Spiritual Cinema Circle

The Spiritual Cinema Circle originally grew out of collaboration between film producer Stephen Simon and psychologists Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks. Stephen had produced many beloved movies with spiritual themes, such as "Somewhere In Time" and "What Dreams May Come," and had given hundreds of talks and seminars on the emerging genre of Spiritual Cinema. During that time The Hendricks had created a non-profit foundation dedicated to creating a new consciousness in mass media.

Stephen says: "I knew of Katie and Gay Hendricks through the books on relationships they'd written, like Conscious Loving, but I didn't meet them in person until around 1996. I was immediately impressed by how dedicated they were to helping build a new kind of consciousness in the world. We became good friends. The concept for The Spiritual Cinema Circle actually came to Gay during meditation one day in 2003. He meditates every day early in the morning, and one day I got an excited early-morning call from him."

Gay tells what happened: "In meditation that morning I had a flash of insight: I saw exactly how we could create a community of conscious movie-lovers who could change the world. The insight came in a split-second, and after meditation here's what I wrote down: 'There are wonderful, inspiring movies being made by creative filmmakers all over the world, but hardly anybody is getting to see them because Hollywood isn't distributing them. The Hollywood studios don't seem to think there's a market for movies with heart and soul. At the same time there are millions of us around the world who aren't going to the movies much anymore because we're tired of the violence and mindlessness of the typical Hollywood stuff. Why don't we scout the film festivals, find the great spiritual-themed movies Hollywood is ignoring, and bring them to people at home on DVD?'

"After I wrote it down I called Stephen and told him about the insight I'd just had. He agreed with me that there was a huge audience of people who wanted to grow and transform through the movies they watched, and they were frustrated because there weren’t more movies that really mattered. Right there on the phone we sketched out a plan. Even with paying filmmakers, duplication and postage charges, we saw that we could still deliver tremendous value to people for a very low subscription fee. I had read that two people spend $30 or so to go to a movie theater (with the popcorn, sodas and candy accounting for more than half of that sum). I figured we could bring a whole package of great features, shorts and documentaries to people every month for a lot less than that!"

"We asked publicist Arielle Ford and entertainment lawyer Cynthia Litman to join us in building the foundations of The Circle. None of us took any salaries in the early days—it was all done as a labor of love. Three months after we launched The Circle, we got an enthusiastic write-up in Newsweek Magazine, followed by dozens of stories in other media outlets. It seemed that we had struck a chord with people around the world, because we soon had members in more than 50 countries."

We're deeply grateful to our global community of conscious movie-lovers, who are indeed helping change the world… one movie at a time.

ABOUT STEPHEN SIMON

Born into a successful Hollywood family, Stephen Simon grew up during the big studio heyday of the late forties and fifties. His father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a sought-after producer/director who made films with the likes of Abbott and Costello and Red Skelton. He also produced the original version of BORN YESTERDAY. Every year on March 9, the anniversary of his birth, American Movie Classics devotes a day to showing his films. He was also a studio executive at Columbia Pictures under the legendary Harry Cohn. Stephen’s father died when he was only four years old. His mother remarried Armand Deutsch who was also a film producer at MGM where he produced films with stars such as Robert Taylor and Grace Kelly. His mother's closest friends were Nancy Reagan, Betsy Bloomingdale, and Fran Stark, the daughter of Fanny Brice and wife of legendary film producer Ray Stark. It was no surprise to anyone that when Stephen graduated from law school, he soon found himself drawn to the movie biz…as Ray Stark's protégé.

Mentored by Hollywood greats such as Stark (producer of STEEL MAGNOLIAS, THE GOODBYE GIRL, FUNNY GIRL) and Dino De Laurentiis (producer of over 150 motion pictures, including RED DRAGON, HANNIBAL, KING KONG), Stephen Simon became a highly regarded and well respected veteran producer and executive in his own right with over 30 years of experience in the entertainment industry, producing or being responsible for the production of over 20 motion pictures.

He has produced acclaimed projects such as the Academy Award® Winning WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.) , the classic SOMEWHERE IN TIME (Starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour), ALL THE RIGHT MOVES (Starring Tom Cruise) and was an executive producer on fan favorite BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (starring Keanu Reeves).

An amazing career, yes? Depends on who you ask. While his resume reads like a dream career to some, Stephen will be the first to tell you that most of his Hollywood years were spent in frustration at not being able to make the spiritual films he so loved as a child and young man. Films such as IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, LOST HORIZONS, THE PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, and THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. Ultimately, Stephen became so disillusioned with his inability to make story-based, spiritual films in Hollywood that he not only left the mainstream industry, he moved out of California altogether in 2001. Having relocated to Ashland, Oregon he finished THE FORCE IS WITH YOU: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire our Lives, his seminal book on the genre he coined as “Spiritual Cinema.” He spent much of 2002 traveling the country on a speaking tour to support the book and to rally film lovers to help establish Spiritual Cinema as a genre.

In 2003, Stephen made his directorial debut, INDIGO, (starring Neale Donald Walsch) which was produced entirely in the State of Oregon with a $500,000 budget. INDIGO has since become a grassroots phenomenon with its one weekend worldwide release in January, 2005 grossing over $1.3 million. INDIGO is currently being widely distributed on DVD by Monterrey Media.

In 2004, Mr. Simon co-founded The Spiritual Cinema Circle (www.spiritualcinemacircle.com) with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks. The Circle, a monthly DVD subscription service that distributes 4 spiritually-themed films a month, became an immediate international success story and now has subscribers in more than 70 countries.

By late 2004, The Circle had become successful enough to venture into original film production so it acquired the rights from Neale Donald Walsch to make CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD into a movie. Directing and producing CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD was the culmination of a dream for Stephen who had wanted to make a film version of CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD since he first read the material in the late-90's, but couldn't find a financier to make a deal with Walsch for the rights. "My career has been marked mostly by my passion for three projects,” he says. “It took me 3 years to get SOMEWHERE IN TIME produced, almost 20 years to get WHAT DREAMS MAY COME made, and now almost 8 years to get CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD to the screen."

Stephen currently resides near Portland, Oregon.