Film Background

By Laura Dunn,
Co-Director/Producer/Editor

This film started with a deeply personal subject for me — our children.  Like so many parents, I've been grappling with raising young kids in a society where electronic screens have increasingly come to undermine childhood itself.  The average American kid spends 40 minutes outside and 4 hours on a device each day.

After reading Richard Louv's vital book, The Last Child in the Woods, I felt inspired to explore this subject for a new documentary.  As Louv puts it, kids today suffer from "nature deficit disorder".  Children NEED to be outside. They need to see the stars, get dirt under their fingernails, and skin their knees.  Parents owe their kids time outdoors to help them grow resilient and to understand their own nature as creatures.

We began filming in the summer of 2018.  We lined up interviews with Richard Louv and several other renowned child development experts. We also decided that we would travel together as a family (driving with all six sons in a Sprinter van) to film the interviews and, along the way, explore the natural world.  We were fortunate to discover and film in many diverse and awe-inspiring landscapes!

As we accumulated material, my husband and co-director Jef began to probe another question. Why are we so quick to lose ourselves in screens?  What are we trying to avoid?  For those of you who saw LOOK & SEE: A PORTRAIT OF WENDELL BERRY, you may remember these themes actually permeate that film's Prologue. 

Enter Ernest Becker

Months after Jef posed these questions to me, he made an archival discovery that would completely transform our film.  He found a lost recording of a brilliant and provocative cultural anthropologist named Ernest Becker. 

Dr. Becker spent his entire intellectual career trying to answer the deceptively simple question: Why do people do what they do?

  • artist Rodney Buck Herring 

  • author Hayley Campbell

  • comedian Norm Macdonald

  • documentarian Patrick Shen 

  • filmmaker Woody Allen

  • humorist Marc Maron

  • novelist Don DeLillo

  • pastor Tim Keller 

  • philosopher Cornell West

  • physicist Brian Greene

  • podcaster Lex Fridman

  • President Bill Clinton 

  • writer Maria Popova

  • and countless others

Becker beautifully and powerfully articulates an answer to his own question in his landmark bestselling 1973 book The Denial of Death. A work of often shattering insights, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and remains in print even half a century later.  Fifty years after his death, Becker's seminal work remains in print and the subject of continuous discussions.  He is among those rare "influencers of influencers" whose ideas have shaped thinkers across the cultural spectrum.

Some people greatly influenced by Becker

With the gracious permission from Dr. Becker's widow, artist Marie Becker, we suddenly added Becker's voice to our cast. Millions have read Becker, but ILLUSIONS marks the first time his voice has been featured in a film.  

And what a voice it is.