Alien Explorations: Brainstorm (1983)

a) "The George Dunlap Tape"

Joel Rubin had an idea for a story which had a very big metaphysical aspect, called "The George Dunlap Tape"

The idea was that what was being seen was a tape that was being played by a machine that would be looking for its creator, and that creator would be George Dunlap; it would be trying to re-create biological life at a time when all that existed were tapes playing themselves out over and over.

Douglas Trumbull tackled the story by deciding that there was enough for three movies and they were going to make a movie that dealt with the turbulence of the technology.

So the headset that recorded people's memories letting others download them into their's brains became the focus, and one of the scientists records her own death

Trumbull was a special effects expert who had worked on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" would go on to do special effects for Andromeda Strain, Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

He turned this story into a Metro Goldwyn Mayer sci-fi movie called Brainstorm, in which he intended to combine the best special effects available at the time and discoveries of modern research on non-ordinary states of consciousness to portray the experience of death.

His intention was to make a movie that will feel like a dream.

The viewer doesn’t simply watch a dream as a passive observer, but fall into its world.

It's a dream surrounds the viewer, and at the same time penetrates at a sensory level as if the person would be able to feel it.

The film had a great cast of the day, including Natalie Wood, Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher and Cliff Robertson

Stanislav Grof and Christina Grof.

b) Developement of the afterlife vision via the Esalen Institute

Trumbull had been researching afterlife vision looking for an ideal vision for his film. He has read people's reports of having seen bright lights and tunnels, people coming into contact with other people that they hadn't see for years who were dead relations. People having out of body experiences looking down upon themselves from above on operating tables when they're supposed to be dead, hearing what the doctors were saying, and there was enough of this sort of thing in the film.

Then a week before filming began, Trumbull gathered much of the cast and some crew at the famed Esalen Institute in Big Sur in the Monteray Peninsula in California, a retreat where “seekers” can “explore deeper spiritual possibilities…[and] forge new understandings of self and society.”

An idea being brought forth was that Brainstorm story has roots in the the findings of Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychiatrist who worked at the Esalen.

At some point, Trumbull was trying to come up with a new system, that both he and the crew could understand, but he came up with an idea of memory bubbles, and in each moment in time or life's experiences were stored in some big infinite computer in some vast place, as if they like a hologram that has memories evenly distrubuted through the whole brain in some lattice work that's not been understood yet.

Robert Stitzel who was one of the scriptwriters working on the film took careful note of what Grof helping to base the script , so that there was enough of that to talk about in the movie

Once a highly thought of Freudian analyst, Grof was asked by the Sandoz corporation to do some experiments with LSD, and continued to the pursuit of altered mental states without the use of narcotics of pharmaceuticals.

What Stanlislav Grof and his wife Christina found was that LSD caused many test subjects to regress to their own births, to the traumatic moments that begin with the euphoria of the womb, grow painful and uncertain as contractions begin, become terrifying and horrible during the actual journey down the birth canal, and then in something like a psychic explosion, end at the consciousness enters a larger, more challenging world, as a successful birth is completed.

Trumbull had heard that they were presenting an audiovisual slide work called The Inner Journey which depicted the experience of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth, and so he asked them if he could see it.

Stage one: Tranquility in the womb: The slides in the first phase were very idyllic images of warm sunlight, soft flower petals, downy kind of things, corresponding with very gentle music - soft chimes, bells, nice sounds.
Stage Two: The disruption: Then he would go into a second phase with images such as people on the sea in the wind starting to come up, or people standing on the edge of a cliff - anxiety images - and the corresponding sounds would be a little more atonal with the rhythms picking up a bit.
Stage Three: Journey through the birth canal: He'd go into the third stage a sequence of all the horrifying images you ever think of in your life - of wars and death and destruction, dismemberment, horrible sadomasochistic torture, pain, fire, ice as a real Hieronymous Bosch type of horror, with a loud, completely atonal cacophony.
Stage four: The final stage of birth: Then the fourth stage suddenly, in a burst, the whole thing would go idyllic again. The sun would come up, flowers would bloom, everything would be fine - better - again.

