September 1, 2011 — Life Enhancement Products

Life Enhancement Products is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement with Jesulu Productions and Lady Magdalene’s LLC to distribute our own sponsored releases of the award-winning suspense-comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, starring Nichelle Nichols and made by author/filmmaker, J. Neil Schulman. These new releases will include sales, rentals, and free premiums to Life Enhancement customers of a DVD/Blu-Ray enhanced-features combo pack of Lady Magdalene’s; showings of the movie with our product messages on commercial broadcast & cable/satellite TV; and streaming/downloads of the sponsored movie via the Internet.

Durk Pearson Sandy Shaw Showroom

The Lady Magdalene’s official movie website is at http://www.ladymagdalenes.com and the official Facebook Fan Page is at http://www.facebook.com/ladymagdalenes/.

Life Enhancement Magazine: September 2011

To see a recent Reason.TV video interview with Lady Magdalene’s filmmaker, J. Neil Schulman, go to http://reason.tv/video/show/author-and-filmmaker-j-neil-sc

Lady Magdalene’s Poster

About Life Enhancement

Quality is Paramount
The raw materials we purchase for our products are the safest, highest-quality, pharmaceutical-grade ingredients available in the world. We package under the purest possible clean-room conditions, and materials undergo lab testing to confirm purity greater than 98% (or we reject them!).

Advisor Biographical Notes

Dr. Jonathan Wright is the best-selling author of Dr. Wright’s Guide to Healing with Nutrition, Dr. Wright’s Book of Nutritional Therapy (over 600,000 copies sold), and Natural Hormone Replacement for Women Over 45. He is the medical director of the Tahoma Clinic in Kent, Washington and publisher of his own newsletter, Nutrition & Healing.

Dr. Don Kleinsek is the president of GeriGene, Inc., a Wisconsin biotech company devoted entirely to life extension through gene therapy. Dr. Kleinsek was the hand-chosen successor to life extension pioneer Dr. Johan Bjorksten as President and Director of the Bjorksten Research Foundation. According to two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, Dr. Bjorksten was an innovator and “one of the most active and effective students of longevity in the world.”

Will Block is a researcher, writer, and speaker specializing in the life extension, life enhancement and cognitive enhancement aspects of nutritional science. His writings have appeared widely in newsletters, magazines and books. He is also the author of Tools for Privacy. a book about public-key encryption and speaks about futurology, nootropics, nanotechnology and freedom.

Innovation is our Driving Force
We were the first company to market DHEA, making it commercially available in the summer of 1995. We were also first to market pregnenolone, 5-HTP, vinpocetine, mastic gum, the world’s first DNA support supplement, galantamine, and now MHCP. We’ve been out there pushing the envelope and building acceptance for the enhancement of life since 1985, when the concept of life extension supplementation first gelled. Often we hear from doctors saying they really appreciate what we’re doing for this field.

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Posted today on the IMDb “Help” Board

A caution for other indie filmmakers
by Jneil (Sun Aug 7 2011 20:55:29)

I strongly caution all independent filmmakers not to use the IMDb message board for their film as a way of communicating with movie viewers or potential movie viewers.

A quick view at the message board for Lady Magdalene’s, a feature film I wrote, produced, and directed, will provide plenty of examples of what happens if you try: the board has been overwhelmed by attack messages trashing my film, me personally, anybody who writes in support of the film, and anyone who has ever said anything nice about it. The troll messages have included every form of libel and today has escalated by an attempt by one troll to shake me down for money or “I’ll make it my life’s mission to hurt this film.”

Complaining to IMDb staff does nothing. It’s beyond their power to patrol the message boards and reporting any troll message results in a coordinated campaign by other troll accounts to spam the message board even more.

This hacker attack is so well organized they managed to input 103 “1″ (worst) ratings for my film overnight — this was a calculated counterattack because in a previous post to this “Help” board I noted attack votes coming from overseas where my film has never screened nor been available for sale.

In fact, this warning message will result in additional retribution. Let them do their worst; I no longer care.

Today I emailed the following to Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com is the parent company of IMDb):

Subject: IMDb encourages asymmetrical warfare against indie filmmakers
Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:36:25 -0700
From: J. Neil Schulman
Organization: Jesulu Productions
To: Jeff Bezos

Dear Mr. Bezos,

By allowing and encouraging anonymous users to register ratings, write user reviews, and post on the IMDb message boards, IMDb has created a toxic environment for independent films and filmmakers, because IMDb is overwhelmed by trolls using multiple anonymous accounts which they use to attack independent films and independent filmmakers who use IMDb for its intended purpose of providing information about their films to the viewing public.

