| Indigo An interview with Stephen Simon by Tim Miejan No doubt dedicated readers of The EDGE are familiar with film producer Stephen Simon, producer of such films as What Dreams May Come and Somewhere in Time and regular film review columnist with this publication. Simon, who is single-handedly trying to get mainstream recognition for a film genre he has named Spiritual Cinema, has taken the next step in his evolution: film director. He will return to the Twin Cities this month for the premiere of his first cinematic direction, Indigo, a film about loneliness, redemption and the healing powers and grace of the new generation of Indigo children. Simon spoke with The EDGE from his home in Ashland, Ore., about Indigo and his many other ways to inspire hope in movie-growing audiences in America. You live in Ashland, Ore., which is home to Neal Donald Walsh and James Twyman, two men who are not strangers to The EDGE. Were you privy to early drafts of what they were working on and what turned out to be the film Indigo? Did you know early on that they were working on a possible film idea. Stephen Simon: Oh, my goodness, this actually generated before Neale got involved. Jimmy brought this idea to me in February 2003. He said that he wanted to do something with an Indigo child in the film and he and I started talking about it. He went away and wrote a couple of drafts on his own and I worked with him on them and then, after a few drafts, we decided that Neale would be the perfect person to play the lead. We discussed it with Neale and at that point he signed on to play the lead and started helping Jimmy with the script. That's how it came together. Why did you sign on to be involved with the film? Simon: It is the focus of my professional life now to create and nurture a genre film called spiritual cinema, which does not necessarily involve movie stars and big budgets and special effects. It is really a focus on story. I thought there was a wonderful story that could be told here and a movie that could be made for very little money and a movie that I could make with two dear friends of mine, James Twyman and Neale Donald Walsh, that we could make in our hometown. So, for all those reasons, I got involved. What contributed to the fact that the film attracted so many volunteers and people willing to work for below-standard pay just to get this film done? Simon: I think it's the passion for spiritual cinema and the interest that so many people have in being involved with a film that asks, "Who are we?" and "Why are we here?" and actually has you leaving the theater feeling a little bit better than when you walked in. Creative people are really tired of putting their talents to work for the standard Hollywood movie, which has basically become very shallow and youth oriented. So, this film gave people an opportunity to work on something in which everybody was treated with dignity -- there was no class or caste system. We were all trying to cut as many corners as we could to get a movie made for $500,000 in 20 days, which we did. So, I think it was a spiritual journey for a lot of people, and it actually was that for all of us. Give our readers a sense of how that budget and the production schedule compares with the average Hollywood movie. Simon: (Laughing) The average studio movie today costs $90 million to produce and to market -- and we spent $500,000. The average Hollywood movie takes somewhere between 70 and 90 days to shoot, and we took 20. Were there limitations to having such a small budget and short production schedule that may have made this a better film? Simon: When you're working with that specific amount of money, you need to be creative of how you spend it, and you need to be very economical and very, very organized about your shooting day. We did some very innovative things on Indigo. For instance, we rehearsed all of the cast on the actual locations where we were going to shoot the film. We would rehearse in the morning and then the cinematographer and the assistant director and I would go into a little room with a blackboard in the afternoon and we would actually do a detailed shot list for that location. So, when we started day one of the film, we had a detailed shot list for every single day of the film and a timeline of where we needed to be at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. As a director, I knew that I had a particular amount of time to get a scene as good as I could get it, but then I was going to have to move on. I couldn't luxuriate in saying, "OK, I'm going to do this until I'm totally, totally happy, until it's perfect." It's like, "I've got an hour and half to get this and I can get it in the best way I can get it in an hour and a half and then I have to move on." That's a very interesting way to work and it requires a lot of organization and a lot of planning and a lot of rehearsal with the actors. I read that Hitchcock storyboarded everything down to the detail on his movies. Simon: Yes, he did. Hitchcock was famous for that. He had already made the movie in his head before he got started. The only thing that we did that I don't think Hitchcock did, because he didn't have the luxury of being able to do it, is rehearse all of his actors on all the locations before we got started. If you're dealing with highly paid talent, you have a difficulty being able to get that done. Was this quite a challenge for you considering, this was your first film direction? Simon: It was a fascinating and a fun challenge, yeah. But, we