Grof demonstrated this concept by creating a slide and music show, cobbled out of images clipped from magazines and books that was presented in four phases.

Some people would really go with the thing, and by the time it was over feel completely euphoric, like they'd really been through something successful - like a great three-act play.

Others would get "stuck" in the hellish nightmare sequence, they'd just come unglued and have to leave the room.

The idea became that Grof would bring the cast together on a very deep emotional level.

His breathwork methods, would involve looking at certain images, listening to certain kinds of music, and hyperventilating deliberately to over-oxygenate the brain, and the idea was that this would bring out suppressed emotional material in the individual.

They conducted holotropic breathing sessions with the actors and other staff members at the institute.

Experiencing non-ordinary states of consciousness would play an important role in the film and help those involved in the making of the film understand these better.

With that, the attention turned to making a certain visual sequence in the film in the film a high quality facsimile of holotropic states.

c) Natalie Wood's Death changes everything

As far as Grof understood, while there was an effort to bring to the screen the transcendental aspects of the death experience in the film, unfortunately, the special effects were very compromised, because of the tragic death of Natalie would shortly before the movie was finished.

MGM didn’t want to put any more money into the movie; they believed that it was not viable, because there were three scenes of principal photography with Natalie that were still missing.

But as far as Doug Tumbull was concerned, it had nothing to do with Natalie Wood dying really, because all of her scenes were filmed, there were three minor shots that she was going to be filmed in but as far as he was concerned they didn't matter.

He was sure that the studio was going broke and he thought that there was some kind of subterfuge going on to get a big insurance claim to keep the studio [MGM] going and he stood between them and the insurance claim, because it was easy to finish the film without her because she was basically done.

They didn’t want to hear this so he became persona non grata at MGM.

He finally got it done and then MGM management changed and he thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is just going on and on and on.’"

d) Into the beyond

d.i) Lillian's death tape

But the effect of the slide show itself was undeniable - and it was those gut-level responses that Trumbull decided he wanted to elicit with a sequence in the movie known as Lillian's Death Tape.

d.ii) Memory bubbles

There would be little memory bubbles each of these bubbles had a separate little movie that a memory in some kind of matrix like space, and the character played by Christopher Walken has the opportunity to go from one memory bubble to another experiencing the different memories within.

d.iii) Disintergration of consciousness

The disintegration of consciousness had begun.

Next, the point of view would enter (Stanislav) Grof's third state of being.

As the film entered the fleshscapes, there was much more planned with a large, more awesome approach to hell - a vast landscape of organic plains and mountains festooned with raw meat and internal organs, but in the final movie, we see only closeups of some parts of the fleshscapes with the bubbles filled with seemingly damned human souls everyone referred to it as 'hell' even if it wasn't really in any literal sense.

It was a hellish image of pain and torture and the special effects crew used a lot of animal guts in that scene, trying to get the feeling of vulnerability, physical pain and compression in one rapid-fire burst of images.

Originally there was a glance towards nuclear armageddon, but Trumbull ultimately decided it would take people out of the film and make them think about something else, so he shied away from that.

Hellish environment

d.iv) The birth process

There would also be a sort of euphoric release at the end, like the birth process.

The sequence would be open to whatever the viewer brought to it.

A vision of a galaxy leads to a place that might be heaven, or infinity even, but it was a kind of a depiction of some other realm in time and space, like the stargate sequence, and it was actually inside of an atomic particle, and they made these atomic particles moving all with little movies inside.

d.v) Glowing entities

If one is religious, perhaps these strange glowing entities seen in the sequence are 'angels' that Christopher Walken's character sees, but Trumbull didn't want to see it so narrowly.

Instead he saw it as getting in touch with a more expanded consciousness or awareness of life, of matter, the universe, energy itself.

