Lana Wilson Says Making New Documentary About Psychics Helped Her Understand Religion
What do abortion care providers, psychics, and Taylor Swift have in common? For many people, they all serve as beacons of hope—for reproductive freedom, resolution from life's plagues, or that even celebrities can be bullied into a presidential endorsement that differs from their more...conservative friends. These things aside, they've also all been lensed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Lana Wilson.
In Wilson's latest film, Look Into My Eyes, the lifelong self-identifying skeptic takes an unblinking look at the lives of a group of New York City psychics as they offer their clients comfort—or not—during the pandemic. One client wonders whether her dog actually loves her; a middle-aged ER doctor remains haunted by a little girl who died in her arms at the start of her career, and a mother seeks answers as to what's become of the two children she lost. From session to session, audiences watch as Wilson's subjects repeatedly extend their empathy and challenge their clients to suspend their disbelief. All the while, the film asks the same of its audience. Sometimes, it's simple. Other times, however, prove it's a lot more difficult. This, Wilson told Jezebel was precisely the point.
Audiences soon learn that the seven psychics (men and women ranging from Millennial to Boomer) are yearning for the same things their clients are—in short: closure, comfort, and perhaps, above all, genuine human connection in a city where it's easier to find a neon storefront. As Wilson's lens follows them from candle-lit sessions to suffocating studios, it becomes all the more clear that their own grief, trauma, and loneliness inform their practice. Even if they can't offer answers to the questions plaguing their clients, they can at least provide their undivided attention. And sometimes, as you'll see, that's enough.
The film's premise—which just received a wide release on September 13—was inspired by Wilson's own spontaneous visit to a psychic in Atlantic City on the morning after the 2016 election. She never expected to take solace in the sit-down, she told Jezebel, but solace, she most certainly got. And for the low, low price of $5. As for her subjects, well, they're selling the same sensation. Whether or not you're buying it is entirely up to you.
In a recent Zoom interview with Jezebel, Wilson spoke on all things psychic cynicism, and whether or not Look Into My Eyes made her a believer. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
JEZEBEL: You've said previously that you and your team saw over 100 psychics in pre-production. What made the group of psychics ultimately chosen for the film so special?
LANA WILSON: My team and I got readings from almost 150 psychics in total. I started out probably like anyone who lives in New York—or is visiting New York—going to storefront psychics on foot, just walking in and getting a reading. I've always been curious about those neon-lit worlds. Those readings weren't uninteresting but they were all quite short, pretty dry, you know, just like a quick prediction about your love life, work, or some kind of curse. And you're paying for five minutes, or by the minute, and there's a lot of upselling. Not that it's not fascinating in itself, but I was much more drawn to those doing something totally different. I gravitated towards people who were doing these longer, deep-dive sessions, where it's an hour, hour and a half or more at the intersection of psychotherapy. However, the more I worked on the film, I felt less and less like this was therapy and more an equivalent to any other religious belief system.
I think I was drawn to people who were, themselves, deeply sincere about what they're doing. Many of the people in my film also have other day jobs. They have multiple creative pursuits, like New Yorkers do. So, they're not doing this for the money. They also needed to be willing to express self-doubt and engage openly with me about these questions of "Is this real?" or "What's the difference between your intuition and your imagination?"
Speaking of, most of the psychics featured in Look Into My Eyes have backgrounds in some form of art—whether it's film, theater, or another medium. As audiences see, they're also very adept at performing empathy so their clients feel empowered to share.
It made sense to me that I was drawn to people who...I won't ever know if this was just who I was drawn to, or if this says something bigger about the psychic profession, but I was drawn to people who all had some sort of creative background. They love movies. Some are former actors. They have degrees in performance. So, I think there was a lot of connection between creativity and performance and art and the roles they have in our lives and of psychic readings. Then, as I filmed with this particular group, I started out filming their sessions and then went on to film them outside of their sessions and found that most of the people I'd chosen had a formative experience with grief and trauma in their lives, too. In many cases, you have a profound loss of someone close to you, that's a wound that never heals. So many of them were living embodiments of how to grieve and come to terms with people leaving us without any explanation or apparent meaning.
Did you personally have a significant experience with any of the psychics?
It definitely happened for people on my team. It happened for my producer, Kyle Martin, with Phoebe, the animal intuitive. He had a sick cat, and he called her and talked to her on the phone about his cat and it made him cry. There were two or three other people who were story producers doing this research with me who also had similar experiences.
I didn't have that kind of experience. By the time we found the people in the film, I had stopped doing sessions because I was burned out. I've never felt like someone I'd lost was in the room, I did, at the same time, find comfort and meaning and an odd kind of enjoyment in talking about people who I'd lost. Even if I didn't believe their spirit was in the room, I still really loved remembering them with this total stranger...which is kind of odd.
From start to finish, we see these clients sharing some shockingly intimate things about their lives. Was anyone even the least bit reticent to do so on film?
No. No one ever. But I find this in general when making documentaries. The only times anyone has ever expressed reticence to me is when they say someone's full name and they're worried that person wouldn't want their name to be public. Almost never otherwise. They were really prepared for the fact that they were being filmed.
Were they already the psychics' clients or did you and your team put out a search for people to participate?
When we found the clients, it was during lockdown in the city—this was before vaccines, mostly. It was during this time of like, "OK, how do we find people in real life?" So, we set up tables all over the city in places where people gather—outside grocery stores, parks, farmer's markets, etc. At the tables, I'd have production assistants behind a sign that said "free psychic readings" and if someone approached the table and said, "Oh yeah, I'm interested in a psychic reading," then the person would say, "So we're filming all of these sessions for a documentary, is it OK if your session is filmed?" If they said yes, we'd take their information and either I or my story producer would Zoom with them in advance and answer any questions they had and get a sense of what they wanted to ask a psychic about. Then, we would kind of match-make with a psychic. We would decide who to put with who. The psychic never knew who was coming in that day.
Do you think enduring a pandemic played a role in people's willingness to be so vulnerable?
Maybe. Even though covid is only mentioned twice in the film, I think you feel it the entire time, don't you? I think you feel the kind of extreme loneliness, vulnerability, and pain. For instance, I thought there would be many more people asking about their love lives. I was surprised by how existential and centered on loss and death so many of the questions were. I think it could've been very different had we done this at a different time.
In the end, do you still identify as a skeptic?
I'm not interested in proving or disproving anyone's beliefs about the afterlife, for example. Where I emerged from it was actually—as someone who didn't grow up religious—with a much deeper understanding of religious belief systems and alternative types of spirituality. I would include psychics as an alternative type of spirituality. We're living in a world that, on the surface, makes absolutely no sense. There is beauty and joy in our lives, but there is also absolute horror, pain, tragedy, and loss, that has no explanation and no obvious meaning. And I think that, to cope with that as human beings, we have to find things to believe in. We have to find some kind of meaning or some kind of way of dealing with these impossible horrors. For me, as someone who's always looking askance at every religious belief system, I came to understand their value and purpose through looking at these sessions.
I think that looking at these readings, I see two people connecting in front of me. I see people who are getting exactly what they need from each other—in that moment, they're believing in things that can't be proven and they're hearing stories about things that they can't see. But it's less about whether it's real or not, and more about "Well, how does believing in this affect your life here on earth?" or "How does it shape you here on earth?" I think as long as it's not hurting anyone, whatever is helping someone cope is good. That's where I came down in the end.
Have you seen a psychic since?
You know, I haven't. I can't film hundreds and hundreds of sessions and then go to a psychic. But it's been fun because all of the psychics in the film have a lot of reassuring predictions that the film will be successful.