Interview: Roger Nygard of ‘The Nature of Existence’

Posted on November 21, 2010 at 8:00 am

The Nature of Existence is a new documentary from Roger Nygard, who visited people all over the world to ask them the hardest and most important questions he could think of, about our purpose and the nature of existence. His interviews included Indian holy man Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (The Art of Living), evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), 24th generation Chinese Taoist Master Zhang Chengda, Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind (co-discoverer of string theory), wrestler Rob Adonis (founder of Ultimate Christian Wrestling), confrontational evangelist Brother Jed Smock, novelist Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), director Irvin Kershner (Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back), Stonehenge Druids Rollo Maughfling & King Arthur Pendragon and many more. The DVD will be released tomorrow.

He was kind enough to take time to answer my questions:

Why are we here?

It took me four years, interviewing over a hundred experts, collecting hundreds of hours of footage,and tons of airline miles to find my answer. The most common answer I got from people was religious, variations on, “To serve God,” “To know God,” “To praise God,” etc… But then that begs the question, what is God? I found that definitions varied widely. As Gandhi said, “there are as many religions as there are individuals.”

We also seem to have this notion that as a goal in life we should be pursuing happiness. But as Julia Sweeney told me, happiness is a false goal, you can’t pursue an emotion — happiness comes as a byproduct of having a purpose in life. So the real question is, how do we find purpose? You can’t give somebody else a purpose, they have to arrive there themselves. But you can give clues; you can help show people where to look, which is what my film is about. I believe the answer is in the film — it’s part of the experience, the journey we’re all on. In the film, you get to see my journey; you see what I learned from Christians, Muslims, Jews, Jainists, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Confucianists, Taoists, Atheists, Pagans, Native Americans, Baba Lovers, Satanists, everyday people, scientists, and more…. And now I have collected in one movie all their answers to the biggest questions.

What unexpected similarities did you find in the different ways people have of making sense of the world?

I was surprised to discover that religious and scientific motivations stem from the same drive within us. We all share a curiosity about the world, and the Universe. Where we look for those answers is what’s different. I’ve heard the religious describe it as being born with a God-shaped hole in your heart. As you grow and mature you fill that space with something…religion, spirituality, drugs, adventure, sex, or some other pursuit, God being the most perfect fit. The scientists fill that space with questioning and learning. They describe humans as pattern-seekers making connections between things in their environment as they attempt to exert control in their lives. But control is an illusion. There is an old joke, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Quantum mechanics has made it even clearer that we exist in a Universe that is variable and unpredictable. But we have made great strides in the thousands of years that our species has existed. Where religion used to be the exclusive holder of cosmic explanations, science has been encroaching on religion’s domain, providing more and more answers for how things are the way they are. Who’s right? Whenever I asked a scientist, “Why do we exist?” They would often correct me and say the proper question is, “HOW did we come to exist?” They leave the why question to the religious and the philosophers. I think conflict between religion and science occurs when the “why” and “how” domains get confused as the same thing. To each it’s own. Render unto Caesar….

Did you find some approaches more hopeful than others?

Some approaches are more tolerant than others. I find proselytizing to be destructive. Our best hope for the future is to accept the fact that we will NEVER all agree. Given that, our most hopeful course is to allow others to have different beliefs. Jesus (and others) preached the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is somewhat invasive, however, in that it assumes that everybody else would want the same thing as you. Confucius is known for a negative version of this, also known as the Silver Rule: Do not do to others that which we do not want them to do to us. Essentially, live and let live. To quote Julia Sweeney again, I also like her rewrite of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but ask them first if it’s okay.

What do people understand least well about those with other beliefs?

Most people (including myself before I began this journey) are unfamiliar with the fact that there are so many other belief systems. There are over a thousand active religions on the planet. How do you know that you were lucky enough to be born into the right one, unless you investigate the others? The whole point of this journey for me was to get to know people with different beliefs, ask them what they believe and why they believe it–without trying to change them into what I think they should believe. I found there are more similarities than differences. As Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

What have you learned about the importance of laughter?