To Trumbull, what seemed to be angels then could just be souls, birds, clouds or they could be anything, but they were abstract forms which had some dimension them with an awesome and beautuful quality to it, and some sort of motion dynamics, and even life. Perhaps the viewer could have the feeling that it was millions of souls there all singing something musical

He was aware that a lot of people have speculated about this sequence and that the people who are really into quantum mechanics and particle physics were starting to meet up with the philosophers in discussing what the hell is the nature of the universe.

Heavenly vision with angelic forms

e) Finishing the movie

Doug Trumbull convinced the MGM people that he could finish the movie, and so it was released in 1983

He did his best to put it together, but Grof felt that it didn’t really come out very well.

Watching the movie, for Grof, it wasn't only the lack of the special effects, but also a kind of logical gap, where one can tell there is something missing

But he thought that the topic of the movie was so interesting that this deserved to be remade and done really well.

He was very interested in marrying state of consciousness research, transpersonal psychology, amd modern special effects, and while this modern technology would not only make it possible to convincingly portray the mystical experience on screen, it would also perhaps make accessible and change the narrow pattern with which people look at these states.

He felt that films using this strategy could become what is technically called "enteogenic" inciting spiritual experiences. They would thus transcend the structure of entertainment and become important tools in the transformation and evolution of human consciousness, individually as well as collectively on a large scale. He even started thinking about a story that could become the basis for such a film. .

Grof would spend his years watching movies and seeing how special effects were being used and were evolving, seeing their potential, and often being disappointed by the way it was used almost exclusively to portray scenes of violence and destruction.

Still this idea was something that Trumbull would think about wanting to recreate perhaps in another film later on.

