The little movie that could, "What the Bleep Do We Know?"

Written by Jennifer Sandomir

The little movie that could: 
"What the Bleep Do We Know?"

Being Magazine readers' questions +
William’s thoughts on being in the physical universe
A conversation with William Arntz
filmmaker, producer and screenwriter

“What the Bleep Do We Know!?”
A film by William Arntz,
Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente

Interview by Jennifer Sandomir and Andrew H. Kahn
Typeset from audio recording by Matthew Sandomir

Being: What impact were you hoping to create with ‘What the Bleep Do We Know!?”

William: Our overall goal is to have a 100 million people around the world see the film. Given that, what would happen if a 100 million people across the world were exposed to this information? Have you ever heard of the ‘100 monkeys experiment?’

Being: No, what is that?

The 100 Monkeys Experiment

William: Very briefly, there were scientists studying monkeys on an island somewhere around Japan and they noticed that these monkeys would dig up the roots. The monkeys would spend some time and brush off all the sand and dirt and then eat them. Then, they noticed at one point that one monkey was washing them in the ocean before eating them.
This was a much more efficient way.
Well, the scientist kept watching this and watching this and eventually there became two monkeys doing this, then four, then six, then eight and suddenly all the monkeys on the island were doing this.
I thought that was weird. But, then they found out that the moment that all the monkeys on the island starting doing it, all the monkeys on all the other islands near them started doing it too. So, it’s like there’s some sort of connection between these beings and once it hits a critical mass, a 100 monkeys; BOOM! Suddenly, it gets subconscious and everyone does it.

William: So, we’re sort of wondering what’s going to happen when 100 million people start realizing they can create their own reality and things like that. So, really what we were going for is something that would significantly change the trajectory of the timeline of the culture on the planet.

Being: Sounds like evolution.

William: A rather grandiose task but, you know we always dream big.

Being: Absolutely.

Being: What has surprised you in response to the film and what did you expect?

William: Well, the fact that it’s as popular as it is doesn’t surprise any of us because that’s what we intended. Some of the things that do surprise us are pleasant surprises. One is, we do a lot of question-and-answer after the movie, all three of us, and people always come up to us afterwards from disciplines, healing modalities, therapies, metaphysical groups or whatever, and say, “This movie is exactly what we teach and what we learn about in our studies!” The amount of groups that have said this to us is up around one hundred by now.

Being: Wow! You hit home with us too.

William: I didn’t even know what they were all about and they came up after a showing and said, “This is unbelievable, this is exactly what we talk about every week.” Unity Churches, Science of Mind folks, the people in Landmark [Education] have often said, “OK, who of your filmmakers are the Landmark Forum people... this is exactly it!” The list just goes on and on.

So, what we’re seeing is that people are coming out of their ‘metaphysical closets.’ All these different groups that have always been somewhat disenfranchised by the culture because if you think differently- especially when it relates to spirituality or religious matters- the culture comes down on you. They say “You’re a cult... you’re weird,” they trash what your doing and make you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s something that definitely pisses us filmmakers off. All these different groups coming out are a pleasant surprise-- to see that basically all of us agree. So, that’s cool.

Another thing that surprised me is I thought we were going to get more push-back from organized religion and I only got picketed once. Months ago in Portland and that’s it. You know... you get some crazy people who will write you emails and tell you you’re the “mouthpiece of Satan.” [chuckles] But, that’s very, very few people.

I would say most people that have seen it, at least the ones we think are mainstream religions, don’t really have a problem with what we say. In fact, they like it and there’s sort of more openmindedness coming from that than we expected. Because we get down pretty heavy on certain aspects of organized religion, we figured that they would be coming after us and it hasn’t happened really. So, that’s been a surprise and it’s been a nice one.

Being: How does "being" fit in the physical universe?

William: We use the terminology from quantum physics saying ‘The Observer.’ The observer is ‘the being’ that takes on physical form. The way that it fits in the physical universe is it picks up a body. One thing we do get probably the most controversy about in the film is ‘Ramtha.’

Ramtha is a channeled being, meaning that what you see, the person you see there is not the person reincarnated in the body. Channeling is when someone has an arrangement with this non physical being and they step aside and let the non-physical being come in and speak through them for certain periods of time. That’s what’s happening in the movie when you see the woman in red, that’s really Ramtha- someone different than the person who incarnated the body. Sometimes we say they’ve got a time-share worked out. Other times we say ‘he rents, he doesn’t buy.’ Although, we all rent so it’s interesting that we have Ramtha in the film.

