ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Filmmaker Lana Wilson was feeling down. It was 2016, and Donald Trump had just won the presidential election.
LANA WILSON: I woke up that morning feeling incredibly depressed, lost, confused.
SHAPIRO: And then Wilson saw a sign. It said, $5 psychic reading.
WILSON: And without even thinking, I just walked in. I thought, I have nothing to lose. And when I pulled back the curtain in this shop, there was a table and two chairs, and no one was there. But I sat down in one of the chairs, and I immediately felt incredibly emotional. Like, I teared up. I felt like I was looking in a mirror at my own internal state at that moment.
SHAPIRO: The psychic wasn't even in the room.
WILSON: No. No. And I kept thinking, this is crazy. Why am I feeling so emotional? No one's even here. But I think it was - I was confronting the fact that I had come to see a psychic, and sitting there, that alone was very clarifying.
SHAPIRO: Wilson told me when the psychic eventually showed up, the reading was gentle and made her feel better.
WILSON: I paid her $5, and as I was walking out, the psychic said, what do you do for a living? I said, I'm a documentary filmmaker. And she said, what kinds of films? At that point, I was finishing a film about a priest who counsels suicidal people. And the psychic said, sounds like my life. And I said, what? And she said, you know, you wouldn't believe the situations people come in here with. They come in at really serious crossroads in their lives. And that's when I had this light bulb moment of this would be an incredible setting for a film - getting to be inside psychic readings, hearing the questions people ask, hearing the psychic's answers, getting to witness that wash of humanity.
SHAPIRO: Eight years after that encounter, Lana Wilson's new film about psychics is called "Look Into My Eyes."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LOOK INTO MY EYES")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Could you answer any questions that relate to the past at all? Because I know, like, clairvoyants, like, mostly focus on the future. Is that correct?
UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHIC #1: Both.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Both. OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHIC #1: Past, present and future. Yeah. For clairvoyant readings, I always ask the client, like, even if it's - even if what I see is not positive, and sometimes it can be hurtful, do you still want to hear it?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah. I think so.
UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHIC #1: OK.
SHAPIRO: As for the big question, are psychic powers real? Wilson told me that's not really the point.
WILSON: I wanted to get beyond this dichotomy of belief versus skepticism. And I wanted to take audiences into a more emotional space because I think it's true you can have an emotional experience with a psychic regardless of whether or not you believe what the psychic is saying. It's about the connection between the two people who are in the room together. And I think that connects also to the fact that so many people visit psychics to connect with loved ones who are dead.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
WILSON: And the reality is that people do die and they do go away, and we can all have different opinions about whether or not there's an afterlife and what that looks like. But one thing I think we can all agree on is that just because someone's gone doesn't mean they're not still affecting you and doesn't mean you don't still have a relationship with them. So that became something that's a huge part of the film, how simply because someone's gone doesn't mean that your connection with them isn't still meaningful and impactful. And I think that's a huge part of what's going on in psychic readings too.
SHAPIRO: Obviously, people who visit psychics have certain common traits. The people who become psychics also have a lot in common - or at least in your film, they do. Can you talk about some of those throughlines?
WILSON: Yeah. Well, so I met - I talked to over 150 different psychics in New York City.
SHAPIRO: Whoa. Oh, my - wow.
WILSON: Yes, before landing on the seven in this film. And so this is not representative.
SHAPIRO: So maybe they don't all have as much in common. Maybe you just chose seven...
WILSON: You know, it's funny.
SHAPIRO: ...Who kind of feel similar.
WILSON: I wonder about that. I actually did an event. One thing the people in my film have in common is that it turns out that many of these seven people had backgrounds as actors, as performers or in the creative arts. Another thing they had in common was early formative experiences of loss and of trauma, a kind of sense of processing grief still. And this is a group of seven people that I was drawn to for a bunch of different reasons. But it's funny because I did an event around the film in Missouri, and a random psychic was brought to do this event with me where I did a live staging of how I filmed "Look Into My Eyes," and it turned out she had an acting degree and also had gone through a very intense loss that led her to become a psychic.
SHAPIRO: OK.
WILSON: So maybe this stuff is more universal than I realized. But...
SHAPIRO: And also, not just New York because the psychics in this movie feel very New York.
WILSON: Yes.
SHAPIRO: But that Missouri psychic had a lot in common with your Manhattan psychic.
WILSON: Yes. Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Was there any moment as you were filming that gave you goosebumps?
WILSON: Definitely. You know, there's a moment early on in the film where one of the psychics says to a client, the word shrimp is coming to mind.
SHAPIRO: Oh, right.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LOOK INTO MY EYES")
UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHIC #2: There is something about shrimp that spirit is showing me.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah. Shrimp's my favorite thing in, like, the world.
UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHIC #2: OK (laughter).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Growing up, shrimp was my No. 1 thing. Like, I even one year made a bet with someone where I ate shrimp 365 days.
UNIDENTIFIED PSYCHIC #2: Oh, my God. Are you serious?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Such a funny thing to get goosebumps about because it's not like dead grandma's in the room. It's like I ate shrimp every day for a year (laughter) and you've pinpointed shrimp.
WILSON: For a year, yeah.
SHAPIRO: This might sound blatantly obvious, but it strikes me that 90% of the distance you need to travel is just sitting quietly and paying attention and being still. And whether that brings somebody who has passed into the room or just brings up emotions that you had suppressed or something else entirely, that small thing is actually a very big thing that happens in the context of a psychic reading that could happen in other contexts, too.
WILSON: Yeah. That's a great observation. Just listening, giving sustained attention and I think also listening in a non-judgmental way, no question is too ridiculous to ask or too outlandish. People ask questions in this space they couldn't ask in a therapist's office, in some cases, they couldn't ask of their - a religious leader. And I think also there's something about the fact that these are two strangers, this idea of a complete stranger witnessing you and holding up a mirror and telling a story of what they see, reflecting something back to you in that way. And I think there's something really beautiful in that vulnerability and courage and their willingness to step into that space.
SHAPIRO: So how did this deep dive, this experience of making the film change your view of psychics, if you even had a view about them to begin with?
WILSON: Well, you know, what I learned is that I think psychic readings are like religion or art in that it's a vehicle for making sense of the world and in some cases grief, especially. I think it's a template for organizing and understanding this planet we're on that on the surface makes no sense. So I think I came to this conclusion that something artificial can also be real. You don't have to believe in it. But in the end, it's that we as humans have this desire to connect to each other, whether it's through emotion or conversation or art or performance that's so deep, it feels like magic when it happens. And that feeling of magic and of connection is always meaningful.
SHAPIRO: Lana Wilson is the director of the new documentary "Look Into My Eyes," in theaters now. Thank you.
WILSON: Thank you so much, really appreciate all your questions. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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