The following is my interview with the creator and director of the last film I commented on: "The Nature of Existence". It's a long interview, but well worth it. Enjoy!!
Dubbed an "Enlightened Grown-Up" by the students he taught as a guest speaker on philosophy at an International Baccalaureate school in Brazil, Roger Nygard admits to not feeling like a grown-up at all. "I still feel like the goofball I was as a kid, just in a body that has more aches and pains."
Before sitting down in the editing booth to work on Season 8 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (which he says pays for his documentary-making habit) Nygard spoke on the phone with me about his new film "The Nature of Existence" and how he became a documentary filmmaker.
Nygard admits that he hadn't intended on taking this path when he started out in the business. He credits his first dip into documentaries to Denise Crosby, a woman he had cast in his first film, "High Strung". As a former Star Trek cast member, Crosby was often invited to the film conventions, and she pitched Nygard the idea of doing a documentary on the interesting people who attend. He was surprised that no one had already done it. It seemed so obvious. Nygard says it was like, "Look over there, there's this diamond in the middle of the road. How come nobody's picking it up?"
The end result was "Trekkies" and "Trekkies 2"--for which Nygard says he's probably most notorious.
"It's addicting," Nygard says. Instead of trying to reproduce a screenplay in the perfection that's already on paper, "documentaries are like a journey that you start but you don't know where's it's going to end. It's continuously exciting during the process."
He's also been accused of being a "closest anthropologist," because his films are about sub-cultures of humanity. Nygard has even received copies of anthropology students dissertation papers on "Trekkies". Other of his documentaries, "Six Days in Roswell" and "Suckers", follow that same trend.
His most recent project, "The Nature of Existence", explores the sub-culture of faith and belief systems that exist around the world. Nygard had found himself personally questioning many of the largest esoteric questions in life, especially when faced with events like the passing of his father when he was 13 and the tragedy of 9/11 later in life. As he began asking others about these questions, he realized that there was an opportunity to share the answers in a documentary.
Establishing 86 questions that span the range of "why do we exist?" to "is there morality?" to "what is the devil?", Nygard spent four years traveling the globe conducting interviews. The final movie consists of a variety of answers from 170 people and over 450 hours of film.
Nygard often found that when someone agreed to an interview for the film, they didn't know quite what they were getting into. Two hours later, they'd be totally exhausted. These are emotional topics we often avoid or just don't think about on a daily basis. "It was fun to see someone reconnect with that feeling," he says, even the pastor of a church who hadn't really considered these questions since seminary.
This film is now being used in classrooms, which is something he had never anticipated. Thinking back on his brief teaching experience in Brazil, where he discussed these questions with philosophy students, Nygard reflects that he was surprised by the emotional connection he felt with the students when they would grasp a deep concept he was trying to get across. "You are making them a thinking being who is conscious and self-aware. Those are words that people take for granted."
"I know lots of people who are not self-aware and it's questionable about whether they are very conscious. They just go through their life on a very surface level and it's not until a personal tragedy happens, to them or someone close to them, that they're forced to consider these questions.
"I'm trying to bring these questions up before people are forced to think about it because not only should we think about them but it's actually exciting and fun to wonder and discuss and debate the after-life or soul or sin and free will. Do we really have free will? It's the kind of debates you have at two in the morning in your dorm room with your fellow college students."
When asked which was the strangest interview experience (and there are many to chose from), Nygard went immediately to the particle physicists and the mind-blowing concepts they are coming to believe about our universe.
"It can just freak you out!" Nygard says. Trying to contemplate the infinite number of universes that exist, each with its own separate law of physics, he says, "If you didn't feel insignificant before, a little spec in the universe, now you're a little spec in a multi-verse!"
Nygard says he could have listened to the physicists forever to learn more about how they are looking for the origin of the particles that started the universe. "Basically, it's the search for the Creator or an origin that affects the universe and us."
Brother Jed is also certainly hard to ignore. A confrontational evangelist on an epic scale, Nygard says he couldn't put the most bizarre stuff Jed does in the movie. The "Gay Song" is only the tip of the iceberg. "That may be the strangest moment," Nygard laughs. The odd (and to many, highly-offensive) song did not make the movie, but you can find it on youtube and at the movie's web site.
Nygard freely admits having a special favorite in the older people he interviewed. "The older the better," he jokes. "I think they were a little bit closer to truth because they don't care what people think any more. They'll tell you the way that it is." Children come closer to honesty too, he feels. "They're not as on-guard, which you learn to be as you grow older."