Even though The Nature of Existence deals with some very serious subjects, to me they are comedies. People are fascinating, surprising, and funny. Life is absurd and if you don’t laugh you go insane.

What are some different ways people have of dealing with grief?

Grief, sadness, and loss are necessary to know joy. As one young man says in my film, “We exist to experience emotions.” There has to be a balance, you can’t have only happiness in life. But when we are in the downward part of the cycle, laughter is our strongest tool for coping with setbacks, for combating the infinity of death. The more serious a topic, the more jokes we tell about it.

What inspires you?

I am inspired by great art, great movies, great writing, great musicians, great speakers, great teachers, greatness in human endeavor… And on the contrary, bad movies, bad television, bad art, bad music, I find it depressing that somebody at some time thought that terrible work was good. If you want to be inspired, expose yourself to greatness.

How is your journey continuing? Where will you go next?

I have continued to learn from people at question and answer sessions and post screening discussions. This movie makes people want to talk. A lot. Only half kidding I sometimes announce before a screening, “I should warn you all not to see this film because it will mess with your mind. — But if your mind is already sort of messy, you’ll be fine. If your mind has everything stacked in nice neat piles, they may get jostled though.” Taking on the most challenging questions is a self-perpetuating process, because the result is so rewarding. After finishing the film I was faced with a bit of a dilemma, however: what to do next? What topic could be even more challenging than the very nature of existence itself? I finally found one, a topic even more perplexing and inexplicable: The Nature of Marriage. Check back in a couple years for some answers on that one….

Interview: Davis Guggenheim of ‘Waiting for Superman’

Posted on October 17, 2010 at 2:00 pm

“Waiting for Superman” is the stunning new documentary from Davis Guggenheim about the failures of our public school system and our failure as a society to support outstanding teachers. You can help by pledging to see the movie — if you buy tickets online you will get a free download of “Shine” from John Legend and the Roots album “Wake Up,” and the film-makers will donate five books to kids in need. Guggenheim is the son of pioneering documentarian Charles Guggenheim and the husband of Oscar-nominated actress Elisabeth Shue. I spoke to him about the public schools, what he recommends, and his own favorite teacher.

Did you have a favorite teacher?

My 10th grade history teacher, Harvey LeJure. There’s an animated film where I talk about how he changed my life. I was a terrible student, a C- student, and there were a couple of teachers who pulled me out of my funk and taught me that I had something to say. I would not be a film-maker without them.

A Conversation with Davis Guggenheim from TakePart on Vimeo.

Why is it that most of us have just one or two great teachers in our lives?

All it takes is a couple. That magic won’t happen with every teacher. But the movie is about how we have to have really great teachers in every classroom.

Do we put too many administrative burdens on teachers that interfere with their ability to teach?

What we need is a pipeline of great teachers. We need to recruit the very best, train them really well, develop the good ones, reward them really well, and the few that are ineffective, we have to find them another job. We don’t do any of those steps very well. We tend to treat teachers like widgets, just plug them in like they are all the same. Countries like Finland who are kicking our butts, number one in every category, they have a great program for great teachers. And that’s the exciting thing. It’s not some magic; it’s about having a commitment to making great teachers in this country.

What can we do to make teaching a more prestigious job?

We do have a prestige deficit. In Finland, teachers are held in the highest regard. We need to start treating teachers like a profession, holding them to the highest standard, rewarding the really good ones, we can make a difference. Teachers will feel better about themselves and we will feel better about them. Unfortunately now we have a factory mentality; anyone who wants to get a credential can. We have to hold them to a higher standard and then they will get more respect, more money, and more prestige.

Your film features Geoffrey Canada, whose extraordinary success is in part based on his ability to get the support of the parents. How important is that?

A big piece of the puzzle is parent involvement, and teachers will tell you they need parents to be good partners. But this new generation of reformers says, “We can no longer use parents as an excuse.” Yes, it’s a problem and we should give schools and neighborhoods more support. What you can see in these schools is that even in the toughest neighborhoods we can go in and send 90 percent of those kids to college. The exciting thing is that it is possible.

