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The Monthly Aspectarian: Please tell us about your journey.

Stephen Simon: I was born into the movie business. My father, Sylvan Simon was a writer, producer and director in the 40's. He made movies with Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, he made one of Lana Turner's first movies ... and I remember very vividly seeing dailies sitting on my dad's knee when I was 3 years old. I remember having actors and all of that fun around the house. My dad died very suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage when I was 4 years old. My mother remarried a wonderful man named Armand Deutsch, who is also a film producer and he adopted me, hence the name of Stephen Deutsch for most of my career. On a lot of films, except for What Dreams May Come, the credit was Stephen Deutsch. When I was 50 years old, I decided to go back to the name my soul gave me in this lifetime and changed my name back to Stephen Simon. It's created a lot of fun and a lot of confusion. People who are tremendous fans of Somewhere in Time got in touch with me when the publicity started on What Dreams May Come, to angrily tell me that some impostor named Stephen Simon was claiming to have produced Somewhere in Time.

I had movies in my genes, blood and heart and always knew that I wanted to do that. I became a lawyer for a brief period of time, as we all sometimes say, I'm a recovering lawyer...

TMA: You repented your ways...

SS: I did. In 1975, I was 29 years old, very restless and I knew there was something else I needed to do. I walked into a bookstore, saw a book called Bid Time Return by Richard Mathison, read it, and realized that I had to get into the movie business to make that film. That is the book from which Somewhere in Time is based. I begged my way into a job with a wonderful, legendary producer named Ray Stark who had made Funny Girl and The Way We Were and dozens of other tremendously successful movies. My first day on the job I arranged a lunch with Richard Mathison and told him that I wanted to produce the movie. We shook hands and it took me three years. I began my journey in that way, as an assistant to a producer and always knew that I wanted to make these kinds of films. The saga of Somewhere in Time is a long one and I have a whole chapter about that in my book.

In between, I did a lot of films, some of which I am proud of, some of which didn't turn out to be as great as I would have liked. But my heart was always in spiritually themed movies, Somewhere in Time being my first movie with almost 17 or 18 years after that to get What Dreams May Come made. In 1992 I was president of the production company of the legendary Italian film producer Dino deLaurentiis. This man had single handedly started the whole Italian film industry and had made movies in America, like Serpico and Three Days of the Condor. I was running his company and we had just made a film called Body of Evidence, with Madonna. I was in New York for the press screening and I had an epiphany, I just could not continue to make movies that my heart and soul were not in. Dino and I had an enormous confrontation, he fired me, and I immersed myself in metaphysics and spirituality for a year, basically in seclusion. I really decided at that point that it was the only thing I wanted to do with the rest of my career.

A lot of things happened after that that are too lengthy to go into, but I formed Metafilmics with my partner Barnet Bain in 1995 to just make spiritually oriented films. What Dreams May Come finally got approved for production in 1996, we shot it in 1997, and it was released in 1998. We made an extraordinary movie for the Internet called Quantum Project with John Cleese and Stephen Dorf which is the first Hollywood film made originally and exclusively for the Internet. It still is available at Sightsound.com and is a totally spiritual movie about what is reality. We made a beautiful love story for CBS on the story of Paul and Linda McCartney, called Linda McCartney. And I'm now developing Richard Bach's classic book Illusions, which we're going to make into a film with Christopher Reeve directing.

TMA: That's very exciting.

SS: It has been my journey to make these films. Four years ago I decided, after What Dreams May Come, that I just no longer had any interest in the so-called "mainstream" film business. I want to only make films that have this subject matter. That is why I wrote my book, The Force is With You, Mystical Movie Messages that Inspire Our Lives. I want to put spiritual cinema on the national map.

TMA: What are your metaphysical influences?

SS: There have been so many. I've read so many books it's very hard for me to narrow that down, and I'm afraid I would leave out something important. Richard Mathison, who wrote Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come, introduced me to metaphysics. He became my first mentor. I've gone through so many seminars and read so many books that it's hard for me to distinguish in my mind which ones had the most influence on me. Michael Murphy has been a big influence on my life. I think he's a genius in this arena. Ken Wilbur has had a big influence. Neal Donald Walsch, James Redfield, all of Richard Bach's books have had an enormous influence. I could go on and on.

TMA: You mention Michael Murphy, so you're a devotee of Shivas Irons?

SS: You bet! That's a movie that I want to make. I've wanted to make Golf in the Kingdom for a long time. When I met Michael, he had just sold the book to Clint Eastwood at Warner Brothers where it still sits. After I saw The Legend of Baggar Vance I was even more intent on trying to get Golf in the Kingdom made. Even though it sits with Clint Eastwood at this time, you never know what will happen in the future.

