Six Synchronistic Degrees of Fred Schepisi

Fred Schepisi behind the camera

One of my favourite movies is Six Degrees of Separation, mainly because of the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of,

"a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

I wrote a post about my experience with the movie here,
Six Degrees of Separation?

It was directed by Fred Schepisi, an Australian who has directed such films as;  

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Barbarosa (1982), Iceman (1984) 'Roxanne (1987), The Russia House (1990), Mr. Baseball (1992), I.Q. (1994). Fierce Creatures (1997), Last Orders (2001), It Runs in the Family (2003)  

His latest film which gets released in Australian cinemas this week is The Eye of the Storm, which was based on the Patrick White novel.

 

I was reading an article in FilmInk magazine yesterday where Fred said, 

"There's just no way of knowing. 

Sometimes I think that the only thing that makes a difference is when serendipity comes into play, and there's a certain point when something might just come together.

In this case, it was getting those three actors who were only available for a very specific period of time.

That's when movies get made.

There's a serendipity about it that's either there or it ain't, and you never find out why." 

The movie stars Geoffrey Rush, who won an Oscar for his performance in the movie Shine the story of David Helfgott, who I saw play in Brisbane last year.

 

Now,  Shine stars Noah Taylor as  a young David Helfgott, as well.
Noah also plays the barman in the movie Red Dog, which I wrote about here,
Red Dog and the Sacred Kingfisher/Tree/Owl Synchronicity

I met Noah in Brisbane when I won two free tickets to his movie premier of He Died with a Felefel  in His Hand, which was filmed in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

I also met John Birmingham, the guy that wrote the book  
He Died with a Felefel in His Hand at the Brisbane Writers Festival last year, when I took my sons to see Jeff Lindsay, the author of the Dexter crime novels.
John had a broken (or at least bandaged) left hand when I asked him if he could sign his book for me.
I remember saying lucky it wasn't your right hand, to which he replied "but, I'm left handed".
So he signed what he said was up until then, the only right handed signature of his book in the world (what a lucky break for me;-)
The Eye of the Storm also stars Judy Davis, who starred in Woody Allen's film Deconstructing Harry, which I wrote about here,
Twisted? 
I just finished reading Soul Survivor, the story of James Leininger and his memories of a past life as a WWII fighter pilot, which I did a post on here,
Soul Survivor 
and I went to the author’s web site 
http://www.soulsurvivor-book.com/ to see if there were any further developments to the story and I saw this endorsement, “James Leininger’s story is the most compelling evidence so far for reincarnation.”
–T.J. MacGregor,
Edgar-winning author, Running Time
So I rushed over to Synchrosecrets.com to tell Trish about seeing her name mentioned on the Soul Survivor website and how I was going to do a post about Fred Schepisi, the director of 
Six Degrees of Seperation and his brush with synchronicities in his film making career.
I went to Fred's site  
http://www.fredschepisi.com/eyeofthestorm.html to find out a bit more on The Eye of the Storm for my new post and came across this page 
http://www.fredschepisi.com/in_development.html about his upcoming projects and found a list of films he is planning to make.
One is called Hitches … and get this...it’s about; “Two young brothers hitch-hiking to BYRON BAY so they can save the money on their bus tickets and have more to spend on the beautiful girls they’re sure they’re going to meet. 

They have an optimistic view of what their futures will be, but every ride they get, the people have a different view of life and they’re going to set these boys straight, even if it kills them.”

 The funny thing is I bought my copy of Soul Survivor in Byron Bay in March!?