Do we ask too much of teachers by giving them students with such widely different levels of achievement and learning styles?

The problem of our system is that it is designed to educate a few. Even in the white suburban neighborhoods where you buy a million dollar house to get into the good school district, those schools are built for the top 10-15 percent. We now are in an economy where everyone needs the education and skills to be a good worker. The big truth is that our skills are built for a 1950’s model where you’re only going to educate a few.

How do you create a system with enough flexibility to be performance based in evaluating teachers but not too much to allow for abuse and favoritism?

We tend to swing from one extreme to the other. We’re in the extreme now where we don’t evaluate our teachers very well at all. The other extreme is just looking at scores and blind to the nuance and art of great teaching. But there is a big, thoughtful discussion on how to do that. Maybe 50 percent on test scores and another chunk of how the other teachers see you and another from a principal visit. But the other alternative is no evaluation at all and keeping everyone in the job. We have to have a thoughtful way of assessing our teachers with scores a piece of it but other observations another piece.

Your film features DC school head Michelle Rhee, who announced her resignation this week.

I’m worried about the kids in D.C. Just because the mayor and chancellor change doesn’t mean the kids change. I hope whoever replaces her continues to make the tough choices that put kids first.

Why are documentaries having such a flowering? There are several this year on education alone and many others that are attracting a lot of attention.

The other genres of movie-making seems to be stuck in a rut, but documentaries are exploding. They’re growing, they’re blossoming, many different types. People are turning to documentaries because they are not getting answers elsewhere. They’re frustrated with the mainstream press. They’re frustrated that these stories are not being told. These movies speak to them. They are inspired by the stories of the families in the movie, and by buying a ticket to become part of a movement that is changing our schools. They can disagree with some of what we say, but it is a catalyst for real change.

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Directors Documentary Interview

Interview: Randall Wallace of ‘Secretariat’