A week before filming began, Trumbull gathered much of the cast and some crew at the famed Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, a retreat where, according to its website, “seekers” can “explore deeper spiritual possibilities…[and] forge new understandings of self and society.” The Brainstorm story has roots in the beliefs of Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychiatrist who worked with Esalen and who was exploring the pursuit of altered mental states without the use of narcotics of pharmaceuticals. “The goal was to bring the cast together on a very deep emotional level,” Trumbull says. Grof’s hypertropic breathing work involved “looking at certain images, listening to certain kinds of music, and hyperventilating deliberately to over-oxygenate the brain. The idea was that this would bring out suppressed emotional material in the individual. Everyone tried it.”
Fletcher recalls a class about rebirthing, in which participants were shown how to experience their own birth again (“the '70s, you know”), and one man who imagined he was a warrior carrying a stake. At one point everyone was in a hot tub, “although Natalie somehow cleverly avoided going in the hot tub,” Fletcher says.
(https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a25654064/sci-fi-movie-brainstorm-natalie-wood-final-film/)
Il mio interesse nello scriverlo fu in realtà inspirato dall'esperienza che Christina ed io abbiamo avuto nel 1982 a Hollywood quando fummo contattati da Douglas Trumbull, un esperto di effetti speciali che aveva lavorato con Stanley Kubrick sul film 2001: "odissea nello spazio " che aveva anche creato gli effetti speciali per Andromeda Strain, Blade Runner, ed Incontri Ravvicinati del Terzo Tipo" . Doug stava per dirigere un film di fantascienza della Metro Goldwyn Mayer intitolato Brainstorm, nel quale intendeva combinare i migliori effetti speciali disponibili al tempo e le scoperte della moderna ricerca sugli stati non ordinari di coscienza per ritrarre l'esperienza della morte. Il film aveva un cast stellare, incluso il Natalie Wood, Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher e Cliff Robertson.
My interest in writing it was actually inspired by the experience Christina and I had in 1982 in Hollywood when we were contacted by Douglas Trumbull, a special effects expert who had worked with Stanley Kubrick on the 2001 film: "A Space Odyssey" which he had also created the special effects for Andromeda Strain, Blade Runner, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. ”Doug was about to direct a Metro Goldwyn Mayer sci-fi movie called Brainstorm, in which he intended to combine the best special effects available at the time and discoveries. of modern research on non-ordinary states of consciousness to portray the experience of death.The film had a stellar cast, including Natalie Wood, Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher and Cliff Robertson.
Doug aveva sentito che noi presentavamo un lavoro con diapositive audiovisive chiamato Il Viaggio Interno, che dipingeva l'esperienza della morte e rinascita psicospirituale e ci chiese di vederlo. Gli piacque moltissimo e assunse Christina e me come consulenti speciali Brainstorm. In questa occasione, abbiamo condotto all'Istituto Esalen Big Sur, in California, sessioni di respirazione olotropica con gli attori e gli altri membri dello staff. Questo fu suggerito dal direttore e dal produttore come un'opportunità unica per tutti quelli che erano coinvolti in questo progetto ;per sperimentare personalmente stati non-ordinari di coscienza, poichè questi stati giocavano un ruolo importante nel film.
Doug had heard that we were presenting an audiovisual slide work called The Inner Journey, which depicted the experience of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth and asked us to see it. He liked it very much and hired Christina and me as Brainstorm special consultants. On this occasion, we conducted holotropic breathing sessions with the actors and other staff members at the Esalen Big Sur Institute in California. This was suggested by the director and producer as a unique opportunity for all involved in this project to personally experience non-ordinary states of consciousness, as these states played an important role in the film.
L'intenzione originaria era come usare i migliori effetti speciali disponibili al tempo e la conoscenza scientifica sugli stati non-ordinari di coscienza per ritrarre in modo convincente l'esperienza della morte, quel progetto fu gravemente compromesso dalla tragica e prematura morte di Natalie Wood ed il conseguente ritiro dell'appoggio finanziario da parte della MGM. Come risultato di questa tragica circostanza, non c'erano abbastanza soldi per creare un facsimile di alta qualità di stati olotropici.
The original intention was how to use the best special effects available at the time and scientific knowledge on non-ordinary states of consciousness to convincingly portray the experience of death, that project was severely compromised by the tragic and untimely death of Natalie Wood and the subsequent withdrawal of financial support from MGM. As a result of this tragic circumstance, there was not enough money to create a high quality facsimile of holotropic states.
Fin da questo progetto-esperimento eccitante ma fallito, ho seguito con grande interesse il progresso rapido della tecnologia degli effetti speciali. Sono stato molto impressionato dalle sue realizzazioni stupefacenti ed entusiasta circa il suo enorme potenziale. Comunque, sono stato altrettanto profondamente deluso dal fatto che questa straordinaria qualità artistica è usata quasi esclusivamente per ritrarre scene di violenza e distruzione.
