Recently, there have been several articles in entertainment magazines about the fact that movie box office returns go up when the economy goes down. These articles ascribe this interesting fact to people’s need for escapism.

Whenever indigenous tribes and cultures confronted times such as these, they looked to their storytellers to tell the archetypal stories that helped them face their fears. They would take heart knowing that others had faced similar hardships and life endured.

Movies are our modern day storytellers. People turn to movies during times of great change and distress, not only to escape, but also to find meaning, understanding, inspiration, hope and courage to face challenges.

In his book, The World Behind the World, Michael Meade says, “Stories are the oldest school for humankind. Genuine stories offer a living school where the only entry requirements are an active imagination, some capacity to feel one’s own feelings and a willingness to approach the world as a place of mystery and revelation. Genuine stories don’t prove anything. Rather they reveal things about the world that were already there, but were not being seen. … A real story is an installment of eternity.”

At a critical time like this, when our world is faced not only with many challenges, but also a deep sense of meaninglessness, we need more archetypal, mythical stories like: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Star Wars, Casablanca and The Grapes of Wrath to help us recover a sense of the eternal.

I am a screenwriter who is moved to write stories that bring meaning to the present and hope for the future. Such is the story of Secret of the Crystal Skulls. If anybody out there is interested in joining me in making these kinds of movies, please contact me.

Please visit our main website for Secret of the Crystal Skulls.

When people hear about Secret of the Crystal Skulls they often ask me how I came to write the story. Like most stories, it was written from a combination of personal experience, research and imagination.

I first began writing Secret of the Crystal Skulls in 1993 after living on Kauai for a year and a half.  Those eighteen months were packed with several profound life and near-death experiences. I was inspired to contemplate the effect such intense and often, traumatic experiences have on shaping your life.

I came to Kauai with my husband in January of 1991 when I was 6 months pregnant with my second child. The first event of note was my husband’s near-drowning on Easter at Secret Beach. Next, I straddled the edge of life and death during the later stage of my pregnancy and during the birth of my son. Of course, his birth was also a profound experience of life at it’s beginning.

The event that foreshadowed more to come was the Anahola Flood in December of 1991. The rain came so hard and so fast in the darkest of the night, it seemed like a Biblical event. It took four lives. Then came devastating Hurricane Iniki on 9/11/92. Yes, for those who don’t know, we had our own 9/11 on Kauai long before the infamous one. Hurricane Iniki was my second major hurricane experience. The first one happened when I was 9 months pregnant with my first child. My first husband nearly died in that event.

As you can see, I have lots of experience in the life/death/disaster arena. What I know about these experiences is that they absolutely put you in touch with who you are, what you are and what truly matters. The paradox of being close to death is that it makes you more aware of the gift of life than perhaps any other experience.

For Secret of the Crystal Skulls, I wanted to create characters who were unable to completely embrace life due to some deep pain they were not acknowledging. The experience of trying to survive on the Na Pali coast during a raging hurricane would put them directly in touch with that pain and the desire to live life fully.

After my initial work on the story, I put it aside. It seemed to be waiting for something. That something came in 1999 when I went to Glastonbury, England by myself on a pilgrimage. One afternoon while visiting the Chalice Well, a woman came up to me and told me her crystal skull had chosen me to hold it during a meditation/activation ceremony that was beginning in a few moments. I had never heard of the crystal skulls, but felt compelled to participate.

What followed was an incredibly amazing experience that influenced my destiny in a certain way. I was so altered by the ceremony that I didn’t even get the woman’s name or the name of the crystal skull. Much of that experience has been written into Secret of the Crystal Skulls.

Please visit our main website for the movie: Secret of the Crystal Skulls

Secret of the Crystal Skulls, the archetypal crystal skull movie, seeks champion : (Producer, Financier, Literary Agent or Manager, A-list Director or Actor or Anybody with the right connections) to help launch it into production.

After seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, those who want to experience more, understand more, go deeper into the phenomenon and mystery of the crystal skulls, will want to see this movie. 

Written before the Indiana Jones script, it also explores the little known world of Hawaiian spirituality, culture and magic. At its heart is an exciting, unique, family adventure film set against the backdrop of the beautiful Na Pali Coast of Kauai.

Logline: Teenage hikers and their injured guide discover a secret  world and two magical crystal skulls when they are helped by the Menehune (Hawaii’s legendary little people) during a raging hurricane.

