Pearse Redmond of Porkins Policy Review joins the show. We discuss his monthly series Porkins Great Game and the series he does with the UK’s Tom Secker CIA and Hollywood. We talk about the CIA’s involvement in the entertainment industry and deleterious effects it has had on society. Later we talk about Pearse’s research into the OJ Simpson murder trial and the several interviews he conducted with journalist Stephen Singular who wrote the book Legacy of Deception: An Investigation of Mark Fuhrman and Racism in the L.A.P.D.
James Evan Pilato is our latest guest as we dissect the 2009 Disney UFO adventure Race to Witch Mountain. We start off looking at Disney as a corporation – its long standing interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials, the connections to government agencies and their recent takeover of the fantasy genre. We then get into Race to Witch Mountain itself – a strange blend of a kids’ movie, a love letter to the UFO culture and an homage to spy thrillers especially Enemy of the State. Next, we examine the deliberately hyperreal nature of the film and dwell on the effects of a fantasy movie set in the real world with real people. A children’s movie about ‘illegal aliens’ being pursued under the Patriot Act is not Hollywood’s typical output.
Then the conversation moves on to the mysterious CIA involvement in Race to Witch Mountain, which the CIA themselves deny but the director Andy Fickman insists took place. After discussing the CIA Inspector General’s Report on their Engagement with the Entertainment Industry we move on to the question of infiltration of the UFO culture, and the use of UFOlogy to infiltrate alternative cultures more broadly. We round off looking at the effect of films like this on people’s perceptions and expectations of government secrecy, and we each try to answer the question ‘are you a believer?’.
Adam from Themes and Memes is our guest to talk about the 2015 action comedy American Ultra. We start by trying to define this film, which is an intense mixture of cartoonish ultra violence, CIA covert operations, romance, comedy and horror, looking at the dissociating nature of this blend. The intentions of screenwriter Max Landis and the director Nima Nourizadeh are discussed and we ask whether they were reaching out to the CIA or trying to flatter them by making MKULTRA seem cool to stoners and young people. We go on to look at the prominence of female and often maternal characters in modern spy fiction, particular in CIA-assisted productions and ask what difference this makes to how these films and TV shows portray the CIA as a whole, not just MKULTRA and similar experiments.
We also examined a bizarre weed-based marketing campaign for the film at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con and ask whether like the Pentagon and NASA, the CIA now sees Comic-Con as a key networking and recruitment opportunity. The conversation rounds of discussing the director Nima Nourizadeh’s father Ali Reza, who bears all the hallmarks of being a CIA asset (complete with mysterious name changes and working for Voice of America). The presence of footage of Langley and the prominent use of the CIA logo suggests that at the least the CIA were aware of American Ultra and approved use of these for the film, so we ask whether they were involved in the making of the film and if so, why.
Jay Dyer joins us for this episode where we analyse the 2009 comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats, loosely based on Jon Ronson’s book of the same name. It tells the story of a journalist who is inducted into the world of psychic soldiers during the Iraq war. The movie goes on to explain some of the history behind the First Earth Battalion, an experimental Pentagon unit devoted to developing a new generation of super soldier informed by the hippy and New Age movements. We examine what the film leaves out, especially in the form of MKULTRA and similar CIA projects and experiments with similar aims, and ask whether the purpose was not to ask ‘How could love and peace help win wars?’ but to weaponise New Age philosophy and the New Age movement.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is the final movie in the George Clooney/Grant Heslov series before they took the full plunge and made Argo with the help of the CIA. We look at whether Goats – Heslov’s directorial debut – was the final step in their long-term overture to the CIA. The fact that Goats reduces the CIA’s involvement in such projects to a single scene, and was distributed by none other than Overture Films are strong hints towards this. We also map out the evidence and implications of state sponsorship of the entire Goats project, from Ronson’s original book and documentary series through to the Hollywood version. The use of technical advisors who were part of these Pentagon units back in the 70s/80s and who were ‘reactivated’ to help fight the War on Terror implies that at least the DOD, if not the CIA, were in favour of this film. We round off by pondering the plausibility of the remote viewing phenomenon.
Tom Secker and I recently sat down to talk with Ed Opperman all about Matt Alford’s new book The Writer With No Hands. The book deals with the bizarre “death” of Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore and his mysterious links to the CIA. We also talk about the second season of The CIA and Hollywood, and some recent Jeffrey Epstein developments.
Aaron Franz joins us to discuss the 2002 biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which tells the story of game show producer and host Chuck Barris. Barris claims that while becoming a TV star he was recruited by and worked for the CIA as an assassin, killing a total of 33 people. In this episode we analyse this claim, which has been dismissed by the Agency as a ludicrous fantasy. We examine Barris’ true life history, focusing in on his marriage to Lyn Levy – the daughter of one of the founders of CBS – and his incredibly selfish relationship with their daughter Della. None of this appears in the film so taking this into account we consider whether Barris was a CIA assassin, a psychopathic fabricator or an emotionally warped narcissist (or all of these things rolled into one). If Barris truly was a CIA agent then what was his job? Was he an assassin, or did they employ him to ‘slay the audience’ by developing the prototypes for reality TV?
