The Big Picture - Errol Morris's Catnip for Conspiracy Theorists | The Big Picture (Ep. 38)

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with documentarian Errol Morris to discuss his new Netflix miniseries ‘Wormwood,’ a story of mind control, LSD, the CIA in the 1950s, and murder. They also discuss Morris’s classic works like ‘The Thin Blue Line,’ as well as the day he spent with Donald Trump to discuss the president’s favorite film, 'Citizen Kane.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No detective, if he's honest with himself, goes into a case without the hope that he's going to crack it. So if you're interested in putting pushpins in walls and flashcards and pulling a piece of string, connecting one pushpin with another, this is definitely something that would interest you. I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture. The documentarian Errol Morris makes movies about hidden history and unsolved nightmares, eccentric figures, and curious incidents. He's one of the world's great storytellers. His new project, which is called Wormwood, is set to premiere later this month on Netflix, and it's a little different for him.

It's a four-hour, six-part story that attempts to explain just what happened to Frank Olson, a CIA operative in the 1950s who was dosed by the American government with LSD as part of a secret experiment known as MKUltra. Olson died under mysterious circumstances. How did Morris tell this story? By combining dramatic performances with actors like Peter Sarsgaard recreating these events with his signature probing documentary style. Morris interviewed dozens of people, including several sit-downs with Olsen's son, Eric, who has sought the truth about what happened to his father for more than 50 years.

Morris gathers all of the story's loose strands, and at its best, Wormwood recalls Morris' masterwork, 1988's The Thin Blue Line, which freed a wrongly convicted man. Morris was a real hoot to talk with, playful and sharp-witted and argumentative. We talked about his new work, his old work, detective work, and the day he spent with Donald Trump to discuss the president's favorite film, Citizen Kane. So without further ado,

here's Errol Morris. Errol, you have a new film. It's called Wormwood. It's also technically a miniseries, I suppose you could say as well. Are you comfortable with that? The nomenclature. What in hell is it? Since Netflix has come on the scene, they've created a whole different idea of media, how media is delivered, how it's organized, how it's shot. Is it a series? Is it a film? Is it something else?

It is four hours long. So that I think is why some people will say, oh, it's episodic. You've broken it into different segments. I want to know when you first met Eric Olson, who was at the center of this story that you're trying to tell. Do you remember the first time you encountered him? It was when I actually interviewed him for Wormwood. What were you told at the time of your father's death? I was told that your father has had an accident. But that was the cover story told by the CIA. When did you become familiar with his story?

Not long before that. I mean, I had read a little bit here and there, but I knew relatively little about the story. How did you get compelled to interview him in the first place? I had sold a project to Netflix about MKUltra. And MKUltra, people just love it. They can't get enough of it. Can you explain what it is for the listeners who may not know it? Catnip for conspiracy freaks.

The U.S. government, the CIA in particular, had a program of mind control. Think of it as the Manchurian Candidate Program. Behavior modification, memory replacement, the use of drugs to create forced confessions, and on and on and on. Part of MKUltra was the use of drugs, in particular LSD. LSD was thought to be a truth serum. You just get someone to ingest a lot of it and they'll spill the beans. No matter how well-trained, say, as an espionage agent they might be, they'll spill the beans anyway. So this is a story involving MKUltra and LSD and murder and some other stuff. I feel like this is the movie that is most consumed by the concept of truth since The Thin Blue Line.

Is that fair to say? No. Tell me what is. Almost everything I've done, truth runs as a theme throughout. Truth and the avoidance of truth, the effacement of truth. But yes, this is a historical story where it is possible to say, OK, this is true. OK, that's not true. And that really is the difference between documentary, nonfiction, whatever you want to call it, and drama is you can look at a scene and you could say, did this really happen? Or was it entirely made up? Or if it was not entirely made up, what part is true? What part is made up? And on and on and on and on and on. That plays a really important role in Wormwood because part of Wormwood is based on several

hundred pages of CIA documents that purport to tell you what happened these last 10 days of Frank Olson's life. Frank Olson was an army biochemist, bioweapons engineer, working primarily with anthrax. And he went out a window at a hotel in New York City. The Statler fell 13 stories to 7th Avenue and died. This is in 1953. When you were doing the research for possibly doing a film about this, is he at the center of a lot of these stories around this government program or is he sort of a sideline to the stories? He's part of it.