Since this exciting but failed experiment-project, I have followed with great interest the rapid progress of special effects technology. I have been very impressed by its amazing achievements and enthusiastic about its enormous potential. However, I was equally deeply disappointed that this extraordinary artistic quality is used almost exclusively to portray scenes of violence and destruction.
Mi sono convinto che la natura e qualità di effetti speciali che sono divenuti disponibili nei recenti anni dagli avanzamenti dell'immaginare digitale possono aprire nuove ed eccitanti vie nel fare film. Non c'era dubbio nella mia mente che un matrimonio tra la ricerca sugli stati di coscienza, la psicologia transpersonale e la moderna tecnologia degli effetti speciali, non solo avrebbe reso possibile ritrarre convincentemente le esperienze mistiche sullo schermo, ma probabilmente divulgare rendere accessibile e modificare il modello angusto con il quale le persone guardano a questi stati.
I have become convinced that the nature and quality of special effects that have become available in recent years from the advances of digital imagery can open new and exciting ways of making films. There was no doubt in my mind that a marriage of research into states of consciousness, transpersonal psychology, and modern special effects technology would not only make it possible to convincingly portray mystical experiences on the screen, but would probably make accessible and change the narrow pattern with which people look at these states.
Ho sentito fortemente che i film che usano questa strategia potrebbero divenire ciò che è tecnicamente chiamato "enteogenic" - incitare esperienze spirituali ( letteralmente "svegliare il divino interiore"). Trascenderebbero così la struttura del divertimento e diverrebbero importanti strumenti nella trasformazione ed evoluzione della coscienza umana, individualmente così come collettivamente su grande scala. Io ho cominciato a pensare ad una storia che potrebbe divenire la base per un film di questo genere. I have strongly felt that films using this strategy could become what is technically called "enteogenic" - inciting spiritual experiences (literally "awakening the divine within"). They would thus transcend the structure of entertainment and become important tools in the transformation and evolution of human consciousness, individually as well as collectively on a large scale. I started thinking about a story that could become the basis for such a film.
(http://www.psicologia-integrale.it/provasitovecchio/3_polis_inte2_7.htm)
Stanislav Grof: I am fascinated by the amazing progress of special effects technology in cinematography. I would love to see it used to portray mystical experiences rather than dinosaurs or aliens destroying cities. I have some initial experience in this area. In 1982, my wife Christina and I were invited by the special effects wizard Doug Trumbull (2001, Blade Runner, Close Encounters, and others) as consultants for special effects in the Hollywood sci-fi movie Brainstorm. The original intention to use the best special effects available at the time and the scientific knowledge about non-ordinary states of consciousness to convincingly portray the death experience was severely compromised by the untimely tragic death of Natalie Wood and the ensuing withdrawal of financial support by MGM. As a result of this tragic circumstance, there was not enough money to create a high quality facsimile of holotropic states, the part of the movie we were most interested and involved in. The film was finished and released, but was severely compromised. Since the time of this exciting but failed experiment, I have followed with great interest the rapid progress of special effects technology. I have been very impressed by its astonishing accomplishments and excited about its enormous potential. However, I have been equally profoundly disappointed by the fact that this extraordinary artistry has been used almost exclusively for portraying scenes of violence and destruction. I became convinced that the nature and quality of special effects that have become available in recent years by the advances of digital imaging could open up radically new and exciting avenues in movie-making. There is no doubt in my mind that a marriage of consciousness research, transpersonal psychology, and modern special effects technology would make it possible not only to convincingly portray mystical experiences on the screen, but probably actually induce them in many of the spectators. I felt strongly that movies using this strategy could become what is technically called entheogenic - inducing spiritual experiences (literally awakening the divine within). They would thus transcend the framework of entertainment and become important instruments in transformation and evolution of human consciousness, individually as well as collectively on a large scale. https://pdfslide.net/documents/interview-with-stan-grof.html
Stanislav Grof: Hollywood movies portray with formidable power scenes reflecting what I call BPM III – the violent and sexual imagery associated typically with the final stages of birth. The destructive scenes are so boringly stereotypical that they are almost exchangeable from movie to movie; only the danger takes different forms – alien invaders, natural disasters, dinosaurs or other monsters, demonic beings, and all kinds of dangerous villains threatening to destroy the planet. Most of these movies end up in a situation where the enemy is overcome and people celebrate the victory on a trashed, devastated planet. What is missing is the shift to BPM IV, lifting the experience to the transcendental level, to spiritual death/rebirth experience. I don’t know if you know that Christina and I were consultants on the movie called Brainstorm, which was an attempt to portray a transcendental experience.

