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Onward and Upward with Michael Wiese by Don Schwartz
Filmmaker, publisher and mystic Michael Wiese relaxing in Lima, Peru. photo: courtesy M. Wiese
MICHAEL WIESE IS TELLING HIS OWN
story. For a lifetime he’s told the story of so many others—through books, films, television, live shows, exhibitions, presentations and the Internet.
Now, through the publishing of his memoirs, “Onward and Upward”, and the release of his four films, “Sacred Journeys”, his own story is told. As of this writing, the four films which document his journeys through sacred lands and cultures, are touring the United States as
'The Sacred Journeys Film Festival."
His book, subtitled ‘Reflections of a Joyful Life,’ begins at the beginning, literally, his birth: “My skin presses on a metal slab.” From that moment on the reader is propelled through a lifetime motivated by learning, creating, producing, loving and transcending.
Wiese’s path leads him from the quiet middle-class neighborhood of his upbringing in Champaign, Illinois, to countless journeys around the world, through tumultuous times and into dangerous territories.
Along the way he becomes successful as a filmmaker, musician, writer, producer, media marketer and publisher—amassing a many-paged resumé any small portion of which would make for an impressive professional profile. His company, Michael Wiese Productions, based in Studio City, California, has published more than 200 books about screenwriting and the production of film and television.
Wiese’s journeys are not limited to the outer world. Early in his life he began exploring inner worlds through contacts with Hindu, Buddhist, and shamanic practitioners, teachers, healers—and psychedelic substances. Throughout his book Wiese makes it abundantly clear that these ‘inner-naut’ journeys fully impact his well-being, his life’s decisions and accomplishments, and his world view.
After reading just the first 34 pages of “Onward and Upward”, I felt as if I’d already been on a long, dizzying roller coaster ride. By book’s end I felt as if I’d read an epic novel—and was ready to take the ride again.
The cover to Wiese's new memoires. photo: courtesy M. Wiese
His books on filmmaking range from "Master Shots" about camera tricks to get high production values on a low-budget, by Christopher Kenworthy, to "Alfred Hitchcock's Moviemaking Master Class", by Tony Lee Moral, see his book shop.
Wiese, with wife Geraldine and daughter Julia, settled down—I use that term loosely— near Land’s End in Cornwall, England in 1998. He continues writing, producing, travelling, teaching, and inspiring an ever-growing community of writers and producers. And now, with the publication of “Onward and Upward”, Wiese is inspiring anyone who discovers his story.
I had the distinct honor of speaking with him at his cottage in Cornwall, England—from my humble abode in California.
CineSource: Michael, I want to start out with a couple of clichéd journalistic questions. Why publish your autobiography? And why now?
Michael Wiese: One’s own body of knowledge from life experiences is worthy of exploration. Everyone has a story to tell. For me, the challenge was to evoke the forces of my generation, those of us born at the end of WWII, to create a joyous account and celebration of life.
The other thing is, I’m 65 now—I don’t know how that happened, I was 30 the other day! [laughs] Then one day I woke up to find that I am an elder. I think that it’s the responsibility of elders to pass on their wisdom.
Our daughter is 20, and she’s just grappling with the world now. I wrote the book in part because I wanted her to see the curves and twists one’s life can take, and the wonderful creative moments that occur.
Also I have Parkinson’s. While I used to be the world’s fastest typist, I am now the world’s slowest. So it was a matter of getting the book out before the fingers stop working. Having Parkinson’s underscores the importance of fully living each day.
Finally, it’s a way of kind of wrapping up and acknowledging all the wonderful teachers, lovers, and friends—the magnificent people in my life—not that I write about everybody. I certainly left out many more people than I got in the book.
Wiese shooting an experimental film in Marin just before cast and crew were surrounded by eight deputies with rifles. photo: courtesy M. Wiese
My wife encouraged me, too, which had a lot to do with it. She loves my stories, and she’s read the book about fifteen times. She copy-edited the book and worked very closely with me on it.
I was originally just writing little stories, starting about five or six years ago—pulling the colored threads out of my past in order to weave a whole tapestry. So, all those things kind of came together and became compelling reasons to give it a go.
It seems like the four Sacred Journeys films are the audio-visual part of the book. What are your thoughts about the decision to put them together and marketing more them more in various ways? These films seem to express the most vulnerable, the most intimate aspects of your story.
Like many storytellers, I realized I tell the same story over and over—in different cultures, digging deeper each time. They’re all personal journeys. I’m not an expert on any of those things.
With “Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas” I returned to my independent filmmaking roots—relating to the works I did in the sixties and seventies where one is only accountable to one’s self. You don’t have investors, you don’t have broadcasters telling you how long it should be, and where the commercial breaks should be.
