Every other week this fall, we will be airing some of Alec’s favorite episodes from our archives. This week features two incredible authors: chronicler of Hollywood legends, Sam Wasson, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning The New Yorker writer, Lawrence Wright. Sam Wasson tackles distinctive creators and seminal moments in Hollywood history, from Blake Edwards and Paul Mazursky, to Audrey Hepburn and the history of improv. Alec loved Sam Wasson’s book, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood. In this fascinating conversation, Wasson tells the story of the four men behind the 1974 film: producer Robert Evans, screenwriter Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski, and star Jack Nicholson - and how the film was a turning point in each of their lives. Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. Filmmaker Alex Gibney directed an HBO documentary based on Wright's reporting in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Unbelief. In his in-depth and varied reporting, Wright has documented the Jonestown massacre, explored allegations of Satan worship, profiled brimstone-tinged gospel preachers, and tracked the histories of al-Qaeda and the Church of Scientology.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from I Heart Radio. This week we're featuring two incredible authors, Sam Wasson, Observer of Hollywood and its artists, and the Pulitzer Prize winning New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright. Here's my interview with Sam Wasson. From My guest today is author Sam Wasson. Whether he's writing about directors such as Blake Edwards, Paul Mazerski, or the history of improv, a consistent theme running through Wasson's books is the perseverance and talent required to make art in Hollywood. His latest book, The Big Goodbye, is about the seminal film Chinatown. How Much You Were? How Much you Want? I just want to know what you're worth? Over ten millions? Yes? Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford? The future? Mr Gitts the future. This is the love theme from Chinatown by the film's composer Jerry Goldsmith. In The Big Goodbye, Wasson chronicles the friendships of the four men at the heart of the nineteen four classic producer Robert Evans, screenwriter Robert Town, director Roman Polanski, and the movie star Jack Nicholson, and what was at stake for each one in making this definitive film. Sam Wasson grew up in Los Angeles and fell in love with the movies. Early on. I was a movie love. It was actually Bullets over Broadway. I went nuts. I thought, oh, film is not just dialogue and performance. It's visual component. It's a complete sensual experience. That Bullets was so beautiful and so funny. It knocked me out when I saw it. That was the end. It's the ultimate art form, combining all the other art forms. You finished film school, yeah, USC First I went significantly. I went to Wesleyan for film school in Connecticut and studied with Janine Basinger, who's the Hollywood historian on the planet. Knows more about Hollywood than anyone ever has I think ever ever will have. And it's just obvious when you talk to her, and she really teaches a tour theory of Hollywood. So I got a deep, four year long survey of the greatest and there was no deconstruction, there's no you know, film theory. It's film as film. And that was my film education. And then I went to USC which was kind of a bust for what for film production. I directed one film myself and I just wouldn't say hate it, but I didn't care for at all. You know, being responsible for cajoling the work, especially actors. It's a lot of managing, isn't it. I mean it's it's as a much managing as art. Whereas if you're acting, or if you're starring, or if you're writing, there's very little bullshit that you have to deal with. It's purer. I think, well, when I was acting and mid that I directed a film, I remember that when you're when you make films and you're starring in films, you know, years ago for me, you could be in your trailer and they would knock on the door and say, well, the producer I would like to talk to you, or the head of the studio is here visiting, he'd like to talk to you, and I'd say tell him I'm asleep and just and you could hide in the trailer, as opposed to when you're directing. You can't do that. You can't. You have to. They come to work and they're like, let's let's talk about how you're over over schedule. Here. That's an amazing thing about directing is that you're you're really in reality. You're interfacing with reality all the time, and other art forms you don't. You can be in your imagination, but when you're making a movie, there's so much ship that you have to do. You're making a building from scratch. So you finished, you did four years at Wesleyan. Yeah, and then you wanted more film school. And then I and everyone was said, oh, you want to make movies, you gotta go to film school. You gotta go to USC. And so I thought, oh, yeah, at USC. Of course, that's where you know, you go to Juilliard. If you want to do Lincoln Center, you go to USC. If you want to do you know, Man's Chinese. So Wesleyan was more film theory, and USC it was about film production. Yeah, it was film study. I mean it was filmed. It was watching movies and talking about filmmaking. But at what point do you stop and see you I don't think I'm gonna make movies. Well I'm not totally convinced that I'm not going to, but at that moment it was a combination of two things. I looked around and I saw that my fellow classmates were completely invested in the Hobbit thing, and I felt instantly lonely and realized that I was experiencing a microcosm of what it was gonna look like out in the real working world. And I thought, you know, maybe the Hollywood that I grew up in is no longer the Hollywood. That is the Hollywood that I grew up outside of. And I was right. And then the book thing just happened. How it was actually Janine Basinger Wesley and said why don't you write a book? I never thought of it. And I picked Blake because I wanted to pick who I thought was the greatest writer director of comedy alive who had not been celebrated. Now Blake. My ex wife, Kim Basinger did a man who loved women with Blake, and that's when I first met Julie. And you know, you're so right. I mean, he's so under a pre I think Victor Victoria is one of the ten funniest movies I've ever seen in my life. Ever. I love Victor Victoria. I loved ten. I love a movie he made that a lot of people probably don't know about, called What Did You Do? In the War Daddy, Dick Sean, Dick Sean, and Dick Sewn. I'll just say this, Dick Seawn is a drag scene in the movie. I mean, if I don't know what else you need, but but Blake, Blake. I I always thought that