Working draft. Not for distribution.

Edge of Reality

A filmmaker gives a stranger a ride in the rain. The stranger says every possible world exists at once, and that he is the source of all of it. Finding out who he really is pulls the filmmaker toward a harder question, one that a crisis in his own family turns into life or death: when you start seeing patterns everywhere, are you onto something, or coming apart?

A first-person documentary by Miles Rasmussen. Shot on iPhone and drone in Los Angeles and Hawaiʻi.

The film

Edge of Reality is about the thin line between synchronicity and delusion. It follows one chance encounter as far as it will go: into the history of a hilltop above Beverly Hills once listed for $1 billion, into interviews with my own parents, and out to the largest volcano on Earth.

It’s shot on iPhone and drone the way it happened, with select scenes hand-painted in a rotoscope style that nods to Waking Life. It belongs alongside You Can See Everything, Stories We Tell and Tickled.

Part oneStrangers in the Rain

On the first day, I give a stranger a ride in the rain. On the drive he lays out the idea that every possible world exists at once. He calls it All Worlds One, which he says is also the name of an organization he’s tied to, one he claims is known for making copies of people. Then he tells me he is Source. I drive him to a house behind a locked gate, and by the end of the ride he’s telling me I doubted him.

  1. Stranger in the rain
  2. All Worlds One
  3. “This organization is infamous for making copies of people”
  4. “I am Source”
  5. “You doubted me”
  6. “I am also a stranger in the rain”

Part twoThe Edge of Reality

On the second day, I put a question to him: is there a world in which I’m a famous rock star and you’re not? From there the film opens up to the question in its title: how close creativity sits to madness, and how much of artistic success depends on believing in things other people can’t see.

It also takes on what I call intellectual leprosy, the stigma that comes with taking the multiverse or a UAP sighting seriously out loud, even as those ideas reach physics departments and congressional hearings.

  1. “Is there a world in which I am a famous rockstar and you’re not?”
  2. Edge of Reality
  3. Intellectual Leprosy

Part threeThe Minotaur’s Maze

I try to find out who the Stranger really is: his past, his life online, and a story that gets wilder the deeper I go.

Then I turn the camera on my family. My father, a clinical psychologist who specializes in schizophrenia, gets the question in the chapter title. My mother, a licensed clinical social worker, talks with me about depression, ADHD, and the stories we tell ourselves until they become real.

  1. Who was that guy?
  2. Am I crazy?
  3. We’re OK, right?

Part fourThe Mountain

The trail leads to The Mountain: 157 empty acres on the highest ground in the 90210. A sister of the Shah of Iran owned it, then Merv Griffin, who had the top of the ridge cut flat, then Herbalife founder Mark Hughes, who died at 44 before he could build. In 2018 it was listed for $1 billion, the highest asking price in Los Angeles history. A year later it sold at a foreclosure auction for $100,000. The neighbors have theories. I fly a drone over it and wonder what, if anything, is underneath.

Meanwhile I start seeing patterns everywhere, in the people I meet and the conversations I have. There’s a clinical word for that: apophenia, a trait associated with schizophrenia. I want to know whether it’s a symptom, a gift, or the same thing seen from two sides.

Then, on December 8th, my mom makes a violent and very real attempt to end her life. She’s put on a 5150, an involuntary psychiatric hold. She believes she has nothing to live for and that no one in her life actually loves her. The woman who sat with me and talked about how we build stories about ourselves until they become real is now trapped inside one. Every question this film has been asking stops being abstract.

  1. What’s the deal with that property?
  2. Neighbors
  3. Apophenia
  4. December 8th

Where it endsMauna Loa

Three people in my life who don’t know each other all name the same place as their next trip: Mauna Loa, on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island, the largest active volcano on Earth. One is going on a healing retreat, one on vacation. Two of them invite me along before they know what this film is about, and before December 8th.

In Hawaiian tradition the volcano is sacred, tied to Pele, a force of both creation and destruction. The film ends there, on ground that is still being made.

Why I’m making it

I’ve spent fifteen years producing documentary series and working on other people’s films. This one started with a ride.

The question under everything in it is simple: is madness just creativity gone wrong? I believe every good story helps the people watching it grow. I’m also asking whether this film is my way of using creativity to work through pain, instead of using it to build false stories about myself and about how dark the world is.

Where it stands

Shot
Two days with the Stranger, the search into his past, interviews with my parents and with the Mountain’s neighbors, aerials of the property, and Hawaiʻi.
Still to shoot
A theoretical physicist on many worlds. A psychologist on schizophrenia as a blending of possible realities. Researchers on the brain networks behind rumination in depression and ADHD. Artists on how much delusion creative work needs. A walk on The Mountain.
In the edit
I’m cutting it myself in Premiere. The first assembly is underway.
Looking for
A producing partner and financing to finish the shoot and post.

Miles Rasmussen

Producer on documentary series for Netflix, NBC, Nat Geo, A&E and Oxygen, including Queer Eye Season 7, LA Fire & Rescue (supervising producer), Farm Dreams, Secrets of Polygamy and A Plan to Kill. Eight years working with Gus Van Sant on features, TV and commercials. Director of three short music documentaries with pianist Micah McLaurin, one featuring Jimmy Webb. Based in Los Angeles.

More of my work is at milesjrasmussen.com.