I believe he could be considered a central figure because there are so many stories that emerge out of MKUltra. You name it and it's connected with it. Charlie Manson? Check. Ted Kaczynski? Check. Jack Ruby?

Check. So if you're interested in putting pushpins in walls and flashcards and pulling a piece of string, connecting one pushpin with another, this is definitely something that would interest you. It's high-level conspiracy yarn in a lot of ways. But it's also very – I mean it's a very personal story that you're telling through Eric's eyes in a lot of ways. Eric is Frank's son. How did you decide to focus the movie on Frank's story then in order to tell the MKUltra story? You never know how these things happen. My process, if that's what you want to call it, is I get interested in something.

And then I start digging. I'm like a dog scratching in a backyard. I start digging a hole, probably digging a hole for myself. And this story interested me. It interested me because of Eric, the son, who is extremely articulate and interesting. It interested me because Eric, the son, had spent 60 plus years investigating the circumstances of his father's death. He makes Hamlet look like a piker. And Hamlet is a, you know, one of the core themes that you hit on in the film is you develop these antecedents for Eric in some way and these figures that you return to to tell the story.

But Eric, I think in some ways, like you say, supersedes Hamlet with his devotion to solving some of the problems of this story. How did you go about setting some of the problems of this story? Hamlet, of course, solved the case pretty damn quickly. Eric has the outlines of the story pretty early on. Did Eric know what he was getting himself into by beginning to sit down with you for a film? Because this is a very complicated story and as I understand it, you interviewed him many times over a long period of time. And in doing so, was he hoping that he would get more answers by participating?

Peter Van Doren Eric knew I was a filmmaker with some reputation. Eric is smart. I think I'm smart, maybe smart. Eric is smart. I think I'm smart, maybe smart enough to look smart because part of being smart is being successfully able to look smart. How am I doing on that right now? You're doing great. Oh, good. You're doing just fine.

That's fantastic. He liked talking to me. I liked talking to him. We started this film together, shooting him in a way that I've never shot anybody before with 10 cameras. 10 cameras. Why did you do that? It is very different from your other films in that respect. I think it's very different from anything.

But you're very well known for your shooting style and your subjects in your documentaries. Obviously, you've developed this technology that has been written about, the Interrotron. But this is very different. You're in the frame a lot of the time here. You are seeing subjects and yourself at all angles. Why did you do that? Because it's a story about shards, scraps, pieces of evidence. It is about collage. Eric got his doctorate at Harvard in what he calls the collage theory,

using collage as a way of investigating who people really are. But any detective is involved in collage. You're sifting through evidence through the detritus of the world, trying to figure it out. Did he believe that you were going to be able to help him get some resolution on the story of what had happened to his father? No detective, if he's honest with himself, goes into a case without the hope that he's going to crack it. You know, you just don't want to piddle around in a story.

You want to actually achieve something. You want to come to some kind of conclusion, to some end point. But what we don't see in a lot of stories about detectives and crime is that not every story comes to a solution. Sometimes the detective fails. The world's a nasty place out there. When you're investigating a crime, there are lots of people who don't want you to know about what really happened. People destroy evidence. They hide it or they cut corners off of it. So you don't know really whether you're looking at a complete piece of evidence or some fragment. The world is trying to cover up evidence of crimes at the same time as you, the detective, is trying to figure it out.

And this is very much a story of detective work. Among other things, it's a lot of stories. I sometimes think of it as a set of Russian dolls with stories inside of stories. You said it was complex. It is complex. I'll buy that. Well, there's another way that it's complex too and I want to hear about that, which is that you have introduced a different storytelling method here where you have professional actors doing a sort of high-level reenactment slash narrative of the story of Frank. Simultaneous to Eric being interviewed, evidence being presented. Trevor Burrus Why will I always be saddled with this hideous reenactment term

as if like it was my destiny hoisted on my own petard of reenactment? Aaron Ross Powell I have some theories about that. I think part of it is due to some of the controversial nature of the way that things were framed in earlier films. And then so people are likely to say it's Errol Morris, the reenactor, the great reenactor. The goddamn no good reenactor is at it again. And this time I hope he will really, really be severely punished. So what is the – what's the nomenclature you prefer for these scenes where – that feature great actors? Peter Sarsgaard is sort of at the center of this version of the story you're telling.

