Douglas Gillies

Douglas Gillies has produced six documentaries. "On the Edge" features former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Jane Goodall, Ted Turner, Lester Brown, Oren Lyons, Huston Smith, and Carl Sagan discussing the need to make a concerted effort to restore a healthy balance to Earth's resources before it's too late.

Douglas's biography of Robert Muller, "Prophet--the Hatmaker's Son," tells the story of a young man who escaped the Nazis during World War II and left home to become a peacemaker at the United Nations. According to Ted Turner, Robert Muller "is one of the greatest men to come along in a long time."

Douglas' attention turned to global problems in 1994 when he produced "The Big Picture Summit" hosted by Tom Van Sant in Santa Barbara, California. Tom's question: "How can we speed up the shift to holistic thinking from linear, reductionist, compartmentalized thinking?" In other words, how can we get people to see the big picture? Participants released a report to the United Nations with 72 strategies for speeding up the shift to holistic thinking. In 1995, Douglas produced "A Matter of Life & Death" hosted by Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. This event was the start of a 10-year exploration leading to the publication of Robert's biography, "Prophet." In 1996, Douglas worked with Jean Houston to produce "The Grail," where eighty participants searched for elements of a new story that would lead humanity out of the wasteland and point the way to a positive future.

"101 Cool Ways to Die" was published in 2009. A humorous and penetrating glimpse at how we live and how we die, this book is a quick read that will leave a lasting impression. 101 Cool offers an opportunity to get past the natural tendency to avoid thinking about dying. It encourages readers to laugh. It might make them cry.

Only in America will you hear people say, "If I die...". As if there were an alternative. As if we could choose between dying and, say, a vacation in Hawaii. This book crosses the great divide between if and when.

Dying is something we all have to do sooner or later, but nobody seems to want to talk about it. Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage." If so, then most of the players are reading a script without an ending. We can act like the show goes on forever, but the climax always comes in the final act. One way or another, each of the fascinating characters who appear in every stage of our lives is going to die.