The other night, we were looking for a movie to stream from Netflix and selected Man From Earth. It’s a 2007 film written by Jerome Bixby, who has written for Star Trek and Twilight Zone. In a nutshell, the story is about a professor – John Oldman – who is leaving his teaching job and moving on to new things. Some of his fellow profs stop by to wish him good luck and to say good-bye. They’re all surprised that he’s leaving and keep pressuring him for a reason. So he finally says, “What if a man, from the Upper Paleolithic survived until the present day?”
Everyone thinks he’s either kidding or writing a sci-fi novel. But as the film progresses, John begins to talk abut how he sailed with Columbus, what life was like in the various stages of history since the caveman days. His friends balk, of course, in various ways, and the film is actually a thought-provoking dialogue on the nature of reality, religion, man, the environment. Now here’s the synchronicity.
The day after we saw the movie, I was talking to Carol Bowman. We often exchange book and movie titles, but as soon as I mentioned Man From Earth, there was a BIG silence. Then:
Carol: “I can’t believe this.”
Trish: “What?”
Carol: “I called my brother yesterday and he mentioned I should see Man From Earth. He loved it. So last night (the same night Rob and I streamed the movie) I tried streaming it from Netflix, but the buffer kept kicking in. I coldn’t get it. Now I’m going to have to try again. But, really, why this movie out of all the available films? What’s the message?”
Indeed! It’s not even a recent release. We also had trouble buffering the movie from Netflix, but after a couple of attempts got it. Interestingly, as if to put a punctuation on the synchronicity, the next day Netflix sent us the DVD of the movie.
We'll certainly write a review, Eric. It's really a terrific film!
I just stumbled across your blog and I am thrilled to see that you liked this film. As a producer of the movie, reading blogs like this and seeing your comments is the most rewarding part of having put so much hard work. It just came out on Blu-ray a few weeks ago, so there has been some renewed interest in the film recently.
If you would like, please don't hesitate to contribute a review to our IMDb page (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/usercomments) that would really help the film and create additional awareness. Keep spreading the word and THANKS AGAIN!
Best,
Eric D. Wilkinson
Producer
Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth
I like the synchro, and I think I will check out the film too, as I was speaking about such a thing the other day with my friend. 🙂
trish, your books already have me every waking and sleeping moment, don't know how i'm going to squeeze in this film, but it's a must do!
Hmm I'll stick it in my queue.
Now we'll have to get this again just to see the extra stuff! Interestingly, for me, anyway, is that I think the movie hits themes I use in my fiction. Maybe that's the message!
definitely, a message there for you all – and i love the theme of the movie so have to run get it now – thanks for telling us about it! great great post!
I like this movie very much. It is a low budget project, based on a script that had been on the shelf after it's author died. There is a nice DVD EXTRA at the end of the disc. Worth watching.
Highly recommended.
hey.. this movie sounds very interesting…I'm going to check it out…there must be a message in it for you and your friend..sometimes I will rent a movie and unknown to me.. something that I had been thinking about or questioning will be touched upon somewhere in the theme of the movie..It usually makes me sit up and take notice .it tells me I'm not done with reflecting on that issue ..I need to think about it more.