While the interviews could have gone on forever, Nygard says that he needed to find an end-point for this documentary. While it could never be totally done, he felt he needed to just pick a deadline and stick to it. In his mind it had reached the point: "Okay, I've just got to give birth. I've been pregnant long enough."
The Companion Series is now serving as the sequel of sorts. "The movie became the appetizer," Nygard says, "and people wanted the full buffet once we'd awakened the thirst for more information." Fans of specific interview subjects wanted to hear more from that particular person, or on one specific question. While not all 86 questions made it into the original film, they are all included in this series of DVDs.
"People only have energy for about 90 minutes worth of answers and then their brain needs a rest to process it," Nygard jokes. So the Companion Series is an avenue to share the many hours of wonderful film that could not be included in the movie.
In an interview with "Life to the Max" (show #99), Nygard talked about this film as a comedy. When asked why he took this approach to the material, he said that being social creatures as a part of a social community, he believes that we improve that community through laughter.
"Everything I do has that element of humor to it because any good artist gives you a point of view of the world or the universe as seen through their eyes. I see the world and the universe as absurd, but not in a bad way. When you see something that's absurd, it makes you laugh, and that's how we process tragedy and hardship and very serious subjects--through laughter--because if you don't laugh you will go crazy. It's a tool we use to deal with the immensity of what seems like the pointlessness of the universe and, in fact, gives us a point.
"If we can make someone else laugh, then we've fulfilled our purpose for that day. If you can reach out and touch somebody in some way, help them, give them some comfort or make them laugh, you're realizing your purpose on a daily basis."
I wondered if, after hearing all of these answers, Nygard himself felt any closer to his own, personal answers. "Well, yeah," he admits, "but the more answers you get the more questions that come, and so the answer is that you're never done."
Nygard feels that the one lesson he learned is that the journey continues and always will. "The work is never done," he says. "Your whole life, you're on a journey.
"If you do say, Okay, I'm all done, then you begin the process of dying. It makes no sense to me, the idea of retiring from life. Your entire life you should be continually challenged and challenging yourself to reach your potential. Even if your potential is declining from what it was when you were 18, you still have potential and you should still be striving to reach it. Plenty of 80 year-olds are still vibrant intellectually because they're still excited about knowledge and life and learning. You can learn, and should learn, your whole life. You're never done. You shouldn't be done."
Thinking about how visiting other cultures helped open up his own thought, Nygard comments that immersing yourself in another culture that is totally different from the one you have lived in can take some adjustment.
Remembering the Buddhists who meet every January to pray for world peace, Nygard says, "It's like a Star Trek convention for Buddhists. Everyone's got their uniforms on, you look around and you're surrounded by thousands of Buddhists in the same uniform, and they're all chanting and praying and chanting, circling and perambulating around this temple, but it's all strange in a good way."
"To better understand your own country, you have to leave it and come back after you've seen other places. It really opens your eyes to things you were oblivious to before."
So maybe, to appreciate your own belief system, you need to consider what others hold as truth.
"I sometimes, as joke before a screening, will say to people: I should warn you not to see this movie because it will mess with your mind." After a good laugh, he'll admit, "But if your mind is already messy, you'll be fine."
But for those who think they have all the answers already, there can be a problem. "If everything is stacked in nice neat piles, those piles might get jostled a little bit because that's what happens when you receive new information." And this new information can be seen as a threat.
"You may spend your life defending this idea you hold sacred against all the new information. That takes a lot of energy." But if you go with the flow of the universe, Nygard feels, you can have a much more peaceful and exciting life. "Chaos is exciting!"
"I hope the film just opens up people's minds a little bit to wanting to ask questions and learn more. That's the whole point."
Sharing a bit about his next project, Nygard said that he felt he needed to take his own advice and push himself to do something even bigger. "What's even more challenging than the nature of existence?" he laughs. "I set my sights kind of high!"
The one topic he found even more perplexing? The nature of marriage. The whole arena of relationships, divorce. "It's the marriage concept that I find, and many people find, mystifying. Even people who are married still seem mystified by it sometimes." Who knows how many hours of interviews will be involved in that film!
Nygard stresses that he loves to hear from people about what they are learning or being challenged by. You can reach him through the web site, or even take a moment to share your thoughts on one of the 86 questions. He does read the answers. And take a minute to tell your friends about this film.
"You make something," Nygard says, "and you put it out there, and you never know what will happen. Hopefully, people will keep discovering it."
"Please help spread the gospel, as it were!" Nygard jokes.
Okay, readers. Click on "like" or "share" and do your part!
More can be found at http://www.thenatureofexistence.com/.