Blake was people look at slapstick somehow, with the exception of Chaplin, who is revered as poetic because he is, everyone else looks at slapstick as this low form. You know, slapstick is dumb, it's for children, it's childish, And so I think Blake got a bum rap because of that, and I wanted to elevate him and say this is sophistic. Someone can fall off a fucking chair and it's still be nol coward and that's what Victor Victoria is. Okay, So then you do after Blake your next book Fifth Avenue five AM. Yeah, So fifthven and five M is your next books? Why Missurski, what did he do to you that made you want to write a home Because to write a book, as you know, you spending a lot of time in your life with that person. Yeah, Missouriski was just just love for the work, enthusiasm for the man who I had met a couple of times, and actually it ties to Blake. As much as I loved the work, Blake left me with such a scar in my heart. Why why he personally was so sadistic to you? Yeah, sadistic to me, and he was that way to you as his as his boswell here it was astonishing. I was young. I don't know. You could probably tell me how old I was. I don't remember. I was young. And he would cancel on me, and I'd be in the car on the way over and he would cancel on me with not giving any reason. And then he would call me up and he would say, you know, get in the car, come on over. And I would get in the car and he would cancel on me. It was a real dance of death. And I finally got in there a couple of times. But um, it was open hostility. It was like nothing, and it was a real abusive codependent relationship. So Missourski is platformed off of Blake. How why? Because I we're getting into the therapy portion of the conversation. But of course I blame myself for the way I was, you know, and I guess I wanted to make sure I knew how to do this, and then it wasn't going wrong because of me. And so I wanted to be with someone that I was comfortable with and obviously idolized, and those two things dovetailed perfectly. And Paul was nothing like Blake I take it. Oh, no, Missour's keys. You know, it turns out people are like their movies. Blake edwards movies are sadistic and we love them for it, and Paul's movies are loving and warm and we love him for it. But because comedy is finally about rage, to find a nurturing director of comedy and Nichols wouldn't be would qualify in this case is a rare thing. And so I'm interested in funny people, and funny people and good people don't always go together. So to find in Missouriski funny and mench to the core was a beautiful thing and is what what his movies are about. Wells interesting you mentioned Nichols because Nichols is a very good example. A lot of these big directors I worked with and had very small parts, you know, Stone, Marty, Woody, Nichols. I mean, I didn't have leading roles in these films. And when I worked and I did the movie Working Girl, one of the first films I did, and I worked with Mike. You could tell that Mike was someone who had come through a gauntlet. He had worked his way, and I don't I don't mean this as a criticism. He had come through a gauntlet where in the way that you move through the film business, and you have and Polanski reminds me of this as well in your book. Mike was someone who had in the way that you You'll take the good ideas wherever they come from. You'll take the good advice wherever it comes from, and you're going through the jungle if you will. And eventually you realize that the person you can rely on, the person has that typically not always maybe, but who typically has the best ideas is yourself. And you grow to rely on yourself and you don't want anybody to talk you out of what you're keen on. That's improvising. That's because Mike is an improviser. I mean, does that think that? Why did you write that book? Why did you write about improv Well? Two reasons. One, I do believe it is the great American art form. I do believe that, and the other reason I wanted to meet Elaine. I wanted to know Elane. I wanted to celebrate Elane because she created this. She's a national treasure. You're referring to Elaine May. Yes, she is, as you know, you know, tough to get a hold of. I wanted to do it. I didn't do it, and my heart is still not whole. There's still a dark Elaine part in the heart. It belongs to her. Describe for me with the relationship between you spend a good amount of time in the book, and the relationship between Town and Polanski. So the film of Chinatown, the shooting script, the scenes that were shot, and I'm assuming that eventually a script is compiled and is and is bound if you will, Then is the shooting script is that more Polanski than Town? Well, Town obviously generated it, and then Polanski for years he was generating it. And Town is a very slow writer and a very expansive writer. I mean he writes big and then struggles to cut down to structure. So when Polanski comes in in the last two or so weeks or a month or whatever it was, Polanski really structures it. So I guess the answer is yes. So the structure is Roman, no question about it. But the material is Town. Now Town who had his writing partner Edward Taylor? And Taylor was someone described that relationship. Taylor was someone who did a lot of work uncredited, I think nearly all of it on Was he ever credited? Did you mention that in the book? What did he get a credit anywhere? And not on a Town movie? He got a credit, a writing credit on a movie called w I Warshowski Kathleen Turner picture. Edward Taylor got credited for that. Um, but he never got a writing credit on a Robert Town movie. UM, never wanted one. Why do you think that is when you have a guy, here's four men who are fairly um, I'm not obsessed with success, They're obsessed with greatness, their legacy. I mean you could you could find tune all four men. What did they had something in common? But there was a little bit distinctive what Nicholson wanted Evan so forth. But for Taylor to be in the rooms with these people and writing these seminal films, why do you think he didn't want any credit? What was it about? Well, there's stated reasons and then there's unstated reasons. And the stated reasons were, and this is Taylor either from his own writing or or what he told to other people, were one, he didn't want to deal with the bullshit of show business. He just wanted to punch in, punch out right the scenes, do the creative work, and not have to deal with the haggling of the negotiations and and egos and despair and all that stuff that comes with having your name on something. There's a certain amount of freedom that you get to say, no one's going to know that I was here. So there was that. Then there was the long term friendship that he had with Town, going