From IndieWire:

Director Patrick Takaya Solomon shares a scene from his documentary “Finding Joe,” a film that delves into the studies of famed philosopher-mythologist Joseph Campbell. “Finding Joe” opens in limited release this Friday, September 30 through Balcony Releasing.

Some excerpts:

For me this film was about passing along what I had learned from reading Joseph Campbell’s work. Unfortunately that film was close to six hours long and after we cut it down to it’s current length of 80 minutes, we were left with the two most important ideas. Which are actually one: The Heroes Journey and “follow your bliss”. I wanted to show not only how those two things were related but I wanted to do it in a very personal way. It’s about you!

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The sequence of discovery, for me anyway, goes like this:

1. Reading Campbell is like getting a skeleton key to almost every story ever told.

2. What you discover is that they are all, more or less, telling the same story.

3. The stories being told are actually about you. They are the stories of your life! I know, crazy right?

Like a lot of people, I watched the Bill Moyers interview on PBS and was instantly hooked. However, as the years passed, and PBS played it every year, I kept thinking that the material was dated and nobody but us Campbell geeks would ever really care about it. So, one of the big goals I set for the film was to make it interesting even if you’ve never heard the name Joseph Campbell. I wanted to use symbols that anyone could understand even kids could understand. Also, I wanted to make the experience emotional. I wanted the audience to feel connected to every story ever told and every story that will ever be told.

I first read Joseph Campbell as an undergrad at UVA. I still have the paperback copy of “The Hero of a Thousand Faces” from all those years ago. Campbell has been a personal and professional inspiration, so I’m looking forward to seeing this documentary.

The trailer:

A clip with screenwriter Akiva Goldsman:

A clip with director Catherine Hardwicke:

The movie’s website.

For more of the IndieWire article, go here.