The only correction for this is to institute the same policy Amazon.com has adopted: only allow users to post comments, make votes, and write reviews under accounts tied to real and verifiable identities.

J. Neil Schulman
IMDb Pro Subscriber
Withoutabox filmmaker
CreateSpace customer
Amazon.com merchant

Until this troll problem is eliminated, IMDb film ratings are hopelessly untrustworthy, the message boards toxic, the user reviews contaminated.

I am seriously contemplating cutting all external links to IMDb. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Posted August 7, 2011 on the IMDb “Lady Magdalene’s” Message Board

Policy Statement
by Jneil (Sun Aug 7 2011 14:12:53)

Posted August 1, 2011 on the IMDb “Lady Magdalene’s” Message Board

Webtrash on the IMDb
by Jneil (Mon Aug 1 2011 16:59:05)

Let’s acknowledge a few easily checked facts.

Anyone can get an account to post on the IMDb message boards and vote on the movie ratings.

IMDb is not in the business of fact-checking anything posted on its message boards. Its staff only fact-checks submissions to the database, itself.

IMDb also has no ability to prevent vote spamming of the movie ratings. Anybody can vote on a movie without any proof that they’ve even seen it. This problem doesn’t really affect major studio releases which get thousands or tens of thousands of votes from moviegoers, but a few determined spammers can tilt the IMDb movie ratings of independent films by creating a few hundred phantom accounts and voting multiple times. If you see hundreds of “10″ votes or hundreds of “1″ votes it’s a good indication a movie rating has been spammed.

Anyone can make up anything they want and post it here anonymously without any consequence, for any reason, demented or not, truthful or not, factual or not.

The only power anyone really has here is the power of being an active reader to figure out what’s fact and what’s made up. They can cry about their posts, in violation of IMDb policies, being reported and removed by IMDb staff. It’s crocodile tears from people who delight in random destruction of other people’s creative work. It’s the Internet equivalent of arson, vandalism, and lost souls writing dirty words on walls.

Anonymous posters on this board have been talking trash about Lady Magdalene’s. A lot of these posts are sheer unsupported nonsense, easily proved false by anyone who checks the facts both in the IMDb database and elsewhere on the web.

I wrote, produced, and directed the movie, but I could not have done any of that without a wonderful cast and crew headlined and inspired by Nichelle Nichols.

Lady Magdalene’s is available on Amazon.com, both as a DVD and as an Amazon Instant Video. Here’s the page link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004ZMSDIK/.

Lady Magdalene’s: The Musical Soundtrack is also available on Amazon.com. Here’s the page link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002OSWWDE.

Linked from the Lady Magdalene’s official movie website at http://www.ladymagdalenes.com are dozens of real reviews and comments on the movie — written by people using their real names — plus extended video excerpts and music videos from the movie, photo galleries, and so on.

Off IMDb, these vandals have no power. Here they have the power of clutter. Like people who litter any commons, it’s their goal to drive away anyone who wants to use it for ordinary enjoyment.

Basically, they’re criminals without even the courage to commit real crimes. They’re webtrash.

If you’re interested in learning anything real about Lady Magdalene’s, please look for facts in the IMDb database, on the official movie website, and on my blog at http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com, where it’s not so hard to keep the creeps out.

Signing off and God bless you,

J. Neil Schulman

Posted August 9, 2011 on the IMDb “Help Board

Re: A caution for other indie filmmakers
by Jneil (Tue Aug 9 2011 04:21:09)

This discussion is probably moot. I’m guessing IMDb already has a solution in mind.

You pointed out in a previous discussion that with IMDb cutting all links to Amazon.com the only products IMDb has left to sell are subscriptions to IMDb Pro, the resume service, poster service, etc.

It’s obvious that to maintain revenue IMDb will adopt a new business model in which one needs to be an IMDb Pro subscriber to rate movies, write user reviews, and post on all but one or two strictly moderated message boards.

I even imagine that IMDb will sell editorial control of the message boards for productions listed in its database to studio execs, publicists, or producers associated with those films.

This solves all of IMDb management’s problems in one fell swoop, since IMDB Pro subscribers have to use verifiable identities (equivalent to Amazon.com customers) to make use of the enhanced services; and if the companies listing their productions on IMDb have editorial control over the message board for it they can make their own proprietary editorial choices of how proactive they want to be in moderating their own product boards.

