The Big Picture - Bonus Episode: Errol Morris on ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ Donald Trump, LSD, and America

Episode Date: November 27, 2020

The legendary documentarian Errol Morris has a new film called 'My Psychedelic Love Story' premiering on Showtime this week. He returns to the show to talk with Sean about a wide array of topics, from psychedelics to psychotics. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Errol Morris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fantasy, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with Errol Morris. The legendary documentarian has a new film premiering on November 27th on Showtime called My Psychedelic Love Story. I last spoke to Errol Morris in 2017 about his hybrid documentary narrative series Wormwood. It was a fascinating conversation. Since then, he has made a controversial film about Steve Bannon called American Dharma. He participated in a documentary series on FX that was a quasi-adaptation of his book, A Wilderness of Error. This chronicled the violent crimes and subsequent decades of legal proceedings in the Jeffrey McDonald murder case.

And now this new film, which focuses on Joanna Harcourt Smith, a, quote, flower power teenager in the 60s who lived with the Rolling Stones in france partied with salvador dali and eventually became the common law wife a famed psychologist and a fervent advocate for psychedelic drugs timothy leary morris's movie feels of a piece with the fog of war his masterpiece portrait of former secretary of defense robert mcnamara and the known unknown a companion movie from 2014 that zeroes in on donald rumsfeld who also held that same job about a half century later morris is one of the smartest and funniest chroniclers of our lives and our culture, and I really love his movies. If you're new to his work, I recommend starting with The Thin Blue Line, which briefly comes up in our chat here, and then you can bounce around

from there, from Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control to Mr. Death to Gates of Heaven. You really can't miss with any of his movies. He's mischievous, curious, one of a kind as a filmmaker. My Psychedelic Love Story is one of his most sensual films and it's bittersweet too. Joanna Harcourt Smith died just six weeks ago at 74 years old. So here's Errol Morris in a rollicking conversation on the film and a whole lot more. Hope you enjoy. I am delighted to be rejoined by the great Errol Morris. Errol, thank you for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Errol, this film feels of a piece with the fog of war and the unknown known to me. These memory pieces with these elusive and almost mythical characters.

Why did you make this movie? One thing, what you just said is music to my ears. I've been trying to explain in a number of interviews. I'm not exactly sure why. Part because it interests me, the similarities between my psychedelic love story and the fog of war. So hearing you say it unprompted, thank you. You're welcome. I'm glad I picked up on that. No, absolutely. The result of making certain oddball choices, fog of war came out of the Interrotron, my interviewing machine, and this idea of first-person storytelling.

I'm not sure which came first. I think the Interrotron came before this obsession with the first person, although they kind of happened at the same time. My film, Mr. Death, about an electric chair repairman and Holocaust denier Fred Lutcher Jr. would have been an Interrotron film, save for the fact that the material became so controversial. It's really interesting.

I wanted it to be a one-character film, but I couldn't because it involved Holocaust denial. And as it turns out, I am a Jew. And I believe that the Holocaust happened. I've never had any reason to doubt that it happened. But I've always been fascinated by people denying stuff. Because after all, it seems to be, particularly now in our day and age, it seems to be the central element of human existence. All you have to do is look at the results from this last presidential election to understand that denial is sort of what we're all about. When I made The Fog of War, it was my opportunity. I saw it as an opportunity to really indulge in first-person storytelling.

I would not interview anybody else. There's a reviewer who asked me after the fog of war came out, are you aware that you interviewed only one person? Yeah, I was aware. Yes. Thank you for asking. And what happens when you interview one person? Odd things happen. At least for me, they happen. All of a sudden, it becomes a very different kind of movie. In McNamara's case, it became a movie about a guy trying to figure out himself, who he is, who he was. Was he a good man, a bad man?

It became an investigation of self, by self. And that's, to me, a really fascinating story in and of itself. People have a lot of trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that that documentary can be a lot of different kinds of things. You can have mysteries like the Thin Blue Line. You can seek to solve the mystery of who killed the cop. Was it this guy or that guy? But this is a different kind of mystery. And the compelling nature of the story is not the redemptive part of it.

