You can't inspire people anymore?

Thats what I was told! On Apr 1, 2009 I rented out The Heights theater in Minneapolis to run a special showing of Ben-Hur. My plan, announce my intention to get Hollywood to do a modern day version of "The Ten Commandments". At intermission I was approached by a rather large Harley looking gentleman who promptly told me that in my speech, I was wrong to assume you could inspire people as they did in such epic films as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments.

Wow, that was one of those out of the blue remarks that took me off guard. You can't? Turns out he and I would become good friends and later do a special showing of Gettysburg, which he was in, and was imho the most inspiring (and epic) film of the last decade.

And it doesn't stop there. I've been told by others that you can't make a film that is inspirational, epic and Biblical anymore, over and over again. I've been told Hollywood won't touch it with a ten foot pole. Were they right?

Look at some of the films I'm referring to. Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, The Robe, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and The Sound of Music. Sure, The Sound of Music wasn't a Bible based movie as the others were, but it was a true story based on good morals and was epic and inspirational. The final song and scene to "Climb every mountain" resonates with movie goers for ages. And while not Bible based, The Lord of the Rings was certainly epic, inspirational and followed the story-line of the books with great respect and integrity.

And Avatar! Well, I didn't like it, what a shallow story. But it no doubt will rake in 3 billion dollars. I saw it once and have already forgotten most of it, where all the ones previously mentioned, I can quote almost line for line.

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Through the encouragement of my friend Kathy I am finally committed to writing the screenplay for "Dreamers Empire". I'm very excited, I'm getting good coaching through a book by Cynthia Whitcomb and I hope to have it all done this year. Right or wrong I really feel motivated to prove that you can indeed to a Biblical, Epic and Inspirational film that will not only be successful but will inspire people. Walt said, in effect, he never did things for the money, money empowered him to do things, and he always had vision for new and marvelous things.

Dream #100

I'm going to cover myself and assume I've had 99 of my own dreams and start numbering them at #100.

My brother Bob put out this web site holder yesterday..

www.horizonsfuture.com

You been on Horizons at Epcot? It shut down in 1999, many have felt like the vision of the future that Horizons embodied went with it. Horizons was bar-none the best picture of the future I have ever seen. The picture you see there is but a small part of a city scape you see during the ride.

Now, if I may paraphrase for Bob, he has put out a little reminder to get us excited. Where is this vision of the future we once elaborated on? We need to be excited about the future.

What Bob plans with this site is not entirely clear to me yet but I promise you, he's got the right thing in mind, lets get a little excited about the future again.

Comment on this and let me share your dream next :)

Starry Starry Night - Vincent Van Gogh

This really touched me and wanted to share it with you. At the bottom of this post you'll find the link to the video but read first..

Starry, Starry Night - Vincent Van Gogh!

Be sure your speakers are turned up.

I've heard the song many times before and always loved it, but until I saw this I was clueless that the song was written for Vincent Van Gogh, as a tribute by Don McLean.

It is rumored that Van Gogh's painting of the 'starry nights' was painted during the time he was in an asylum and that he sold only one painting during his lifetime as he was not recognized.

That's perhaps what caused him to fall into an abyss of depression which eventually led to his suicide ... how tragic to have felt so hopeless and misunderstood in spite of being so gifted! It is truly a pity that medical science could not have been more advanced at that time, so that this wonderful artist could have been saved ...

Sit back and be enthralled by the works [paintings] of Vincent Van Gogh. This alone justifies our exchange of emails of subjects we might never have seen otherwise.


"There are as many nights as days and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness and the
word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness ... " ~~ Carl Jung

Click here

Dream #2 - begins Feb 6th

On Friday, Feb 6th there will be a "Dreamers Empire" poster at the Historic Heights Theater in Columbia Heights, MN. This is part of my "idea" documented in this blog. This idea will help me launch dream #2. A little history...

A while back I blogged that I would try something that has never been done in hopes it would launch a dream. That will all be explained Apr 1 at the Heights Theater. The press release comes out on Feb 6th to invite folks to come out and see a special showing of "Ben-Hur" and hear a message from Dreamers Empire, which is being prepared by me along with my brother and nephew. So you'll have to wait and hear about dream #2 on Apr 1.

Dream #1 - In the meantime I was able to launch a really fun dream, which is documented below. My brothers family and my family put on an Epcot themed celebration at his house on July 4, 2008. You can read about it below with links to the videos and what not.

So you can see that Dreamers Empire intends to document, support, market one dream at a time. I have other ones planned but really intend to reach out and help other dreamers achieve their dreams.

Stay tuned...

New Friends Alert!

As some of you know, on July 4th my brother "EpcotBob" and I put on an Epcot themed celebration at his home. We built our own versions of Soarin, Illuminations and Mexico, all favorites at Epcot.

We posted our youtube videos at a few Disney forums and were quite surprised the way the view counts went up and the comments came back. Reading posts like this one at disboards has been one of the most rewarding experiences we have had. We figured we'd connect well with the Disney crowd but we had no idea we'd get this warm response, it was worth every dollar and hour invested (a lot)!

I was a little disappointed in the number of folks who took the opportunity to sign up at my site dreamersempire.com and participate in the forums. Theres definately not enough to sustain any conversations. Still, I made a great connection and one new friend is helping me out with some artwork for the site.

Okay, here is the point of this post. There was one thing I had hoped would happen and it didn't (I'll take the blame, its gotta be me). No one asked about what my avatar or my site prominent graphic (a reflection of a mountain in a building) meant. I expected at least a "what the heck..?" but no one asked. Okay, I guess in truth I don't spend too much time looking behind the scenes when I stumble into a great video or some blog or site. So my bad!?!

However (this is a huge however for me) the intent behind dreamersempire, the plan if you will, took a great surge forward on Tuesday, Sept 9th. The plan required one thing for me to move forward, permission to rent a movie theater and borrow a movie poster slot. I dreaded asking this for months, I knew I had to do it, and I braced myself for a "No" or better yet a "What in the world are you talking about?" kind of response. The response was "Sure". Huh? Did he understand what I was asking for?

You too might be wondering "Huh?" and thats okay, it was deliberate, it was deliberate. Where is that line from? Anyway, chasing my dream, Dreamers Empire, just got a little more 'possible' this week and I'm estatic. In the meantime I hope I can connect with some of you new friends through Twitter and youtube and see if there would be anyone interested in joining me at the dreamersempire.com forum for some lively discussion about "Recapturing the Future".

Minicot videos available & Myspace Page

Hello, and welcome to Soarin. That is our version of it!

Here is our re-creation of Soarin

Here is our re-creation of Illuminations and Mexico

And finally, find us at Myspace and become a friend, share your comments.

We've had great feedback from a few Disney forums that we posted the videos at. We figured Disney enthusiasts would get a kick out of this, but we were pleasantly surprised just how great the response was. I'm trying to fix a small registration issue at Dreamers Empire before I post to other Disney forums.

If you want the technical explanation behind this, my brother "EpcotBob" will be posting a "How we did it" video soon.

BTW - This is not the "idea" I've mentioned in other blog entries.

Dream #1 - Minicot

The July 4th recreation of Epcot in a Minnesota backyard, known as Minicot, was successful and we will have the video posted by the end of July. This is the first of five events designed to help recapture the future.

Check out the Press Release!