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is also notable for being George Clooney’s directorial debut, and a production that languished in development hell for years before he became involved and began pulling strings to ensure the film got made. We consider whether the movie was one of Clooney’s attempts to gain the attention and approval of the CIA, and whether he too thought that Barris’ TV career was the real mission for the Agency. We examine Clooney’s self-appointed role as Chuck’s ‘defence lawyer’, his obsession with goats and why he employed theatrical visual tricks throughout the production. We round off comparing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to The Recruit, as both films show The Farm (the CIA’s semi-secret agent training facility) and portray the protagonist being inducted and initiated into that covert world.
I had the great pleasure of once again joining the one and only Chuck Ochelli on his fine radio program The Ochelli Effect. This time around we discussed the recent mass shooting in Orlando and each of us offered up our thoughts and analysis on the massacre. Chuck and I also went into great detail about the ever bizarre (and underreported) Jeffrey Epstein case. I tell Chuck about some new research that has come my way relating to the case, as well as those moving in Epstein’s circles, and some of the “expose” books that are due out soon. We inevitably do some good old fashioned Trump bashing. Chuck and I ask the question: Why the hell is no one reporting on Trump’s close personal connection to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein? We also briefly talk about the new season of The CIA and Hollywood.
We welcome Ed Opperman to the series and discuss the 2005 docudrama Good Night, and Good Luck which retells the story of the 1954 confrontation between senator Joe McCarthy and television journalist Ed Murrow of CBS. McCarthy was pursuing Communists within the State Department and other government agencies and innocent people were getting caught in the crossfire, creating a climate of suspicion, mistrust and hostility. Murrow used his prime time series See It Now to attack McCarthy and the culture and mentality of McCarthyism, showing the senator to be a hypocrite who persecuted his targets.
This is the story that is told in Good Night, and Good Luck, a film born out of the creative relationship between George Clooney and Grant Heslov. In this episode we take a sideways look at the historical events and ask why Clooney and Heslov chose to lionise not just Murrow but the whole See it Now/CBS crew. We try to persuade Ed of an alternative interpretation of events, with Murrow not quite being the heroic counter-establishment figure he is in the film and CBS being a rotten media organisation with deep ties to the CIA. We then explore how almost everyone involved in Good Night, and Good Luck had either already made a film with CIA assistance, or went on to do so. We round off talking about Clooney’s bizarre Las Vegas connection, E Michael Burke, George Steinbrenner and (inevitably) Donald Trump.
In this first episode of the new season Pearse and I discuss the 1958 spy drama The Quiet American, adapted from the novel by Graham Greene. We focus in on the role of Air Force and CIA officer Ed Lansdale’s relationship with the film-maker Joseph Mankiewicz, and how the CIA were involved in assisting Mankiewicz the first major American movie to be filmed in Vietnam. Mankiewicz met Lansdale in Vietnam while doing research for the movie and, apparently unaware that Lansdale is one of the inspirations for the Pyle character in the original book, befriended him. Lansdale later reviewed the script and wrote to Mankiewicz encouraging the changes he had made to the storyline and characters.
Another angle is Graham Greene’s transition from an MI6 agent in World War 2 to an anti-establishment author who was spied by the FBI for supposed Communist affiliations. We look at how his original novel of The Quiet American was an excellent critique of post-WW2 American imperialism, secret warfare and so-called ‘humanitarian interventions’, which was butchered in the Hollywood version. In particular the character of Pyle is turned from a bookish, virginal ‘war nerd’ into the charming all-American version played by real-life war hero Audie Murphy. Likewise, while the original book has Fowler’s worst suspicions about Pyle being proven right (Pyle is sponsoring terrorism), the film changes this so Fowler is fooled by the Communists into betraying Pyle.
We round off this episode by briefly discussing the far superior (and not state-sponsored) 2002 film version directed by Philip Noyce and starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. This version is not only better written, acted and directed but is also, crucially, a faithful adaptation of the original book.
We will begin releasing season 2 of The CIA and Hollywood this weekend, and to give you a taste of what’s to come we have produced a linkchart combining data and connections from both season 1 and the forthcoming season 2. New additions include The Rock, Angelina Jolie and former Sony executive Amy Pascal, along with self-confessed (though officially denied) CIA agent Chuck Barris. Much of this season’s material links up with the people and organisations we discussed in season one, including the two production companies Participant Media and Relativity Media.
As with the previous linkchart, embedded in the pdf are links to various resources – interviews, documents, making of featurettes and other sources of information for those who want to know more about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood, and of course where Pearse and I get the information we use. The 8 films we examine in this second season are: The Quiet American (1958), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Men who Stare at Goats (2009), American Ultra (2015), Race to Witch Mountain (2009), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Salt (2010).
The linkchart is available as a high-resolution PNG file or as an even higher-resolution PDF, which has the source links embedded within it.
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