Indie Spirit Film Festival 2009

All the Mysteries of the Universe -- Explained! Sort of...Roger Nygard's journey to search for THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE began at age thirteen when his father died, and Nygard started wondering whether there was a point to everything. It wasn't until the events of 9-11 shocked an entire country into considering their own mortality that Nygard conceived of doing a documentary on the big questions. Nygard finally did something about it when he was invited to a STAR TREK convention in Tel Aviv, Israel in October, 2004. 'I often attend when they screen my documentaries, but this time was different. I thought that if I didn't start shooting some footage while I was at the source of the major Western religions, I'd never do it. I made a list of the eighty-five toughest questions I could think of,' said Nygard, 'starting with biggest one, 'why do we exist?' and then I began interrogating the widest cross-section of humanity possible.' What is man's purpose? What started the Universe? Where was God during the Holocaust? What is Truth? Should people have sex before marriage? What is the best way to find happiness? Where are the voices in my head coming from? Where is the afterlife? ...Nygard tested his questions on a friend, composer Billy Sullivan. Sullivan had worked with Nygard, composing music for his previous documentaries, and was interested enough in the subject matter to come on board. According to Sullivan, 'When Roger asked me if I believed in God, and I said I did, he responded, 'I hope God shows up during the making of this movie.' I immediately thought... how do you not support that?'When Nygard arrived at the Tel Aviv convention, organizers put him on stage for the traditional introduction, 'I used that opportunity to announce the start of my new project, saying, 'Hello, everybody -- I need a Rabbi!'' The Star Trek fans arranged a meeting with q Rabbi in Jerusalem, who explained the concept of God being in a state of constant 'isness,' and that events like the Holocaust are 'a challenge to find God in that event.' This became the first of 175 interviews over the next four years, across 4 continents. Profiled in the film are people like Indian holy man, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (The Art of Living), who describes his job as 'dehusking' people: 'stress is the husk, which covers the light, the joy within a person.' Nygard spoke with Catholic Archbishop D'Ambrosio in Italy, who admitted, 'To believe in Christ is not easy. But it's not impossible.' In Athens, Georgia, Rob Adonis, founder of Ultimate Christian Wrestling, says he looks forward to the afterlife, 'In Heaven I'm going to be perfect, I'll have abs of steel, I'm going to be chiseled, I'm going to have a great tan.' Taoist Master Zhang Chengda of China's Azure Cloud Temple on Taishan Mountain, China's holiest mountain, said, 'If you do good in this life, then you can continue practicing Tao in the afterlife.'Islamic scholar Dr. Zakir Naik maintains, 'In Islam, the Truth prevails, not majority.'In England, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said, 'Not only do you not need God, it's positively counterproductive, if you are trying to understand the nature of Existence.' In Palo Alto, California, Leonard Susskind (co-discovered string theory) explained that modern string theorists are coming to the conclusion that there is not just one Universe, but more likely trillions, if not an infinite number of Universes, all with laws of physics different from ours. Professor Li Shaoqiang, in Confucious' home town of Qufu, China, explained that, 'Chinese people worship Mao Ze Tung as god because he founded a country.' The interviews averaged two hours each, and some went as long as five hours. 'One of the hardest things for me to comprehend is how we can all firmly believe things that are so different, often contradictory.' When Nygard began assembling the footage from the first interviews he screened some of it for fellow filmmaker, Paul Tarantino. Nygard met Tarantino at the 1998 USA Film Festival in Dallas, Texas. Nygard was there to screen his first documentary, TREKKIES, and Tarantino was unveiling his first feature, COURTING COURTNEY. Tarantino suggested that Nygard insert himself into the story. Nygard couldn't very easily film himself, so he asked Tarantino if he could learn to use a camera. Nygard had read the manual and taught himself how to shoot--mainly because he couldn't always rely on anybody else while traveling over a several year period. Tarantino read that camera manual also and then joined the journey. 'Making this documentary is the kind of life changing event that sneaks up on you one interview at a time,' said Tarantino. 'Each and every interviewee has left a mark on me.' 450 hours of footage may be a huge amount for one documentary, but with a subject so complex, it seemed unavoidable. The intensive editing process took over two years. Simply watching that amount of raw footage would take one person eleven 40-hour weeks. The first cut was almost four hours. The time it took to put a cut together was frustrating. 'People talk about what ended up on the cutting room floor, let me tell you what's on ours - two sequels and the first season of a compelling television series,' Tarantino only half joked. 'I looked at every frame we shot,' said Nygard. 'As we selected which footage to keep, my goal was not to judge people. But to try to understand them. I hope the film helps people understand their neighbor a little better. Maybe that will help make it a little easier for us to get along too.'