JUST BEFORE DAWN ... notes
The Ojai valley traditionally embodies many local myths, tall tales and heroic characters. Growing up on my grandfather's cow-and-calf ranch ten miles west of the town of Ojai definitely impacted my own early dreams and fantasies. Gramps had come to the valley as a young child in the 1890s, and l naturally picked up the stories he told me. Just Before Dawn explores a fairly recent story about a prominent physician family purported to have special medical healing powers - that ended up nearly tearing the family apart.
The Just Before Dawn plot also plays with the possibility that, as quantum physicists and mathematicians now insist, there does seem to exist a fifth dimension (call it what you like) that certain people can sometimes tap into. Just Before Dawn explores this theme at a suble slightly-mystic level.
The aim of Just Before Dawn is to play out what might in fact happen when a conservative local Ojai doctor finds himself forced to tap into healing powers in order to save his dying daughter. There's a slight edge of horror throughout the story - but NEVER does this movie drop into actual horror genre - just the opposite, this is if anything an ultimately uplifting slightly-mystic tale.
In my understanding most really good transformative movies are lucid-dream extensions of normal reality. The old literary notion from Latin America often called 'magical realism' points toward this genre – where normal everyday reality gets jolted by just one slight alteration ... that in turn provokes a startling fresh dramatic outcome.
MULTIDIMENSIONAL PLOTTING
Just Before Dawn, along with its central healing theme, also toys with several other semi-mystic possibilities that lurk in the underbelly of most good films – namely the ability of people in love to share at non-verbal levels. Also explored is the potential of extreme compassion to evoke expanded strength and even deep wisdom, We also insert the unnerving possibility that a new remarkable spiritual master might arise in our midst at any moment ...
This pragmatic yet also mystic film doesn't push any particular theology. Instead we use drama to passionately explore certain psychological subtleties of relating that science doesn’t yet fully comprehend. NOTE: The story is strongly influenced by Ojai's primary spiritual teacher, Jedda Krishnamurti, who taught that spiritual and scientific truths are not at all antagonistic to each other.
Just Before Dawn includes a subplot that plays lightly on the actual and quite complex Krishnamurti story. Plus there's a local atheistic psychiatrist to help counterbalance the drama – but he then almost destroys those he loves.
Ultimately this is a tale of a man and his daughter, his wife, his friends and the Ojai community itself – rich in history, permeated by subtle and at times sexual realms, loaded with lingering myths – and pregnant with fresh emerging possibilities.
I spent time again in Ojai just recently, and yes – the place still has the power to awaken shadowy mystic realms that excite me. And when I let myself imagine arriving in town to help shoot Just Before Dawn in and around Ojai, I must admit I got seriously excited. The time has come.
In the underlying spirit of pure coincidence and synchronicity, what if right now there's a great director who loves Ojai - and who's looking for an authentic Ojai-drenched story to shoot? That same subliminal muse that guides the writing of most significant screenplays might just possibly generate key encounters that will get this movie made.
