The Joy of Sox Movie... where we are now
From Rick...
The Joy of Sox, the movie, was born in the space of just a few minutes back in late September. The idea to make a movie based on my Op-Ed piece in The Globe energized everyone who heard about it. And what a thrill - a full day of interviews at Fenway Park! On the field, in the dugout. It all happened one day in early October... And now, we have a great trailer, website, many generous donors, and have done many more days of interviews with scientists around the topic of the Red Sox fans, passion, prayers and the power of intention. So, where are we now, at the end of March, 2006?
We’re really in phase 3 of the project now. Phase 1 included all my scribblings and journalings that got distilled down into the Boston Globe Op-Ed that appeared last September. Phase 2 began with Joel’s audacious call to the Red Sox front office to get their permission to film a documentary. That call led to an initial burst of interviews and filming that seemed to fall into place without much effort, and gave us the raw material for the video trailer. And from the foundation of that trailer, we’re now entering Phase 3 - we have the potential to branch out in many directions, including a few that we didn’t even anticipate at the start of the project. In this blog, I’ll mention a couple of the exciting possibilities that have recently emerged.
Several researchers whom I interviewed mentioned the name Michael Murphy as someone we had to speak with, or else we’d be leaving out the man who pretty much invented the study of the paranormal in sports. He’s best known for founding the Esalen Institute in 1962, the California mecca for New Age explorers located on the spectacular Big Sur cliffs overlooking the Pacific OCean. But as an avid golfer, he also knew first hand about the subtle energy aspects of sports. His book “The Psychic Side of Sports” was first published in 1978 (and later re-issued as “In the Zone”), and his golf novels “Golf in the Kingdom” and “the Kingdom of Shivas Irons” are considered classics of golf literature.
Surprisingly, a couple of emails to Esalen were all it took to get me access to Mr. Murphy (as a Harvard grad, he was probably hooked by my affiliation with that august institution), and a delightful recent phone conversation with him set the stage for an eventual interview. His wit, wisdom and vast knowledge were obvious in our brief chat, and I’m looking forward to actually meeting him and hearing more of his grand perspective of sports, culture, the energy arts and the evolution of consciousness. I’m sure that conversation will be a highlight of the film.
Another area for exploration opened up in a recent conversation with a colleague who specializes in the “sick building syndrome”. He mentioned an architect colleague who has studied the opposite phenomenon – buildings that seem to enhance the health of its occupants. He has founded an offshoot of the American Insitute of Architecture called the Acadmy of Neuroscience for Architecture – they use the latest findings in cognitive psychology to help design more healthful settings. I think it would be fascinating to take one of its members on a tour of Fenway, to have him assess the contours of the stadium for its impact on the psyche of the fans. Sort of a Westernized version of the Chinese art of energy flow called feng shui. Come to think of it, it would be fun to have a feng shui master tour Fenway too!
So there are lots of possibilities – and it’s fun to watch them arise as the project unfolds.
The Joy of Sox, the movie, was born in the space of just a few minutes back in late September. The idea to make a movie based on my Op-Ed piece in The Globe energized everyone who heard about it. And what a thrill - a full day of interviews at Fenway Park! On the field, in the dugout. It all happened one day in early October... And now, we have a great trailer, website, many generous donors, and have done many more days of interviews with scientists around the topic of the Red Sox fans, passion, prayers and the power of intention. So, where are we now, at the end of March, 2006?
We’re really in phase 3 of the project now. Phase 1 included all my scribblings and journalings that got distilled down into the Boston Globe Op-Ed that appeared last September. Phase 2 began with Joel’s audacious call to the Red Sox front office to get their permission to film a documentary. That call led to an initial burst of interviews and filming that seemed to fall into place without much effort, and gave us the raw material for the video trailer. And from the foundation of that trailer, we’re now entering Phase 3 - we have the potential to branch out in many directions, including a few that we didn’t even anticipate at the start of the project. In this blog, I’ll mention a couple of the exciting possibilities that have recently emerged.
Several researchers whom I interviewed mentioned the name Michael Murphy as someone we had to speak with, or else we’d be leaving out the man who pretty much invented the study of the paranormal in sports. He’s best known for founding the Esalen Institute in 1962, the California mecca for New Age explorers located on the spectacular Big Sur cliffs overlooking the Pacific OCean. But as an avid golfer, he also knew first hand about the subtle energy aspects of sports. His book “The Psychic Side of Sports” was first published in 1978 (and later re-issued as “In the Zone”), and his golf novels “Golf in the Kingdom” and “the Kingdom of Shivas Irons” are considered classics of golf literature.
Surprisingly, a couple of emails to Esalen were all it took to get me access to Mr. Murphy (as a Harvard grad, he was probably hooked by my affiliation with that august institution), and a delightful recent phone conversation with him set the stage for an eventual interview. His wit, wisdom and vast knowledge were obvious in our brief chat, and I’m looking forward to actually meeting him and hearing more of his grand perspective of sports, culture, the energy arts and the evolution of consciousness. I’m sure that conversation will be a highlight of the film.
Another area for exploration opened up in a recent conversation with a colleague who specializes in the “sick building syndrome”. He mentioned an architect colleague who has studied the opposite phenomenon – buildings that seem to enhance the health of its occupants. He has founded an offshoot of the American Insitute of Architecture called the Acadmy of Neuroscience for Architecture – they use the latest findings in cognitive psychology to help design more healthful settings. I think it would be fascinating to take one of its members on a tour of Fenway, to have him assess the contours of the stadium for its impact on the psyche of the fans. Sort of a Westernized version of the Chinese art of energy flow called feng shui. Come to think of it, it would be fun to have a feng shui master tour Fenway too!
So there are lots of possibilities – and it’s fun to watch them arise as the project unfolds.
posted by Rick Leskowitz, Joel Leskowitz at 11:22 AM
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