David Jay Brown: I had read that, and found that very interesting, as Brainstorm is one of my favorite films. I thought that there were a lot of fascinating ideas in it.

Stanislav Grof: That was an effort to bring to the screen the transcendental aspects of the death experience. Unfortunately, the special effects were very compromised, because of the tragic death of Natalie would shortly before the movie was finished. MGM didn’t want to put any more money into the movie; they believed that it was not viable, because there were three scenes of principal photography with Natalie that were still missing. Doug Trumbull convinced the MGM people that he could finish the movie. He did his best to put it together, but it didn’t really come out very well. If you watch the movie, it is not only the lack of the special effects, but there is a kind of a logical gap; you can tell that there is something missing. But I think that the topic of the movie is so interesting that it deserves a remake, as they are remaking all kinds of other movies. I think that this is one that deserves to be remade and done really well. (https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=75836)
Doug Trumbull:"It had nothing to do with Natalie Wood dying, really, she was already in the can, but the studio was going broke and I frankly think there was some kind of subterfuge going on to get a big insurance claim to keep the studio [MGM] going and I stood between them and the insurance claim, because it was easy to finish the film without her because she was basically done. They didn’t want to hear it, so I became persona non grata at MGM. I finally got it done and then MGM management changed and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is just going on and on and on.’" (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/natalie-wood-death-christopher-walken-brainstorm-263800)
Joel Rubin:“The story [initially] had a very big metaphysical aspect. The idea was that we were watching a tape that was being played by the machine. The machine would be looking for its creator, and that creator would be George Dunlap; it would be trying to re-create biological life at a time when all that existed were tapes playing themselves out over and over.”(https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a25654064/sci-fi-movie-brainstorm-natalie-wood-final-film/)
Trumbull pared it down. “We got into this thing, and we were all saying, Holy shit, this is enough for three movies,” he remembers. “Let’s just make a movie that deals with the turbulence of the technology, before people start going solid state.” So the technology—that headset—became the focus, and that story became Brainstorm.(https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a25654064/sci-fi-movie-brainstorm-natalie-wood-final-film/)
A week before filming began, Trumbull gathered much of the cast and some crew at the famed Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, a retreat where, according to its website, “seekers” can “explore deeper spiritual possibilities…[and] forge new understandings of self and society.” The Brainstorm story has roots in the beliefs of Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychiatrist who worked with Esalen and who was exploring the pursuit of altered mental states without the use of narcotics of pharmaceuticals. “The goal was to bring the cast together on a very deep emotional level,” Trumbull says. Grof’s hypertropic breathing work involved “looking at certain images, listening to certain kinds of music, and hyperventilating deliberately to over-oxygenate the brain. The idea was that this would bring out suppressed emotional material in the individual. Everyone tried it.” (https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a25654064/sci-fi-movie-brainstorm-natalie-wood-final-film/)
Doug Trumbull: Stan Grof was a highly thought of Freudian analyst in Czchkoslovakia in the early fifties, who was asked by Sandoz corporation to do some experiments with LSD. (Cinefex 14: p28)