I was free to explore Tibetan Buddhism in “Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas” with really an innocent eye. The success of that film led me to a similar no-frills approach to “The Shaman & Ayahuasca” which was also an extraordinary life-changing experience.
I’d heard when you reach your 60’s things get quieter, you watch a lot of TV, then fade out like my granddad. But, in fact, the experience of exploring other dimensions filled with powerful entities has reinvigorated me creatively, productively, in every way.
This led then to wanting to share my experiences of Bali and its invisible worlds. Ayahuasca had open me up, so that when I went to Bali to make the film, I met elders and magicians and healers, and priests, incredible people who shared with me at the deepest levels, the inner workings of their very sacred and very powerful culture.
And if that wasn’t enough—despite my physical condition, I went back to the Amazon, and dug deeper into the multiple dimensions of ayahuasca, spending 10 days in the jungle with the plant medicines, which resulted in an hour long video diary.
Buckminister Fuller in Bali, holding a birthday gift, and being filmed by Wiese on what was also Weise's birthday in 1977. photo: courtesy M. Wiese
I feel awkward in some ways about putting out this very personal stuff, but then I realize that I have to get beyond that. I have inspiring stories, and I have seen things that other people haven’t seen that I want to share. So, I have to put away my reluctance to be an on-camera presenter and just, “Shut up and do it!” I’m certainly not trying to become a presenter at this age [laughing].
But you have been presenting for much of your life. The issue seems to be what you present.
Yeah. You are right. What I present is what I feel is important, what’s moved me. I’m not making these films for big audiences. I realize the audiences are going to be very, very small, and that they may have bigger audiences after I’m gone when the subjects I explore become common knowledge.
Today if I sell a thousand DVDs and some video streams, I’m happy as a clam, the film will have paid for itself. These are very low budget films. For me, what they lack in production value is made up for by the experience of making them.
Michael, as your life unfolded, it seems like you’ve come to live in two worlds—to put it simply, the world of spirit and the world of matter. And since you’ve added the Divine Arts imprint to MWP your business reflects that dichotomy. How do you deal with these two aspects?
Well, yes, I’ve had a foot in each world for some time. In my independent filmmaking days in San Francisco, I was on a spiritual path, and making films that reflected that.
Then I got a ‘real job’, which was inside the entertainment industry producing and distributing television and home video and the like. The job was not about trying to raise consciousness or save the world. The goal was making money— getting ratings, getting votes, or selling video cassettes.
So I found I was losing my soul or my connection. I was making a lot of money for the companies I was working for, but was not fulfilled. I wasn’t making my own films anymore. I was creating fodder for this hungry entertainment audience that soon found its way into the remainder bins.
So I returned to being independent by publishing filmmaking books and making my own films. I like to think of it as an end-run kind of independent filmmaking. How can we have a sustainable living making the films we want to make? The books were a way to share and start a dialog on those insights.
Nowadays you think that how-to film books have been around forever, but they haven’t. They’ve only been available as a genre for twenty or thirty years. All that information about how to make films was secret stuff among the studios, their writers, cameramen, assistant cameramen, editors…and you only learned ‘how-to’ if you were an apprentice. So, I kind of kicked that door open for everyone through publishing that kind of information to serve and empower emerging filmmakers.
As the book line grew, I wanted to take it beyond just how you do it, and started asking questions, ‘why are we doing it?’ So, ‘how-tos’ went to ‘why-tos’. We started publishing books that had a little bit deeper questioning about why we are making this media. “The Writers Journey” was one of the first that did that, and then there were a dozen others.
At some point, I started taking my own advice, and started making my own documentaries again, marketing be damned, or commercial world be damned. Let those interested in the same things I’m interested in find the material.
It’s a tricky thing to do, you know. What would I say to beginning filmmakers? Bucky Fuller sums it up the best. I talked with him about this once when I was frustrated because I had a day job—I think I was working as a typist—and I wanted to make my films.
Bucky said, ‘It’s okay to have a day job, but do your own thinking and keep an eye on the prize which is your own contribution.’ So, it’s okay to have a day job, but make sure that leaves time to do your own thinking, and your own explorations. So, that’s what I say to somebody coming into this business. Eventually your own work will grow from the seeds you plant.
Sometimes I can’t believe the publishing company, how it’s grown, but it’s grown very quietly, very slowly. It’s like you’re planting seeds in the backyard and the next time you look you see a forest out there. It’s not only sustainable, but it’s throwing off fruit for everyone, at many levels. And, you know, young filmmakers are always in a hurry, they want that break into Sundance—Right Now.