all had such a good time together. You know, there was so much camaraderie. Magical Blend magazine came to the set and did an article. They had a wonderful quote in it, which is that it became very clear to them that this was just not the making of a spiritual film; this was the spiritual making of a film. I really think that does describe the way we did things and why everyone had such a good time doing it -- and why we actually got this movie made for $500,000 in 20 days. How did the creation and production process of Indigo differ from any other film you've been involved in? Simon: The smallest budget film that I'd ever been involved with before was $3 million dollars -- and that was almost 20 years ago -- so I've never been involved with budgets that low. I actually had a tremendous amount of fun and, truthfully, I'm not sure how much more we would have benefited by having another $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000. Having a little bit more time probably would have helped us, there's no question that it would have, but I'm not sure how much more it would've helped us. It was interesting, too, because we had 38 speaking roles and none of the people in the film had ever been in a film before. For me as a director -- my first time as a director -- I was dealing with actors, including Neale, and Neale is an extremely experienced stage actor and director, but he'd never been in a film before. And our little girl, Meghan McCandless, has become such a wunderkind. All the people who have seen the film are comparing her to Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) for the impact that she has on our film. Megan had never been in as much as a school play before. Now, at the same time, we were greatly aided by the fact that many of our actors are regular performers in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). It is an extremely prestigious theatre company that operates eight months a year here in Ashland and has an amazingly talented repertoire company. Because we shot here, we used a lot of those actors in the film, and that also presented another fascinating challenge. All of those actors were committed to being in plays that ran at irregular times. Their first commitment was to being to their play on time. So not only did we have to do our schedule according to time, but we would sit there with the schedule of the performances of the Shakespeare Festival and we would plan a day and then we would say, "OK, now let's see and make sure that all of our actors...uh, no, so and so has a matinee that day...so we can't shoot that that day and we have to shoot on another day." It was a fascinating jigsaw puzzle, but none of our actors were ever late for any of their performances. I know from interviewing Neale Donald Walsch a number of times that he has had a challenging personal life. Did that experience prepare him to play this role in Indigo? Simon: Oh, very much so, and I think Neale would be the first person who would tell you that one of the reasons he was attracted to the character is because there were aspects of the challenges that the character has in Indigo that resonated with Neale in his personal life. It's interesting that you bring that up, because the next film that I plan to produce and direct will be the Conversations with God film, which is going to be the story of Neale living as a homeless man in a park with a broken neck collecting cans to live on 50 cents to a dollar a day, and then four years later being the author of Conversations with God. So, yes, a lot of what Neale brought to the film is stuff that resonated with him in his personal life. And the result was really good? Simon: I think Neil does wonderfully in the movie, and I think everyone who has seen the film so far agrees with that. Jimmy Twyman, has he had past experience in movies? Simon: None. How'd he do as executive producer? Simon: We had a lot of fun together. You know, Jimmy and Neale and I are very dear friends and so we had a great emotional shorthand with each other. There were no egos involved. We just needed to get the job done, to make it as easy and as pleasurable for everybody as we could -- and it worked seamlessly. What does Indigo have to say about forgiveness? Simon: It's really the underlying theme of the entire film. I think that forgiveness is an enormous issue that we are going through today as a society. Forgiveness is such a hard thing for so many people to address -- forgiveness of other people, but very much also forgiveness of ourselves. The first 15 minutes of the film deal with poor choices that led to the disintegration of a family. Tragic choices. The film then continues five years later when our Indigo child is now 10 years old, and she, through her own love and through her own understanding of humanity, is actually the catalyst for the forgiveness to begin. What will viewers who have never heard of the term "Indigo child" know about them after watching this film? Simon: I think they're going to know quite a lot. We don't in any way shy away from showing people, I think dramatically, and discussing within the film exactly who Indigoes are and why they're here. Our little Grace in the film has healing abilities and she has psychic abilities -- and she's very specific about why she's here and what she's doing. What's fascinating is that when we put out the casting call for somebody to play a 10-year-old Indigo child, we had literally 650 people from all over the world show up in Ashland, Ore., in