all the way back to their years at Pomona when they were in college. So he felt a kind of loyalty to Town, which manifested as subordinating himself to Towns, you know, quite obvious need to be a star. And then there were all these speculative secret reasons about secrets that they might have had on each other. Uh. Then there was of course Edwards alcoholism and Town really being a support to take aller, you know, because Taylor got paid for this, and Taylor in his heart really did believe, you know, these are Towns movies which they were in so far as town generated them, and I'm just helping Robert with his movie. He convinced himself of that that it really was more town. And also there are people like that who what they convinced and they have a certain kind of personality. I've known a couple of myself where through attitude is better the crumbs off your table than nothing at all. That's it. That's it. So there's deep pathological stuff that we can't even get into. But that's the type that you're describing. But the one thing that you see in this movie is the death of that studio executive like Evans. You mentioned a piece of very well known history, the advent of Jaws and what Jaws does to marketing and films and how the business old changes in the wake of that. But you tell it so well, I mean, you tell it really wonderful. You you make everybody really see the impact that that once these guys knew there was big money in them, there are hills. Everything changes. What was it a about Evans that he wanted to have great films that made money and one awards. He loved it. He loved it, He loved show business, He loved movies, he loved people, he loved talent. It's actually that simple. I asked him this question. I said, Evans, is it as simple as you bet on talent? Do you have an easy job? And he said, you goddamn right. That was and and and it's true. I mean, if you have the courage, that's the question. Do you have the courage to say, yes, I believe you are talented. Here's the check. Then you're a great studio executive because even if the movie fails, even if it is a steaming piece of ship humiliation to everyone on the planet, at least you go to bed thinking I picked a good guy. I picked the right people to do that. That's a pride that what executive can now go to sleep saying that? You know the Evans is and you mentioned Zanek and people like that who are running with the studios. Back then, some of them were people who knew how to make movies. But they knew people who knew how to make movies, and they knew how to bring them together, and they seduced them into communion to join them on this venture. Yes, I mean Goldman's maxim turns out to be right. I believe nobody does know anything. I believe nobody knows anything. Those people who end up being the most successful are the people who have the who are the strongest to adhere to their great taste. And those guys Zane, all those great guys had exactly that. Now, Evans, of course you you you do a wonderful job in the book. This is a prism through which you learn a lot about the movie business, in the history of the movie business. It's a great, great, great book. And you also learn what a seminal year of this is in nineteen for so many great movies. May and Evans is someone who you know, is that white hot period in the seventies, the studios are making Paint Your Wagon and Finnian's Rainbow and all that stuff is tanking, and then along comes and Robert Osborne said this to me when we co hosted TCM together. He said, you know, I just hate Easy Rider, because Easy Riders, the movie that comes along and just changes everything. The movie is becomes so real and so ugly and so and and and so nasty and so and they're they're like documentaries. Nicholson becomes a star, if you will, on the back of that movie. In sixty nine let me get into the seventies and what happens, Well, you know, just like Hollywood being Hollywood, Easy Rider is a hit. So then they all fall over themselves trying to get the next one now, unlike today where they fall over themselves trying to get the next one. Back then making a movie was relatively inexpensive enough that they could understand the next one being well, let's try another little movie based on a you know, based on a couple of guys. You know, the modesty of the Easy Rider project could be replicated, and that is a recipe for creativity. And so that's what they did after that absolutely cynical undertaking insofar as Hollywood is doing what it's always done, But because the economics of the system are conducive to creativity and the people calling the shots are genuinely interested in art, it can flower Polanski's wife. He makes the movie Rosemary's Baby, which I can't say enough about that movie. And the more I watched that movie, that's one of the ones I've downloaded on my computer because of that remarkable balance he has. You have Ruth Gordon in this like right up to her toes are right on the line of camp in that, and yet they're Sydney Blackmer playing her husband who's his velvety, and the cast is Alicia Cook. You have the creepy and the sour and the sweet and the yeared in the pleasant everything harmony, and the same is true for this movie. The same is true. Polanski is a master of casting master. I'm so glad you brought definitely down to I mean, who is Bert Young in Chinatown? Talk about juicy? I mean, there's so it's an embarrassment of riches that we never get The movie is so fertile in talent that we never get down to the Bert Young of it all. Yeah, we do obscure Bert Young. Diane Lad how about that dead on the floor and just a perfect, perfect portrait of a nervous actress all the way through performing, down to the very end when he pulls out the sag card, And that is an l that is also inside. That's a little gift to an Angelino to see that, Oh yes, she was an actress. Of course she was, And you play it back in your mind and and the whole psychology of the actress just kind of harmonizes with what you've seen. Fucking Polanski casting that movie. I mean, how do you do you can't tell. How do you teach the ability to cast? That has to be one of the things like like, yeah, you don't have you have to have you have to sense that that person can do even if you have to push them, even if they have to dig down, you know, you know. Gary Oldman became a star doing Sid Nancy. Gary Olden became a star doing Sid Nancy and won an oscar playing Churchill. Talk about that journey as an actor in terms of the disposition of the character. Now, Polanski, his wife is killed, he does Rosemary's Baby. It's it's released in sixty eight. His wife is killed in sixty nine. He comes and does this movie I guess in seventy three. It's released in seventy four, correct, And what Polanski is