Posted August 9, 2011 on the Lady Magdalene’s Official Website

Lady Magdalene’s
IMDb Info

Lady Magdalene’s has been listed on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) since its original announcement of production on March 23, 2006, and for the most part the IMDb database contains accurate information. IMDb staff does a good job of vetting information input into the database itself for production info and cast and crew links.

There are, however, severe problems and deficiencies with IMDb.

Of the three film-festival awards that Lady Magdalene’s has received, IMDb only lists the first one. IMDb does not allow listing of awards for festivals not already listed in its database, and the list of film festivals has not been updated for the most part since 2007.

IMDb will not link to the Amazon.com User Reviews for those customers who have actually purchased either the Instant Download or DVD of Lady Magdalene’s.

IMDb no longer links to the Amazon.com catalog pages for the Lady Magdalene’s DVD, Instant Video, and Lady Magdalene’s: The Musical Soundtrack CD or MP3′s.

The User Rating for Lady Magdalene’s on IMDb is artificially low due to hackers and spammers having artificially input multiple “1″ (worst) votes — many of them from overseas users where Lady Magdalene’s has never screened, and 103 of these fraudulent votes were hacked or spammed overnight after director J. Neil Schulman complained on the IMDb Help Board about the prior spammed votes from overseas. IMDb does not require any verifiable ID to rate movies on its system, so that system has been completely corrupted by spammers, hackers, and Internet trolls.

Positive user reviews of Lady Magdalene’s have been deleted by IMDb staff after false and malicious reports by IMDb trolls charging that these reviews were written by the movie’s director, J. Neil Schulman. This was done in retaliation for J. Neil Schulman’s reports to IMDb staff that an early rough cut of the film — an early cut not up to the standards of the final commercial release — had been stolen from a distributor and used by a troll as the basis for a malice-filled “review” full of false production information and other assorted libels.

Finally, the IMDb message board for Lady Magdalene’s has been overwhelmed by anonymous posters who write falsehoods (such as that Lady Magdalene’s never won any real film-festival awards, or repetitions of the charge that positive reviews were written by J. Neil Schulman) and such spam postings have clogged and overwhelmed use of the message board for legitimate discussion of the film.

For these reasons, Lady Magdalene’s producers advise not relying on IMDb for accurate information about Lady Magdalene’s.

For background on how these campaigns of malicious disinformation are conducted throughout the Internet, see the Wikipedia article Sock puppet.

If, however, understanding these cautions, you still wish to proceed to the IMDb Page for Lady Magdalene’s, it’s at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783538/combined.

The IMDb message boards are a fertile breeding ground for anonymous posters with seemingly endless energy, no life, and a bloodsucker’s parasitical attachment to any independent filmmaker who does what appears to be beyond their imagination: actually make a movie that somebody might like to watch.

My film, Lady Magdalene’s, has become an object of their attention, due to my writing on the IMDb “Help” board that multiple spam “1″ votes (“1″ being worst, out of a possible “10″) were being registered from outside the United States, where the movie has never screened or otherwise been sold.

The troll’s retaliation was the registration of 103 more “1″ votes overnight.

So if you’re a fucking moron with nothing better to do than trash movies you’ve never seen, here’s an easy guide to becoming a troll on IMDb.

1. You’ll need a minimum of five anonymous IMDb accounts since your activity will eventually cause IMDb staff to delete one or two of them — but if you can manage over one hundred anonymous accounts, you can spam the movie rating system for indie films and dramatically lower the IMDb rating.

2. It is considered UnTroll Activity ever to watch any of the movies you trash.

3. If the film you’re trolling has won film-festival awards, deny that the film festival exists, and demand proof that the award was ever given. If anyone from the production responds, demand links proving the festival award exists, and if the link is posted repeatedly claim it doesn’t work.

4. Accuse anyone posting a positive user review of the film you’re trolling of being a paid shill of the filmmaker. Report their review to IMDb staff as being written by the production staff and have it removed.

5. Accuse anyone objecting to your lies as being an unlibertarian Orwellian who believes in censorship.

From DeviantArt, Whynne’s iconic ‘Troll’

6. Posting a lie once is ineffective. Any lie must be posted at least two dozen times to have any effect.

7. Claim that any filmmaker responding to questions on the IMDb message board for their film is violating IMDb rules by commercially promoting their film on the message boards.

8. Call the filmmaker a Jewish shyster and invoke as many antisemitic stereotypes from movies as you can find. Don’t worry if these comments are reported; that’s why you have all your backup accounts.