Posted on October 5, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Randall Wallace, seminarian-turned-film-maker, knows how to raise the spirits and fill the hearts of the audience. In “Braveheart” and “We Were Soldiers,” he gave us some of the most inspiring screen heroes of our time. And now, as director of “Secretariat,” he takes one of the greatest 20th century stories of faith, determination, and unmatched achievement with the saga of the Triple Crown champion owned by a self-described “housewife” named Penny Tweedy who won him on a coin toss.
What makes a champion?
The victory occurs inside the champion before it occurs outside the champion. The task before the story-teller is to inspire and you can’t do that unless you are inspired. You have to change the story until it inspires you, until you have to shout it from the rooftops. Every warrior wants a battle worth his blood and Penny found that for herself. That’s what I love about being a story-teller, finding those defining moments. There are stories I heard as a child about a deceased ancestor that told me everything I needed to know about who they were and who I was supposed to be. That’s what you look for in a story. In this one, Penny not only declares who she is, she discovers who she is. Everything logical around her was saying, “You must do this” and she said, “No, I will do that.” It gave me goosebumps!
It is such fun to get a glimpse of the real Penny in the film.
She’s one of the people I not only admire the most but am most captivated by. She is really striking and uplifting. You can’t take your eyes off her. She’s magic. And she puts up with no nonsense. She’ll tell you exactly the way it is. Part of her was, “If this is done, I want to be around to see it, and have my say.” What she told me is that the right people finally came along and were willing to put the money into it to make it right.
I was very happy to see such a terrific movie with a family-friendly PG rating.
“Family movie” sometimes means mediocre. But this is a story that will speak to a person of any age or gender and confront you with the power and excitement and force you to consider what courage means. I found myself writing in my own journal “Belief is a stronger word than no.”
There’s a prevalent attitude in movie-making, politics, religion, education, certainly in entertainment that’s a sort of contempt for the audience. So many movies by the approach they choose to have indicate a lack of faith in the audience and assume they are attention-deficient. No they’re not! They’re craving something that matters, and you’re not giving it to them. When you just turn up the volume and substitute noise for excitement, you are admitting defeat and you’ve broken the covenant.
How did you make the film exciting when you had to show so many different races, all with the outcomes already known?
That is exactly what the challenge was. The audience says “I’m here, show me.” We can’t show them the same events from the same perspective over and over. I had to structure the architecture of the events. The first race is a build-up and we cut away from the moment to a freeze-frame. The next is the first time we’ve ever seen him run and he is so far behind and then he wins. Then there was the one that was 1000 frames a second as the horse has all four of his legs off the ground at once. That shot replaced a whole montage sequence. It’s far more fascinating to see it articulated in this way. That stood for six different victories. And then the Derby and the Belmont each had their own structure. The Derby we build up forever, slower and slower, and then there’s the silence which is in a way the loudest moment in the movie. And then the Belmont was going to go the other way, slow leading up to the race and then boom, what’s he doing?
You took a risk showing one race from the perspective of the people watching at home on television.
The Preakness was problematic. How is it going to look different? I had two enormous advantages. I had the actual footage which looked good. But the greater one to me was that the story was screaming for an answer to the question about the family. In the beginning, Penny makes a choice that seems to be moving away from family. Her family was there; she was somewhere else. And as a person who’s gotten on a family knowing I would not see my family for months. On my first film, I kissed them goodbye as they were sleeping at 4:30 and then again after they were in bed asleep at night. I only saw them asleep for months.
The pull you feel to show my sons as hard as it is for me and for them that a man takes care of business. I am loving them and that is defined by how I do it, not what I do but why I do. The most powerful thing I could show is what the family is feeling at home when they are watching this, to see her husband “as if the scales have fallen from his eyes.” And I got to show that in a scene that was about a horse race.
What do you look for in your projects?
People want to work on a movie that matters. And they look to the director. The speech I gave everybody was this: I’ve seen all your resumes and there are might be five films, there might be fifty. But the ones that stand out, the movies like “Chariots of Fire” or “Dances with Wolves,” this is one of those. We had a limited budget but what we did not lack was passion and imagination. We had the finest people in the world working on this film because it mattered to them.
What makes the story of Secretariat so captivating?
The story, ultimately, is about transcendence, about going beyond what anyone thought was possible, even the horse. His commitment to run that fast, and it was his choice, was what made it possible, and also what made it dangerous. He was running not against the horses in the race, but about every horse who ever ran, and then, after he rounded that corner, for the glory.

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Behind the Scenes Directors Interview

Interview: Lisa Cholodenko of ‘The Kids Are All Right’

Posted on July 15, 2010 at 3:51 pm

Lisa Cholodenko co-wrote and directed one of the best-reviewed films of the year, “The Kids Are All Right,” about the teenage children of a lesbian couple (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) who seek out their biological father, leading to upheavals and realignments. I spoke to her about developing the film from her own experience.
It was a joy to see middle-aged actresses with beautiful but real faces. Bening and Moore let us see their real faces in this film.
I adore them. They are tremendous people on and off screen. One thing that was great about the experience was that everyone had the same agenda, to bring this script to life and make sure we got it right. We spent five years developing and revising the screenplay. It was five years in the making. By the time we got it together, with very little money, they were ready to bring it forward and it was more than I ever expected, what they did with these roles.
How did the screenplay evolve?
It originally evolved from a very personal place. My girlfriend and I were deciding to have a baby with an anonymous sperm donor and it was complicated. It took us a long time to make the decision and find the right donor. I had been fully absorbed in that process and when I sat down to write a script I realized that there wasn’t much on my mind but that. I started from a place of imagining this girl turning 18, her prerogative to open that Pandora’s box and make contact with her sperm donor, what that would be like.
I have a four-year-old now. I imagined he would want to meet this person and that the donor we selected would be open to that. That was something I felt strongly I would want for him. I made a right turn there with the narrative and made the moms are more anxious about it. I sort of threw a dart at the wall and that’s where the story began.
Stuart Blumberg (the co-author), I had known before and we re-connected. It turned out he had been a sperm donor in college.
Josh’s character Laser has the keenest, most perceptive take than anyone in the family.
What are the biggest challenges for people in long-term relationships?
It’s keeping an equilibrium. It’s easy to get lost, as Jules says at the end. Boundaries get blurry and identities can get lost easily. It’s easy to take your partner for granted. Keeping boundaries and equilibrium so you can move through the whole menu of life experiences and recover and grow.
In this film and in “Laurel Canyon” you allow middle-aged people to be sexual, which you don’t see very often in movies.
We don’t see it in a way that resonates as true or interesting. What interested me about the characters in these two films is that understanding their sexual gravitas helped to understand them as people.
Who are some of your influences as a film-maker?
I was very influenced by the films of the 70’s. It was a golden era for independent-minded films being made at studios — Hal Ashby, Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, movies with a keen sense of character and psychology and were also funny, drama-comedies, taking bigger risks with character than we see now, more naturalism than we see now. Everything today is more digital and finely crafted and controlled. I really wanted this family to feel natural and lived-in and real.