What the Grofs found was that the LSD caused many test subjects to regress to their own births - to the traumatic moments that begin with the euphoria of the womb., grow painful and uncertain as contractions begin, become terrifying and horrible during the actual journey down the birth canal, and then in something like a psychic explosion - end as the consciousness enters a larger, more challenging wide world, as a successful birth is completed.(Cinefex 14: p28)
Doug Trumbull: The Grofs found that the moment of birth had such a powerful effect later development in the patients that there were a lot of relationships between specific things that went wrong or occurred in the patient's real life. Based on this research. Grof formulated a whole system of ideas about the way various cultures developed religious beliefs, art forms, music forms and rites of passage - how anything from a bah-mitzvah or a marriage, to an Indian ceremony of manhood is a reenactment of the birth process.
(Cinefex 14: p28)
Grof demonstrated this concept by creating a slide and music show, cobbled out of images clipped from magazines and books that was presented in four phases.(Cinefex 14: p28)
Doug Trumbull: The slides in the first phases were very idyllic images of warm sunlight, soft flower petals, downy kind of things, corresponding with very gentle music - soft chimes, bells, nice sounds. Then he would go into a phase of images such as people on the sea in the wind starting to come up, or people standing on the edge of a cliff - anxiety images - and the corresponding sounds would be a little more atonal with the rhythms picking up a bit. Then he'd go into a sequence of all the horrifying images you ever think of in your life - of wars and death and destruction, dismemberment, horrible sadomasochistic torture, pain, fire, ice - real Hieronymous Bosch kind of horror, with a loud, completely atonal cacophony. Then suddenly, in a burst, the whole thing would go idyllic again. The sun would come up. Flowers would bloom, Everything would be fine - better - again. (Cinefex 14: p28)
Grof showed his hour-long presentations to numerous audiences, and with remarkable results.(Cinefex 14: p28)
Doug Trumbull:Some people would really go with the thing, and by the time it was over feel completely euphoric, like they'd really been through something successful - like a great three-act play. Others would get "stuck" in the hellish nightmare sequence, They'd just come unglued and have to leave the room.(Cinefex 14: p28)
But the effect of the slide show itself was undeniable - and it was those gut-level responses that Trumbull decided he wanted to elicit with Lillian's Death Tape.(Cinefex 14: p28)
The disintegration of consciousness had begun,. Next, the point of view would enter (Stanislav) Grof's third state of being.(Cinefex 14: p41)
Doug Trumbull: Even though everyone referred to it as 'hell', it really isn't, in any literal sense. It's a hellish image of pain and torture. We used a lot of animal guts in that scene, trying to get the feeling of vulnerability and physical pain and compression in one rapid-fire burst of images.(Cinefex 14: p41-43)
Doug Trumbull: Originally there was a glance towards nuclear armageddon, but I ultimately decided it would take people out of the film and make them think about something else, so I shied away from that. (Cinefex 14: p43)
Then there was to be a much larger, more awesome approach to hell - a vast landscape of organic plains and mountains festooned with raw meat and internal organs. (Cinefex 14: p43)
Doug Trumbull:I wanted something quite different where that is totally in another dimension - that it didn't adhere to any of the laws of physical science. It was going to be very organic, sort of decayed and desiccated, a horrible place with thousands of people all meshed in it, caught, trapped - all sort of flowing down towards a big Devil's Garbage Disposal, and dressed with actual entrails and cow intestines.(Cinefex 14: p43)