9. Call the filmmaker a troll whenever he calls you a troll.

10. Remember: you’re anonymous! Nobody can do a damned thing about anything you write, so lie, lie, lie, and lie again!

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Lady Magdalene’s

“Shot in Pahrump in 2006 and finally made available years later online, J. Neil Schulman’s Lady Magdalene’s already seems a little dated, with its storyline that relies strongly on references to 9/11 ….”
––Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly, September 8, 2010

No, we didn’t call the character Osama bin Laden. The writer/director figured he might be captured or killed one day. So the character is called “The Director.” That could be the next guy in line. But what doesn’t date is what The Director has to say, because it’s quoted directly from the writings of Osama bin Laden.

Click Poster to go to
Movie Word of Mouth

This just received in email from Lady Magdalene’s line producer, Pierre Lorillard:

“Hi Neil, I swear I saw some footage of your show on the ABC news. It was the shot in the cave. I wonder if someone lifted it or you just did a hell of a job with the look. Best…PLL”

–J. Neil Schulman

Listen Now:
Karl Hess Club Talk:
Atlas Opened

One comparison of the opening weekend I wasn’t able to make with such short notice was to another film that turned out to be a box office success. Both mid-April releases, both made in the same budget range, neither one with star power driving box office, no TV or print ad campaign driving ticket sales on either movie, roughly the same number of screens and roughly the same performance per screen, both successes based on audience word-of-mouth.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding, released April 19, 2002 — exactly nine years ago today.

Here are the comparables:

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Opening weekend:

Date                   Rank    Sites      Average      Gross
2002 Apr 19            20      108        $5,531       $597,362

USA Theatrical gross: $241,437,427  

Worldwide Theatrical gross: $356,500,000

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1

Opening Weekend

Date                   Rank      Sites      Average      Gross
2011 Apr 15            14        299        $5,639       $1,686,347

Every box-office report on Atlas Shrugged: Part 1‘s opening weekend has been a dismissal of the opening weekend as a “train wreck.” You can hear the panic in the writers’ voices — the same dismissive tone critics have been directing at the best-selling sales figures of the novel since 1957. Let them panic now that Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 has an opening weekend twice as good as My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

I wrote my first impression review of Atlas Shrugged: Part One after seeing the midnight show Friday.

I saw Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 Monday 2:00 PM for my second time in Westwood — a weekday during business/school hours. There were 50 people watching this show, and they applauded at the end. A weekday matinee that has more people than a Friday or Saturday night screen for most studio releases.

Speaking personally, the second screening had even more of an emotional impact for me than the first time — maybe because I was no longer waiting for scenes from the novel that weren’t there but was seeing what was on the screen. It’s pure character-driven story-telling. Nobody needs to be familiar with the novel to follow the movie — and the overwhelmingly positive audience reactions on sites like Rotten Tomatoes reflect that. The responses from people responding to my review linked from my Facebook wall have been very positive.

What the critics are missing is that Atlas Shrugged will likely end up being, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Passion of the Christ, The Blair Witch Project, and Napoleon Dynamite — one of those indie blockbusters that are always dismissed as “an exception” because you’re not supposed to be able to have a success without enormous production costs and massive studio P&A spending.

–J. Neil Schulman

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
Director, Paul Johansson
Screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole
From the Novel by Ayn Rand
The Strike Productions / Rocky Mountain Pictures
Starring Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Michael Lerner, Graham Beckel, Rebecca Wisocky, Edi Gathegi, Jsu Garcia

This will be a briefer first draft of a full review that will appear later this year in Mondo Cult Issue 3. See also Karl Hess Club Talk: Atlas Opened.

–J. Neil Schulman

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
Director, Paul Johansson
Screenplay by John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O’Toole
From the Novel by Ayn Rand
The Strike Productions / Rocky Mountain Pictures
Starring Taylor Schilling, Grant Bowler, Matthew Marsden, Michael Lerner, Graham Beckel, Rebecca Wisocky, Edi Gathegi, Jsu Garcia

Atlas Shrugged — Part 1

There were around thirty ticket-holders at the Torrance, CA midnight showing of Atlas Shrugged – Part 1 last night. I was not the only person in the audience who had driven from Nevada for this showing; there was also a couple from Henderson (Las Vegas adjacent). The audience bonded in lively conversations before the showing, and I discovered that many in the audience were, like me, great admirers of the novel who’d been waiting for this event for many years.

Just before the movie started I heard a soft prayer from behind me: “Please don’t suck.”