I'd call it drama. Drama. Yeah. OK. What am I fucking reenacting? They don't use this term. You go to see a movie that we're reenacting. God knows what because one of the major staples of modern filmmaking such as it is, is that we reenact everything like historical events.

Whether it's Churchill in World War II or Ted Kennedy in Chappaquiddick. It goes on and on and on and on. Yeah, but Chappaquiddick and Darkest Hour, the two movies you're talking about, do not feature documentary. And your film does feature documentary. And the point is? Well, I think that's why that nasty word that shall not be uttered going forward comes up from time to time, you know?

It started with the Thin Blue Line and it really pissed me off. Pissed me off for a lot of reasons. They disqualified it for the Oscars. I wondered, what do you have to do exactly here? I got an innocent man out of prison. My investigation also identified the real killer.

I made a truly innovative film. I mean, what do you have to do? That was rejected as, I don't know. I was pursuing truth. I'm in the middle of a story about the murder of a Dallas police officer. And I'm interviewing the eyewitnesses who claim to have seen this thing on the roadway, various police officers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're all telling different stories, Rashomon style. This happened.

No, this happened. No, no, no. That happened. Well, how do you bring that to life in what you call a documentary movie. You bring it to life when this was the choice that I made by illustrating it, showing what that version looked like so you can sink into it, so you can feel it. That image of the fast food cup with the shake hitting the ground is burned into my brain because you've recreated something. People love the milkshake. So there's a car stopped on a roadway, car traveling without headlights.

Police officer sees that and they're going to stop it and tell the driver, hey, put on your lights. You're driving without headlights. Lonely, lonely road in West Dallas. So this police officer, Robert Wood, and his companion, Teresa Turco, stop this car, routine traffic stop. What's normal police procedure? Normal police procedure is the driver, the cop, gets out of the car, walks up to the driver's side of the vehicle. His partner, Teresa Turco, positions herself at the rear of the vehicle. His partner, Teresa Turco, positions herself at the rear of the vehicle. Well, did that really happen? That was supposed to happen, but did it happen? I got a diagram from the Dallas police that showed the crime scene. And it was so weird.

They had marked next to the police car a kind of milkshake splat, and there was a little arrow drawn, and it was labeled, hand-labeled, milkshake, milkshake. I thought, what the fuck is this? I started to think about it, and I realized that it told us something very, very important about the crime scene, namely that the police officer, the companion, Teresa Turco, never got out of the car until after the shooting. Because if you were just getting out of the car as police procedure called for it, you'd put your milkshake down on the floorboard of the car. You'd get out. Maybe you'd carry the milkshake with you. I don't think so. But you wouldn't toss it out the window.

I don't think you'd toss it out the window. But if you were in the car and your companion went up to the driver's side of this window and got shot to death, you'd get out of the car goddamn fast, and you'd toss your milkshake in the process. So I'm trying to bring the audience into the world of this crime by showing the various accounts, by showing the milkshake toss, and on and on and on and on and on. It's one of the best things I've ever done and it was one of the very best investigations. I worked as a detective. I'm proud of the Thin Boo Line.

I am even more proud, much more proud of the investigation I did. I got the guy out of prison. How often do you do that? Trevor Burrus Does Wormwood have a milkshake then? Is there something in it that you say this is a catalyzing moment that draws the audience in but also explains something? Do you look for that when you're telling these stories? Peter Robinson I always look for that kind of thing. In Wormwood, it's this pile of documents that was given to the family by the CIA.

And you put all of these accounts together, you have a story, kind of a story. It's a story that doesn't quite add up. It doesn't quite cohere. It has loose ends. It has threads hanging out of it. And I thought, what an opportunity to turn falsehood into drama. Maybe not all of it's false. Maybe some of it's true.

