This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:
Aug. 31 Ryan Knighton: I cut out this Globe and
Mail article called “Transformations” by Marsha Lederman on Mar. 26, 2013.
Vancouver-based author Ryan Knighton is by no means a
religious or spiritual person, but he is in another way uniquely qualified for
the very hot screenwriting job he has landed. Knighton, 40, will write the
screenplay for Universal Studios’s adaptation of the giant bestseller Proof
of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.
The memoir debuted at the top of the New York Times
bestseller list in the fall and retained the No. 1 position for weeks (it’s
currently No. 2). In it, Eben Alexander, a Virginia-based neurosurgeon,
recounts his 2008 near-death experience. At 54, he contracted a rare strain of
bacterial meningitis and fell into a coma. He lay near death for a week. When
he woke up, he had an amazing story to tell: He had seen heaven.
That agent also happens to be Knighton’s screenwriting agent, so he asked Knighton if he would check out the book, which Knighton had not yet read. Two weeks later, Knighton was on the phone with studios in L.A., offering a thumbnail version of what he thought the movie would feel and sound like. A couple of weeks after that, he was in Los Angeles, with Alexander, pitching the project in studio boardrooms.
If it felt strange sitting next to Alexander, describing the man’s story to Hollywood, Knighton has a very intimate perspective on the matter. On his 18th birthday, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which would lead to total blindness. He knows what it’s like to have your world rocked by an unexpected medical bombshell and emerge from it, altered.
“I do recognize something in this book in a very distant way,” says Knighton, sitting in his East Vancouver living room. “This is a guy who went into a coma and came out something else on the other side. And in my own distant experience with late-onset blindness, I went through something that I recognize dramatically…. I remember very deeply that process. And so [Eben] and I have had very interesting conversations about what it’s like to really come out and feel yourself a different person, in his case a radically different person. As I keep joking to him: You’re the only ghost I know.”
With that personal foothold into the story, Knighton devised the bones for an adaptation, focusing not just on those seven days Alexander spent near death in the hospital and his journey to the Core, as the doctor calls it, but also on what happened to the man post-medical-miracle recovery. He had long conversations with Alexander about that, and it became a key element.
“I was more curious about his life after, because he doesn’t really [write in the book] about what happened to him after the coma. Coming back and what it did to his life, his profession and his family and everything. And that sort of gave the second engine in the story that it needed.”
Knighton has written two memoirs of his own (Cockeyed: A Memoir and C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark) and written other screenplays, but has yet to have a film produced. So he felt like he was a bit of a long shot. On the other hand, he is extremely thoughtful, articulate and funny – and can with ease captivate a room — not just the classrooms at Capilano University where he teaches English literature and creative writing, but also, it seems, a boardroom of studio executives who spend a lot of time listening to project pitches.
“It’s funny because it’s an incredibly blind person’s medium, because what you’re doing is you’re describing a picture to people who can’t see it. And trying to make them feel what it would be like to see it.”
The final pitch — the one to Universal — is the one that led to the deal. Disruption Entertainment’s Mary Parent (Pacific Rim) and Cale Boyter (Wedding Crashers) will produce.
Knighton has not yet started writing the script, but as he develops his ideas, he plans to spend time in Lynchburg, Va., with Alexander — witnessing him work, meeting his family. He’s also thinking about a lot of different films: Awakenings (“a guy returns to a world he doesn’t recognize”); Contact (“the elements of sci-fi swapped out with a medical thriller for this one”); A Beautiful Mind (“how does a marriage survive when one of the people in that marriage radically changes?”); even, in some ways, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (“that’s dad and his wacky quest”).
“It has a lot of similar DNA to those movies,” says Knighton. “And I think there’s a real medical thriller in this story,” Knighton says. “The infection itself and the fact that they thought it was this very deadly antibiotic-resistant E. coli. For a while there they thought he brought the black plague into the United States. You can’t get stakes much better than that for a movie.”
My opinion: I thought this article was inspirational
because it was about filmmaking. Then it
was also kind of religious and reminded me of the book Heaven is for Real
which I wrote about here:
John of God: I cut out this Edmonton Journal
article “Science can’t explain spiritual experience” by Ron Lajeunesse. Here are some excerpts:
Many of us are more spiritual than we think; that is, we search for something to explain why we are on this Earth (purpose) and to understand if or what God is (the sacred.) In my youth, I was very religious, although I now understand that to be quite different than spiritual. When I was educated in "critical thinking" and the scientific method (medicine and business), much of religious doctrine seemed to make no sense.
It wasn't until 2009 when I discovered the Centres for Spiritual Living (CSL) in Phoenix and Edmonton that any philosophy resonated with me.
In general terms, CSL is
a combination of scientific principles, philosophy, psychology and the
revelations of many religions, all made relevant for today's world.
We are urged to examine all views and accept all people. We
are also urged to be open to new experiences beyond our usual willingness -
such as the pilgrimage I made recently to John of God.
He has no medical training and he describes himself as a simple farmer. He completed only two years of education and, following self-described apparitions, spent a number of years travelling from village to village doing faith healing. Since 1978, his centre, the Casa de Nom Inacio de Loyola, has been visited by millions of people seeking healing.
Casa is not a church; collections are not taken and there
are no charges for service. Costs are apparently covered by the sale of blessed
water, crystal beds, books, trinkets and herbs. John of God, we are told, is
not paid for his services.
"I do not cure anybody," he says repeatedly. "God heals, and in his infinite goodness permits the entities to heal and console my brothers. I am merely an instrument in God's divine hands."
Notable people who support him include Shirley Mac Laine,
who claims to have been healed by De Faria, Oprah Winfrey, Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer
and Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The reported results to date include an almost universal
stronger "spiritual consciousness," improved
"personal/interpersonal well-being," cancer remission, spinal
alignment, pain elimination, cyst disappearance, thought clarity, and so on.
Certainly much of the experience and outcome can be
explained by energy-healing and belief. But there is something far beyond that.
I can describe it, but I cannot explain it.
My opinion: I’m not religious, but since I wrote
about Ryan Knighton, I added this religious article. As soon as I read “John of God”, I was like:
“Wasn’t he on Oprah?” I then checked my blog,
and I wrote about it here in 2010:
John of God: I watched Oprah about
"John of God." It's this Brazilian guy who's a miracle healer. There
is footage of him cutting an egg sized tumor out of a man, scraping a woman's
eye, putting scissors through people's nose to the brain, without anesthesia. O
talked to doctors who saw it first hand and the patients who went through
surgery without anesthesia. They reported no pain.
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