I don't think there is a redemptive part to the fog of war. Vietnam war is never going to be redeemed as such. Something that I demonstrated against as a young man, a horror that can never be redeemed. It's something that this country did that is, in my view, despicable and remains despicable. And then I found another character who very powerfully is involved in self-examination. I think it's fair to say that Joanna sees herself as a mystery that she herself is trying to solve. Why did Leary abandon her?

Why did he turn on her? Was she a tool of the CIA? Was she being manipulated by forces that she could not understand? Was her friend Dennis Martino a double agent? Did he betray her? And on and on and on and on and on, going back to her relationships with her very, very strange family. I finished the film yesterday The final version I'd be happy to show you the final version of it I'd like to see it

I've seen some version You've seen some version It's like some pig out of Charlotte's web A version We've been working on it constantly This was done so quickly Much more quickly than anything else I've ever done. We were asked by Showtime, will you show it at the AFI Fest and at Doc NYC?

And we said, sure. And the movie had not been color corrected. The score had not been recorded. Now it has been. If you want me to send you a copy of the ultimate version, I'd be happy to do so. It has stuff in it that we had to take out earlier about Joanna's family. Very near the end of her life, she asked me to remove five minutes from the film. And shortly before she died, she said, put it back. And so we did, we removed it and we put it back, but you haven't seen the version with it back. I would like to see it. Hopefully I will be able to. I'm so interested in her,

you choosing her as a subject. You mentioned the thin blue line. I think a lot of people associate your work with getting to the truth of something but this strikes me as a movie that is almost disinterested in the truth and more in the way that she sees her life that's absolutely true i don't i don't think i'm disinterested in the truth i think i'm still as interested in the truth as ever making worm Wormwood, you hunkered down. I've been writing as well. In fact, I wrote a book about the Jeffrey McDonald case. It was turned into a series. I wanted to ask you about that. I'd be happy to talk about it. Alas, I think it does not have very much to do with my book.

That was part of what I wanted to ask you. I'm happy to talk about it. But Wormwood taught me something, maybe I knew it all along, that you can pursue the truth and if you're lucky. In The Thin Blue Line, I was lucky. I was diligent. I was dogged, blah, blah, blah. But I was also lucky. And I could unravel a mystery. In Wormwood, yes, I can more or less unravel a mystery. But there are elements that I can't touch. Why?

And that's of interest. It's not like that the truth isn't touch. Why? And that's of interest. It's not like that the truth isn't there. Truth is there, but you may never be able to access it. And why? Evidence gets lost, gets corrupted, gets destroyed. People misinterpret the evidence or they deny it or they allied it in some way. It's interesting, as talking with a friend of mine, about Rashomon, of all things. I wrote a little bit about Rashomon for the New York Times, the Rashomon of Rashomon. Your remembrance of a film about remembrance? There you go, exactly. But I take exception to the received view about Rashomon. People talk about it as an essay on the

subjectivity of truth. There is no truth. Truth is how we perceive truth. Truth is how we see truth. Quintessentially postmodern idea, I don't see Rashomon that way at all. I see it as a movie about the denial of truth, about the hiding of truth, the avoidance of truth. If you like, it could be a movie about lying and misrepresentation. So here we are in an age where it seems to be the central feature of our age is just overt self-deception, delusion, lying. Maybe it was always true, but it seems more true than ever. I wrote an editorial. I'm sorry if I'm all over the place. You can tell me. No, we're talking about a big theme,

which I think is very relevant to all of your work, but especially the new one too. So please continue. Yeah, I wrote an editorial for The Globe about Trump and lying. And I make references I often do to movies, this time to Dr. Strangelove. And this scene between George C. Scott and Peter Sellers, General Buck Turgidson and President Muffley. Are you referring to, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair must to that sequence?

That's at the very end of the sequence. But the part that always fascinated me is George C. Scott is trying to read this transcript of things said by Sterling Hayden, Colonel Ripper, General Ripper, excuse me, sorry, General Ripper, Jack D. Ripper, and he's going on about the precious bodily fluids or whatever. And Peter Sellers says, let me see that. They hand him that and he looks at it and he says, it's obvious. This person is psychotic. And what I so much liked about it, yes, it's obvious, but not so obvious that it's obvious, evidently. To me, it's obvious that Donald Trump is psychotic.