showing up now to shoot Chinatown? Which Polanski shows up Now he's changed, how from the horrors of what happened to his wife. He's been devastated, He's been devastated, and he's he left town. And it should be said, not just because his wife and child and friends were murdered by them, not just because of the emotional residue of the grief but because the town turned on him in a way, the town in the panic around figuring out who the killer was. We didn't know who the killer was. There was speculation that, well, maybe it's Polanski. His movies are enough from you. I learned that from your book. And it's a tribute to his friends, Dick Silbert, Jack, Warren Batty Evans, the people who were really his friends, who stuck by him and supported him in that. I mean the grief to compound on top of the grief, the paranoia of the town closing in on you. I can't even make a word to come out of that. We were They put him back together again, so to speak, his friend, They put him back together. He's got a bunch of friends. And that's kind of also what this book is about, secretly for me, is a good bunch of friends, because that's what I dream of, That's what a good Hollywood should feel like. One thing that was just really assaulted me from the book was that idea that back then and it never crossed my mind. It never occurred to me that Polanski was someone who people he was a suspect and some people's and now the whole and now the whole town. The whole community lived in terror in the way that lived in terror. And I should add to compound to make this even fucking worse. He didn't know who the killer was, so he's suspecting his friends. Maybe it is Warren, Yes, maybe it is Warren. You know he's trying to get sampled. What was he trying to get? Like blood samples off of steering wheels in the carpeting cars and all this ship. That's an amazing part of the book. I mean, it's enough for an opera right there. I mean people say it's a Greek tragedy, I mean Roman Polanski. That's to say nothing of what we all know is coming, but just that incident right there, unimaginable. Author Sam Wasson, If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Wasson talks about the reception of the film's shocking ending and it's remarkable score. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing Because Chinatown was Jack Nicholson's first real turn as a leading man. He paid attention to every last detail, down to his wardrobe, to inhabit Jake Giddis. I mean it was deep in him too, because Town wrote it for him. Town observed Nicholson. They were in Jeff Corey's acting class, and and improvised improvisation was heavy in that class. And so Jack is a great improviser. So Town really became a master of Jack, whatever that means, and so learned learned how to just hit it right to him. Sometimes I think the guy that can nail Chinatown and especially that ending and that in that last line, the guy that can nail that ending you right with great detail and great insight into the shooting of that final scene and the car driving off in that long shot, and the actor that pulls the gun and shoots her. You know, they're the whole kind of existential on wi of the whole thing. At the end, Uh, forget about it. Jacob's Chinatown, I thought to myself, that's Polanski. In the wake of his wife being butchered that way, Yes, like his mother's killed. His father says to him, how you have it in there? Move it, move it, the prompt from the father, But you just keep moving, just keep moving. And Polanski was certainly primed to nail because of all the horrors he'd been through. And it's hard to imagine a more horrific ending to a major Hollywood movie. It's hard to imagine. And when the film was screened for the executives, what was there you write about this? What was their response to the film? You know, you tried your best, Evans, you know, Sue Manger's was like, what are you? What were you Connie? What were you thinking? I can't do Sue, you can do it. You know, they're filing out in the director's guilt. Um was it Freddie Fields who had a sort of shiit eating grin on his Freddie Freddie and Evans were never sympathical. But then it got good reviews. Yeah, yeah, then it did well. It did Yeah, and I won a lot of awards. Jack didn't win. Jack didn't win. Jack didn't win. Who won that? You? Oh? Oh? Art Carney arc from from Missourski, from Missoursky, even Missoursky. When I Jack's oscar and hands it not so fast, Jack hands it to Art Carney. Yeah. I think even Paul was a little embarrassed of that was it going in style. No, it was Harry, Uh huh. Let's see Chinatown. Let's see Wow. Okay, it sounds like an SETV sketch from the makers of Chinatown. From the comes a story of a man and his cat. You know. One of the things that I love the part of the story because I'm obsessed with musical score. Describe how there was the path with the score for Chinatown. One composer who then what happens? His name was Philip Lambro, and um, he wrote, I don't have the language to even describe what music I mean. You can actually find the score on YouTube. And it was an atonal, edgy, expressionistic, weird, you know, not melodic, not what you think of his Hollywood, certainly not what you think of his forties glamour Hollywood. And it didn't work. And this was like in the final moments before you know, scoring comes in at the very end. And what happened was Evans called Goldsmith and said you got to save my life and and Goldsmith said all right. And ten days later and and ten days sounds like a legend, you know, sounds like fable fiction stuff. I got ten days confirmed all over the place. It really was ten days. I mean, if it wasn't ten it was eleven days. You know, he turned around a masterpiece in no time. This is another reason why Evans is Evans only people like Evans can pick up the phone and get somebody like Goldsmith to write a score for one of the greatest movies in the world in ten eleven days or wherever the funk it is. And it also tells you that Evans was beloved on a personal level. Yes, you know you could make those calls. You make those calls and someone says yes and turn and turns it around, and Evans supervised the score. You know. Music was so important to Evans, so important to Evans, even though he's fucked up on on Godfather by not you know, Nino wrote a pushing back on Rits. Okay, But Evans loves music because he's finally in his heart just a romantic and a softie. And also music is a major part of post production, and that's where Evans can come in and get his hands in there. Sometimes he gets his hands a little too much in there, as as as copal and Knows and suffered by but that's the shadow side of Evans. But music allows him to allow him to do that. Author Sam Wasson, and now from our archives, my interview