Hi r/movies!
This is co-director Courtney Stephens and producers Taylor Hess and Jesse Miller. Our documentary JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE, about the countercultural icon John Lilly (you may know him as the guy who tried to communicate with dolphins by giving them LSD, or inventing the Sensory Deprivation Tank), was released this week.
It's now in select theaters and available on home VOD from Oscilloscope.
Narrated by Chloë Sevigny and co-directed by Michael Almereyda, the film explores the life of a determined scientist and his experiments into the psychonautical unknown.
We're here to answer your questions!
Here's the trailer: https://youtu.be/8UV4ifEOGHI
Synopsis:
The daring experimenter Dr. John C. Lilly dedicated his life to radical self-investigation and unlocking the mysteries of consciousness and communication. “My body is my laboratory” was the motto, and his research on the language of dolphins and whales – as well as psychedelics and sensory deprivation – assured his own cult status in 20th-century pop culture as the basis for Ken Russel’s ALTERED STATES and Mike Nichols’s THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN.
And the website with theater listings and VOD links: johnlilly.oscilloscope.net
Ask us anything, back at 12 PM PT/3 PM ET today to answer your questions.
by JohnLillyAMA
7 Comments
Where can I throw money at you to be able to download and watch, or buy a physical media release???
Hi to all 3, thanks for joining us 🙂
What was each of your introduction to John Lilly’s work?
Did he damage himself taking acid? Connections to Leary?
Hi I am retired now. First in the mid 1980s, I attended a lecture by him, I think it was more on his consciousness research though. As a biologist I was part of a team (with veterinarians) that studied dolphins found stranded dead on the coast of my country. We looked at health, disease, pollution. And I have done field work at sea. I have read his dolphin literature. Though it’s admittedly been a while.
I need to think about a useful question.
Hi 👋
How do you balance portraying a controversial figure honestly without either glorifying or dismissing them?
If you could only bring 3 movies with you on a deserted island to watch for the rest of your life, what would they be? Bonus question: Best and worst pizza topping?
Do you guys believe in the whole ECCO thing at all? Or did you start to believe more in it as you learned about John? Or less even?
Lilly is an intriguing guy. Depending on who you ask, he’s either a total generational genius or a crazy weirdo.