I was first introduced to Father Yod (aka Jim Baker) by a friend of mine Mary Fagot a few years ago. She was telling me all about this cult guy who along with his disciples ran a health food restaurant on Sunset Blvd and had 13 wives and all kinds of other crazy stuff. It was pretty fascinating. Then a few years after that we were working on some ideas for something and Father Yod came up again.. he was the perfect reference point for this project, like a modern day Jesus in a white suit that happened to be a front man of a psychedelic rock band…needless to say nothing came of it.
That was a couple of years ago.. So a couple of weeks ago I’m editing this job with Michael Mees, and during a break he shows me this trailer he’s cut for this film – It was about the Source Family. I said wow that’s funny cos an old friend of mine is obsessed with that guy.. the end credits came up… and to my surprise, Turns out I know the co-director, Maria Demopoulos.
So then I’m on set shooting and during a break I’m telling the Director of Photography Dermott Downs about how weird this coincidence is and it really kind of freaked me out.. To which he responded, his wife Holly Becker produced it.. WTF is going on.. It’s all around me, I feel like I’m in that scene in Star Wars, the trash compactor one….finally I relayed this story to Phoebe Sudrow the 1st assistant camera, as we were all laughing about it etc.. and she announced she worked on it.. Too many signals….hence the need to post.
Here’s a link to the film by Maria.