As Roland Emmerich prepares to end the world in a cascade of disasters for 2012, some true believers are complaining that he's putting too negative a spin on what could be key date in human evolution.
According to Everything Long Beach, twenty-eight cities around the globe are hosting "counter-screenings" to explore the positive transformations that might be expected when the Mayan calendar runs out of days on December 21, 2012. The unlikely title of these conferences is a nod to Dr. Strangelove — 2012: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dimensional Shift.
Not that moviemakers mind, of course. Not only was this sort of speculation about 2012 a source of inspiration for the movie, the studio is even funding junkets for one of its chief prophets. New York Magazine reports that, as part of its attempts to heighten the buzz around the movie, the studio is providing financial backing for a conference of 2012-ologists at Yellowstone (which the movie destroys) even though attendees are for the most part describing the upcoming movie as "counter-productive."
Headlining the conference is 2012 guru and psychedelic drug advocate Daniel Pinchbeck, who is described as "equal parts Jesuit and Jim Morrison." The inspiration perhaps for the movie 2012's own Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), who continues to deliver his doom-laden guerilla broadcasts from the borderlands between fact and fiction at thisistheend.com.