The whole thing about ‘being’ fitting in the physical world, we’re sort of directly saying, ‘you need a body in order to interact with this physical plane.’

Being: How do you, personally, create your day?

William: I’m a little different than some of the other filmmakers and Joe [Dispenza] in the movie who talks about that.

I don’t necessarily create the day. I go further out in the timeline; I may be creating a week or a month or some time. When I was making the movie what I would do is just sit there and envision what reactions I would want people to have from watching the movie.

One of my odd ones is thinking at one point someone would be driving home after seeing the movie almost in a daze, and get about half way home and go, “What just happened!?,” turn around, pull a U-turn and go back to watch the movie again. I just kept seeing that-- it tickled my fancy.

Sure enough, about two months ago I get the email, (imitating a woman’s voice) “Hi this weird thing happened, I was riding home from seeing your wonderful movie, and I just stopped and I had to turn around, ride back and see it right again!”

Exactly that, Whoa! There you go. That kind of thing is more of what I do.

Being: How do you explain a ‘Rabbit Hole?’

William: I would say a ‘rabbit hole’ is mental, from the mind. It’s when you have an idea- like we were just talking about, how the ‘being’ is not physical and your only interaction with the world is through a physical body. That’s where we have the ‘rabbit hole.’

It’s when you start thinking about ‘that’ and, “What does that mean?” and “Who am I?” and “What am I really?” and “Am I really this body... and if I cut my finger off, did I really lose a finger,?” those sort of questions.

A rabbit hole is one of those questions where you just go on and on and the answers bring up even more questions. We obviously like rabbit holes, and think that that’s kind of a neat, interesting way to spend your time.

Being: Are humans addicted to thought? If so, what’s the impact?

William: [laughs] Well, I spoke to Mark [Vincente] one of the filmmakers the other day about this. There’s this thing in the brain called ‘nerve growth factor’ and when ‘nerve growth factor’ is high is when you learn.

First, it turns out when you have an ‘ah-ha! moment,’ you learn something new, the nerve growth factor completely just flows to the brain so you can actually have an ‘ah-ha! moment.’

Then you just learn and pick up these new concepts. Secondly, the pleasure centers are all stimulated in the brain, so, a realization produces pleasure. And as you see in the movie you can get addicted to pleasure so yeah, you can actually get addicted to ‘ah-ha! moments.’

Being: Ah Ha! [all together laughing]

William: Laughter too does very interesting things to the body. So, you can say you get addicted to that- whether that’s good or bad, whether that’s better or worse than the other addictions- I’ll leave to the readers and viewers.

There are books that I’ve read where they just describe those things, you know, the world or history or something in a very different way and suddenly all this stuff that never seemed to make sense, makes sense... it’s all put into place. Those moments are just so... I happen to love them... your whole world view just gets turned inside out and suddenly, like I said, you see things differently and it makes so much more sense.

One of the things we’re trying to do with the film is have people thinking for themselves. It’s funny, some people think when you’re thinking of spiritual things that it’s a religion and most religions have the idea that “We’re right and you’re wrong if you don’t agree with us. If you don’t buy [into] our thing then you’re really wrong.”

And of course sometimes they get carried away and send you off to hell.

We just want people to examine ideas and decide for themselves. If at the end they think we’re crazy, then so be it.

Being: What response have you had from the scientific community?

William: It turns out we pleased and pissed off just about every group of people out there.

Some scientists really like what we talk about in the film. Some people get outraged that we use their sacred cow to talk about this stuff. They say it is pseudo-science. Although, it’s interesting for saying we use pseudo-science because, nobody ever uses science to prove their statement. They’re just kind of trying us out. There’s some that just don’t like it.

Then we have some real scientists that say “I don’t agree with this, here’s why... I think when you said this you meant that...,” and instead we get into a really interesting scientific discussion. There’s always a lot of discussion and a lot of disagreement in science.

Being: We understand that you have an interest in producing a transformational television network; can you tell us about that?

William: People keep saying, “This is great... ‘What the Bleep’ is great... but, what’s next? You can’t just leave us high and dry!” When I think ‘what’s next,’ I think more about movies.

