Conscious Choice: Celestine In Celluloid

February 2006

Celestine In Celluloid

James Redfield’s best-selling spiritual quest novel The Celestine Prophecy hits the big screen

By Matthew Heller

Figuratively speaking, it took 2,000 years for Hollywood to make a hit movie about the Crucifixion. The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Gibson, has grossed more than $370 million in the U.S. since its release in February 2004.

It’s taken a lot less time for Hollywood to bring James Redfield’s best-selling spiritual quest novel The Celestine Prophecy to the big screen. The movie version will be released in March—some dozen years after Redfield self-published his book. While the source material for the upcoming Celestine movie may not be as rich as the New Testament, Redfield is hoping it will do for his alternative brand of spirituality what The Passion did for mainstream Christianity.

“People are hearing about [ The Celestine Prophecy ] for the first time,” he says. “It’s another way of trying to get the word out.”

Redfield, 55, quit his practice as an Alabama psychotherapist to start writing in 1989. He’s morphed into a New Age phenomenon, the head of a multimedia empire with offerings ranging from The Song of Celestine picture book for young children to his wife Salle’s The Celestine Meditations audiotape. For those with short attention spans, there’s A Pocket Guide to the Nine Insights of Prophecy, and its two sequels. A native Southerner, James and his wife now own homes in Alabama and Florida.

The Celestine series wasn’t a critical hit—one reviewer called the first book “a tenth-rate melodrama joining gnostic hubris with flower-child theology.” Some critics have suggested Redfield’s business savvy exceeds his spiritual depth, noting that he sold his services as an astrologer (at $49.95 a reading) in an early edition of Prophecy. But as their sales indicate, the books are review-proof. The Redfields—both of whom are slim, blond and wholesome—seem like walking billboards for the benefits of his “positive energy” philosophy, even while enduring the demands of a publicity tour for the Celestine movie.

“I’m not a guru,” he insists during a stop at a Beverly Hills hotel. “I’m just saying, ‘Here’s what’s out there that you can discover for yourself.’”

The timing of the film adaptation may be just about ideal. The box-office success of Passion and, to a lesser extent, such movies as What the Bleep and Indigo, has turned the “faith-based” or “inspirational” genre into a hot commodity, according to film industry observers. “Mel Gibson has shown Hollywood that it can make money with religion,” says media analyst Paul Kagan.

Neale Donald Walsch, author of the bestseller Conversations With God, believes the industry is starting to recognize that the movie-going audience wants something a little deeper than thrill-a-minute action movies or teen-oriented sex romps. “God and spirituality is the next hot thing,” he gushes. Shooting has begun on a movie version of Conversations, the first major foray into film production by The Spiritual Cinema Circle, which circulates “visionary, inspiring movies” on DVD.

The Celestine Prophecy is Redfield’s fictional vehicle for the discovery of nine special insights that can tune us in to a “deeper spirituality.” His protagonist, John Woodson, journeys through Peru in search of an ancient manuscript containing this wisdom. He encounters numerous far-fetched coincidences, but embracing coincidence is one of the book’s key insights. “There’s a force that’s moving us into a best-case scenario for us,” Redfield says.

Hollywood producers courted Redfield after the book first hit the bestseller lists, but, despite what he calls “hundreds of offers,” he wouldn’t part with the film rights. “They would have turned it into an ordinary action tale,” he recalls. One of the suitors was Demi Moore, who’d had her own quasi-mystical hit with Ghost.

Redfield ended up writing the first draft of a screenplay and setting up his own company to produce it. “We tried to make the movie so it would feel the way the book made people feel,” he says.

The cast features no major stars, with relative unknown Matt Settle playing the part of Woodson. “The book is the star,” Redfield explains. He gave up little control once the cameras started rolling, showing up for every day of the shoot last spring in St. Augustine, Fla. When two of the actors’ egos seemed to be clashing in one scene, he stepped in and expressed another of his insights. “I told them, ‘You can uplift and pull for each other or be competitive and pull against each other,’” he says. Salle Redfield was also on hand as executive producer and “spiritual monitor.”

Even with his insight, Redfield never imagined Passion would have such an impact. But he’s certainly trying to ride the coincidental wave, even following in Gibson’s footsteps by visiting churches and religious organizations as part of his promotional tour. The marketing push also includes The Making of the Movie, a glossy, coffee-table book priced at $29.95 that glowingly describes the “vision” of Redfield, producer Barnet Bain and director Armand Mastroianni.

The selling of a “spiritual” movie is a tricky endeavor, however. Go too far, get too crass, and you may dilute your uplifting, anti-materialistic message. “People will say, ‘He’s just trying to make a buck,’” Walsch warns.

To avoid that trap, the Conversations With God author suggests, “You have to pay careful attention to the integrity of the material. Mel Gibson refused to compromise the integrity of the theology of his movie.” When Walsch gets proposals for Conversations promotions, “My stomach knows when to say ‘No.’”

Redfield won’t stomach Celestine Prophecy coffee cups or a line of clothing. But he has authorized the movie’s marketers to do T-shirts, as long as they are inscribed with a “meaningful line from the movie that is a reminder of the philosophy.” As for the film’s integrity, he says, “the key is to evoke a feeling of the mystery of life, of why mysterious coincidences happen to us that alter our destiny.”

Matthew Heller is a Los Angeles-based journalist. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly and New Times.

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