New Edgar Cayce film

by SIMON FORSYTH

     A DOCUMENTARY film about renowned psychic Edgar Cayce has finally been completed after four years of research and filming across the United States. Now, the director, Darrah Meeley, is seeking funds to help enter her film, Edgar Cayce - The Beautiful Dreamer, in the 2005 Academy Awards.

"I have had some of my friends in Hollywood screen the film and they have encouraged me to submit it in the documentary category", Meeley told The Kentucky New Era newspaper.

To qualify for the Oscar, Meeley's beta video must be transferred to 35mm film which will cost over twenty thousand pounds. The documentary traces Cayce's life from his birth to his death in Virginia Beach. As a teenager he began to exhibit skills as a clairvoyant.

Following his first psychic reading in Hopkinsville in 1901, Cayce is credited with more than 14,000 clairvoyant diagnoses and readings while under hypnosis or "sleeping."

"This (film) is on the life of the man," Meeley said. "You see that he's a man inflicted with great talents. You watch his growth as a man where these talents become great healing tools for mankind."

The documentary features interviews with historian William T. Turner and Cayce's relatives, D.D. Cayce and Edgar Evans Cayce.

Meeley said the documentary also has received praise from Hollywood directors Robert Wise, director of The Sound of Music, and Arthur Hiller, director of Love Story.

Actor Joseph R. Scott, who portrays Cayce in the film, said:

"It was a bit of a challenge, but it was quite a unique experience."

Scott has performed as Cayce in local plays since 1999.