” It also turns out that the company that Bain was writing the screenplay for was being run by Simon. However, they didn’t meet at that time.

The therapist introduced Bain to the “Seth” books. At first Bain thought, “He’s crazier than I am. He should be paying me for my forty minute hour.” But the deeper he explored, the more he opened to the gift that he had just been given. “I began to understand that psychology was just a blip on the screen of something much bigger that we call spirituality,” says Bain. “This put me on a spiritual path—not my therapist’s path—my own spiritual path.”

As he learned to discern among the many concepts to which he was being exposed, Bain discovered a few powerful teachers, one being his wife, (the “beautiful woman” referred to in the introduction), who he also refers to as a mirror for his soul, and the other being Lazaris, with whom Simon also shares an affinity.

“Everything I’d done was a search to find some kind of outlet, to discover what was real for me, what was valid for me, what was an authentic expression of who I am, or who I was,” says Bain. He began to view his journey as “the voyage of discovering a spiritual path couched in the framework of finding a career path.” 

Although his screen version of “Jesus,” had been an enormous success, Bain thought it should have been dismissed for many reasons. For example, it wasn’t movie-star driven and it wasn’t fantasy-based. “It took me many years to discover the ego investment I had in denying the Jesus movie,” says Bain, “and a few years beyond that to discover that there was some kind of pattern, some kind of beautiful symmetry to what was going on in my life with respect to filmmaking.” Although he had started off by making a very mainstream religious movie, making spiritual movies became his new priority.

Referring to both himself and to business partner Simon, Bain acknowledges that in both instances, “the examined life is now becoming the expressed life. Our lives are an expression of who we are choosing to be and the unfolding of that discovery is the natural expression of who we are. Metafilmics is a joyful way for us to do what we do, as opposed to doing indentured servitude. We generate our own work, so we might as well express who we are.” Bain doesn’t perceive their metaphysical moviemaking venture as being risky, but rather simply as a challenge to accomplish a number of things with respect to the world, for those they love, for each other, and for themselves. 

Bain cites that it’s more of an emotional risk and a health risk for him not to pursue making metaphysical movies. “We’ve all gone through many years of not expressing who we are. And we all know the risk, the dangers, and the struggles everytime that happens,” says Bain. Rather than viewing nineteen years of waiting to make a film as a struggle, Bain instead acknowledges Simon’s persistence of vision which “speaks to a courage and an idealism, and a tenacity and a connection with aspects of the self that are greater than what we normally perceive. It also speaks to who we are as individuals and to what Metafilmics is about.”

“The studio process used to be thirty-one flavors,” adds Simon. “Now there’s no more rocky road fudge or strawberry cheesecake, it’s basically all vanilla. It’s just the way the process has come about. Our movies cannot be vanilla by their very definition. We can’t worry that some group is going to say, ‘Well, but that’s not my belief system’. This film does not totally represent in all of its philosophy, our belief system. It contains the original author’s belief system in it, as well as screenwriter Ron Bass’s, the director, Vincent Ward’s, and our belief system as well.”

According to Simon, anything worthy of achieving in the movie industry must involve a collaborative process. “When someone gets absolute power in this business and chooses not to collaborate with anyone, it usually fails.” “But,” Bain adds, “The collaborative process needs to be with people of a like mind. To make films about consciousness requires people that are committed to being conscious. If you’re going to make a film about waking up, you should be awake. Consciousness should be your life priority. If you have that, you can really create magic.”

Further, Bain believes that, “Metafilmics is not about throwing mighty rocks out there. It is about throwing out a grappling hook of vision. We are throwing ourselves out in the spirit of discovery, getting closer to some inkling of where we want to go, and having the humility to let it be an adventure along the way as we see exactly where it is that we will wind up.” 

“Amongst many other things,” adds Simon, “Metafilmics is about us expressing ourselves in a medium that is capable of worldwide impact; impact that is unprecedented around the planet. We have the vehicle and the platform to deliver a level of impact that we believe will empower people and help them feel a greater sense of spiritual connection.” 

Bain and Simon believe that they have a worldwide audience that is ready and waiting for their material. Had this film come out any earlier, they further believe that their message of empowerment would most likely have fallen through the cracks.

Simon is quick to add that these movies are not polemics. Their main purpose is to entertain. “People do not like to be taught anything or be preached to when they go see a movie. Teaching has become the province of television because it is a much less intimate and vulnerable experience. Going into a movie theater with a group of strangers and sitting in the dark under a fifty- foot screen, is an act of intimacy and vulnerability.” 

Bain agrees. “On the level of storytelling, after a hundred years of filmmaking, the audience has developed an ability to enter into the particular world of a story, identify it, and abide by it in terms of its own rules and its own physics. The audience is able to suspend their understanding of their world, at least for the duration of that presentation, and is able to enter into the film completely.”

“Further,” says Bain, “When we tell a story that presents a new paradigm and a new physics to an audience that has come to this place in time and space where it can actually enter into that world, this represents a quantum movement in terms of the receptivity of the culture. We’re presenting very esoteric ideas. So it is the convergence of a delivery system, our personal passion, and the ability of an audience to accept, in a very mainstream fashion, what were here-to-fore the most esoteric ideas, that make Metafilmics ready for the time.”

In addition to “What Dreams May Come,” Bain and Simon are also producing a multi-part television series on the evolution of consciousness in conjunction with Zoetrope, a Frances Ford Coppola company. According to Simon, “This series will be to the inner world and to inner space, what Carl Sagan’s series on the cosmos was to outer space.” 

Simon and Bain are not looking to replace the types of movies that are currently being made. Rather they are simply looking to add to what already exists. “People want to be entertained, they want to be moved. Some people like to be frightened or watch violent films. Whatever. All of those are valid. The kind of technology which produced the special effects for Terminator II about six years ago and cost over $120 million dollars to make, can now be done on a home MacIntosh,” says Simon. This extraordinary technology hasn’t yet been applied to the inner world experience,”—and this is precisely what Simon and Bain intend to do.

Shortly after the turn of the century, Simon predicts that there are going to be new delivery systems for entertainment that are as inconceivable to us now as laser discs were twenty-five years ago. “The whole future of entertainment is changing and we are going to have technology which will allow the viewer to truly experience a movie in a new way. When that day comes,” says Simon, “it is our passionate belief that the experience that people will want is not to have a gun pointed at their heads so that they can see the bullet coming; it will be to go inside and experience the wonders of what we feel in our meditations and in our dreams. That’s what we see as the future we can help create in the world through Metafilmics.”

In “What Dreams May Come,” Simon and Bain will deal with the afterlife in a way that hasn’t been done before, but will still appeal to a mainstream commercial audience. Says Simon, “If we do our job correctly, we hope that people will walk out like they did after Forrest Gump, either feeling a little bit better or a lot better about what it means to be a human being.”

As Simon and Bain introduce their new model of metaphysical storytelling, movie-goers will become partners in witnessing the creation of a new kind of mythology which focuses on bringing greater awareness to the inner realms through the medium of film. Simon and Bain are intent upon examining, what Bain refers to as, “the logical and metalogical ramifications of how we behave, how we treat ourselves and how we treat each other.” Says Bain in conclusion, “When we begin to identify with the fact that we are all one Self, and we begin to identify with our consciousness and with our wholeness both as selves and as the other, we can begin to create stories that model the dynamics that are involved in thinking in those terms. When we think like this, who knows ‘What Dreams May Come’???”