Or if you don't want to use any kind of psychobabble or DSM-5 nomenclature, he's looney tunes. He's insane. He's absolutely batshit crazy. And people don't talk about it in that way. Well, I'm having trouble understanding. It seems inconsistent with that. He said this just before he said that. It was P and not P and then something that seemed really off the wall. He's obviously trying to manipulate us in some way. There's a kind of craft behind all of this. No, no, it's Looney Tunes. We're in the grip of someone who is bat shit crazy. Hopefully not for long.

He's going to be bat shit crazy for a long, long time. Hopefully we will not be subjected to it in the same way that we have during the last four years or so. But what I tried to point out, the Washington Post can say he's lied 20,000 plus times. But to me, that's not the interesting question. The question is, what does he think? Does he really believe that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's? People spend all of this amount of time, they'll compare this photograph with that photograph,

this on-the-scene observer with that on-the-scene observer, and they'll say, well, you know, there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that his inaugural crowd was not as big as Obama's. But that's not the point. What is in his head? What does he think? Does he believe his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's? Does he believe he won the 2020 election?

And here's the really, truly horrifying thought. People don't want to deal with it because it's scary. Yes, he does believe these things in my maybe not so humble view. But yes, he believes all of this nonsense. And why? Because he's batshit crazy. But so how does that reflect? It feels like you're trying to essentially understand people's different perceptions of reality.

Obviously, Donald Trump's perception of reality is is downright worrying is confusing worrying you say yes uh but beyond that scared of war with iran is are you are you are you one of these shrinking violets who doesn't want to you know people go to some kind of mega nuclear confrontation. I'd like to avoid it. Are you one of those? Candy ass? Let's just say I'm not a Buck Turgison. There you go.

So with that in mind, though, I mean, why does that idea fascinate you specifically? For all people, because I feel like in many ways, what Joanna Harcourt Smith sees is also, you know, it's hard to know what is true, how to actually get inside someone's mind and understand their perception of reality. I think it's hard. It may even be possible, but I am interested in it. You know, for someone who's seen psychiatrists since I was a little boy, I wouldn't be here if not for psychiatry or for a number of really nice psychiatrists that helped me not to just blow my brains out over the year. I find that enterprise of trying to figure out who you are really interesting. And I also find it really interesting how little purchase I have ultimately on who I am.

Who in hell am I? of recording what the Interitron gave me and what this first-person idea gave me as a way of burrowing into something. I'm not even sure what. Sticking someone in front of the lens, talking to them, encouraging them to talk to me, and uncovering something unexpected. It's not even that I know what I'm looking for. Maybe it is even quasi-psychiatric. As a subject of so much psychiatric intervention through my entire life, maybe I wanted to flip the tables and become the psychiatrist for a change.

Whatever. I don't see myself as a social worker. I must be a really bad social worker if I'm a social worker. But Elsa Dorfman, who is a close friend of mine who died, spent the last week of her life repeatedly watching the b-side and taking comfort from it and joanna film you made about her that's the film that i made about elsa dorfman and joanna the week that she died watched my psychedelic love story five, six times and took enormous comfort from it. And I take enormous comfort from that, that maybe I did something

that helped somebody else, that gave someone something. I used to love this experimental novel I still do by Virginia Woolf called The Waves. No one ever reads it, or very few people read it. They read To the Lighthouse, but they don't read The Waves. And she talks in The Waves of netting a fin in a waste of water. It's an expression that I've always liked, of maybe catching the ineffable. And if I'm involved in that kind of pursuit, that's terrific.

Of capturing something that really can't really be captured, maybe even in words on film, of creating a portrait of a person. My feeling was that Elsa and Joanna felt that I had captured something about them, that I had preserved in aspects, celluloid, whatever digital media I had captured something about them that was important to them and gave them comfort at the very end of their lives. That's some, is that why you, is that why you made those films?

Did you think that were they sort of, were they efforts to help someone understand their own life or were they beyond where the purpose is beyond that? I think they were beyond that. I, I loved Elsa. Elsa had been a close friend, both her and her husband,

Harvey Silverglade for years. And I was always amazed by Elsa's art. I found it mysterious. There's a review that came out in the Boston Globe that infuriated me where they said, well, what does Elsa do? She just pushes a button, doesn't she? It's the kind of amazingly stupid thing you can say about photography. Yes, it's true.

