ON AGING, WISDOM, AND CREATIVE INSPIRATION

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hi, friends!

We made it!

I, for one, am very happy to be on this side of 2026. I love a new year, the idea of a blank page, and just stepping out into the unknown. So, here we are.

After shooting BERLIN LOOP (click the link to watch it in North America!) I couldn't wait to shoot another film, so I got to work. I spent 2023 sketching it out, 2024 writing it, and 2025 gathering a team to start developing the project. So, almost three years into this new project, I can finally say: I'm at the beginning. The starting line.

With Berlin Loop, I started sharing my process after filming; this time, I'm getting out way ahead of the curve and starting now. Three years of tight team work, and now, a process that I can share as we move along on this new film, Los Ageless.

In case you want to skip ahead, in this newsletter you'll find:

• A recap of 1954
• A location scout time travel adventure outside Joshua Tree National Park in California
• A creative pivot
• The wisdom to move humanity forward

NOW, VIA THE PAST

I'm beginning with a look back in time that gives shape to where we find ourselves today.

Imagine you're back in 1954. Seventy-two years ago. IBM debuted the first machine translation from Russian to English. The US launched the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, while the USSR launched the world's first civilian nuclear power plant. The quest to explore space began with the USSR's military space satellites. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel between the Communist North and the Western-backed (freshly independent) South. Meanwhile, the CIA planned its first Central American coup in Honduras, the first McDonald's opened its doors, and L. Ron Hubbard launched the Church of Scientology.

Not unlike today, the news alternated between frightening, absurd, and villainous.

In the midst of it all, one man, working on a military base in the remote California desert, had an unexplainable encounter that left him with an architectural template that would change everything and usher in the future "transhumanist" movement: a regenerative time machine. The encounter took place on a geomagnetic vortex, a naturally-occurring, scientifically-confirmed energy field that would contribute to the functionality of the machine. Once constructed, it would allow human cells to regenerate, giving our species the ability to live longer, allowing each of us to acquire the wisdom that's only available through a long life. It would be those with extended lifespans that could lead humanity into its next evolution and save us from ourselves.

That man, who died less than 20 years later, his time machine still incomplete, was George van Tassel.

EXTERIOR. GEOMAGNETIC VORTEX. NOW.

Well, close to now: September, 2025.

George van Tassel's time machine, The Integratron, has ignited my imagination for more than a decade, yet somehow I never managed to visit it until now. I've watched all the YouTube videos, including interviews with van Tassel, explaining to journalists his visit aboard an alien spacecraft and the engineering design of the structure, a fusion of Noah's Ark, Nicola Tesla's technology, and extraterrestrial mentorship.

What fascinated me was the idea that simply living longer would make us wise; and yet, despite adding almost 20 years to the average lifespan since van Tassel's time, the (mostly old) people who rule the world don't seem to be getting any less destructive, on average.

Nonetheless, the aging and the wisdom of the desert combine for a conceptually magical atmosphere.

That's why I wrote a script that takes place in this desert. As my Grandpa always used to say, "California is the land of fruits and nuts." It's a magnet for extreme personalities, extreme landscapes, and some kind of contagious optimism about God, the future, and the thin space between time and eternity. That's what I'm exploring in Los Ageless.

Due to its highly-enviable location two hours from Hollywood, the Integratron's website and the three sisters who own the property clearly state NOT AVAILABLE FOR FILMING. So when I wrote the Integratron into my script and began pitching it by describing its atmosphere as "sacred space amidst a little bit of delusion," I knew I was perching my entire pitch on dangerously uncertain ground.

Nonetheless, I wrote a heart-felt letter to the three sisters, explained my attachment to the site, and asked if I could come with my producers just to take a look for research purposes. They responded, affirming their hesitancy about filming there, but with just a little ray of hope shining through the rejection: they invited us for a meeting.

That brings us here, now, to a parking lot and gated parcel of land amidst the desert bushes and some very tongue-in-cheek signage.

It's just as I had imaged. The Sisters greet us with a little skepticism, but soon, as I start explaining my appreciation for van Tassel, it's clear my enthusiasm is reciprocated. We sit down on some couches in the shade, and I pitch.

While the story starts at the Integratron, it's really not about the dome at all. It's about the thin space between life and death, when past and future disappear and each character is asked to confront what they think life is really about. Those characters, an ensemble, just happen to be two cousins and their grandmother, along with the grandmother's best friend and some other key characters that live with her in a desert village of eccentric, unconventional older people who have found belonging in a chosen family.

Essentially, I think it's about what George van Tassel was really after: acquiring the wisdom to live life well, in harmony and community.