Which part is false and which part is true? When did you decide to include this much drama in the movie? Early. Early, early, early. And what do you say to actors beforehand? Because this is – despite what you're saying, which is understandable and you don't want to be tarred with the reenactor phrase, it is unconventional. It is not – it doesn't play out the way that a traditional narrative movie that say Peter Sarsgaard would appear and plays out. So is it easy to explain to them what you're trying to accomplish?

Peter was always a willing customer. In part, I think it's my enthusiasm for him as an actor. Peter, at some crazy awards ceremony a couple of weeks ago, said I was his favorite director. And then he told a story about why I had wanted to work with him. Would you tell us that story? Yeah. I'd seen a film he had been in called An Education, which I really liked. And there's a scene at the end of An Education where Peter is sitting in a car. He's supposed to go into this house. He doesn't go in.

He's just sitting in this car. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't really do anything. He's just sitting in the car. And I thought it was one of the most amazing scenes I've ever seen. And I told Peter, he jokes about it now. I told him, I said, you know, you're really great when you're doing nothing. And I'll stick to that.

And Frank kind of does nothing in a lot of this film in some ways, right? He's not really overly expressive. You can't really figure out what's going on in his mind. We don't solve that part of him. I assume that that was part of why he was an appealing actor for you. He's a fabulous actor for me. Did any of the actors in the dramatic portion of the movie see any of the documents, see any of the footage that you shot? Yeah, we tried to show them as much as they wanted to look at.

Why not? You want to bring them up to speed. I want to talk a little bit about Seymour Hersh and his role in this movie and your relationship to him. I'm very interested in that. He is a kind of – he's kind of a hammer at the end of the movie, the interview that you have with him. Yeah. For those who don't know, he's a longtime journalist written for The New Yorker and many other places over the years. My Lai Massacre broke that story during Vietnam.

What is your relationship to Sai? I really, really admire and like Tsai. Think of all the cases he's been involved with. In my view, America's greatest investigative reporter. We wouldn't even know about the Frank Olson case if not for Tsai Erich. But he's also known as a curmudgeon. And I would have to say that is an understatement. Difficult. Sometimes extraordinarily abrasive. But I came to really like him and I think that he likes me. I don't want to be presumptuous here.

But he loves Wormwood. I could never even imagine such a thing. He actually likes the movie. His wife likes a thing. He actually likes the movie. His wife likes the movie. His kids like the movie. Maybe even his dog likes the movie. I think it does in some ways. It shows the abrasiveness that you talk about.

But it also valorizes him and what he does in some ways too. So I could see why he would find it appealing. The scene where you interview him does have the feeling of kind of two old boxers squaring up, you know, just trying to get the other to say something, you know. You ask a question and he says, why do you want me to answer that? Or I can't answer that and here's why. You know, did you have an expectation that he would be quite so tough with the cameras on? I had the expectation he was going to be even tougher. It surprises me. I mean, I've interviewed over the years some really ornery customers, people who didn't want to be interviewed, who said they wouldn't be interviewed, who offered to give me very, very little time. Even the Cy Hirsch interview in Wormwood starts off with – he says, OK, what do you want?

What do you want? Do you like chatting with an ornery person? Yeah. Why? It's more of a challenge. How was your experience with the sitting president when you interviewed him? This may come as no surprise. I'm a connoisseur of irony.

Here I have in the green room Iggy Pop, Jesse Norman, the opera singer, Walter Cronkite, Mikhail Gorbachev, and for the pièce de résistance, Donald Trump. What a show. What did you learn that day? It's the same thing I learn every day. Maybe it's not worth going on with it all. No, what did I learn that day? Trump complained because we took Gorbachev before him. Didn't know he was going to become president. We're there to talk about favorite movies. What's your favorite movie? Because this is for the Oscars. And I tried to shoot as much as possible with certain people because I thought, hmm, maybe there's a little kind of film that could be made out of all of this. So the piece I used in the Academy Award film was Donald Trump talking about King Kong taking over New York.

