September/October 2005 Featured Stories
The Cinematic Vision of Stephen Simon

An interview by Marta Freundlich

Stephen Simon
Photo by Christopher Briscoe

Stephen Simon has produced and directed many films including Indigo and the Academy Award winning What Dreams May Come. He is co- founder of the Spiritual Cinema Circle, an international DVD subscription service. Stephen speaks here about Spiritual Cinema and his upcoming film based on Neale Donald Walsch’s book, Conversations With God.

Since you place "Conversations With God" in the spiritual cinema genre, can you say what spiritual films are?
For me - and everyone will have their own definition - spiritual movies ask who we are and why we are here. They uplift us. At the same time, by empowering us to find our own meanings to life, they provide an opportunity for transformation. Any movie having a hopeful take on humanity by the end of the film fits into this genre. Some of these films contain dark subject matter because life isn’t all goodness and light and you have to go through the darkness before you can see the light, but you have to eventually get to the light. Spiritual Cinema has been around from the beginning, including "It’s A Wonderful Life" from the 1950’s; but it is enormously gratifying for me that in the last couple of years there has been a greater recognition of spiritual cinema as a separate genre. There are now Spiritual Cinema sections in video stores and the Spiritual Cinema Circle is completely devoted to it with subscribers in over 70 countries.

What is happening in the world to produce this greater demand for Spiritual Cinema?
There is tremendous thirst, among a very large group of people, for meaning. This group is conscious of their spirituality, conscious of their empowerment and have a deep need and desire for inspiration and fulfillment in entertainment form. This comes at a time when there is a sense of fear in the world and so many beliefs about Armageddon. Most of the media around the world are so cynical about humanity that many of us have said enough is enough. We are not a debased species. Yes we have darkness in us, of course we do. I don’t believe in the ostrich theory of humanity - let’s not look at any of our darkness - but we are the only species that consciously loves and consciously forgives. We are a beautiful species and I think people around the world have got to a point where they are saying we’ve got to start thinking better of ourselves. Humanity has had a self-image problem for a long time, created mainly by the media. People are now trying to correct that image. That is the niche that we are creating entertainment for.

Is Hollywood getting the message after the success of What The Bleep and Samuel Goldwyn’s involvement in St Ralph?
Probably not. What The Bleep is looked on as an anomaly. It grossed $12 million at the box office, which it fully deserves because it is a wonderful movie. That is a huge milestone for our community, but in terms of the mainstream and Hollywood, it’s just a weird little film and that’s a drop in the bucket. As for St Ralph, Goldwyn didn’t pick it up because they understood or liked it, but because they realized that people were going to see it over and over again.

If we delude ourselves and start thinking that Hollywood will be making these types of movies, we are going to be on a very slippery slope towards all the compromises that Hollywood itself makes when they try to appeal to everybody by not making movies that appeal only to certain groups.

Tell me about your next film, "Conversations With God."
Neale and I are great friends and we have wanted to make this film together since we met in 1998. We are really excited that we finally came up with the right way to make the film and that The Spiritual Cinema Circle is now in a position to finance it. It will be cast and shot in Oregon because while Neale was living around Oregon as a homeless man, he began to get the messages for Conversations With God. At this point we are seriously considering having the world premier in October 2006 in Portland for the benefit of a local homeless organization.

What inspired you to make this film?
The human story is so compelling: the triumph of the human spirit. Neale was living in a tent in a park collecting cans to survive. Five years later he had become an international best-selling author with a revolutionary message about a new way of looking at God as energy. This is fantastic subject matter: a fascinating human story of somebody who went through that kind of transformation. I personally find it to be enormously empowering and particularly important today - but it will probably wind up being a very controversial film.

Why controversial?
It will be a radical way of perceiving God energy in our lives. As God says to Neale, "You’ve got me all wrong and you’ve got yourself all wrong." God will be portrayed in a non-religious way, not as separate but as part of who we are, not expecting anything from us or wanting us to feel guilty, to suffer, or to feel fear.

These ideas may be controversial for certain people but they are becoming more acceptable today.
This is why it is important for us to look to the community of people who consider themselves spiritual and identify themselves with the unseen divine essence that is life force itself. According to a recent survey in USA Today, that’s somewhere between 20-30% of the people in the US and definitely not mainstream; but it means there are 50-90 million people who do identify themselves as being spiritual and that’s a lot. These are the people we want to entertain, uplift, inspire, and empower. Our focus is to give this type of entertainment to the people looking for it. But we have no reason or desire to attack anybody’s belief system, and we’re not going to do that. We are just going to present a dramatic film with a very basic belief system. It is going to be an entertainment first. I’m hoping it will be a bridge between spiritual and religious people because we have a lot more in common than not. We all would like to see peace in the world, to see people treat each other better and to see a return to honesty and integrity. The world can’t afford ancient divisions based on fear and jealousies anymore. What I am very much hoping for from a filmmaking standpoint is that we would be able together to embrace our differences, but to understand that we all want a better world.

You seem passionate about raising consciousness in the world through film, which you see as present day shamanic storytelling. Given the extent to which a film can pass on the myths and hopes of one culture, how can it build bridges between different cultures?
We do have different cultural affinities, but at the end of the day we are one humanity and things that touch us, empower us, and uplift us are coded in international language. I believe the appreciation of art, because it is such a universal experience, is able to break through cultural barriers by helping us to experience the magical aspects of our shared unseen world. Film, like other art forms, is able to do this by reconnecting us with our feelings and opening us to love, respect, and compassion for others and ourselves. It certainly is one of the ways to help build bridges, and I do believe this is the material I have come here to make.

If you want to find out more, visit www.spiritualcinemacircle.com