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Directors Interview Writers

Interview: Rich Christiano of ‘The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry’

Posted on May 4, 2010 at 1:59 pm

I spoke to writer-director Rich Christiano about making — and marketing — faith-based films.
You were really a one-man show behind the scenes for this film.
We have a good production team and worked hard on the distribution. This the third film we’ve put out theatrically. We learned a lot doing it. It played over 300 screens. We lot local churches to sponsor the movie in their cities. The churches that put forth the effort did well. We also worked with Christian radio. In Dayton, Ohio we ran 22 weeks because the radio station got the word out. In another city there was a pastor who really got behind the film and we did really well there. Promotion is the hardest part of it. We made sure we had local groups pushing the movie.
Is there a big audience for faith-based films?
The inspirational films have a lot of upside. One-third of this country goes to church each week and that’s our marketplace. And they’re an under-served audience. If everyone who goes to church would see our movie, we’d have “Avatar” numbers. Our society has changed over the last 20 years. If I’d told you back then there would be a weather channel, you would not have believed it. The Christian consumer group is now becoming more and more a player. They audience wants to watch these films; they just need to know they are there.
What do you hear about the way audiences respond to this film?
We’ve had wonderful reactions. There’s an emphasis to read the Gospel of John in the film. I heard from a lady who said her eight-year-old came home from the movie and read the Gospel of John. Then he wanted to go to Bible study like the boys in the movie. Another woman said her husband had drifted from the Lord. But when he came home he said three words that really lifted her spirit: “Where’s my Bible?” A 60-year-old lady told me her sister was visiting from Scotland and that she’d never, ever seen her cry until she saw this film. One of our sponsors in Fort Worth, Texas took his daughter to the film. When she saw a character change in the film, she told her father she wanted to show that she had been changed. There’s a strong message of forgiveness in this film. We’ve shown it in prison. Several of the prisoners wrote me a letter.
What can a movie convey better than a book or a sermon?
The church needs to recognize how powerful the audio-visual really is. I spoke to a man who was a church-goer and asked him if he could remember what his pastor preached a month ago. He couldn’t. I asked him if he could tell me about “The Wizard of Oz.” Even though he had not seen it for 15 years, he could remember all of the details.
Movies manipulate us, affect us, influence us. Most movies influence people away from the Lord. I want to use them to influence people for the Lord. There’s a spiritual battle going on and the Message of Christ is always being snuffed out. Movies are an entertainment medium, but every movie is religious because every movie has standards, every movie has a message about those standards. We’re trying to put forth films that are entertaining but put forth a message for the Lord, to inspire, to challenge thinking, to provoke spiritually, to make people think about eternity.
It was nice to see the film set in 1970 because that lends it a simplicity that suits its themes.
There’s no cell phones, no text messaging, no X-Box. I showed opening credits over pictures like old-school film-making. It’s like Mayberry with Bible study. It’s a throwback. It’s not edgy. It’s simply shot, no visual effects. It’s story-driven. It’s not an action film. It’s got laughs. And it’s got heart.

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Directors Interview Spiritual films