Please visit our main website for the movie: Secret of the Crystal Skulls

Nadya Wynd began a transition from a career as a counselor, social worker and teacher in 1982 when she began studying acting in Austin, Texas. In 1983 she coordinated Plays for Living, a program of plays about social issues, which was produced by the Family Service Association of America. During this time she also wrote and directed a play about teenage pregnancy.

In 1983 Nadya entered the Graduate Program in Film Production at the University of Texas. In 1986 she moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an actress and in production positions in film, television and theater. She also began work on her first spec screenplay, an adaptation of a six hundred-page epic novel about the beginnings of modern medicine by a best selling, American author.

After moving to Kauai in 1991, this novel became a record-breaking best seller in Germany and Austria. After a bidding war between several companies she was hired as writer/co-producer by one of the most successful and well-respected film companies in Germany. After a three-year development odyssey in both Germany and the United States, the film was ultimately not produced.

Upon moving to Santa Cruz, California in 1993, Nadya taught drama and creative writing and wrote, produced and directed original musical theater for several years.

Nobody’s Boy, her most successful production, premiered at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium in 2002 to near sell-out audiences. Set in the passionate, magical world of a Gypsy circus family traveling through France in 1889, it was inspired by the classic French novel, Sans Famille by Hector Malot. The production was staged as theater in the round and featured lots of live Gypsy music and dance, circus performances and a real draft horse pulling a Gypsy wagon on stage.

In 1999 Nadya wrote, produced and directed The Beautiful Illusion, a short film starring De Lane Matthews (co-star of “Dave’s World” and “From the Earth to the Moon”) and Tyrone Power Jr. (“Cocoon” and “Cocoon, the Return”.) It was an official selection of the New York Independent Film Festival and the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. It also screened in Berkeley and Santa Cruz, California and Miami and Hollywood, Florida and aired on PBS television.

Returning to Kauai at the end of 2002, Nadya has focused her energy on writing the screenplay for Secret of the Crystal Skulls and several magazine articles.

A life-sized crystal skull with mysterious powers is being cared for by the MENEHUNE, magical little people living on the island of Kauai. A diverse group of individuals is inexplicably drawn to the cave where the skull sits on an altar, magnificently reflecting light in all directions from a skylight above.

MAT, a jaded fifteen-year-old from the San Fernando Valley, is sent on an outward-bound hiking trip of the stunningly beautiful Na Pali Coast of Kauai, while his mother honeymoons with husband #3 at the Hyatt. Two contrasting futures beckon for him, will he accept his father’s offer of prep school in Virginia or stay in LA with his mother and her new husband.

At the British Museum, archeologist SIMON CHENEY has two weeks to produce new findings on a crystal skull project or it will be terminated. Lured by clues from an ancient Hawaiian chant, Simon heads for Kauai in search of a crystal skull once consulted as an oracle by a lineage of Hawaiian Kahunas. He longs for professional redemption and the self-esteem needed to reunite with his long-neglected daughter.

KILO, Mat’s Kahuna guide, introduces him to Huna, (Hawaiian spirituality) and shows him an ancient fishpond purportedly constructed by the Menehune. Mat is intrigued, but the mood is broken by the arrival of his fellow hikers, preppies flashing their brand-name equipment, GPS locators, and attitude.

They head out as Mat befriends JILL, an ecology-minded seventeen year-old who appreciates the beauty of Hawaii and its mythology. Mat vies for her attention with two future corporate defilers, who team up to humiliate him at every turn. One of the pranks backfires when Mat turns it into a sacred gesture.

As Simon heads up into the mountains of Kauai with a Samoan guide and his superstitious brother, a tropical storm becomes a hurricane, takes an abrupt turn, and heads directly for Kauai. The hurricane turns the teenagers’ hike into a life-threatening event until a rescue helicopter comes to their aide. Only able to carry five, Mat and Jill volunteer to wait with Kilo for the helicopter’s return. When Kilo is seriously injured, Mat and Jill must seek help from the Menehune.

Mat and Jill are astonished when the Menehune introduce them to the power and significance of the crystal skull. Simon discovers the cave, steals the skull and hurries to deliver it to the museum. Mat, Jill and Kilo rush into the night to recover the skull. In the ensuing chase, Mat must face his fear, Jill her insecurity and Simon, his mortality.

In a remarkable turn of events, everyone learns they have a role to play in safeguarding the crystal skull and disseminating its important message.

 Please visit our main website for the movie: Secret of the Crystal Skulls: