THE BOOK OF CO-CREATION

In 1987 I asked Barbara Marx Hubbard if I could produce a video of her presenting the content of The Book of Co-Creation. At the time I managed the Television Center at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I taught courses in screenwriting, film and television production.

A discussion of the material would have taken hours to record and would have reduced the potency of the subject matter, making the video impossible to distribute. Instead, I wrote a script for a studio taping, where five of Barbara’s friends would ask about the key passages in the book and have her quote from it with spontaneous comments. To make the video visually stimulating, I drew from my library of stock footage and still, photographed artwork produced by friends and involved students in the week-long taping sessions including special effects. A former student and friend, John Howland, accompanied me to the West Coast where we recorded Barbara’s introduction and shot a considerable amount of B-roll.

From the outset, the video was a labor of love, involving many friends and students, faculty members, my wife, Linda, and Judy Zarick who gave up her weekends to work with me in post-production. The video was packaged and offered to the public through a video catalog. Sales were moderate, but in 1990 the video took first place in the category of Religion and Philosophy at the American Video Conference sponsored by the American Film Institute. After the award ceremony in Los Angeles, riding the elevator down with four others, the trophy in my hand, a woman congratulated me. I thanked her and silence followed as we watched the floor numbers. When the doors were about to open, she said, “You beat us—we’re from the Vatican.”