She does push a button. But somehow, why is it that her work looks different from everybody else's? And why has she captured something really unique and extraordinary in her work? And I had the good fortune to have my photograph taken by Richard Avedon. And there's something about Avedon and Elsa very, very close. Avedon was interested in people. He wasn't there solely to take your picture. Yes, that was part of the deal. But he was there to talk to you and to engage with you in some way.

And the amazing thing, and this was true about Elsa as well as Avedon, you would be engaged in conversation with them and then all of a sudden the flash would go off. You had forgotten that you were there to have your picture taken. It happened while you were thinking about something else altogether. This idea of capturing someone in media res or in a way that's unexpected. Joanna is so interesting, such a romantic figure, so honest.

Well, honest is a strange word because it suggests truthful. And it's not so much about truthfulness i would say open she is so open and willing to explore things and so much alive on camera i mean she was a very attractive woman woman judging from her pictures and all of the men that she drove crazy when she was in her 20s and 30s, but she still remained an extraordinary, attractive woman. She was so very much there and alive. It's hard for me to even wrap my head around the fact that someone who was so much alive for me is actually dead no longer with us it's almost perverse that she died in the time that she did just as the film was about to appear you know one of the things that struck me about it it's obviously right there in the title but

it really does feel like your first love story your first story about this kind of love um is that something that you had been wanting to put on screen in this way? No. I mean, I did this first person with Sondra London years ago about her infatuation with psycho killers. Is that love? I don't know. Can you fall in love with a psycho killer?

A lot of people do. Why not? That is true. Let me ask you about... It may not be a good thing to do. I wouldn't recommend it. If you're thinking of falling in love with a psycho killer, I would suggest you think about it very carefully before you engage. That's apt advice. It seems like Joanna came to you because of Wormwood and because of the question of psychedelics in Wormwood. Was that the case? Yeah, it was part of it.

And her Love of My Son series. I was a pharmacopoeia. She loved his stuff. She loved my stuff. You get the father and son combo platter. What is your relationship to psychedelics? Did you dabble back in the day? My childhood psychiatrist told me that I was on the edge, which might have been true.

I'm not sure the edge of what, but the edge. I should avoid LSD. She had done studies about the effect of LSD on children, and she scared me. She didn't scare me to the extent that I've never tried every other psychedelic because I have maybe not every single one, but a lot. Um, but I've never, I've never tried LSD. I'd like to actually, what the hell? I'd like to take some time, you know? Yeah. Let's go.

Let's get, let's get Errol Morris some LSD who can help out there. Whoever's listening. Well, I have a personal relative who probably knows where I can find some. I suspect your son knows where to find some LSD if he needs to. How does that inform the movie then? Because it feels like the movie,

her memories feel, in some respects, kind of compromised potentially by the effects of the LSD. And then how do you make that reflected in the movie? Wait a minute. There's this crazy thing that people say. For example, this crazy thing you just said. Are people's memories compromised by the use of psychedelics? Here's a clue. People's memories are compromised endlessly by the most grotesque self-deception of all. Embarrassing. What's interesting often is the enormous disparity. I was asked by the New York

Times, they were writing an article about Fred Wiseman and Fred Wiseman's newest film. And this is City Hall you're referring to? City Hall I'm referring to. So how many Fred Wiseman films have I seen? Maybe 40. Good number so that I have, I think, a big idea. Sure. I think you get the gist at this point. I get the idea. Also, I know Fred. And Fred is one of my... We have this argument, by the way, which I love. I constantly call him the king of misanthropic cinema.

And he says, I am not the king of misanthropic cinema. You are the king of misanthropic cinema. You are the king of misanthropic cinema. And it goes back and forth. I was struck watching City Hall of how, and this is part of someone's art, and I think that's what makes art great, really. You feel like you're in an ant colony. You could be some kind of infernal entomologist observing this just endlessly rote, repetitive behavior that goes on before your eyes,

and occasionally something leaks out, some kind of angst or absurdity or insanity. Fred, after all, I learned it when I first came to visit him 40 years ago in where I am now, Cambridge, Massachusetts. I realized he was in love with the absurd. Does he like filmmaking? Not so much. Does he like existentialist theater?