But, what would actually have more impact on awareness? I think TV. I think a lot of evenings I would like to watch something for a half-hour our maybe an hour, not watch a whole movie but just something where I would learn something, get a different viewpoint, and there’s really nothing out there.

Every once in a while you see something good on the History or Discovery Channel but most of the time there’s really nothing that gets me. So I was thinking that ‘this makes such perfect sense’ and I’m realizing with the success of ‘What the Bleep’ we’re privy to the entertainment industry that there really is a market for this type of information.

It’s almost like when I started the movie thing I made some wise-ass comment like, “Someone should make a movie.” Well this time I said, “Someone should start a television network.” And I was like, “Oh geez, did I just volunteer again!?” [laughs]

Being: Yes you did!

William: Oh boy, I’m going to keep my mouth shut next incarnation! [laughing more] So, since then everyone keeps asking me about it and that tells me more and more that I need to get it on... there’s something here. Everyone I say it to says, “Oh yeah, that’s perfect, we really need that.”

Being: It is definitely wanted and needed.

Being : Is there anything that you would want to share with our readers that wasn’t shown in the movie, or is there some message you want our readers to take with them after reading this?

William: (pauses) I think it’s real clear to anyone who observes the events in the world that if the world goes on the way it’s going, it’s not going to last a whole lot longer. I mean that’s just kind of an obvious, obvious thing. You know, the use of resources... the fact that people think we can achieve peace on earth by killing other people. You have to step back and look at the ideas that are driving our civilization.

I think some of the ideas are either ‘there’s no God,’ or ‘there is a God out there that’s up in heaven and you can do whatever you want in life as long as you bow a knee to him as you go to heaven and everyone else goes to hell.’ Those sort of ideas... the idea that ‘we area given dominion over the Earth...’ In other words- ‘we can do whatever we want to this wonderful planet because we are ‘it’ and the planet has to take whatever we do.’ Those kinds of ideas are just wrong. And we know they’re wrong because we see what it’s doing to the planet. Things have to change or we’re going to get wiped off the planet and our great-great-grandchildren will have nothing to eat, etcetera.

I think that we need a new way to look at the world and that starts by being open to that. I’m not, and none of the other filmmakers are necessarily saying that we have the answer-- the one and only answer to all of life’s, yours and the planet’s problems.

I think part of the problem is different ideologies have come along or faiths or even just the scientific viewpoints saying ‘here’s the ultimate answer.’ I don’t think any one thing has the ultimate answer. I think the only way you’re going to get to a new answer is to be open to that and start looking and questioning and not just sitting around and wondering what movie Brad Pitt is going to be in next or wondering, “Are the Miami Dolphins ever going to get out of the cellar and start winning again?” To a lot people, that’s a big deal and I guess if they want to do that they get to do that. But I say, ‘What about those ah-ha moments?’ What about the moments when you learn something and life just opens up to you?

The idea that learning is something you did until you earned your diploma and from then on it was just consume. It’s really a societal thing because sometimes there are moments in culture where it is very cool to learn stuff. I remember growing up in the 60’s... the whole counter-culture thing; there were a lot of new ideas coming in and it just got really cool to learn these new ideas. That’s when transcendental meditation showed up and a lot of ideas from the East. It just became really cool to learn stuff and spend all night talking ideas over. In our culture, that’s a lost art form. Hopefully, we can do a little jump start on that whole process, as it says in the ‘good book,’ “Seek and ye shall find.”

People have to go looking for them and if your bored with your life then there’s really two basic choices. You can start looking for something that’s not going to bore you or you can just start anesthetizing yourself. Through drinking... or whatever our society does... sit in front of the tube for nine hours a night that will pretty much anesthetize anything.

Being: William, we just want to thank you immensely for the time we spent with you, it’s been a privilege for us to spend this time with you. Thank you for your contribution to the world and you’re totally aligned with what we’re up to. Being Magazine is a gift to each and every reader and we see your movie as a gift to each and every viewer. So, the more gifts we can create in the world through your film and through our magazine is a blessing and an honor for us to contribute to people to create positive change in their life. So again, we thank you immensely.

William: My great pleasure... we just need about a 1,000 more of what you guys are doing. Well, thank you for your time. I certainly appreciate it. I guess we have to start somewhere.