Tag: Movies

You can spy on me as I give a short Q&A presentation to my local community by clicking here http://one.revver.com/watch/889967 or here
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1774314533430922488 or on the image below:

 Besides being Mother’s Day, May 11th (tomorrow) is also Twilight Zone Day. It’s an important day to me because I met Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone TV series, around 1970, five years before he died. It was a turning point in my life.

Before I tell you about it, left click on the black box at the top left of this post.

See anything strange happen?

Welcome to The Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone television series ran on CBS from 1959 to 1964. I’m told 156 episodes aired and Serling wrote 92 of them, which is still mind boggling to consider.

But Serling was a brilliant writer, which is why I so badly wanted to meet him when I was still in high school and heard he was speaking in Youngstown, Ohio. I had dreams of being an author like him. 

I loved his show’s blend of psychology and theatre. I don’t like scary movies, but I do love psychological twists and mysteries. Serling specialized at it. He scared you by getting into your mind.

It helped that his TV series had many great actors in it, from Robert Redford, William Shatner, Burt Reynolds, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Carol Burnett, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Peter Falk and Bill Mumy, to such legends as Buster Keaton, Art Carney, Mickey Rooney, Ida Lupino and John Carradine.

Of course, Serling himself introduced each episode of The Twilight Zone and also ended each. This made him famous, which probably planted the seed in my mind that I could be an author and a sometime TV show personality, and both would help my career. It sure did for Rod Serling. No wonder I’m in the movies The Secret and The Opus. I learned it from Rod.

But meeting Rod was a disappointment, at least to my young mind.

I expected him to be a deity of some sort. I expected him to be in control of his life and surroundings; a master of the world.

He was a short man with tight lips, a day old beard, and a chain smoking habit.

He was self-depreciating; saying he was the only boxer in the Army who had to be carried both in to and out of the boxing ring.

He was afraid. He said though he writes scary scripts, if there was a bump in the middle of the night, he’d be the first one outside in his skivvies.

He was also unhappy. He said, “I was traumatized into writing by war events. By going through a war in a combat situation and feeling the desperate sense of terrible need for some sort of therapy. To get it out of my gut, write it down. This is the way it began for me.”

Still, I wanted to talk to Serling. He was a living genius with words. He wrote plays, such as Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight, and TV shows, that I loved. They were emotional and intellectual.

But I was shy, insecure, and still in high school. I didn’t know if I could ask him anything.

Yet I was standing in the presence of greatness.

This was my moment. 

I finally got up the nerve to ask the great scriptwriter if he ever planned to write his autobiography. I personally wanted to know his story.

He seemed surprised.

“About me? My life story?,” he asked. “No. Nothing really interesting has ever happened to me. I think my life story would be boring.”

That’s when I realized that the great Rod Serling was human.

He was like me. He was full of dreams and doubts. He was full of talent and trepidation. He was full of fear and faith.

That’s also when I decided that if this nervous little guy with the cigarette in his hand could become a world famous writer, then maybe I could, too.

I decided to be a writer right then and there, which led to my writing many books, from Hypnotic Writing to The Attractor Factor, and much later even starting my own Miracles Coaching program to help inspire others to live their dreams, too.

Serling also taught me about the importance of action. It’s one reason I am so prolific today. He said, “The instinct of creativity must be followed by the act, the physical act of putting it down for a sense of permanence. Once you get that prod, that emotional jar, that, ‘I have witnessed something.’ Or, ‘I have felt something.’ Or, ‘I have seen something.’ Or, through observation, ‘I have been moved by an event.’ I think the answer is, ‘Get it down. Get it down quickly. Write it down.'”

It’s ironic but Rod Serling died on June 28, 1975 and never wrote his life story, sticking with what he told me when I met him, that he thought his life was boring; yet at least three biographies came out after his death. Obviously there was something interesting in his life story, after all.

I think Rod missed the great gift he lived but didn’t see: his own life as an inspiration to others – like me.

Happy Twilight Zone Day.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS — Rod Serling was an advisor for the Famous Writers School at one point, as was copywriter John Caples, another writing legend who influenced me. I think both would have loved my Miracles Coaching program. They believed in dreams, too.