The theater of the absurd? Mwah! Do you? Yeah! Of course. I love film. Do you? Yeah. Of course. I love film. I still do. It amazes me.

I don't love all film, but I like a lot of it. How people see themselves, how we see them, how they should see themselves, given what's out there in the world, or at least what we think is out there in the world, is always amazing. And Joanne is unusual, even unique. It's not about self-deception. It's about her knowing that she doesn't know. It's about her being mystified by her own life and the circumstances of her life. She asked me just before, I guess a month before she died, to take one section of the film out. And I did. Of course I did of course I did and the section of the film was about her family it's five minutes of

nightmare do you want me to send you the most recent version I can even point you to where that section is in the film to make it seem fine I suspect I'll figure out what it is having seen the other version already but I took figure out what it is having seen the other version already.

But I took it out. And just before she died, she said that was a mistake. Put it back in. I said, of course. And I did. It was interesting because it was this moment where she was fearful of her own storytelling. I don't want to betray any kind of trust or secret, but she was dying and she knew she was dying. It happened very, very fast.

It's true. A lot of people with cancer, you think they're going to beat it. And you think they're in remission, and then they're not. And they go downhill very, very, very fast. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a perfect example of someone who I had hoped would live forever. And her death was shocking because I think at least a certain segment of the people, including myself, wished that it was not true that she would be there. Somehow her will to go on and to live seems so strong that it could overcome death itself. But of course, nothing overcomes death. We don't ever have as much control as we want to have.

Errol, very quickly, I wanted to ask you about American Dharma, which is a film that you made a couple of years ago about Steve Bannon. And the reception of that movie was, I would say, more complicated than the reception of some of your other films. How are you feeling about it in the aftermath of it? And frankly, in the aftermath of what's been happening in the country since the movie was made? some utterly amazing, nasty reviews that came out right after American Dharma premiered at the Venice Film Festival. David Remnick at the New Yorker had just, it's taken as a central example of cancel culture had disinvited Bannon from the New Yorker festival because of a series of complaints by writers at the New Yorker who just did not want him there people attacked me for the movie and they attack me as though they had never seen

any other movie I'd ever made, which is probably true. If the idea is that you're trying to tell a story of what's inside someone's head, do I find Bannon's views pernicious? Yes. I often say my problem with the left is they're not left enough for me it's not I'm a secret proud boy Jewish proud boy that's looking to see you know the right

victorious in America I made the movie and this just again shows you how really inherently stupid I am thinking that I was contributing to the discussion of what was going on. There's a moment in American Dharma that I'm particularly proud of and I think captures it better than anything, where I say to Bannon, directly to Bannon, that Trump is the fuck you president. It's in the movie. He's the fuck you president. Fuck you to everything. Fuck you to climate science. Fuck you to anything and everything you could possibly imagine. That ultimately,

I was making a movie about how these people are offering nothing except destruction. That the agenda, the inherent agenda is about destroying the world around us, not building anything, not even building anything except maybe the wall. It's hard even to see the wall as anything other than destruction. I was doing ADR with Bannon. He had to record. I noticed that he just can't say the word scythe. It cuts through things like he says scythe. And so I said, it's not scythe, it's scythe. It cuts through things like he says scythe. And so I said, it's not scythe, it's scythe. And he said, are you sure? And I said, yeah, yeah, kind of sure, scythe. Like he probably would like to say that he would love to cut people's heads off

with a scythe or scythe, whatever you prefer. So we re-recorded him saying scythe. Why do I care about this stuff? Because I didn't want it to be about how Bannon is ill-educated or whatever. So he's reading a book on the Great Wall of China. And they go, oh, they really kind of like walls you know don't they so I look at Ben and I say you know it worked he says what do you mean I said no Mexicans in China

and he really he scowled at me like he wanted to kill me. But what I was saying is actually no Mexicans in China. I don't, you know, I've been to China many times and you just, you just don't want that many Mexicans. Do you, you know, you mentioned Fred, Fred Luchter and the film that you made years ago. And I feel like that American Dharma has something in common with it in terms of turning the camera onto someone that we know you disagree with and that in some respects you find abhorrent. But I don't think that there was a reception to that film like there was to American Dharma. Well, funny you should mention Mr. Deathpp and Fred A. Lutcher Jr.