STARLOG: The film's scientific aspects seem plausible. Was there a great deal of 
research on your part to find a plausible base for the premise of Brainstorm? 
TRUMBULL: Yes. Everything in the film is based upon scientific research underway at 
this time. We had contacts with a number of different scientists who were doing various 
kinds of brain research, as well as people who were more into this metaphysical connection 
between science and philosophy. Stanislav and Christina Grof helped us with that aspect 
while Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw assisted with the hard science. (Starlog #77)

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDC1EdIpgnw

See: http://technes.org/en/membres/qa-with-douglas-trumbull-festival-traveling-2019/
Joel Rubin: I was attempting to write a film that brought a certain metaphysical viewpoint to the attention of a wide audience. I wanted to write a film that posed problems that were not normally dealt with in commercial cinema. The film was my attempt to explore the nature of consciousness, but to do it in such a way as to make it accessible to a mass audience. The essential idea of the movie, for me, was to use the metaphor of this machine that could record and play back full sensory experience from one person to another, and then to wonder: if you could be anybody, if you could experience any other person’s reality and the loss of your own reality, who are you? (source: https://mossfilm.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/brainstorm-1983-film-review/)
While researching the film, Stitzel accompanied Trumbull to the original "touchy-feely" tank, Esalin located on the Monterrey peninsula. There they met Stanislav and Christina Grof, who had done extensive research with terminally-ill cancer patients.
(source: Cinefantastique December 1982- January 1983)
Part of Grof's research led to the creation of an audio-visual re-enactment of the birth process using tapes and slides, which broke into four stages, the tranquility of the womb (soothing), the disruption(anxiety, wind beginning to blow, sun disappearing behind the clouds, the horror of going through the birth canal (Hieronymous Bosch images, Wagnerian catacalysmic music) then the final euphoria of birth (sun reappears, flowers bloom, images having survived)
(source: Cinefantastique December 1982- January 1983)
Robert Stitzel: Dramatically and special effects wise the script was designed around four stages of development. The entire last half of the film takes off from the pivotal scene of Louise Fletcher recording her own death on tape. Her memories and associations and the images contained in the various tapesthe characters play during the film, were carefully structured around Grof's into prenatal origin of adult neuroses. They feel that behaviour is highly influenced by the process of birth, the first dramatic event in one's life (source: Cinefantastique December 1982- January 1983)
Douglas Trumbull: We wanted to have this sort of euphoric release at the end, like the birth process. (source: Cinefantastique December 1982- January 1983)
Douglas Trumbull: The sequence is open to whatever you bring to it. If you are religious, maybe those are ‘angels’ that Walken sees. I don’t see it so narrowly. I see it as getting in touch with a more expanded consciousness or awareness of life, of matter, the universe, energy itself. A lot of people have speculated about this. The people who are really into quantum mechanics and particle physics are starting to meet up with the philosophers in discussing what the hell is the nature of the universe. (source: Cinefantastique December 1982- January 1983)
Starburst: Brainstorm explores the after-life. What inspired your particular visions of this?
Douglas Trumbull: I can't say . . . because I can't think of anything in particular. I thought here was a very challenging possibility because it wasn't a space, it wasn't stars,it wasn't models ... but a totally different kind of problem that was abstract and yet concrete at the same time.
Starburst: Nothing to do with the various life-after-death books, for example?
Douglas Trumbull: Oh, I read all of those . . . People reporting having seen bright lights and tunnels. I did all of that research. People coming into contact with people they hadn't seen for years - dead relations. People looking down upon themselves from above on operating tables when they're supposed to be dead and hearing what the doctors are saying. . .there's a lot of that in the film, obviously.
Starburst: But exactly how we did it was just . . . art, I guess!
Douglas Trumbull: In trying to come up with any new kind of system for anything, I always try to find something that's organised; that I can understand and the crew can understand. So, I came up with this idea of Memory Bubbles. You know, that each moment of time, or each of life's experiences is stored in some big, infinite computer in some awesome place.
Starburst: Scientists say the memory does work that way, connecting one part of a memory -or a Memory Bubble! - to another.
Douglas Trumbull: Yeah and they're like a hologram that has memories evenly distributed throughout the whole brain in some lattice work that none of them understand yet. It's fascinating!
Starburst: Did you try other concepts?
Douglas Trumbull: We tried a lot of drawings and different ideas but this one seemed to be simple enough to understand and to visualise and not so abstract that it was just a . . .montage.
Starburst: Or overly religious?
Douglas Trumbull: I tried to keep it quite technical in that respect. I'd come up with images that seemed to help open it up to interpretation. I mean, if you wanna say that's angels at the end, that's fine. If you wanna say they're . . . what? . . . entities . . . that's fine, too.
Starburst: I saw them as souls.
Douglas Trumbull: Souls, birds, clouds, they could be anything.
Starburst: Don't you know what they are?
Douglas Trumbull: Well ... no! I just wanted it to be suggesting something that could have an awesome and beautiful quality to it and that you'd never seen anything quite like it before. It's hard to make something that's totally abstract but still seems to have some dimension to it ... a time-frame . . . some kinda motion dynamics to it. Something that had life to it! I wanted to make you feel it was millions of souls all singing there ... or just something . . . musical. (Starburst Magazine 066 (1984 February)
Douglas Trumbull: What we have tried to do is make a movie that will feel like a dream. You don’t simply watch a dream as a passive observer, you fall into its world. A dream surrounds you, and at the same time penetrates at a sensory level. If we’ve done our job right, you won’t simply see Brainstorm. You will feel it. (Source: Fantastic Films Nov 1982, as mentioned in https://mossfilm.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/brainstorm-1983-film-review/)
Doug Trumbull:These were the little memory bubbles with each one of these bubbles has a little movie that's a memory in some kind of huge matrix like space. Er, Louise Fletcher has this big out-of-body experience and floats up through the ceiling of her lab, whether you want to call this heaven or infinity or whatever, it was kind of a depiction of some other realm in time and space, all out 2001 that was really supposed to be actually inside of an atomic particle and we made all these erm atomic particles moving and all these little movies inside (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBaZQojd1_s)

Thanks to the page https://mossfilm.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/brainstorm-1983-film-review/)

Brainstorm (1983)

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