with Lawrence Right from two thousand fifteen, My guest today. Author Lawrence Right thinks a lot about religion. He wants to know why people choose one faith over another, especially when what they choose seems quote absurd or dangerous to an outsider. This question has led Right to investigate some of the world's most complicated and secretive organizations, from the People's Temple in Jonestown to the Church of Scientology. His book on Al Qaeda won the Politz Surprise in two thousand seven. Lawrence Right has a unique firsthand experience as to the power of belief. I grew up in Dallas and the Methodist Church, and there was despite the fact that Methodism doesn't have a reputation as being kind of a you know, hell fire and Brimstone, the first of the churches that we went to in Dallas really was that. And then we graduated to the Methodist Church downtown. My dad taught Sunday school for many, many years. You know, Dallas back at that time was the most pious city in America. We had the largest Methodist Baptist I think, the largest Episcopal church and one of the largest Catholic churches in the entire country. And at the same time we had the highest murder rate and the highest divorce rate, you know, all the things that go along with excessive piety. Yeah, so it was and I was very pious as a teenager. I was in a group called Young Life and m genuinely or you were responding to pressure, No, I was. I was, well, there was part of those things. It was you know, I had moved around a lot as my dad was a banker and we moved, uh, quite a lot, and it was hard for me to establish roots. So when I got to Dallas and this, you know, Young Life came out. It was a social club for me. But also it was the first time I understood the you can binge yourself into the shape of the organization the way it wants you to be. And also the more pious you are, sort of the higher you climb, the more important. So I got to be part of it. Yeah, well you just say those things and it's and you want to believe him. I was not consciously trying to deceive anyone. At the same time, you know what to say your your heartfelt, andy, but at the same time you realize that there's there's an approval system here. Yeah, and I think that that experience um was formative in some ways for me to be so interested in religious matters and why, you know, I people are always, you know, reporters, especially fascinated by politics. But you can have strong political views and it doesn't affect your life at all, But if you have strong religious views, they probably dictate much of your behavior. Is puzzling to me. Why with most journalists it's just embarrassing to ask about what people believe because it's not supposed to matter. Due to leave the area to go to college, I went to Tulane in New Orleans, which was a city least like Dallas that I could find and you could buy beer and woolworth and you could drink at eighteen and uh there you know a lot of things of very pious theory. At that time. I kind of shed that, but I was actively looking for a way to live a more bohemian life. I felt very constricted in Dallas. Was writing something that was on your mind even at an early age. Yeah, Yeah, I took a creative writing class, you know, I was not a discissed school paper. Now. I used to like doing that stuff though. And then um, after I graduated, Um, you know, the Venom War was going on, and uh, I became a conscientious objector and spent two years of alternative service teaching in Cairo. And that's where I became involved for the first time with the Arab world. And when the boy from Dallas becomes a conscientious objector, how did that go off? Back home? You know, I my dad was a war hero, and I wanted to be like him. I was in our otc. I expected, you know, to to follow in his footsteps. But you know, there was this parallel problem going on, which was the Vietnam War, which was despicable different and it was. It was a bad war. And you know, for a person, a young man like me who wanted to serve his country but did not want to kill people for the wrong reason or risk my life for something I didn't believe in, it just was a terrible My father and I had horrible, horrible fights about Vietnam. Do you have any brothers? No, I had two younger sisters, so you were you were the scion. Did you ever make peace with him? About that. Yeah, you know, I wrote a memoir about growing up in Dallas during the Kennedy assassination and in America during the Vietnam Era. And in the process of doing that, I talked to my parents a lot, and I let them read the manuscript and it was a very healing experience for all of us. I think I first became familiar with you, and you're writing in the Olympia Washington story. He was entitled Remembering Satan, which you wrote as a book as well. These were excerpts in the book. There was a two part lengthy excerpt in the edition of The New Yorker. And I first became familiar with you. And I mean I was just supposed, you know, like knocked out by this piece. I thought, you know, how on earth is this possible? Had you written pieces like that, I mean the scientology piece, the book and Going Clear, which we're gonna get to that obviously, and this piece, uh, there's uh, there's some fascinating people either putting themselves or putting other people through some living hell. Here was this the first such piece you wrote? The Olympia piece. No, I think I had written about you know, a lot of different even wrote about Satanists and you know, people of all sorts of I mean, if you're a reporter and you have a passport to write about anybody, um, and I took full advantage of that. But that remembering satan is kind of uh stereotypical type of article that I like to write about, which is um. For one thing, it's a discreet world. You know, in this case, it was you know, this world inside Olympia, Washington that had been infected by these hysterical memories of Satanic ritual abuse which never occurred. But a man was convicted of these crimes. He confessed to them because he remembered them, and there was other than his memory. There was no evidence, if I remember correctly, no one else was sentenced to prison. Only Paul went to prison. What's this relationship with his family now? Or do you even know? It's very broken as far as I haven't talked to Paul in a couple of years. But you know he's married again. You know, he's he started another life. And but you know, it's an example of how the mind can be so persuaded of you know, a fall reality that and I think everybody is capable of that. I don't you want to know if I would say that not capable of that, but creating a false reality. One of the things that has been an education to me as a reporter when I'm out interviewing people that have been, for