And I kind of like Fred, you know. I don't have that many Holocaust deniers that I talk to. And I had this idea like McNamara and all these other ideas that I would interview one and only one person. I would interview Fred. And that's what I did. And we put together a cut. This is quite relevant. You put together a cut and I showed it, I call it the junior college down the road, Harvard. And so we show it, my friend Alfred Gazzetti has this class. And we show this rough cut of Mr. Depp. It was really horrifying. There were some students that thought I was a Nazi, a neo-Nazi. Nazi, neo-Nazi, make your pick. I'm not old enough to be a real Nazi,

but I could be a neo-Nazi. And there were other people who wondered whether the holocaust had happened this is fucking harvard university the same university that produced the great jared kushner um they wondered you know like whether the holocaust had happened you know maybe anne frank was a hoax too. Who knows? Because of the way that you portrayed Fred and the way that the film was structured? Because there was no one there telling them what the fucking thing.

Right. Because that's what we know higher education is all about. It's having someone telling you what the fucking thing. God forbid that anybody should have a thought on their own. And so after this experience, I thought, I can't release this movie. I just can't release it. First of all, it would be irresponsible. If this movie makes people think that the Holocaust hadn't happened.

You know, what do I say to my mom? You know, for example, you know, my mom had enough trouble when I was interviewing mass murderers. You know, Holocaust deniers. You know, you can't take them to shul. And so I have to interview all these people telling you what to think. That's why I look at the movie as a failure, kind of. It was a movie made out of fear where I interviewed all of these Jewish activists telling you that the Holocaust happened and Fred is full of shit. Robert Jan van Pelt and several others.

And as a result, no one thought the Holocaust hadn't happened. And I guess I'm grateful for that. But it wasn't the movie that I really wanted to make. Fred, here's a great line from Fred. I'm down in the death chamber in Tennessee. Fred already had gotten a bad reputation for the Holocaust denial, not the capital punishment stuff. That's fine.

Everybody loves a good execution. But people knew, the warden of the prison in Tennessee knew that Jews had gotten kind of a little bent out of shape because of this stuff, and they didn't want any of the prison personnel filmed with Fred. So they brought us down to the death chamber, and they locked us in the death chamber with Fred. We had to send out for lunch. You order pizza from the death chamber.

A last meal of sorts. A last meal of sorts. And there's the death chamber. A last meal of sorts. A last meal of sorts. And there's the electric chair that Fred designed, patent pending, as Fred proudly told us, with its own drip pan, which he engineered. You know, I always wondered whether it was self-basting and so I'm

there with this photographer Bob Richardson and and his gaffer Ian Kincaid and my photographer Newbar Alexanian and we're all down there in the death chamber.

And Fred smokes like a chimney. You know, he's gone through six packs a day. And so every time Bob, Bob Richardson, starts to film Fred smoking, Fred turns away and puts out the cigarette. This might be in my top 10 lines I've heard during my lifetime. So I asked Fred, how come you put the cigarette out every time we try to, you're a chain smoker, you put the cigarette out every time we try to photograph you smoking? He becomes very, very serious, very much in earnest.

He looks at me, he says, you have to understand, Errol, I'm a role model for children. Extraordinary. I thought so. Still do, kind of. I feel privileged to be able to hear stuff like that. You're getting people to say it as well, which is part of the magic. I want to use that as an opportunity to ask you about the FX series that you mentioned. So this series is ostensibly an adaptation of your book, A Wilderness of Error, which is a wonderful book about the Jeffrey McDonald murders.

And I found the series to be quite different from your book. And you participated and you went on... No, I didn't want it to be different than the book. Why did I? Because it is. Clearly. But you participate, you play a very central role in some respects in this series.

And I wanted to just get your reflections in the aftermath of having seen it and kind of what you think it represents. I think it's an illustration to me, in case I didn't know it already, of how unbelievably stupid I am. Why do you say that? Because you go into these projects so hopeful.

Someone asked me why I'd done something, made a certain movie. And I said, well, you know, the same reason that everybody does stuff in Hollywood. It's a combination of vanity and greed. I had written the book. Did the book get as much attention as I wanted it to? No, not really. Does anything I do get as much attention as I want it to? Probably not. I thought, well, this is a way of exposing the book to a much larger audience. I like Mark Smerling. I thought, whatever happens, the book still exists.

Maybe no one will read it, but it's there. It's available. There's ink on the page. And I'm doing actually another podcast about this because it actually has, it's interested me and upset me. And I would say there are two main reasons, and you identify those two main reasons very clearly, just moments ago. One is it's not a representation of the book that I wrote. Two, I'm actually narrating this misrepresentation. Yes, that is fascinating. As if somehow I have given it my imprimatur.

I've given it my good housekeeping seal of approval. I've stamped it with my watermark. And just to make it clear, this is not a representation of my book. It's not a representation of how I feel about the Jeffrey McDonald case. And the book itself, which I am really proud of, I think it's a really odd and interesting book. And it is a book about the pursuit of truth, maybe the unsuccessful pursuit of truth, but there's definitely a pursuit there. It's also a book about the denial of truth. That's a theme that is so much part of what I think about nowadays.

That's absent from the series altogether, as if somehow the person directing it never noticed. If I became obsessed with this strange figure, Helena Stokely, who claimed to be in the house that night, I would say that obsession is twofold. The factual question, was she in the house? An important question, a question that I can't answer. The second part of it, did the prosecution and the judge do everything in their power to prevent the jury from ever hearing that version of the story? Was it a fair trial? And in that respect, there's no uncertainty, not over here. It's absolutely clear this trial was rigged, was unfair, regardless of the question of Jeffrey's underlying, Jeffrey McDonald's underlying guilt or innocence. And that's absent.

And to leave all of that out, naughty. Let me ask you very quickly about that. Very, very naughty. Did you, you know, to the points you were making earlier about when you are on screen and trying to tell your story as so many of the people that you've interviewed have did you learn anything about yourself seeing yourself on screen in this mini-series yes i'd like to say absolutely not but yes i um did i learn that i'm not a very good representative of myself?

Did I learn that when you're worried in any context, primarily about performance and not about the underlying content of what you're saying. I also learned clearly why I had decided not to turn Wilderness of Error into a movie or a series. I wanted to write a book, which I still think was the correct decision. I'm puzzled why I didn't, and probably it was not an option, exert more control over that interview with me. I don't know if I've ever seen the unedited version. I don't really remember all of what was said. I would love to see the interview in its entirety. In my worst moments, I feel Smerling did what, not exactly, but let's just say for the sake of argument, slightly hyperbolic argument, but let's just say for the sake of argument, he did a little bit of what Joe McGinnis did to McDonald to me. Now, whether he intended this, I doubt it. I don't think that he's a bad guy. I really don't. And I rather like Mark. But the end result of what he did is deeply unsatisfactory to me. I complained once about the fact that he had not really told the Helena Stokely story.

And he said, oh, you're talking about the fact that the judge wouldn't allow the hearsay witnesses to appear before the jury. And I said, no, no, no, that's a small part of it. It's certainly part of it, but it's a much bigger, bigger issue. So I don't know. You tell me. What would you do if you were me? Well, I obviously asked you about this because I was very surprised to see this series come in the form that it did, having read the book. And also just knowing how perceptive you are about the way stories are told.

And this just did not seem like the story to tell at least not in this specific way but you know it's also if he has been granted the authority to tell the story the way that he sees it there's something fascinating about something having the same title with two different approaches and purposes and i think i was just kind of interested in that more broadly what you should do i i wouldn't i wouldn't think to know what you should do yeah that interests me too um i mean the full quote which comes from william wilson edgar allen poe his doppelganger story or it's not really clear what william wilson is they'll tell you it's a doppelganger story, and it is on some level a doppelganger story, but it's a very peculiar. For me, it remains a very peculiar story. And he has this line,

seeking an oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. And the oasis of fatality for me, my exegesis, is that seeking truth, finding something absolute in this sea of untruth. I think you always get to that. Yeah.

The nicest thing I heard said about the series is that it seemed like a true crime version of Vernon, Florida. I could see that, yes. And it does have this wild array of crazy characters. A lot of time is spent with Christina Masowitz or with Stokely's older brother and with Bob Stevenson. As if somehow he's trying to explore something, but he's not.

It's kind of the gestures of investigation without any real kind of investigation. It's a repetition of fatal vision. In the end, he could be Joe McGinnis doing an adaptation of my book. And that strikes me as incredibly ironic. Yes, ironic, insane. I don't think he's even aware of it, which makes it even sadder. He may be now after hearing this. And more fucked up. But yes, that's what I think. I think he, it reminds me, it's in my book.

There's a remarkable moment for me in the book. I'm talking to Wade Smith, who I'm not terribly fond of these days, who was one of Jeffrey's attorneys. He was the local attorney who probably should have been the attorney because it's a good old boy network down there and you don't bring in the Jew with a ponytail from Philadelphia to represent you. That is, if you're smart, you don't do that. And I asked Wade Smith about this crucial moment. Stokely is being interviewed by Bernie Siegel, who is Jeffrey's principal defense attorney,

the Jew with the ponytail from Philadelphia. She was being interviewed. And the question is, what Stokely said in this interview? I don't want to, unless you want me to, go into excessive detail about any of this, which I, alas, can do. So I asked Wade Smith, what actually transpired in this meeting? You were there. You were there. You were observing this.

What actually transpired in the meeting? Tell me. Listening intently. He says, you'll have to excuse me for a moment. And he goes to his shelf to get a copy of fatal vision and he starts reading me the passage from fatal vision i think this is really insane Insane. I'm writing a book about how this version of the story has replaced reality. And instead of going back to his memory, such as it might be, of what transpired, he goes to the book which is at the heart of the problem and starts reading from it errol has just gestured to blowing his brains out there for those of you who can't see him like i

can let me let me let me take you away from the pain of that experience and just let me get you out on this we end every episode of this show i look i'm a connoisseur of the surreal and the absurd. Why deny such a thing? It may be entirely obvious, but that actually, I thought, fuck me. World is as really as crazy as I imagine. It's just one more story on the shelf of absurdity that you've been building for all these years. Oh, yeah. It's another chapter.

Errol, tell me the last great thing that you've seen. Are you watching a lot of films or television in quarantine right now? Well, I'm always watching a lot of stuff. And, you know, I hate to be really ordinary, but I like Queen's Gambit. Yes. Tell me why. My son had a friend in Cambridge. He was probably seven, eight years old at the time. His father was a professor of biochemistry at MIT. And this movie had just come out in search of Bobby Fisher. Now, the father loved the movie, just loved the movie.

And how did I feel about it? I hated it. I really, really, really hated it. One of the things that's so great about movies is they give you an opportunity for raw hatred. Why deprive yourself of such feelings? Yes. Profundity of distaste. Yeah. Hatred and disapproval are so much acts of pleasure. had a choice of becoming a chess international grandmaster or becoming an ordinary kid and playing sports and going on dates and whatever ordinary kids do with their time.

And I looked at it and I thought, what horseshit? What impossible horseshit? The immensely talented people that I've met, and I've had an opportunity to meet a lot of immensely talented people. I've been lucky. But it wasn't a choice between, oh, I think I'll be normal or I think I'll be abnormal. People, in my experience, are compelled to do what they do. Bobby Fisher saw the same psychiatrist that I saw as a child, the one who cautioned me about LSD. Wow.

Bobby Fisher and his mother, two wackadoodles. Except he was one of the greatest chess players of all time. And it wasn't as if he thought, well, I'll be a washing machine repairman or I'll be an international grandmaster. So what I liked about Queen's Gambit is that it was about a person who really was disconnected from the world. And the chess was her oasis of fatality, if you like. Well done.

And that everything around her was crazy, compromised, sad, and yet she had this magical world, this perfect world inside of a truly imperfect world where she could seek refuge. I love the end of the movie where she just mingles with people in the street and plays chess. I think it's kind of great. So yes, I like that. That is a perfect recommendation for the for this series Errol I could talk to you for hours but I appreciate the time you've taken today it's always so good to see you well thank you and I thank you for your remarks about my great fear is that no one

reads Wilderness of Error and no one even notices that there is a friend of mine this truly great genius and philosopher, Saul Kripke, who asked, did you change your mind about Jeffrey McDonald? And there's a really simple answer. No, I didn't. What a way to go. Thank you, Errol. Thank you so much. I way to go. Thank you, Errol. Thank you so much.

I really enjoyed this. Thank you.