I’m more of a plodder. It’s taken me a long time, a slow, upward curve, and it’s very fulfilling to be able to take one’s own experience, and look at it, and shape a piece of art out of it—whether it’s a book or it’s a film, or whether it’s the way one lives one’s own life. Making art in the way you live is, I think, what it’s really all about.
Then out of that, my wife and I started Divine Arts which is our spiritual/cultural/arts book imprint. Looking back, you can kind of connect the dots—which is what “Onward & Upward” tends to do, connect many dots; the early influences, where teachers nudged me in one direction or another in what seemed like small ways, but turned out to be big ways. That’s what I’m trying to do with my work now, for the next generation.
Michael, I’m interested in your thoughts, ideas, or visions about how our world is influenced or changed by your work. This is tricky to ask. What impact do you envision?
The books have kicked open the door to creativity that were previously held as trade secrets. I sought to find people to share those secrets, and to publish what was missing. My strategy in starting the book company was basically to ask, ‘What don’t I know?’ So, for example, I didn’t know much about directing actors, I was a little afraid of actors, and I thought I better learn how to do this. So I sought out the best teachers of directing actors, in Judith Weston and Mark Travis, and published their books on directing—which opened it up to other people who were lacking the same skill set as I was.
So that was the strategy. ‘What don’t I know?’ and publish to it. And feeling that I’m an ‘everyman’ filmmaker and a perpetual student, if I don’t know it, there’s probably a lot of other people who don’t know it, too. I try to connect the great master teachers in filmmaking and screenwriting with a very hungry audience of writers and filmmakers struggling to express themselves.
I wrote the first four books, but after that I published another 200 from other people. My job is just to create the space for it to happen, and to act as cheerleader, and try to identify the material, to find inroads in the traditional and new media markets, and so on. Act as a conduit, and bring together a community of creative people. From this core base of authors we are able to influence a whole generation of movie-makers who will, in turn, bring meaningful works to their audiences.
We’ve got somewhere around two million books in print, and it has altered the world of storytelling. Writers now understand story as myth. This has crept into every area of media making whether its computer games, or Hollywood movies, or independent films, or short films. We’ve created a dialog, and people are examining this; and I want to do a lot more of that. I’m trying to influence the world film community through the smartest people I know.
Thanks, that’s been my impression over time as I’ve come to know your catalog and see your frequent releases. I’m wondering about your personal story. Your book and Sacred Journeys films tell a story that transcends the particulars of your company’s work and impact. It’s a story for everyone.
I see it that way, too. The stories in my book may be funny or poignant which are entertaining and engaging, but it’s the patterns and themes underneath that I’m more interested in conveying.
And the Sacred Journeys films, they’re not meant to convert anybody into Hinduism or Buddhism or shamanism. They’re not evangelical pieces. They’re not intended to convert people to religions or psychedelic practices. They’re intended to open a door and say, ‘bring this into your body of knowledge and your experience, and maybe you’ll find something useful… or not. Here’s a door to look through, here’s a window to look through.’
I’m really looking for the cross-pollination of ideas we can get from these wisdom and enlightenment cultures which are quickly being overrun by over-development and tourism in the case of Bali; in the case of Tibet, the Chinese; in the case of ayahuasca, the burning of the rainforest. These cultures are hanging on by a thread, so I’m hoping to cross-pollinate and to bring appreciation back to rejuvenate these cultures. And I am also looking to assist people to find a way into these cultures.
It was an audio tape of gamelan music that propelled me to Bali. If somebody had not recorded that, I may not have ever been deeply involved with Bali. And I hope to serve people in the same way with the media works I create. The book is to encourage people to…, as Joseph Campbell would say, ‘follow your bliss,’ or as my dad would say, ‘do what makes you happy.’
Be courageous, take chances, and realize that your path is going to be different from everyone else’s. You don’t need to attain anything, you don’t need to make a lot of money, have a lot of stuff; you just need to have your experience. And that’s enough. There’s nobody standing at ‘the pearly gates’ who is going to check off your accomplishments, to decide whether to let you in or not. Our only job is to have our experience, whatever it is. And so, we might as well live and explore it to the fullest.
I hope that my book encourages people to do that, and to own up to the miraculous state in which we find ourselves as human beings and the incredible paradise that we live in. I’m looking out the window now at the ocean and all these plants, flowers blooming, and loving my appreciation of them. And, then they give back to me. They glow a little bit more.
There’s a way of being in the world that has nothing to do with the title you have, or the job you have, or the money you make. It’s about your relationship to the rest of life, to animals, to plants, and to people. If the book inspires people in that way, then that’s terrific. My goal is to create a work that would bring joy, that would reflect the joy in my life, and rub off on other people. That’s all.