Here’s what I really think of the new movie The Opus: (See www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxSPL0-oMVQ or click on image below.)

We saw a pre-release of the movie, The Opus, last night.

It stars —

Bob Doyle, Dr. John DeMartini, Morris Goodman, Marci Shimoff, Jill Lublin, Dan Lier, Jack Canfield, Dr. Joe Vitale, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Alexander, LuAnn Mitchell, James Malinchak, Trent Carlini, Bill Bartmann, Keith Kochner, Allan Marston, Eli Davidson, Dr Sue Morter, Willie Jolley, Ed Tate, Garth Roberts, David Saxby, Bryan Shultz, Debbie Allen, Jim Ziegler, Dianne Legro, Tami Walsh, Mark LeBlanc, Frank Maguire, Dr. Joe Rubino, Janet Attwood, Betty Cooper, Elisabeth Fayt and Peggy O’Niell.

The creator and producer of the movie is also the main star of it: Doug Vermeeren.

There’s a natural tendency to want to compare The Opus to the hit movie, The Secret, but that wouldn’t be fair.

The Secret was a feel good documentary about the law of attraction. I love it and think it will go down in history as one of the most inspiring and life-changing movies ever created. I’m proud to be in it.

But The Opus is a down to earth self-help, story-documentary with the main push being to get you to decide on a goal, take action, and stick with it. While there is some “attraction” talk in the film, that is not its main focus.

Framed around the story of a famous violinist, a cast of teachers (including me) pop in and out to tell you how to find your vision, move into action, and never give up.

I found the story of Martin Luther King as a child being taught how to dream to be moving.

I always find Morris Goodman’s story of his miraculous healing to be inspiring.

Bill Bartmann’s story of how he set a financial goal for himself was enlightening.

He simply found the net worth of the 400th richest person on the Forbes list and decided to make one dollar more than him, giving himself a measurable goal to accomplish (which he did).

I liked the movie. So did Nerissa. Apparently crowds in Calgary and Edmonton who saw a special showing of it went wild and loved it.

I don’t know what impact The Opus will have on people. In some ways it’s just the traditional goal setting stuff you and I have heard and read for decades. Of course, the same could be said for The Secret, though very few people knew about the law of attraction when that movie came out compared to the abundance of material on goal setting as The Opus comes out.

But the beauty of a good movie is that you get the same information in an easy, visual, even emotional form, which means it has a better chance of getting into you and sticking with you.

The main message of The Opus is to bring your music out, to enjoy now, and to leave something behind.

The movie wants you to — as I say in it — “Dare Something Worthy.”

When the movie is released (I don’t know the date yet), go see it.

It just might awaken that song in your heart — your own Opus.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS — You can see a trailer for the movie at www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rIaykldvKM 

One of the movies I’m in just went for sale. It’s called Try It On Everything. (Now titled The Tapping Solution.) In it various teachers describe how EFT (the tapping process called Emotional Freedom Technique) can be used on, well, everything. This is a DVD you should get for yourself and others. For every one you buy, the makers of the DVD will send one to a jail, school, or hospital. Let’s support this DVD and get it into the hands of those who are in pain, hurting, suffering, and need a way out. See www.tryitoneverything.com/ Some of the people you may know in this movie include:

• Jack Canfield – Co-Creator of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” Best-selling Series
• Cheryl Richardson – Personal Coaching Pioneer
• Bob Proctor – Author and Success Mentor
• Dr. Patricia Carrington – EFT Expert
• Dr. Joseph Mercola – Founder Optimal Wellness Center
• Carol Look – EFT and Attracting Abundance Expert
• Bruce Lipton – Cellular Biologist and Author
• Joe Vitale – Bestselling Author and Founder of the Hypnotic Marketing Institute
• Dr. Norman Shealy – Pain Specialist and Holistic Physician
• Rick Wilkes – Founder of Thriving Now and EFT Practitioner
• Brad Yates– Peak Performance and EFT Coach
• Fred Gallo, Ph.D. – Author, Clinical Psychologist
• Dawson Church , Ph.D. – Author, Publisher and Energy Medicine Expert
• Carol Tuttle – Author, Abundance Expert
• David Rourke – EFT Addictions Specialist
• Donna Eden – Author, “Energy Medicine”