[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What is “Bardo” and why is it so meaningful to you?
Peter M. Hoffman, Author/Film Financier/Former Carolco Pictures CEO: The Bardo is a phrase from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and it refers to the three levels of process that occurs when a person dies.
They have first a ground luminosity.
Then they have a coalescing of events and color.
The third level is when you remember back in absolute clarity all the things of your life back to the beginning.
It’s a way of learning about it.
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead after that occurs, you then make a choice.
You’re either still tied into this world and all the things that happened and you want to go back, or you then can go into the light as the alternative.
We made a picture about this called Jacob’s Ladder.
In that particular book in our version of it, Tim Robbins does go into the light with an uncredited Macaulay Culkin.
So, to me, even though I’m not dead, this was a way to think about being in prison for something I didn’t do and trying to get past the rage of that and to learn from it.
And, naturally just sort of a reflection back as I go through all the things of my life, not only the things that led to that event, but also throughout my life.
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Then I figured that was a process by which you could have the knowledge that you get in the Bardo experience without having to be dead.
Indeed the Dalai Lama says that that can happen, that you can actually have the Bardo experience even though you are still alive and you’re actually going to be able to incorporate that into your ongoing existence.
Film Courage: Is there a relationship between Bardo and a karmic wind, not your book, but the philosophy?
Peter: In one of the leading books that talks about the Tibetan Book of the Dead by a disciple of the Dalai Lama he refers to this phrase as karmic winds as what you experience in the Bardo when you’re remembering back and thinking about all the things that buffeted you and all the nice Buddhas and the nasty Buddhas and all the things that happened to you.
Those he refers to as karmic winds in the sense that they’re things that…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
A lawyer turned producer and studio executive, Hoffman built a career that bridged the creative and the corporate, the visionary and the pragmatic. As the founder and CEO of Carolco and Seven Arts Entertainment, he brought to life acclaimed and enduring films including The Believer, winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, alongside Stander, Asylum, Johnny Mnemonic, Rules of Engagement, and Rate Race. Earlier, as President and CEO of Carolco Pictures, he helped guide an era of independent filmmaking that produced cultural touchstones such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall.
In the decades since, Hoffman has continued to mentor and advise filmmakers and financiers through Picture Pro LLC and Luminosity Pictures, ventures that reflect his enduring belief that cinema is both an art form and an enterprise—a delicate balance that must be protected and reimagined with every generation.
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