Ayn Rand was one of two libertarian novelists who inspired me to follow in their footsteps — the other being Robert A. Heinlein — and Ayn Rand would have fiercely objected to being called a libertarian. Ayn Rand objected to so much of her culture that she even developed a philosophy which she called Objectivism. That’s not what she meant by the term, but her philosophy begins with such a trenchant deconstruction of the proclaimed ideas that much of the human race lives by that my explanation for the term is at least as good as hers.

Ayn Rand did not base her life choices on what other people thought of her. This was a good decision because she spent much of her life pissing people off. Oddly the more closely they agreed with her, the more pissed off they were.

Ayn Rand refused to support the candidacy of the one elected president of her lifetime whose political ideas were closest to her own: Ronald Reagan. Her reason for not supporting Reagan was pure left-wing feminism: Reagan opposed a woman’s right to have an abortion. Yet, did Ayn Rand get any street cred from feminists for this? With exceptions notable for their rarity, no.

Ayn Rand thought the War in Vietnam was a mistake. She opposed the draft. Her individualism was so deeply taken for granted in her philosophy that one of her friends had to bug her to write about how racism was a form of collectivist evil. Her portraits of empowered women in her fiction and drama make Rand far more worthy of having her face minted on a dollar than Susan B. Anthony or Sacagawea.

Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, was viciously attacked by William F. Buckley’s iconic conservative magazine, National Review. It was universally panned by liberal and left-wing critics as well. The only support for this novel came from millions of readers, and that number continues growing half a century later, at a rate so high it still outsells most novels ranked on best-seller lists.

Rand had her own philosophy of literature and drama which she termed “romantic realism,” and her style was crafted to her own standards, not those of reviewers, critics, or university English departments. Her bold style, the literary equivalent of writing in primary colors, is easily attacked as comic-bookish, and if she were a young writer today you can bet the farm she would have been a star at Comic Con.

So, when the first movie made from Atlas Shrugged hit theaters yesterday it was a no-brainer prediction that film critics would dismiss and attack the movie in terms identical to the literary condemnations of its source material.

Ignore these critics as background noise. They’re not who the movie was made for.

The odd thing about Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is that based on its actual plot — not all the rhetorical flourishes about capitalism and working for a profit — Michael Moore should love this movie. It’s about honest working people who care about their jobs being foiled by corporate lobbyists conspiring with politicians.

In a scene you’d never see in any other movie, Railroad magnate Dagny Taggart tells a union representative who walks into her office intending to threaten her with a walk-out that all she wants the union members to have is to make their own free choices about whether to work on what’s being called a high-risk job. Boy, is that pro-greed and anti-union.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Despite Atlas Shrugged‘s status as a super-best-seller for over fifty years, the major studios choked for half a century on making this movie. To make this movie up to studio standards would have cost as much as Avatar and there is no James Cameron in Hollywood today who could love Ayn Rand’s philosophy expressed in Atlas Shrugged enough to put themselves at odds with the rest of the movie industry.

Like a new type of steel, a new petroleum cracking process, a new railroad line in Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, the Atlas Shrugged movie itself could never be a product of business as usual. The movie could only be an indie production, and that means severe budget limitations. Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is at the upper edge of independent movie financing — approximately $15 million — and an order of magnitude above the costs of most indie films today — which make equity investors shake in their boots if more than $1 million is being spent.

So Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 has both the merits and limitations of an indie film. It has the bold, iconic vision of an indie film that can never exist in studio green-lit productions which are made within the boundaries of cookie-cutter formulas. It therefore had to choose between spending its production funding on building sets and massive CGI, or on A-list star salaries which are often enough higher than this movie’s entire production budget.

With a star director like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, a star writer like William Goldman, and star actors like Aaron Eckhart and Scarlett Johansson, Atlas Shrugged could have been a perfectly executed movie. That’s what’s made possible when any production roadblock can be solved by throwing gobs of money at it. You get cinematic perfection, even if it has to be re-shot or fixed in post.

That movie could never be made. The people who okay writing checks that enormous share the values of the people Ayn Rand was attacking in Atlas Shrugged. They’re the big businessmen Atlas Shrugged skewers and damns to atheist hell.

So what was possible in the real world was an indie production made without stars, without iconic talent, and which — I can tell you this from my own experience as an indie producer/director — you do the best you can on the day, then the 1st AD says to the director, “It is what it is.” The director says, “We’re done here. Call lunch.” The 1st AD shouts, “Lunch! We’re on the wrong set!”

