Have you seen “I Am”?

Dear Mr. Shadyac,

              Have you ever thought about folks our age being literally “the children of the sixties”?   Unlike any other generation before us, many of us grew up on the televised war in Vietnam, the televised Civil Rights struggle in the U.S. and the original Star Trek.

              Some folks consider us the end of the Baby Boom, while others consider us the beginning of Gen X.  I think of us as something else entirely.  I think we are what Ben Franklin was to the other founding fathers or FDR was to the Greatest Generation, the slightly older inspiration to action.  Look at how Barack Obama, who turned 50 in 2011, inspired the youth vote in 2008.  You are doing it now as both a filmmaker and a professor, inspiring this amazing, up and coming millennial generation.

              Have you ever thought about the legacy of Gene Roddenberry?  I have from the time supermarket doors began opening themselves (like those on the Enterprise) to personal computers and flip phones (communicators).

              Have you heard of William Shatner’s book “I’m Working on That”?  He heard that phrase about Star Trek technology from inventive people for so many years he felt the need to write about it.  Better still, have you seen the documentary “How William Shatner Changed the World”?  He took a tongue in cheek look at how Gene Roddenberry actually changed the world.

              As the fiftieth anniversary of the original Star Trek series approaches, I’ve been writing and waiting half that time for green sci fi.   Yet, since Roddenberry, no one else has given us another vision of the future in which as Captain Kirk said “there is no money and no one wants for material things”. 

              Why not?  Roddenberry created a franchise that may never die.  I once found a quote from him online where he apparently acknowledged his belief that one reason for his success was the portrayal of a fictional future of universal peace and prosperity.

              When “Avatar” broke all the box office records, I thought surely someone would recognize it as the rebirth of eco sci fi.  But, ultimately, warning against the future we could create is really just more of the fear based model, which is not actually as effective as the advertising model of making people want something. 

              Starhawk, author of “The Fifth Sacred Thing” has begun raising funds on Kickstarter.  Check it out!  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fifthsacredthing/the-fifth-sacred-thing .  It’s very exciting but I’m sure the critics will use her dystopia vs. ecoptopia to promote the idea that any ecotopia will be a hippie backwater that many people may find unattractive.  At any rate, I hope you can support her efforts.

              Personally, I’ve been working on an update of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata… set in the year 2069, of course.  “The Sex Strike” is a bawdy comedy, like the original, with a heaping spoonful of sex and laughs to make the anti-war medicine go down.  If you’re interested in reading it, I would love to send it to you.

              If not, please consider supporting Starhawk or some other fictional future.  I can’t imagine anyone better suited than you, with your amazing skill sets, connections and heart, to make green sci fi happen.  We human beings must first imagine anything we want to build.  The world of peace and justice must be made visible and desirable.

               Jennifer, who works at the TBI Resource Line and told me she hugged you at the Seattle showing of “I Am” in February 2011, encouraged me to write this to you.  I suffered a traumatic brain injury in July 2011 when I crashed my bicycle.  Now, I talk and think about green sci fi even more than ever before. I loved “I Am” and tell everyone to watch it.  Thank you for making it and thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

Starhawk to produce Green Sci Fi!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/fifthsacredthing/the-fifth-sacred-thing

 

Ecotopia

In 2007, I had the pleasure of meeting Ernest Callenbach who wrote the original green sci-fi novel in 1975 – Ecotopia. This interview was conducted in January 2008.

Ernest is a brilliant, insightful man. He was generous with his time and very supportive of my efforts to bring ideas like his into being in the form of fictional film imagery. I think of him as the wisest elder of my tribe. But, he doesn’t know either where the rest of our green sci-fi filmmaking tribe is hiding. Do you?

 

Power of Vision

I grew up watching the last truly hopeful sci-fi vision offered to this culture - Star Trek. Whatever you might think of it, even Gene Roddenberry is purported to have acknowledged one of the reasons for the show’s success was Star Trek’s fictional future had all the people of Earth living in tolerance, peace and prosperity.

Of course, in the early days of Star Trek the producers didn’t have the budget to create visuals of life on the home world. The characters only discussed it in dialogue and still the audience was drawn in by the dream. Now, many decades later, people are still drawn in by the dream of Peace on Earth and creative storytelling that uses alien encounters to explore what it means to be human.

We forget now how far out on a limb Roddenberry went with his vision of a racially and gender integrated command crew from a world at peace. We forget that at the time our country was being torn apart by struggles to end a war and secure civil rights for people of color. Many people were angered by racial integration and afraid of technology, too, when Roddenberry dared to present his hopeful vision of a peaceful and ethnically integrated future with advanced technology. 

Today, the cultural impact of Roddenberry’s vision is an ongoing, global phenomenon. Scientists and engineers of my generation have created everything from personal computers to flip phones (”Beam me up, Scottie’). I’m not alone in believing that at least some of that innovation, at least in part, is because we were all weaned on the images and ideas of Star Trek.

Now we have a new generation coming up afraid of ecological devastation and perpetual war. We need to dare to dream like Roddenberry and offer an alternative vision of hope to address those fears.

Now we could make a sustainable future come alive with the newest visual effects and the oldest teaching tool we have – storytelling. I’m looking for collaborators interested in giving our culture that much needed shot of hope.

Some people have tried to tell me that a world of peace and justice will be dull, but I’m not talking about some new-agey “everybody becomes saints so there’s no conflict” vision. I’m talking about characters who are still flawed, flesh and blood human beings. Remember, there was nothing saint-like about Captain Kirk.

Speaking of which, have you seen ”How William Shatner Changed the World”?

It’s an entertaining tongue-in-cheek look at the impact of Roddenberry’s vision. It’s really about how Roddenberry changed the world.

Apparently, Gene Roddenberry once commented, “No one in his right mind gets up in the morning and says, ‘I think I’ll create a phenomenon today,’” .

Lucky for me, I’ve never been in my right mind.

 

Welcome!

We have the technology now to create images of our home world in a green age of peace and prosperity… and is it gorgeous! But, instead, sci-fi generally gives us depictions of our future descent into some barbaric dark age or a sterile, over-mechanized dehumanization or some awful combination of the two. Where are the images of what our world could look like if humanity uses ingenuity and innovation to step back from the brink of self-destruction?

Imagine science fiction set in a sustainable future with our technology reintegrated with nature to create peace and plenty for all. Imagine fictional depictions of cities filled with alternatives that already exist (or are on the drawing boards) to fill the imaginations of the kids coming up with dreams of our world as we dreamers know it can be.

If we want to build a better world, we need to imagine it first.