TMA: It's a movie that has to be made, I think actually the first and second books, Golf In the Kingdom and The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, need to be combined into one film.

So how then would you describe your approach to metaphysics? Are you a daily meditator, what's your practice?

SS: I try to meditate every morning. It's really the way I live my life. I believe that we do create our own reality, that this life is truly an illusion and that the experience we are here for is deeply spiritual. I've really incorporated that into the way I live my life and the way I've raised my four daughters who I've raised on my own for many years. I believe I've lived several lifetimes and that life is a continuum. It is no accident that Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come deal with the afterlife. That is a strong part of my work and it's why I'm really focusing on spiritual cinema and hoping to define in the public debate, what spiritual really means -- to make a real distinction between the spiritual and religion. In most mainstream media you will see the words spiritual and religion used interchangeably. One of the things that I have done recently is to be very clear that the difference for me is the following: Religion refers to an organization that tells us specific rules, regulations and rituals that we must follow in order to experience God. Spirituality relates to an inner experience that allows us to experience God in a very personal and individual way.

TMA: I've been saying for years that physical plane reality is created and defined by mass consciousness. Mass consciousness makes the world what it is. So if we want to change the world, the way to do that is to raise mass consciousness. In our time, mass consciousness and mass media have become the same thing. This gives us a tremendous opportunity to change the world. The most powerful people in the world today are no longer the presidents, prime ministers and generals but the movie producers and the program directors and those who decide what images get put into mass consciousness.

SS: Movies are the most powerful communications ever developed. I see them as a natural 21st century extension of shamans sitting around a campfire passing down the enthralling stories of a culture to enraptured listeners. That's what I believe we have the power to do. It is the most powerful communications medium ever devised and that is why I think that spiritual cinema has such a strong place. For me, spiritual cinema which has never been recognized as its own genre, has been around for 60 years, really starting with It's A Wonderful Life. There were other movies before it, but It's a Wonderful Life really began this, going through several hundred films that would fit into this category that have never been acknowledged to be part of this genre. This genre has it's own audience. There are at least 50 or 60 million of us in this country alone that have a fascination with this kind of film making and unfortunately traditional Hollywood does not understand it. They try to dilute it. They don't want to focus on a spiritual audience. I had several arguments with Polygram on What Dreams May Come about the word consciousness, for instance, which they felt was too much of a metaphysical buzzword. There were constant arguments to change that to awareness. That's why I'm doing--what I'm doing to raise awareness that there is this audience. We can make movies dedicated for this audience, market them to this audience, and have them be successful in the same way that any other genre is successful. What I try to say to people is that spiritual cinema relates to two particular questions. It illuminates what it really means or might really mean to be a human being and it also illuminates why are we here. It asks a lot of questions, it doesn't give answers and it allows us to make up our own mind.

You brought up a fascinating aspect of this which is, "what is real and what is not?" I have been saying for quite some time, that the mantra of the 60's was to question authority. I think the mantra of this first decade of this new century is to question reality. What I believe spiritual cinema does is reflect back to us what is going on in the mass consciousness and the subconsciousness. We are very concerned right now with what is real and not real. So at the end of 2001 you see the release of movies like Waking Life, Mulholland Drive, A Beautiful Mind and Vanilla Sky. Those four films came out in a 3 month period and all were about what is real and not real. The most popular action film of the last decade is The Matrix with two sequels coming up which are about someone living in a world which he thinks is real and finding out it's all an illusion. That is why I say in the introduction to my book, "whether or not you believe that the universe is transmitting messages to us or that we are transmitting messages to ourselves, this genre called spiritual cinema is looking at the deepest mysteries of life, and to me that is the exciting new frontier of film."

TMA: Do you think it's time for a yearly spiritual film festival?

SS: It's long past time for it. I've been hoping that someone would put that together. Interestingly enough, I was called by two wonderful people last year who started a festival called the Damah Film Festival in Seattle in 2001. These two men, who are basically fundamentalist Christians, contacted me because I am a metaphysician and said to me "We would like to have a film festival with short films. We'll have religious films and spiritual films and put a jury together, award prizes to the best film maker and bridge this gap." The first year was tremendously successful. The second year, which [at the time of the taping of the interview] is going on now, but it's only for short films. I think there is an opportunity, particularly in a great metropolitan area like Chicago, to do a spiritual film festival where you bring films and film makers in from around the world. You do a retrospective of films that have been in this genre, and you invite great thinkers and great film makers together into one city to share a Film Festival of Spirituality. Some day, somebody is going to do that, and when they do, I'd love to be a part of it.

TMA: I may have to do it myself.

SS: It's going to be an extraordinary event.

TMA: I want to talk about Illusions. Illusions is the quintessential "newbie" book. Somebody comes to me and they're brand new to metaphysics and want to know what to read, one of the first books I send them to pick up is Illusions. It's such an important book and so exciting that you're going to make this movie with the author Richard Bach. He has said he would not let it be made into a movie after his disappointment with the Jonathan Livingston Seagull film.

SS: Richard has an agreement to do it with us, and Christopher Reeve is going to direct.

TMA: What can you tell us?

SS: I fell in love with Illusions around the same time I fell in love with Bid Time Return. Illusions came out in 1977. It has sold 15 million copies in 35 languages since that time. I've always wanted to do it, and pursued Richard Bach for many years. When Richard saw What Dreams May Come, he really understood that we were talking the same language and we made an agreement to go forward together. Chris Reeve has been a dear friend since Somewhere In Time and Chris always had an interest in starring in the film. He's a pilot, and he understood the spiritual nature and flying nature of the book, and when Richard and I started talking about who should direct it, we both instantaneously said "Chris." Who better understands the soaring nature of the human spirit in the world today than Chris Reeve? Nobody. Chris himself, as people have recently seen through all of the national interviews he's done, has basically willed his nervous system to regenerate. No one has ever done that before, and it is no accident that this man who played Superman actually has become Superman.

TMA: He will walk.

SS: Oh, he will definitely walk. Now, the interesting challenge of Illusions, for your readers who have not read it, is that it is called Illusions, the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. It is about two barnstorming pilots who encounter each other and one realizes that the other, Donald Shimoda, is actually the Messiah, and is looking to "get out of the job." The pilot he encounters is Richard Bach and the story is about their interaction. It is wise, fun, dramatic, very touching and a deeply spiritual experience. None of us trust traditional Hollywood to understand the film. As a matter of fact, we had one conversation with a major film distributor, who was very interested in the film simply because the book had sold 15 million copies and asked us if we would be willing to change the word Messiah to Messenger. We said, "Ok, thank you very much." This is exactly why these films need to be made outside the Hollywood establishment. We are right now in the process of seeking independent equity money to back this film so that we can make it the way that Richard Bach intends it to be.

TMA: The film industry is a whole world that only someone like you knows how to negotiate. There are so many wonderful books that we need to make into movies but how does somebody like me—who can identify the books--get them made?

SS: Well, this is the great and exciting challenge that really inspired me to write this book in the first place. Once spiritual cinema gets recognized as a genre, that has its own audience, then films are going to get made particularly for that audience. Marketed in the same way, for instance, as teen-age horror movies. You know who the audience is, you know how to find them, you know how to market to them. They don't necessarily care about movie stars, they care about the story. You can make an inexpensive film and do very well, making a significant profit. What's happened in the film industry is that the blockbuster mentality has taken over. Every single studio, including the independents like Miramax, has been bought by huge international conglomerates. The only truly independent studio today is Dreamworks, which is owned by the three principals. Every other major studio is owned by a giant company and a lot of pressure is brought to bear on making movies that will appeal to everybody. That is not the way spiritual cinema works. It will work when movies are made particularly for the people that are interested in the genre.

TMA: That's how Bagger Vance got dumbed down.

SS: That's correct, a lot of films that for some of us have wound up being disappointing, got made through the Hollywood system. There's an old saying, if you want to make a movie in France, you better speak French. If you're going to make these movies, the people involved in making them need to really believe in them. Or when you see them you know there is a note of inauthenticity. Whatever people may have thought of What Dreams May Come, and some people loved it and some people hated it, no one can see that film and say "these guys didn't really believe in what they were doing." That is what we're going to do with this next decade of spiritual cinema.

TMA: The time really has arrived.

SS: It has. I became convinced a long time ago that it was not going to be generated out of Los Angeles or Hollywood where the old paradigm is firmly entrenched. That does not mean that the people who run the film business are not good people. I've been in the business for almost 30 years and most of the people running the studios are people I personally know and, contrary to what people may believe, these are basically very decent, well-meaning people. They really would like to make movies that inspire people and cater to our better instincts. They have big problems today because of the economic situation they're facing, because of the marketing and competition for entertainment dollars. They have a large problem in being able to deal with something as specific as spiritual cinema. That's why I believe that the future of spiritual cinema lies outside Los Angeles and it's one of the reasons why, after living my entire life in Los Angeles, I moved to Oregon a year ago. I realized that I personally needed to get out of that environment so I could start thinking about and experiencing a different way to get these movies financed.

Book Signing at Transitions on Tuesday, November 19th
Mystical Movie Salon at the Metropolitan Club on Wednesday, November 20th

Book published by Walsch Books, Hampton Roads, now available in bookstores.

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