instance, in al Qaeda or you know, people that have come out of you know, I've interviewed the children of Jim Jones, and you know, as talk to people who went into scientology, they're not crazy people. Then they're not stupid, and you know they're they're often you know, if there's a commonality, there's idealism. Uh, you know, they're a longing to make, you know, change history, makes something of yourself and uh that's you know, maybe that's one of the most dangerous elements of our human nature, is that we it's the better parts of our nature that sometimes lead us into real dangerous areas. With the better parts of the natures of Jones is children, Well, you know they were they were essentially captive to him. So but and they survived, thank god. They were all playing basketball in a tournament and Georgetown, Guiana, so they weren't a killing when the killings went down. But the it's always to me, it is always uh underscored the danger of these kinds of fanatical belief systems. Uh. There were these three boys U two adopted. UH. Stephen was a natural son and he looked very much like his father, Jim Jones, with the kind of Cherokee cheek bones. And he's very tall and striking, handsome man. And M. Then there was Jim Jones Jr. Who was black. UM and Uh adopted. And then the third adopted son was Tim. Who is this big red headed guy. Tim. These boys when I talked to him, Waco was going on at that time, the Branch Davidian episode, and Tina Brown was the editor of the New Yorker, and she wanted me to go to Waco. And I said, they're more reporters and Waco than there are Branch Davidians. I just but I was. I was convinced that this must you know, I had seen the children, some of the children that were sent out. I thought that must have happened before. And I found these three boys who had never then grown men, never told their story before. And I don't know why they were willing to talk to me. But Tim, when I got to him, UH, he's he demanded that we do it in a restaurant, in a public place, because he didn't want to cry, and he had never told his wife, his current wife, what had happened. Man, he wanted to say this story one time. Now, bear in mind, Tim Jones is a massive fellow. He can he can press a hundred pounds with either arm. You know, he is a immense physical presence. And we went to the restaurant and within a few minutes he was pounding the table and sobbing because Tim is the one who had to go into the jungle and identify nine people his real parents, his adoptive parents, his wife at the time, and his children, everybody lying on the ground and U It makes an impression. Did he ever confide to you or or even just discussed to you what he thought was going on there? What he thought? Joy? They all knew that their dad was crazy and that he had what was he doing there? You know, he was giving these suicide drills regularly. You know, they break out the what was the purpose of jonestown? Oh well, they stated purpose was two they were Jones was intensely paranoid. He had the feeling that the government was persecuting him, which was not really true. At all but one night, the entire which disappeared. You know, they all went secretly to this little South American country with it, you know, in the in the middle of the jungle. They've been preparing it, the boys. Yeah, and it was just a you know, it's like a you know, a little summer camp type of thing. They built quanset huts and so on, and they were living near a river and they built an air strip. I remember reading on this thing online where they said that Jonestown was this training ground where they were breading MK ultra operatives who were capable of committing murder on behalf of the government and then they'd have a memory of it. Well, you know, I'm not saying that that's true, but I remember reading that once. I was fast when I was writing about remembering Satan, when I was doing the you know, the multiple personalities were supposed to be the product of Satanic ritual abuse, and there was a big rise in multiple personality disorder, and one of the theories was that the multiples had been created by the CIA in order that one personality could become a spy and you know, deliver messages that other personalities inside the same human being wouldn't know about Lawrence, writes New Yorker article The Orphans of Jonestown, came out for the fifteenth anniversary of the V eight massacre that killed over nine people. Listen to more conversations with writers who take on complicated issues, like David Simon, who wrote the TV show The Wire but started out as a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun. I think it was very fair as a reporter. You know, some of poverty is about personal responsibility, and some of it is not. Some of it is systemic and a result of societal forces that are profound. Take a listen in our archives that here's the thing dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin. You're listening to. Here's the thing. My guest. Lawrence Wright prefers taking notes on index cards over using a computer. You can only imagine the number of cards right used for his book Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. After it was published in two thousand thirteen, documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney asked right if he considered an adaptation. We'd worked together before. You know, I had done this book about al Qaeda called The Looming Tower, and I had just my little acting venture. I Um, I didn't more travel with it. You know, I just hate touring, you know, doing the book tour thing. Yeah. I had seen Anna Davere Smith do fires in the mirror at the Public Theater and I was the first time I could see the journalism and he could be married. And I fascinated by that. So I did a one man show called My Trip to al Qaeda, and I did it off Broadway for about six weeks and in a few other cities, and Alex saw me do it in Washington. We decided to make it into a documentary, which we did for HBO. We hit it off. Alex Is is a is a his nickname from childhood as Tiger and his well chosen name. And he's a very skillful storyteller. And it takes those qualities to take something as complicated about an organization as vindictive and litigious as the Church of Scientology. It takes somebody like Alex to put together a movie like he's just done. One of the things I thought when I saw the film, and I mean all my friends and people who know me personally, Uh, it wasn't lost to my friends with it. About a week after that I was back on a plane to London to go shoot a film with Tom Cruise. And Tom is a friend of mine, and um, I mean I consider him a friend in the business sense, but we don't get to see each other then often. But he's always very kind and as people