Introduce Yourself : Let's overthrow industry titans + more equitably distribute wealth. Sound good? by Tod Brilliant

Welcome Tod! Nice tomeet you. Glad you're here.

Thanks, Matthew. You'll always be my first. ;) Looking forward to learning from and with you.

Hi Tod! I love your attitude. There is so much good that we can create to bring hope to the world. Currently I'm in love with two topics that I can't get enough of: 1. Telepathic Interspecies Communication. 2. Healing Personal Trauma with professional psilocybin therapy, and microdosing.

I only started investigating these subjects about two weeks ago, and I'm overwhelmed with the amount of information out there. "Coincidentally" both of these subjects overlap. I live in Oregon and recently psilocybin has been decriminalized. Whoops, Hi Matthew, I realized I wrote on your page, but that's ok. It applies to all.

Amazing, Zsa Zsa. Regarding interspecies communication, a book that shaped my thinking greatly years ago was John Lilly's autobiography "Center of the Cyclone". A highly recommend it, if you haven't already fallen into his work. As a kid, I was amazed by the film based on his work 'Altered Species'. Hello to Oregon! If you're into sci-fi, you'll get a kick out the new Star Trek series 'Discovery' as they literally zip around on a mushroom-powered spaceship.... piloted by none other than Paul Stamets. :)

Right on Tod! Thank you for that. No way mushroom-powered spaceship!!! Paul Stamets healed his own stutter with the mushroom! Can you imagine living in a "sensitive" society who is guided by their intuition? I want to live in that society! I want to communicate with the animals! Diablo, the black leopard, told Anna Breytenbach that he didn't like his name because of what it was associated with basically. So they changed his name to Spirit, he stopped being aggressive, and he finally came out of his cage after 6 months. WHAT??? I'm looking up "Altered Species" right now. Maybe there's a chance that we all can truly be "one."

Strange auto-correct mistake, ZsaZsa. Altered STATES.

Welcome to the community, Tod Brilliant. Looking forward to seeing the projects CATHEDRAL Collective makes.

Thanks for the love Maurice Vaughan . Looking forward to meeting you when you get out to LA. Holler up!

You're welcome, Tod Brilliant. Cool. It'd be my first trip to LA. I've never been off the East Coast.

Tod Brilliant So this is the coolest thing I've seen all day. I even love the name...Cathedral Collective. I love hanging out with other creatives. I'd be fine just sitting in a room with other creatives and just basking in the atmosphere. I might have to hitch a ride with Maurice Vaughan because I've never been to LA either.

Hey Tod! Welcome aboard. Are you currently looking for projects?

Road trip, @Leonardo Ramirez!

Maurice Vaughan Yeah buddy!!!! I'm down!

Would love to hear more about Cathedral Collective's mission and projects (I went to the website; it's very secretive).

Thesy Surface Oh, it's absolutely about overthrowing titans. Or, shall we see, supplanting them. The old pyramid models are ripe for replacing with far more equitable ones that have no need of 'titans' in any sense. One can make a very rational argument that enforced class hierarchies (you're in London so you know the madness of royalty) of any type have no place in a society that truly desires equality for all. . As for the psychopaths, well, there aren't enough stakes for the skulls... ;)

Leonardo Ramirez First, hello to Nashville! Been too long since I've been to that great city. Grab that ride with Maurice or maybe we'll just have to talk about helping get you set up with a satellite effort in Nashville. The more we band together across all disciplines, from craft services to producers, the better. It's a crazy exciting fluid time... ch-ch-ch-changes!

Laurie Ashbourne I know, I know. We made the decision to password protect our scripts, decks, and project overviews for now. They'll be 'dripped' out on a schedule to select gatekeepers, after which they'll be visible in some form. Sneak peeks avail over coffee. It's not easy, but we're working hard to engage in the real world as much as possible. We don't have a 'no zoom' policy, but we try to avoid them. We'll have to see how that works out. hahaha the main thing is doing the extra work to build real world community with good people who give a damn.

Thesy Surface You got me to thinkin' on a titan I can abide by. There's only one. It's this guy:

Curt Samlaska Hi, Curt! While our slate is currently overfilled with both our internal dev and a handful of collective partners, it's really hard (and foolish) to not take a look at everything. Feel free to reach out. :)

Tod Brilliant - I can understand keeping projects protected, I have no qualms about that at all, My question is more along the lines of specificity of the mission. IE, how Cathedral is looking to come at the industry in a new way. And what type of films (genre, message etc.) I ask because there are a handful of production companies that have sprung up recently, that are "looking for material" or "offering finance models" and at the same time hiding that they are strictly faith-based or lean to a political side of things, instead of just being an independent production company who knows there is a better way to make films equitable.

