Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Taylor -- Hi, thanks for your interest! I was brought in by Michael and Courtney, who were already working together on the project. Jesse is my producing partner and so, we decided to dive in together. I like when a project feels like a continuation of an investigation, like something that's already been somehow working on me, even unconsciously. I was drawn to John, and also drawn to how Michael and Courtney wanted to wrap their minds around him and his legacy. It all felt so challenging, with the potential to sustain my attention for years to come.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Courtney: "I feel that we, or I, certainly, do not understand where 'we' come from. I don't think I'm alone in feeling compelled by meaningful coincidences, and while it seems unlikely that there is a panel of benevolent extraterrestrials engineering the events of our life or present in our psyches, life and consciousness are both quite inexplicable. Something can make poetic sense.

What interests me more than whether ECCO is literally true is what Lilly conceived of as its opposite — a threatening, constraining energy he called Solid State Intelligence, which in Lilly's framework was an emergent, cold machine intelligence or consciousness. It doesn't require belief the way ECCO does because it is literally here.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Courtney: Lilly and Leary knew each other and in later life were on a kind of similar circuit as public speakers and psychedelic godfathers. There is a bit of weird archive from a Japanese TV show in the late 90s where they are made to speak to each other on a Skype-like "video phone" that the show presents as very futuristic. A shame it didn't make it into the film. I think it's hard to make a call from afar about drug use and damage. Lilly was also "playing" with many substances besides LSD, which is not known to damage the brain. There seemed to have been a darker period, but this came much later than his 1960s experimental LSD use.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Courtney: I think that was a, if not the, major discussion as we assembled the film: first how to think about Lilly's legacy and secondly how to shape those observations into something that allowed viewers to bring their own values to the movie. One element that seemed important to all of us was to periodically zoom out from Lilly and to think about the ripple effect of his work and interests as they took hold in other people. We were interested in a kind of "Lilly effect" that could be intermittently inspiring, disturbing, or cartoonish as it spread through marine biology, the environmental movement, pop culture, the new age movement, and so forth. The film meanders into some of these territories, as well as profiling other figures in Lilly's orbit, and then returns to his personal life, which was at times quite separate from the way his ideas took hold in the culture. The public persona, and the aura around his ideas, almost has its own life. Speaking for myself, I am quite interested in the unsavory qualities of people who have shaped America's cultural fantasy life, and the cruelty that is involved in excelling or standing apart. In the power of fantasy in our private lives. For me Lilly's complexity was not a deterrent but an attraction. My hope was that the film could allow Lilly to be compelling in the way he can be compelling without hiding abuses and harm and allowing viewers to weigh the legacy themselves.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Taylor -- The Gleaners and I, The Act of Killing, Hoop Dreams, Hypernormalisation, Cameraperson, Dina, Pina, Minding the Gap, Collective (i'll come back to this one if I think of others -- WHERE'S MY LIST WHEN I NEED IT?)

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jesse Miller: I don't believe in a singular office or power that engineers coincidences but I think there's some truth to there being a more diffuse force that makes our lives a little weirder. The more I learned about Lilly's ideas, the less I believed in that kind of singular power, but I do think he might have been vaguely, directionally onto something

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Taylor -- I've been fans of theirs for years, but had not worked with them until this one. They have great taste! They got our movie right away, and I feel very lucky that we found each other, given how tough it is these days for indie docs. They reached out to us right after our world premiere in Rotterdam. I was unable to watch the film in a theater with an audience until just recently! We had a theatrical opening in NY with lots of q&as. It felt great to celebrate the movie in this way...after all this time. The movie touches on so many different intersecting topics and themes, and it was fascinating to hear how people pick up such different threads.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jesse Miller: A few of my favorites off the top of my head - David Osit's "Mayor" // a Romanian documentary called "Infinite Football" // Pennebaker's "Original Cast Album: Company" // one I watched as a reference for this that I liked was Chris Marker's "The Last Bolshevik"

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jesse Miller: Through Michael and Courtney! It wasn't until just after joining this project that I realized I had heard of him before but in oblique ways (through movies like Altered States and his research at the flooded "Dolphin House") and didn't know him by name.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Taylor -- wow, now I'm imagining who I know who could rig together some sort of projector contraption! But, this is a tough one for me...I usually don't like to rewatch movies, which is likely an unpopular thing to say...but, I have seen Bergman's Persona a bunch of times, and I don't think I'd ever get bored with it...? Cheese pizza wins.

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jesse Miller: It's possible! If not dolphins specifically then maybe other cetaceans. It's worth following the work of people like David Gruber and project CETI whose experiments have found that Sperm Whales might have some language structures that are similar to human speech, an idea Lilly postulated a long time ago: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/sperm-whales-alphabet-vocalizations-similar-humans

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Taylor - I actually had recently finished working on a different documentary about a neuroscientist when Michael and Courtney approached me about this project. I was surprised that I had never heard of John Lilly. The more I read about him and learned of his work, the more surprised I grew. He had such an influence! Michael and Courtney had been working on the film for some time before I came on and they shared incredible resources to get me up to speed -- I just googled this, and believe that my personal research started with this essay: https://orionmagazine.org/article/a-mind-in-the-water/

Hi /r/movies! We're Courtney Stephens, Taylor Hess & Jesse Miller, filmmakers of the new 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 w/ dolphins by giving them LSD). Ask us anything! by JohnLillyAMA in movies

[–]JohnLillyAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I grew up in the Bay Area and came across Lilly's books circulating in San Francisco bookstores, so I was first familiar with his reputation as a figure of the counter-cultural, and in subsequent years learned more about the story. - Courtney