who know Tom know, he's a great person to be in the trenches of movie making with. He's very hard working and very very um passionate about the work. But when I saw the film, one thing I didn't get And maybe it's there, maybe it was in the book and maybe it's in the film, but I it was I mean, I watched this film with intense scrutiny. There wasn't any sense to me of what are the people who are in scientology and remain in scientology and who are dedicated this, What do they perceive they're getting out of it? Because I have some opinions about that what people have told me, Well, what does it do for them? And why are they there? Especially when people go into scientology, they don't you know, they don't go into it because it's a cult. They go into it oftentimes because they're looking for something as well, you know, sometimes they are spiritual seekers or there. You know, you might be one of those people that goes down on the subway and someone says, would you like to take our personality tests? You know, and um, sure, Oxford capacity analysis. It sounds like, you know, might be and you know, well if we see that you have a little trouble of communicating with people that's true, well we you know, we can say we can help you with that. Or in the case of Paul Haggis, um, you know, he had a girlfriend that he was having trouble with and say we we have a course that can help you in your relationships in pain. And the truth is oftentimes they can help. It's like going into therapy. People do benefit from it. So this initial exposure to scientology is often very positive to people. What about the people like Travolta, people who seem to have the world on a silver platter and everything is going their way, Well, that wasn't true. When he got in. He was a you know, troubled young man who was in his first movie in Mexico. He confided to an actress who was on the set. You know, he's having these difficulties and she was a scientologist, and she gave him some auditing which is what scientology calls his therapy, and gave him a copy of Dinetics and so on. He had an experience which happens to a lot of scientologists when they're being audited. He went exterior. In other words, he had an out of body experience. He had a sense that he had left his corporal being and could look around the room and you know, see things behind him and so on. At the time he was taking a course when he tried out for this Welcome Back Carter, the teacher had everybody in the class turned their direction. I think it was CBS Studios, you know, but telepathically send the message to the executives that the John Travolta is right for the role. And he got the part. And so he always credited Scientology was putting him in the big time, as he said, so you know, in that sense, he really did feel that it had changed his life. But it's one thing to get into it and it's another thing to get out of it. If you are a star like Travolta was at one time the biggest star in the world, and uh, you have put your name down again and again and again. As a scientologist, you're identified with it and they have tapes of you, yes, discussing your moments, right like if you and I were sitting in a Scientology auditing session right now, and you're my auditor, and you know, and I'm holding the cans which are attached to the E meter, and you're probing, uh and asking me very impersonal questions about my life and and things that I would not want to disclose to anyone else except in this very confidential confessional atmosphereiating material that is actually secretly recorded, sometimes videoed, And then it becomes apparent to you that if you decide to leave UM, the church may use some of that against you. And I talk heard that. I talked to a guy whose assignment was to go through all those old auditing sessions on John Travolta and find stuff they could use against him because they were worried that he was he was gonna go over the wall. Right in the piece in the film, The one thing I found that was disturbing was that there are celebrities and wealthy public figures who tie a certain amount of their money millions of dollars to this organization, a second tier, if you will, and this is my description the second tier if you will. Are you know, middle Americans, middle income who often go into debt, often go into dangerous amounts of debt and unwise amounts of debt in order to pay for these ordering courses for them to give money to the church. And then there's people who are poor, who have nothing, who wind up trading in kind services. They become you know, they become like a labor force for them, and then they get forty cents an hour, acording to the film, and and and they're doing a lot of work that benefits other people. In the film, they're saying that these people are maintaining the hangar of cruises airplanes. Well, not only maintained it. What they did was refurbish it. They built all the furniture, they painted it. They you know, they essentially took an empty hangar and made it into an office in a place for his planes and all these elaborate Have you ever been in his hangar burbank Well, and he's got you know these you know, big the cows and stuff like that, you know, banners hanging down. It's it's a pretty swank environment. And they handcrafted a limousine for him and oversaw the reconstruction of his tour bus, and they, you know, refurbished his house. And these are people who are paid fifty dollars a week. Many of them joined as children, so you know, they're impoverished and they there, they have no place to go they have, you know, and if if they do, they don't know what they were then But of course maybe it may be the case that their families and all are in the church and if they left, none of those people would ever speak to them. And do you think the people who were the beneficiaries of this kind of stuff, do they know what's happening. There's no question that Tom Cruise knows what's going on inside the Sea Org. And I hold Tom to account. I single him out in particular. And because they're only two ways that the abuses that we chronicle in the movie and in my book, there are only two ways that they can be addressed, and one is that the I. R. S. Decides well, maybe we should re examine that tax exemption that we were bludgeoned into given them. In explain for people who don't know. But this is a fascinating part of the film. It was during the time that Hubbard was alive or was the settlement reached after Hubbard does after he died, and and apparently he had a brigade and had been raising a lot of money, and he had and he had a lot of cash at his disposal and was just shelling the I R S and litigation to maintain their status. And finally the IRS just caved and said, well, here's the situation that