Still Running Off at the Keyboard

In the book of Mark, Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

It might be equally difficult for a spiritually themed movie to make it into multiplexes without the backing of a big Hollywood studio or star.

These days, lots of people seem to be searching for ways to circumvent both maxims.

A group of Oregonian filmmakers have had an extraordinary amount of luck of late on the second score.

Their film, “Indigo,” will bow Saturday in 600 venues across the globe, including 100 AMC theaters stateside, despite the fact that not one studio head ever advised changing its marketing campaign to emphasize frathouse hijinks over handguns aimed while falling backward out of skyscraper windows.

There aren’t even any handguns or hijinks in “Indigo.”

It will debut in Fort Wayne on the Studio M screen at Mitchell Books in Covington Plaza.

There will be screenings at 1, 3, 6 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday; and 11:30 a.m., 2 and 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $10.

The budget for “Indigo” was minuscule, and the budget being used to market it is even less ostentatious, which makes the film’s impending ubiquity on the cultural landscape exponentially amazing. The film’s title refers to a new age term used to describe psychic and spiritually attuned children.

“Indigo” concerns a dejected elderly man who develops a close friendship with his granddaughter only to discover that she possesses special powers.

The film’s director is Stephen Simon, who had a long and reasonably successful career as a Hollywood producer before he chucked it all and moved to Ashland, Ore., several years back.

Simon, who counts “Somewhere In Time” and “What Dreams May Come” as some of his most bragworthy mainstream accomplishments, said in a recent phone interview that he grew disillusioned with the lack of spiritually potent films being made in Tinseltown.

He subsequently wrote a book called “The Force Is With You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives” and started a DVD service called the Spiritual Cinema Circle that specializes in movies designed to move more hearts than gross tons of concessions.

Simon said his rent-by-mail service wasn’t designed to advocate any particular dogma.

“I wanted to embrace everyone,” he said.

Within nine months of starting the Spiritual Cinema Circle, Simon had 14,000 subscribers in 60 countries.

“It made me realize that there was a real desire for this kind of entertainment,” he said.

He befriended fellow Ashlander and author Neale Donald Walsch, who wrote the bestselling “Conversations with God” series.