The Road To Eden

The Road To Eden • Written Produced & Directed by Jason Goodman

The Eden Alternative Documentary, The Road To Eden, is one of my great disappointments. The idea was to follow one nursing home as they turned their facility from a conventional approach to long-term care into an Edenized facility. I looked at institutions who were beginning the Eden process in Nova Scotia and Delaware, before deciding that critics would dismiss them as Canadian or East Coast elitists. Ultimately I decided on the a nursing home in the middle of the country – Westminister Village North – in Indianapolis, Indiana.

At first, the process seemed to be magical, and I saw great progress among the patients. But it soon became clear that the staff was less than enthusiastic about The Eden Alternative.
And in one sense, I couldn’t blame them. They had $7.35 an hour jobs with no health care, and they were responsible for people who were very fragile and often needy. The Eden Program added the burden of animal care to their daily grind, and that resistance was hard to overcome. To make matters worse for me, Behind The Music had taken off, and i was constantly traversing between the nursing home and Madonna‘s home, which was a little disconcerting. It fell apart when the Eden-trained executive who was instituting the Eden Policy at Westminister left to take another job. What was left is this fragment of the intended film.


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