Avon Filmmaker Turns Down Hollywood, Plans Cancer Survivor Film Program

An Avon movie director whose feature film Mindscapes was slated to be re-shot as a Hollywood blockbuster told Better Connecticut Tuesday that he has since turned down Hollywood's offer to focus on his original goal – creating local filmmaking opportunities for people affected by cancer.

Atlantian Films owner Brian Spectre, who is opening a movie studio in New Hartford, still plans on making his science fiction movie, but on his own terms.

He appeared on Better Connecticut Tuesday with Maura Fitzgerald, one of his producers, to talk about the latest developments for the film. Spectre told Scot Haney and Kara Sundlun that he hopes to open a film school for cancer survivors. Mindscapes would play a role in that, Fitzgerald said on the show.

Spectre, whose real name is Brian Smith, is a cancer survivor himself. He began writing Mindscapes as a way to keep busy while undergoing chemotherapy as he battled non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he previously told Patch.

In Mindscapes, James Michael (Spectre), a CIA agent with telepathic abilities — a Mindscape — enters the mind of a senator's daughter in a coma to wake her up and protect other Mindscapes from a villain's plan to use them for destruction, Spectre previously told Patch. To do so, he must find the secret code revealing the whereabouts of all Mindscapes in her mind before evil Gerth does.

Click on the link provided to watch Better Connecticut's segment featuring Spectre and Fitzgerald.