Starting at the Integratron, framing the story with an unexplained incident at a supernatural sound bath, sets the tone -- sincere without taking itself too seriously -- perfectly.

The three sisters, themselves unconventional and awe-inspiring older women, love the story. They voice their concerns, telling us some details about previous filming experiences and their strong stance on "never again." We agree to send in a detailed shooting plan, with a shotlist, storyboards, expected crew numbers, and scene setups.

"We receive twenty emails per week," one sister explains, "and we usually don't respond at all. But we liked your story, and now that we meet you, we love the women-led team, and we're giving you the coherency discount. You seem legit."

They invite us in for a sound bath, and we are equally enamoured. Inside the dome, sound travels in a perfect circle, creating a powerful resonance from every direction. The magic is alive and buzzing in between my ears.

We leave floating on a cloud, and spend the next weeks planning out a shooting day that will potentially take place six to eight months from now. I spend hours sketching out my amateur storyboards. Finally, we deliver a fifteen-page deck detailing every move we hope to make.

Two weeks later, the Sisters write us back: "After a lot of discussion back and forth, we've decided this would just create too much stress on the site and we have to decline."

WHAT NOW?

By this time, I'd been working with my two producing partners, Jenny and Farida, for about six months. This whole Integratron adventure is just one small sliver of the work we've done that includes creating a financial plan and budget, outreach to actors, structuring an impact campaign, planning with our main location (you'll hear about that in another newsletter), finding an entertaiment lawyer, bringing on crew and building a team that now includes an associate producer, line producer and production designer, and getting to know investors. We'd just opened an LLC and a bank account to create our own legal entity for the world of the film; we named our company van Tassel, LLC.

Oh, George!

Along with our associate producer David and our line producer Tara, we started brainstorming other filming locations. While the main location was still secure, now this one important, story-world-building second location just vanished -- and with that, some momentum. At this point, a lot of our other plans were either stalling, or falling through. So the death of our Integratron dreams hit me hard.

I called my screenwriting guru. At first she told me that maybe this "no" wasn't a hard no -- I couldn't agree. This was the end of the Integratron. What could replace it?

In case you want to read the Integratron scene that will never be, I've made a PDF of it here: Los_Ageless_Integratron.pdf​

I'm curious: what do these five pages tell you about the script that's coming? Who do you think the main character is? And what would you hope comes next? If you want to read these pages, I'd welcome your feedback.

The description of "my" desert is really visualized at the Integratron, but it also gives a lot of weight to a place where we never return in the script; like a giant misdirect, almost. A lot of movies start like this. But it's a little unsatisfying.

So... I started re-writing. Cutting. Re-arranging. I'd been trying to figure out how to bookend the film and bring us back to the Integratron in the end, but it wasn't coming together. And in fact, cutting the Integratron from the beginning of the script might give me space to create the bookends I always wanted.

Now, I'm fixing problems in the first act. Clarifying the characters. Shedding the set piece that I thought would jump-start my film might allow more space for the themes it showed me to become clearer. Perhaps the Integratron, which seemed to be a destination, was only an important stopover that gave me the opportunity to acquire the wisdom to move Los Ageless forward.

Maybe in filmmaking, "wisdom" means being maximally flexible, adaptable, and humble, while staying completely true to your inner compass.

WISDOM FOR THE AGELESS NOW

In van Tassel's time, aliens, space travel, and the quest to find answers in science, philosophy, and the supernatural were early signs of the expanding counterculture that reacted against Cold War politics in the 1960s. So many activist leaders in this expanding consciousness were killed, and some spiritual teachers were discredited. But many of these countercultural thinkers simply went on as change-makers in their own ecosystems, quietly remaining faithful to a new version of social change that seems alien to the mainstream: a third way. I think of journalist Krista Tippett as one great example. She's spent her career bringing third way thinkers and leaders into conversation.

In some ways it seems like we're back to the manic, existential political turmoil of the late 50s and 60s, but I think what we're seeing on the surface is a sign that change has been churning in the ground beneath our feet. (Maybe in a geomagnetic energy field?) And because of the world's turmoil, more and more people are discovering the wisdom of a third way: a path of acceptance, kindness, non-violence, deep-rooted, conscious connection, and relational belonging. When I meet people like this, they all seem to be on a spiritual path. The details of their paths are different, but that they are connected beneath the surface is clear. That's what I'm defining as ageless wisdom.

Did George van Tassel really encounter aliens? Does sound really have the power to regenerate our cells? And what's the point of progress to move forward or live forever if we can't access the internal wholeness that only comes from having a connection to our source, and one another?

I'll keep exploring until I find out.

Until next time...

Emily

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