But we also talked about Citizen Kane. So he's talking about Citizen Kane and it's kind of amazing. I'm not even sure I know what to make of it. And I have to be perfectly honest that my feelings about Donald Trump are clouded by what you might call his current role as president of the United States. So he starts to tell me about Charles Foster Kane, who he identifies with. And what was Charles Foster Kane's real problem? Was his problem that he was a megalomaniac? Not so much. Was his problem that he treated people around him miserably? Nah. What was his problem? According to Donald Trump, his problem was the woman he married. So at the very end of this clip, I asked Donald Trump, would you have any advice for Charles Foster Kane? And he says, yeah, get yourself a different woman.

Now, if you could give Charles Foster Kane advice, what would you say to him? Get yourself a different woman. Now, if you could give Charles Foster Kane advice, what would you say to him? Get yourself a different woman. It's an extraordinary moment. Is that what I took away from Citizen Kane? Not so much. I saw maybe a different film than Donald Trump. He really underlines some of the lack of awareness of the irony that you're talking about too. There are certain people who I think suffer.

I wanted to have this in some psychiatric dictionary, irony deficit disorder. The absolute inability to see irony when it's really stuck right in front of your face. Donald Trump suffers from irony deficit disorder. I made a film about Donald Rumsfeld. Bless his soul. Someone's going to have to. Trevor Burrus Donald Rumsfeld makes an appearance in your new film too. And it feels almost like a callback to your film about him in a small way.

Trevor Burrus Oh, yeah. new film too and it feels like almost like a callback to your film about him in a small way oh yeah and i it had me thinking do you ever speak to the subjects of your films you know years later after you've uh moved on to another thing i wonder if you and rumsfeld have ever had a chat about the movie you made about him did we become buddy buddy well not necessarily that but have you ever spoken briefly rumsfeld was such a hard interview. The interview became, for me, about something other than what I thought it should be about. To me, it became at a certain point, was there anything there? What was I actually even talking to? A kind of set of knee-jerk reactions, denials. And what became even more troublesome about all of it is that he was incredibly friendly, personable. Rumsfeld, the film I made with him is called

The Unknown Known. Rumsfeld would talk to the gaffer, talk to the grip, talk to everybody. He's a politician. But somehow, despite all of the good cheer, I felt something missing, unfair. I'm supposed to love everybody I interview, and I usually do. Why do you say that? Because I think it's important. It's important to actually be interested in the people. Being interested in someone else is a form of love. It's really important to be engaged. And I do believe that directing is about being there, being involved, being concerned. I remember telling my actors very early on, you don't tell someone how to do a scene until

they do it once or twice for you, because how do you know? They may do it perfectly without you having to say anything. And then if you've said something, maybe you destroyed that. Maybe that can never emerge. I like to listen. Directing actors is no different than doing an interview. In an interview, you're looking for a performance. You are. I like talking to you. I'm happy to perform for you. Incredibly kind. I hope you like me. So yeah, you're trying to bring something out of another person. And it is a performance. An interview is a performance. Just like acting on a stage or acting in front of a camera is a performance. And the director, the director is there to make that come to life.

You really brought it in this performance and I'm running out of time with you, though I could speak with you for hours. But before you go, I always ask filmmakers what is the last great thing that they have seen?

And I'm curious, specifically from you, what is the last great thing that you have seen? What did I just tweet about? I know what you just tweeted about. Let's talk about that. Nathan For You.

Indeed I did. Tell me about why you loved Nathan For You's season finale. Well, I've watched all of Nathan For You. So I'm not a Johnny-come-lately. It's a very special show. It's really, really, truly absurd. Quixotic, funny. Nathan Fielder has to be so much in earnest all the time. That in itself is compelling in its own crazy way. But the season finale did something to me. And I heard about it from my son, who is also a filmmaker. Hamilton said, you've got to watch

this. This is fucking fantastic. And I slavishly obey. And I did love it. Breaking the fourth wall. So I was going to break the fourth wall in Wormwood, but Eric wouldn't come up. I wanted to tear down the set around him, but he wouldn't come up for the final day of shooting. Jeez. What would have been the purpose of that? Just to show that this was all a construct? Just as everything is a construct? You got it.

It's pathetic. OK. Don't make fun of me. I'm not making fun of you. Errol, thank you so much for doing this today. Thank you for interviewing me. You bet. Anytime.

Thanks again to Errol Morris and thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. Thank you.