Enjoy the Incredibly Vague Trailer For Jeff Bridges’ (Documentary?) Living in the Future’s Past

I don’t think anyone will argue that Jeff Bridges, as Hollywood actors go, seems like a pretty nice guy. Perhaps that’s just the legacy of portraying The Dude, but Bridges has a grandfatherly, gentle, easygoing manner about him that simply puts one at ease. There’s a reason why I was genuinely happy to listen to the entirety of his Sleeping Tapes album a few years ago, which ultimately consisted mostly of Bridges puttering around the house and having conversations with his wife.

But with all that said, sometimes you have to admit that Bridges can seem a little … unmoored from reality? Nowhere is that more present than in the trailer for the new documentary (we’re pretty sure it’s a documentary, anyway) Living in The Future’s Past, which Bridges hosts and narrates. To watch the trailer, and simply listen to Bridges’ droning voice, you might think that he was making up the dialog off the top of his head. Here it is, in a single transcript.

Everyone knows, deep down, that this is a rapidly changing world. So much so, that the concept of the world we once knew, as a way of distinguishing between human beings and everything else, has evaporated. Living in the Future’s past … yeah, that’s a metaphor for tuning in to what’s already here. Join me, as I share the screen with scientists, profound thinkers and hundreds of Earth’s living creatures, as we explore concepts about ourselves, our past and our future that reveal a whole new way of looking at humankind. We go beyond politics and borders and boundaries, shattering the old paradigm of how we look at our long-term problems—what to do about our fossil slaves, and the super-organism of which we are all a part. We have the keys to move into the future wisely. Let’s explore this—together. What kind of future would you like to see?

Alright, can you really see the phrase “shattering the old paradigm of how we look at our long-term problems” without it sounding like some kind of cult initiation? I mean really—if you want to reach a mass audience, buzzword-ridden vocabulary seems like a pretty ineffective way to do it.

In reality, it would seem that Living in the Future’s Past is an ecological or natural documentary of some kind—if we had to guess, we’d assume that climate change is a major topic of discussion. However, when you describe the documentary like THIS, it’s hard to tell: “Living in the Future’s Past bypasses ideological traps and looks under the “hood of humanity” incorporating elements of evolution, neuropsychology, emergence, ecology and energy into a paradigm shift in the way we think about environmental challenges.”

Here’s how Bridges himself describes it: “LIVING IN THE FUTURES PAST is a metaphor for what’s already here. Our movie takes a good look under the hood of humanity. It incorporates elements of evolution, emergence, energy, phycology (sic.), to show how these effect our environment, our planet. It’s not fear that should drive us to act. It’s love. Like Teddy Roosevelt said “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Okay … and here’s the film’s director, Susan Kucera: “Living in the Future’s Past is a bright and intellectually honest film. As Jeff says in the film ‘it all sounds pretty trippy, and it is,’ but the film allows us to get friendly with our natural ability to reason.”

Why am I getting the feeling that I’m going to be asked to contribute money to some sort of experimental space ark, after the film ends?

Regardless, Living in the Future’s Past will be in limited release beginning Oct. 5 in New York, Los Angeles and selected markets. For more information on screenings, check out the film’s website, and behold the appropriately trippy trailer below.