June 2003 to audition for various parts of the film -- and about 150 of them were kids, most of whom were Indigo children or thought they were Indigo children or their parents thought they were Indigo children. The little girl who came in, Megan, just took over the audition and made it so obvious that she was the right choice for the film. She is actually a little girl who was brought up in a very, very traditional Christian family. She goes to Bible Study every Wednesday afternoon and to church every Sunday and her parents and I actually had a very long conversation about her appearance in the film and their concerns about her exposure to a new kind of philosophy. As soon as I found out that she was from a Christian family, I was even more intent on having her in the film, because spirituality is a very, very broad umbrella, and it welcomes every kind of belief. Megan's family and I became extremely close. I consider them now very, very dear friends. It was a wonderful experience for her and a wonderful experience for us. The result of the Santa Fe Film Festival in December, winning the Audience Choice Award, must have been an incredible feeling for all those involved with Indigo. Simon: That was altogether an amazing experience. Why do you think it succeeded in moving viewers? Simon: People are really hungry for the kind of entertainment that Indigo represents. Indigo is not a perfect movie. Indigo has its flaws and the audience, however, is willing to overlook the flaws in the film to embrace the performances and the story and the things that work about the film. That's why Santa Fe was such an extraordinary event. There were more than 200 films exhibited in Santa Fe, including movies that have gotten a lot of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, like 21 Grams, like The House of Sand and Fog, like The Girl with the Pearl Earring. The Audience Choice Award is the only award that is voted on by the audiences, not the judges. The reason we won the Audience Award over all of those films is because there is a passionate audience for this. I have been saying for quite some time now since Santa Fe, "It's a good little movie, we hope, but we have a great audience." I'm wondering what kind of effect you will get from parents who will suddenly see their own children in a new way after seeing the film. Simon: This has already happened. It happened in Santa Fe. We had a screening in Los Angeles for some potential distributors. We opened the doors to the public and we unfortunately had to turn away 250 people who couldn't get in. We were shocked because people found out the screening was there and how many people showed up trying to get in. Fortunately, some of the people who did get in were some parents and some Indigo kids. We had one particular Indigo child who came up to me afterwards when I was talking to the entire audience and actually thanked me for putting her in the movie. She wasn't in the movie, but it represented her. I hope and believe that parents who have Indigo children or people who've been around them will see the film as a confirmation that these kids are not freaks, that they are not kids who are supposed to be medicated, because they have ADHD or attention deficit problems. These are kids who are here and have a mission. Now, at the same time, the film is an entertainment. This is not a documentary. This film is a dramatic entertainment and we hope that people will take it on that level. We did not set out to make a documentary about Indigoes, and this doesn't represent every single type of Indigo child that there is in the world. It's not. But we think that within that, there is a lot of integrity about Indigo children. When will Indigo be seen in theatres across the country? Simon: Fortunately, right now we have a lot of interest in distribution and we're in the process now of deciding how that's going to look. This is why we're so gratified by what happened in Santa Fe and why we're so looking forward to the screening in Minneapolis. Distributors are paying attention to the crowds that we are drawing at all of our screenings and they have been stunned at the response of the people in the audience and the number of people wanting to get in. Distributors may or may not be understanding the essence of the film itself, but they are beginning to understand that there's an audience for it. That's the key for me, in particular, about spiritual cinema, which is to establish that there is an audience that wants to see these kinds of films. This is also why we have created Spiritualcinemacircle.com, which is to distribute films like this on DVD every month. Starting April 1, we're going to be putting three to five films per month on DVD in people's homes that are in this genre. Now, Indigo is not going to be one of them initially because we have other plans for Indigo, but you know all of this is to create an international awareness that people are hungry for these kinds of movies. You've said that spiritual cinema is a return to shamanic storytelling. What's the value of shamanic storytelling and what effect can it have on our society? Simon: When I talk about shamanic storytelling, what I mean is that films are the 21st century version of a shaman sitting around a campfire communicating the myths and the stories of that culture to an enraptured audience sitting with wide eyes and the fire lighting their faces. The fire lighting their faces in this case are movie screens that reflect back to us who we are and why we're here. This is a critical time in the evolution of humanity. There are so many naysayers and doomsayers. Supposedly the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 means the end of the world is coming. There are things throughout popular culture, like the Left Behind series of books about the Apocalypse, which sold tens of millions of copies and are all about the destruction of humanity. Spiritual cinema is a counterbalance to that. These are films that say we are not a debased species. We are a beautiful species that can consciously love and consciously forgive and that there are tens of millions of us on the planet today who came to this lifetime with a commitment not to repeat the mistakes of the past, not to go up in flames again in destruction, but to create a conscious, human evolution of the planet. We are coming upon a new renaissance of humanity rather than the destruction of humanity, and spiritual cinema, through its storytelling and its simple appeal to people's hearts and minds and souls, represents that kind of view. It is actually a return to the style of older films that were more based on the story than special effects. Simon: Yes. If you take a look at the traditional film industry, there is a history of making films like this. We still get some films like these from time to time. They also almost always wind up having a major movie star in them, because the studios themselves don't really understand the appeal of these films. They see them as fantasy films, so what happens is John Travolta gets Michael made and he gets Phenomenon made. Bruce Willis gets Sixth Sense made. You know, Meg Ryan gets City of Angels made. If you look throughout the history of these movies, more often than not they have major movie stars attached to them -- but they don't need to. We don't want to go down the path of ruin that the Hollywood studios have gone. Hollywood studios have broken an implicit pact that they have had with audiences for the last hundred years, which is that they would always make a regular slate of movies for everyone. Well, over the last five or 10 years, basically because of the corporate takeover of Hollywood, adults in huge numbers have stopped going to the movies as a regular habit, because right now we get interesting movies with interesting content only three months of the year -- October, November and December -- only to qualify for Academy Award nominations. The other nine months of the year we get very little. What happens is, adults don't go to the movies as a habit anymore. This is finally beginning to catch up with Hollywood. In 2003, for the first time in 12 years, they sold less tickets than they did in the year before. One hundred million fewer tickets were sold in 2003 than in 2002. This is because a huge group of people have abandoned going to the movies as a habit. We want to bring those audiences back, but we're not going to bring them back with major stars and huge effects and huge budgets and an action figure at Burger King. We want to bring them back with stories that resonate with people. That's why it is so important to get spiritual cinema recognized as a genre. I want to tell you something else that is just in the process of happening right now. The big video store where I live in Ashland is called DJ's, and they have rebuilt their store around a new section called spiritual cinema. It is the first video store in the country to have done this. They built a whole spiritual cinema section and took all the movies in my book and they put them in that section -- and they took about 300 other movies that we all felt belonged there. So there's 400 movies in this section now. What the owners of this store have told me is that in the week since they have done this, movies that were sitting in other parts of the store never being rented are now in the new section and they are flying off the shelves. People are getting the fact that this is a genre, that it has a specific thing to say. We're hoping to repeat that across the country, so more and more video stores will begin to see that there are people who want to rent these movies, and if you create a section for them and put all of the movies in that section, then they'll rent them. How does that move across the country? Simon: By us getting the word out, number one. I'm just actually sending out an e-mail to our entire list about that today. Here in Ashland, the local television station, the local newspapers, our spiritual community in Ashland and our spiritual cinema community in Ashland has been spearheading this. When I come to Minneapolis in March and I do my weekend of events there March 18-21, we are going to establish a spiritual cinema community and a coordinator in Minneapolis. People will get together once a month to see these movies, to discuss these movies and spread the word to independent video stores that this is a way to generate more business for the store. It's a way to differentiate yourself from the big chains. There are many independent video stores in the country and this is a great way for them to differentiate themselves. For more information on joining the Spiritual Cinema Circle online, visit spiritualcinemacircle.com. For more on Stephen Simon, visit www.Movingmediamessages.com. Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969, toll-free 1 (888) 776-5687 or e-mail editor@edgenews.com Copyright © 2004 Tim Miejan |
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March 2004 |
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