Given these standards, Atlas Shrugged; Part 1 is as good as it gets for an indie film production from a novel that demands ten times the money it was made for. Blaming it for not being as polished as a studio film shows either ignorance of the movie business or is just a cheap way of cursing at it by people who hate its authorial viewpoint and look for new and better ways to attack it. When you hear a critic lambasting the production values of Atlas Shrugged, they’re lying. They’re attacking the production values of an ambitious indie film because they can’t attack the movie’s content without admitting their bias.

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is as faithful an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s half-century old novel as could survive the transition of an epic — and sometimes dated — novel to independent film. It has none of the bombast of Ayn Rand’s literary style; if anything the production look and directing style is nuanced and understated. The storytelling is necessarily economical.

There is, in the movie, a new railroad bridge made out of a new kind of steel — lighter, stronger, and cheaper than steel — and this bridge is elegantly simple.

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is that bridge.

If you’ve loved the novel and understand the limits of independent film, you should appreciate the film adaptation.

I love the novel and came out of the theater thinking, “This movie is Atlas Shrugged.”

Industrialist/inventor, Henry Rearden, repeatedly asks one question of a government official who wants to pay him any figure just to protect existing industry from his new product. Rearden repeatedly demands, “Is it good?”

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is good.

If you’re not already a fan, be prepared for something you’ve never seen in a movie before: a fundamentally honest depiction of the nature of the struggle between those who pull and those who ride free in this country … and why Ayn Rand, speaking from the grave, has shown us why both honest working for profit and true charity from the heart are destroyed by a malignant virus called “self-sacrifice.”

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is not a demented defense of psychopaths like Wall Street‘s Gordon Gekko or Avatar‘s Parker Selfridge, but a demand for freedom from exactly those demented psychopaths who demand that your shoulders be yoked to their plough. We who think we’re called to something higher need to shrug these thugs in business suits off.

If you don’t understand the difference between larceny and production, you need to see this movie. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged — John Aglialoro spent fifteen-million dollars of his own money making Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 — so you can see the clear difference that these criminals will pay anything to hide.

Profile in Silver and Other Screenwritings

In 1983 author/screenwriter, J. Neil Schulman, outlined a feature film titled November 22, 1963, about a future history professor who time-travels back to Dallas on that date and prevents the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, creating an alternate time-line.

Schulman first submitted November 22, 1963 to Herb and Rob Jaffe’s Vista Films, to whom Schulman had just sold another screen treatment, All the King’s Horses.

In 1985 Schulman’s writer friend, Alan Brennert — one of the writer-producers developing a revived Twilight Zone series for CBS — commissioned Schulman to write November 22, 1963 for the anthology series. Retitled “Profile in Silver” Schulman’s script was broadcast March 7, 1986, on Episode 20 of The Twilight Zone, along with a second segment titled “Button, Button.” “Button, Button” was remade as the 2009 Cameron Diaz / Frank Langella feature film, The Box.

Now Jesulu Productions is announcing that it is in development of a feature-length theatrical film based on Schulman’s original outline for November 22, 1963 to be titled Profile in Silver.

The title is a reference to the 1964 Kennedy silver half dollar with a profile of the just slain JFK, which in the story is shown to a still-alive President Kennedy after the future history professor prevents JFK’s assassination in Dallas.

“Profile in Silver” is one of J. Neil Schulman’s best-known stories.

There’s a Wikipedia article on it.

It plays in regular rotation on the Chiller Network and the Syfy Channel.

The Twilight Zone: “Profile in Silver” is available on the DVD collection, The Twilight Zone – Season 1 (1985 – 1986).

The original script is included in Schulman’s 1999 book, Profile In Silver and Other Screenwritings.

The episode has an average IMDb User rating of 8.4 out of 10.

J. Neil Schulman was the screenwriter/director/producer for Jesulu Productions 2008 suspense comedy feature, Lady Magdalene’s, starring the original Star Trek‘s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols; and Schulman is currently in pre-production for Jesulu to direct his own screenplay adaptation of his highly-praised 1979 novel, Alongside Night, as a near-future action feature. Jesulu Productions is also in development of a feature film titled Escape from Heaven, which Schulman adapted from his 2002 novel of that title.

J. Neil Schulman will write a new screenplay for Profile in Silver, and intends to direct it.

Jesulu Productions may be reached at production@jesulu.com.

See also:

The Twilight Zone: “Profile in Silver”

Profile in Silver Screen Captures

The 25th anniversary of CBS’s first network broadcast of “Profile in Silver” on March 7, 1986 is commemorated by David Goodloe in his March 7, 2011 article “Back to Dealey Plaza.”