Laurie Ashbourne Great questions. Not all of which can be answered clearly in this setting. I will say that we are not actively looking for material, as we've a more than full project slate as it is. That said, if there's something amazing that comes along, we'd not look away from such luck.

Regarding faith/politics, we've no particular axe to grind, but at the same time we won't steer away from a great story if it touches on either or both. Personally, I'm a Socialist Possibilian, which leaves me lonely on both fronts. :)

Have we cracked the nut on how to reliably replicate the independent production and distribution of meaningful films? Hell no. And we don't believe any one person or company is going to do that. We're excited to be part of the sea change that can happen right now if enough of us get together to build better models and support, rather than compete with, one another. While the larger economic system we swim in is relatively zero-sum and constantly creates and widens class division, we don't have to lay down our cards and complain that there's simply no way to do things differently. That's nonsense. This consumptive capitalism that literally devours souls and planet alike is not the default state. It had to be built, meaning it can be modified, unbuilt, improved, mutated, or destroyed. There are better economic models out there, ones that don't require us to believe the lie of infinite growth on a finite planet. And we can deploy those better models right here within our industry.

I'll end this clumsy dodge with this: We're working on it. All of it. And we know we're not the only ones. If you know anyone who wants to work with us, now you know where to find us. And, yes, I know my answer is likely unsatisfactory for you. That's because it is. We aren't there yet. But we will be. :)

Tod Brilliant Nashville is a boomin'! It's a good place to be right now for the film industry...kind of a pre-Atlanta stage. And yes, times are changing. Interested to learn more.

"Clumsy dodge" indeed. Kudos for owning that. :-)

I'm all for logical disruption and am creating my own, which is the impetus for my curiosity -- that said I am very clear on my mantra. It's tough to rally troops to topple the titans when we don't know what we're rallying about. I shall wait for your big reveal.

Laurie Ashbourne It's a tough conversation to have via a thread like this, but once upon a lifetime I worked for an international think tank, and our mission was literally to save the world. Dozens of fellows with specific areas of expertise working together to help educate citizens and world leaders about pending and unavoidable resource scarcity (energy, food, water, et cetera). During those years, I learned that there were hundreds of nonprofits and NGOs that were literally competing to be the 'golden saviors'. Competing for attention. Competing for ideas. Competing, crucially, for funding. We didn't need more organizations fighting for our future. We needed fewer, stronger, more cooperative orgs that would share institutional knowledge, mailing lists, and power. In the work we do here at CATHEDRAL, we feel similarly. We don't claim to have The Answer. We do claim to be open to working cooperatively with others who share our dedication not just to telling the important stories of our time, but working within and without the existing models, and advocating at every step for more equitable distribution of wealth. Now, that isn't for everyone. Many people want more of the pie, but they aren't keen on the idea that there should be limits to our indulgences. Swerving even father afield -- many people want homeless 'problem' to go away, but they don't want to be told that this requires reconstituting what home ownership looks like, that profiting on the sale of a fundamental necessity (shelter) inevitably leads to homelessness. It's our very participation and profiteering within the system that leads to the ugliness in the system that we desperately want to believe has nothing to do with us. There's no quick fix, no 'hip, new model' of creating content to be found. CATHEDRAL isn't just some production company looking to pump out moralizing stories that make us feel good about ourselves. We want to convene with our peers in the real world about how to do better from the ground up. The real inconvenient truth is that we need to do serious soul-searching, and take a look at the ever-widening gap between our expressed values and the results of our actions. I picked a terrible day to quit caffeine. Simply can't hold thoughts together. But you get it. I know you get it because I could hear your eye rolls all the way from the top of Tiger Tail. :)

I do get it, Tod. I'm publishing a book on this very topic. :-)

Laurie Ashbourne Put me on your mailing list? Love to learn more.

Tod Brilliant Having dipped my toes in the NGO world, I can relate to what you describe.

I also think major disruption of the TV/film industry is in progress, with openings for developing new models of production & distribution. Good luck with your projects.

Tod Brilliant Here you go: https://investinginfilms.com/