It's Only a Movie!

In 2012, I was brainstorming a book about metaphysical horror films like Serpent and the Rainbow,  Angel Heart, The Believers, Ghost, Flatliners, and Jacob’s Ladder. When I started doing my research, I learned that the writer of Ghost and Jacob's Ladder, Bruce Joel Rubin, hosted a weekly meditation class just ten minutes away from my home. Before that, I had been attending meditation sessions with a friend, so the overlap intrigued me. I found myself wondering if/how Bruce's meditation practice was related to his creative writing process.

 

For the next two years, I attended Bruce's meditation class and got to know him as a person. Eventually, in 2014, I asked if he might be interested in writing a book about the intersections of his spiritual life and his art. To me, the idea was more interesting than my plan to write a book about metaphysical horror films.

 

Ten years later, the Bruce Joel Rubin book exists—but it’s much more than I initially imagined it would be. I spent a full year poring over old interviews, listening to Bruce's recorded meditation talks, and interviewing Bruce at length. During that time, I also organized his personal archives (old scripts—produced and unproduced, research materials, promotional materials, reviews, etc.) for donation to the library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science. The archive project led me to write an in-depth article on the film Deadly Friend as well as a short book about the film Brainstorm. But, at a certain point, the Bruce Joel Rubin biography project faded into the background. 

 

I had compiled a 53,000-word manuscript—a chronological selection of first-person stories—but Bruce thought the manuscript was incomplete, that it wasn’t personal enough, and it didn’t have a proper ending. For a while, he encouraged me to add my voice to the manuscript, to add historical context to his story. Although I added some supporting quotes from other sources, I avoided adding my own voice because I didn’t feel like this was my story to tell, or that my voice belonged in Bruce’s story. As a result, the manuscript sat on the shelf for several years.

 

In 2022, author Paul Cronin—a family friend of the Rubins—asked to read the manuscript. He encouraged Bruce to flesh out the existing manuscript, and posed a couple of precise questions that got Bruce writing. He also offered to publish the finished book. 

 

What happened next is that the manuscript morphed into a true, intimate autobiography of an important cinematic storyteller, expressing Bruce's life, art, and worldview in a way that only he could. It’s Only a Movie! is an important document for anyone who cares about film or screenwriting, surviving Hollywood, evolving as a storyteller, evolving as a human being, or finding meaning in life (and death). It is exactly the type of book I love--one that subtly affects the reader's life by asking big questions.

 

Via his imprint Sticking Place Books, Paul Cronin has also published a worthy companion book. Three Visionary Screenplays gathers unproduced spec scripts that seem like forerunners to Bruce’s most celebrated film work. To my mind, the screenplay “Quasar” is the missing link between Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey and Brainstorm. “Teratoma” is a metaphysical body horror movie that's every bit as dark and challenging as Jacob’s Ladder. “Secrets of the Astral Plane” is a mind-bending supernatural thriller as audacious and as heartfelt as Ghost. For anyone interested in any of Bruce's best-known work, Three Visionary Screenplays will be a revelation.

 

Both books are now available in hardback and paperback editions. It’s Only a Movie! is also available in e-book format, and as an audiobook (read by Bruce himself) on Audible. My friend Tony Mercer edited the latter project, and he did an amazing job. Obviously, I’m biased… but I am also extremely proud to have played a small role in bringing these two books to life.

 

If you want to hear more about the books, you can listen to an interview Bruce and I did for Mike White's The Projection Booth podcast. And if you want to read the books, you can find links for ordering them HERE.