described would have David Muscavage found himself in after Hubbard died. Uh he wrestled control of this organization. And Hubbard had decided not to pay the taxes, and so by the Church of Scientology was a billion dollars in arrears and it didn't have a billion dollars. And so this was an existential moment for the church. They had to get a tax exemption. And moreover, the I R S hated them because, you know, in the eighties Hubbard had infiltrated all these you know, the Justice Department, the I R S, Food and Drug Administration had all these Scientology spies inside the government until the FBI broke it open and what was called Operations Snow White, and twelve people went to prison, including Hubbard's wife. So the I R S, among other government agencies did not look kindly on the Church of Scientology. So how do you just imagine how you would go about getting a tax exemption from the I R S. Well, the Scientology way was to launch twenty four hundred lawsuits against the I R S and individual agents, to hire private investigators to follow agents around to go to conventions where they might be drinking too much or fooling around. I don't have a billion dollars to pay the taxes, but I've got fifty million to lop some grenades. Yes, yeah, and so and they they they they won, and they wanted. My personal feeling it is twofold one is I think that the I R S just did cave because the deal that the deal on the table was, will give you the exemption and and all those lawsuits will go away? And they did. And so did they say, well, will we'll give you the exemption to take away those lassus? Would you have to pay us some amount of this money in a million dollars? And that's all that's the I R S that's fired. And moreover, there was such an overwhelming exemption. The church has manifold different entities, you know, but even Hubbard's novels are considered to be scripture and taxes and uh, in the church now has the authority to determine which parts of itself should be tax exempt. Who was it in the film? If I remember correctly, there's someone I think there's an individual use site who says to Hubbard early in his career, the only way you're going to get rich is if you start a religious They were about ten people he said that too, and uh, you know, I think that Hubbard really, I think he really did believe that. But let me get back to that question of you know, just to touch back on Tom Cruise before we finish that, if the if the I r S re examined after the licking it took from from scientology, if it decided to go back and re examine that, that might force change inside the church. But I haven't seen any evidence that the r S has the appetite to do this. Almost the Senator on the West Coast, the Senator Ron Wyden, is looking into this, and so you know, that's a possible. But the other way that change and reform could come in scientology is that some of the celebrity megaphones turn around in the other direction. And demand change. And nobody has benefited more from Scientology than Tom Cruise. Nobody is more identified in the public with the Church of Scientology than Tom Cruise. Nobody has brought lured more people into the church than Tom Cruise. If you ask people name one member of the Church of Scientology, that's the one and Uh and moreover, it's a powerful I mean if you look at you know, he was the number one box office star, so he had volta than uh than Tom Cruise, and you know, and also Will Smith who started a Scientology school. Although he says he's not a scientologist, he was one of the time he was number one. So you have one to three the most powerful actors in among the moral And if you're a young actor standing out in central casting waiting to get maybe he's not a bad idea. If I stopped by this center, well, when you're standing in line, they'll be passing out brochure saying how to get an agent, how to get ahead and the business. Come to the celebrity center where to make that direct link. Yes, and he also back in the old days, the acting UH schools like the Beverly Hills Playhouse was run by Yes who was my teacher. He was apparently a wonderful teacher, and he was a scientologist. And I think when so many of these young people they when they come, you know, it is a young person's game when they get into it. So many of the people that went into scientology, and this is true of anybody that tries to become an actor. Many people who try to become an actor, they leave high school. They don't go to college. You have to go right away. Nearly everyone we're talking about is un education. And so you're in your vulnerable intellectually vulnerable, and and also you are risking everything. Your friends are going off they're going to get law degrees and stuff like that, and you are out in you know, Hollywood, eating dog food, hoping to be a movie star. There's a sense of inadequacy that you haven't filled in the great blanks that all your friends are doing. And and so you alongcome scientologists, which says, why bother none of that? Yeah, we can you can supersede all that because well we will get you. You will you will learn the secrets of the universe, and you'll acquire superhuman powers. And that's and also just being noticed at all at that level is, you know, very powerful, because you know, I'm sure you've done this a million times. But I remember once when I was out in l a and I was a Norman Lear's company and I I walked into a room in the lobby and there were about forty guys who were blond and six ft two and extremely handsome, and and I felt small and brown and uh. And you know, but there was a sign saying no actors passed this point. And I was able to walk past this point and all those blue eyes in my direction, and uh, and I thought, one of those guys, one of those guys is going to have his life change, and everybody else is gonna go home and some of them become lawnmowers or something like that. But that's the risk to have the Church of Scientology come along, maybe in that same room and passing out brochure is saying that we can help you. And and by the way, on the brochure that might have a picture of Tom Cruise or somebody like that. It's a very powerful lure. If you also appreciate lauren writes work. There's a lot more to consume. Nine books, five plays, countless articles, the documentary film based on his book Going Clear, Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief is currently available on HBO on Demand and HBO Go. And if you're ever in Austin you might be able to catch him playing keyboard in the Blues collective. Who Do Right said of playing in a band quote, I decided a while ago that I would only do things that are really important or really fun. This is really fun. This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing.