WHAT WENT WRONG - The Conjuring

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Lawsuits, mysterious bruises, and real-life horrors plague the legacy of The Conjuring. This week Chris & Lizzie congure the horror franchise’s spookiest behind-the-scenes moments (as well as the creepy allegations against the real Ed and Lorraine Warren).Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hidy, folks. It's October 27th, and Quibi has been dead for one week. Rest in peace. RIP. It will probably turn into a zombie and you will see it some later day. We are four days away from Halloween. And we are so excited to be chatting with y'all today. Of course, I am Chris Winterbauer, one of your hosts, and this is What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, period. That's right. We're just going to assume at this point. And I am here with Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, how you doing this week? I'm doing great because again, we got to talk about a movie that I actually enjoy. It turns out I think I just like spooky Halloween movies because this has been my favorite month of the podcast. This is true.

It has been a great month for spooky scary movies, not a great month for my wife, who's had to watch them with me and gets very scared while we're watching these films. So Lizzie, kick it off. Well, Chris, today I'm going to be telling you the story of a franchise plagued by lawsuits, haunted sets and a real life horror lurking behind one of the most successful movie universes of all time. This is the tale of The Conjuring. Now, Chris, I know both of us are fans of this movie. We've seen it a bunch of times.

What was your reaction upon rewatching it for this podcast episode? Far more religious than I remembered it being. A lot of talk about God that I didn't remember in the first watch. my wife said that it was a secret anti-abortion movie because it is about a woman who is possessed to kill her children and that only possession could lead you to aborting your child. A real witch. Yeah, exactly. And also, I happen to see the photos of Ed and Lorraine Warren at the end credits,

which I don't think I'd pay attention to the first time I saw it and just like, sorry, Vera Farminga and Patrick Wilson are way too smoking hot to play those. too. But anyway, otherwise, great. Really fun scares. Love a Ron Livingston and Lily Taylor, you know, duo. That was fun. All the young girls are great in the movie and really enjoyed it outside of the God talk. First of all, please never say young girls again. Something about it. Just really upset me. And second of all, just kidding. Enjoyed the variety of different aged young female actors. They were all very talented. Okay. No, I'm kidding. So you mentioned Vera Farminga and Patrick Wilson, who are playing a real-life couple Ed and Lorraine Warren. And don't worry, we will be getting to them

quite a bit in this episode. And their physical appearance is not the only way that the depiction of them differs significantly from reality. So we will be, we will be digging into all of that. Now, The Conjuring grossed $319 million on a $20 million budget. So right out the gate, this is an incredibly successful movie. As far as I can tell, was a very smooth shoot. That's not really what we're going to be talking about today. This is a bit of a different kind of episode. So I'm excited to see if you guys like it.

And if Chris, you enjoy hearing about it. It follows the true story, and I'm going to put that in finger quotes, of Ed and Lorraine Warren, demonologists and experts in the supernatural as they're called to help the Perrin family in 1971 Rhode Island with a particularly bad haunting. It stars Patrick Wilson as Ed Warren, Vera Farminga as Lorraine Warren, Ron Livingston and Lily Taylor as Roger and Carolyn Perrin, and Shanley Caswell, Haley McFarland, Mackenzie Foy, Kyla Dever, and Joey King as their children. It is directed by James Wan and written by twin brothers, Chad Hayes and Carrie Hayes. Yes, the Hayes bros. The Hayes Bros. Yes. All right, the idea for the Conjuring

allegedly begins with a producer by the name of Tony DeRosa Grun. And we're going to spend a significant amount of the episode on this man. Exciting. Well, not for anyone else involved in The Conjuring. He was a producer on Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats. So he was somehow affiliated with the Archie Enterprise because both of those are Archie comics. As far as I can tell, he's not affiliated with either Riverdale or Sabrina reboots. But most importantly, he had managed to befriend the real Ed and Lorraine Warren in the 90s. So one night, Ed Warren played a tape for Tony of the real Carolyn Perrin recounting the hauntings that she was experiencing. They actually, they show this in the movie. This is when they go and Patrick Wilson is sitting with the tape recorder at her at the kitchen

table. I believe that is a fictionalized version of this conversation. So Ed was giving Tony some commentary throughout, giving him a little bit more context about the case, really explaining a lot about this particular haunting and giving Tony a ton of details. Now, Tony is, as you might expect, of someone who is personal friends with Ed and Lorraine Warren, an interesting guy. Really, this all starts in 2009 when Tony is forced into involuntary bankruptcy after ending up in a significant amount of legal trouble with pro poker player Phil Gordon, where Tony was potentially owing him hundreds of thousands of dollars for a poker TV show that the two were supposed to work on but had ended badly. Now, just to give you an idea of what kind of guy Tony is and how he

found himself in bankruptcy court, he came to Phil Gordon, who by the way is an extremely established poker player as well as TV personality, claiming that he had a deal in place with CBS for this poker competition show where amateurs are pitted against pros and he wanted Phil to host it. Phil was told he'd be paid his first installment within 15 days of signing his contract. He was like, fantastic, I'm ready to go. He even hired a lawyer to get him out of his contract with Bravo where he was a commentator on Celebrity Poker Showdown. It turns out, allegedly Tony never had a deal with CBS at all and no payment comes through whatsoever. Needless to say, Phil Gordon, uh, not stoked? Also, just a weird person to try to bluff like a professional poker player. Like,

it's a weird move here, Tony. I feel like he's going to catch on. Well, he caught on pretty fast. And despite trying to fight his way out of it, Tony ends up owing Phil a crap load of money. Now, prior to this, he had been shopping around a loose treatment of the conjuring for a few years. Supposedly, there's different versions of this. But regardless, some sort of studios were aware of it. However, one of the most valuable things that Tony supposedly owned were the rights to a number of the Warren's case files, the rights to adapt them, including the parent family case on which the conjuring is based, and the rights to adapt the story of a raggedy and doll that was terrorizing a family, which of course is Annabelle. New Line Cinema, a subsidiary

of Warner Brothers, swoops in during the bankruptcy proceedings and grabs up the rights, paying $100,000 to the trustee and also paying close to a million dollars to DeRosa Grun's companies. So basically, he made a deal when he was down and out, and he got paid. But that is not the last we will be hearing from Tony. Good for Tony. Making that money off of other people's work. Well done. Well, don't worry. He'll be back. New Line Cinema, having recently acquired the rights, approaches siblings Chad and Carrie Hayes to write the screenplay. And they've been working as TV writers since the mid-90s. They started to see some moderate success with their first feature script, which was House of Wax. in 2005. James Wan signs on to direct shortly thereafter, and Juan had, of course, made a name for

himself in the horror genre thanks to a little movie in 2004, which was... Saw! Bingo. Which he also co-wrote, by the way. He follows Saw up with some other low-budget successful horror movies, including Dead Silence, Death Sentence, and of course Insidious, which is where he first works with Patrick Wilson. Again, the casting process on this is really pretty smooth. Vera Farminga and Patrick Wilson are cast as Ed and Lorraine Warren and are sent to Connecticut to spend time with the real Lorraine Warren, Ed had passed away in 2006. Ron Livingston and Lily Taylor are cast as the Perens shortly thereafter. Now, the shoot only took 38 days,

um, filming in and around Wilmington, North Carolina. Yeah, it's very fast. Very efficient. It's very smooth. Um, I mean, if you think about it, there's really what, like two locations in this movie. Yeah, basically just the house plus the Warren house and I guess the college a little bit. And that's it. Yeah, so three. And that's, that's really the whole thing. They even hired a professor of religious studies from UNC Wilmington to act as the religious consultant on the movie. But it seems like maybe instead of hiring a religious studies professor, they should have hired a priest because here is where we're going to get into some of the spooky onset story time. Very excited. It's pretty good. This is the spookiest one yet.

The weird stuff starts pretty much as soon as screenwriters Chad and Carrie Hayes begin talking to Lorraine Warren. They start calling her to go over the cases that she had covered. She had covered like hundreds if not thousands of cases at this point. They said the calls were frequently interrupted by strange bursts of static that sounded like angry whispers. And Lorraine would reportedly say a blessing and the static would ease up. Yeah. As Lorraine on the other end of the phone is just going like,

with like a newspaper and like whispering into it. And then she's like, get away at Amens. Well, whatever she did, it worked. Such a hoax to her. So when James Wan was making tweaks to the shooting script in his house, he noticed his dog staring intently at a corner of the room. She would then begin tracking whatever she was staring at as it moved back and forth across the room, admitting a low, creepy growl. And this happened several nights in a row. He could not figure out what she was looking at.

She would look at the same corner of the room and she would track the same path of whatever she was watching. My dog does that a lot and it is creepy where he just like stares at a corner and I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? And he says the ghosts. Yeah, I don't like it. So remember how Lily Taylor's character in the movie started waking up with bruises all over her body? I do. Okay, well, evidently, when she started filming those scenes,

strange real bruises started cropping up not on her body, but on Joey Kings, who plays one of the middle children in the movie. Joey King of The Kissing Booth on Netflix. And the act. She's great. And the kissing booth, too. And the kissing booth, too.

and presumably three as well. Probably three through ten based on how many people are watching that movie. Yeah. That's horrifying. Joey King's great in this movie. She really seems terrified in a lot of these scenes. Well, I think she was legitimately freaked out about this. Patrick Wilson actually brought this up in an interview with the Independent, kind of like long past the actual press circuit. And he even said that it's something he didn't really want to bring up in the initial press circuit because she's a kid. And he revealed that he was taking his own kid to the doctor when he saw Joey. King covered in bruises in the waiting room and started talking to her about it. It turned out that she had developed some kind of rare blood condition during the filming, but King has since said that she, quote, doesn't believe in coincidences. And I mean, yeah, that's a pretty big coincidence

that the exact same thing that happens to the mother in the movie started happening to her. Lorraine Warren putting something in her coffee in the morning. No. I don't know that she was on set enough for that. Also, I do want to say up top, anything that we're going to get into with the Warrens, by many accounts, the haunting of the Perrin family does appear to be spookily real. Like there is a lot of corroboration in terms of what happened to this family in this particular case that's covered, which I think is why it was one of the more desirable ones to adapt. Patrick Wilson was also careful to point out that Joey King was a kid. Like, she was not doing major stunts or anything in the movie. There's no reason that she would be covered in bruises the way

that she was. So it was strange. And she wasn't the only one to experience abnormal things. Vera Farmiga, who plays Lorraine Warren, said that while they were filming, she came home one night and opened her laptop to find strange claw marks seemingly appearing on the screen out of nowhere. And she actually took a picture of the marks on her screen. It's really weird. Do you remember with old Macbooks, if you pressed the screen too hard, you would kind of get the like black marks that could almost linger on it a little bit. Do you know what I'm talking about? I guess, yes, maybe. I know what you're saying with like old LCD screens where like you like press on them too hard.

Yes, exactly. Later, once they'd wrapped filming in left North Carolina, Vermiga saw the same three claw marks appear on her thigh. Lauren, I'm telling you, it's Lorraine Warren. I don't know how she's doing it, but she's doing it. I don't, she's an extremely talented creepster if she is doing it. She is. So Shanley Caswell, who played the eldest daughter, also revealed that she would wake up

between 3 and 4 a.m., as the family does in the movie, pretty much every night on set, and that most of the cast would as well. She said every time it happened, she felt like she was being watched. She was also quick to note that the real Warrens had, of course, said that waking up between 3 and 4 a.m. was the first step in possession, so that's pretty cool. Why? I don't know. That's when the demons like to party, I guess. Clearly. So it actually continued and still happens for Vera Farminga. She said, quote, I still wake up at that time. I think it's my own psychic alarm clock.

It's almost funny now. Like I'll wake up and it will be 307 a.m. And I think, okay, time to take a tinkle. I don't really have any negative associations with that. Time to go pee while they go swatch. Yeah. She seems great. I like VARFARMiga a lot.

Oh, yeah. She's like in Bates Motel. She's in so much like twisted stuff at this point. She's just loving it. She doesn't care. Yeah. While they were building the set that contained the, oh, no.

In my notes, I wrote Museum of Haunted shit. That's definitely not what it was called in the movie. But you know what I'm talking about. It was pretty close to that. Yeah. It's like the room that's in the Warren's house that is just full of all of the demon-possessed objects they've collected, which by the way, is a real room in the Warren's real house. I believe it.

So while they were building that, Chad Hayes' son, the screenwriter's son, was working as a low-ranking member of the camera crew and was alone in the room coiling a cable when he heard something spinning on the shelf behind him. He turned around to see a symbol spinning with nothing else near it moving. It then spun itself off the shelf and then started spinning faster and faster once it was on the floor. So needless to say, he said, fuck this. I'm never going in there again. And he ran out and told the DP, he was like, I'm not going in there. To be fair. That sounds more like inception than a haunting. Just as bad.

Yeah, exactly. The DP, John Leonetti, our friend, the first assistant camera from Poltergeist, and director of one of my favorite films of the last few years, The Incomparable, The Silence, which just please drink some cans and watch it on Netflix. It's all connected, man. It is. It's the universe inside the year. universe inside the universe. Like, I think John Leonetti's actually the center of the curse,

because he's part of the poltergeist curse and the conjuring curse now. Yeah. Just throwing it out there. Just, you know, seems like a great guy, talented guy. Maybe avoid him. Just kidding. Seems like a really nice guy who's probably haunted. But yeah. So when Lorraine Warren came to visit the set, she walked through the set. She saw the like recreation of this museum of haunted crap room that they'd built. And she told James Wan, there was something in there that really shouldn't be there. He said, what are you talking about? We built the whole thing from new lumber.

Like, it's not your house, old lady. And she said it doesn't matter. She was like, where'd you get the objects? And he was like, okay, fair point. They're all antiques. And she was like, yeah, demons attach themselves to objects. Good job. You done, did it.

James Wan. So evidently things got so creepy that for all future films, in the Conjuring universe, they hired a priest to bless the set. For the Conjuring 2, they got a priest recommended by Lorraine Warren, who was sanctioned by the church to exercise buildings specifically. So isn't that fun? There are different kinds of exorcists. There are building exorcists, Chris. There's a lot of career paths here for us. Toy exercises, I assume, car exercises, dog exorcists. Yeah, Lorraine just seems like she just points at anything and she's like, it's haunted. And it doesn't matter what it is. She's like, well, you know, that really.

It's haunted now. It's haunted now. It's on it now. Sorry, guys. I just don't know if I trust her. I don't know if I trust her. Hold on to those feelings. So I also want to say for anybody that doesn't know,

I should have set this up at the top a little bit more. Lorraine Warren, who has since passed away, was a medium while her husband was this church-recognized, allegedly, demonologist. But she did claim to actually have some supernatural abilities in terms of being able to, you know, see some spirits and or feel, feel certain energies. Right.

She was the talent. He was the muscle. Like, that's what it came. And it's very clear in the movie. Yeah. Yeah. They do a great job of explaining in the movie, I think, what her sort of powers are and also how scary it might be to actually possess those.

But not all priests are created equal, Chris. While filming the nun, another entry into the same. the conjuring universe, they learned this the hard way. They were shooting in Romania where there is not much of a Catholic population. It's almost all Eastern Orthodox Christians. So the priest that they got to bless this set was not a Catholic priest. It was an Eastern Orthodox priest. Now, that is like trying to use Diet Coke when you need the real stuff. Okay, let's be honest. Well, who's to say, if that is accurate? I'm sure it was a very nice Eastern Orthodox priest. but director Corin Hardy was in the tunnels underneath the castle they were filming in with Taisa Farminga, Vera Farminga's sister, and other castorke.

Vera Farminga sister who's like 20 years younger than her and looks like her clone. Yes, she does look exactly like a mini version of her and is also a really good actress too. They were filming a somewhat complicated shot, which was further complicated by the fact that they are down in a real tunnel. Like it's not a set where there's places that they can go, you know, there's no video village, basically. So Hardy had to step out of the main tunnel in order to watch his monitor and stay out of the shot. When he stepped into the chamber that was slightly off of the main tunnel to watch his monitor, he noticed two things. One, it was a room with... Lorraine Warren.

No, she was not in Romania. Like clinging to the wall, like Tony Clinton, hereditary. So the first thing is that it was a room with only one entrance and exit, which is what he was standing in. There was no other way in and out of the room. And two, there were two crew members who he assumed were sound guys that were sitting in the back of the chamber. He didn't talk to them because he was very focused on getting the take. You don't talk to sound guys. Of course, yeah, sure.

That's the rule. Why acknowledge them? And he also couldn't really see them. Their faces were somewhat obscured in darkness. So he was so focused on getting the take right that he didn't really think much of it until they nailed the shot. And he turned around to celebrate only to find that he was alone in the room. So there you go. Uh, creepy. Very creepy.

Very creepy. That one I buy more. Corn Hardy also talented director. I believe he directed the hallow, uh, before he did the nun. If I'm, I might have gotten that wrong. I believe him on this one. Like the, the specificity of it and sort of the way that he, I mean, to be fair, like I, I believe Joey King too.

I do think there was creepy stuff happening associated with a lot of these stories. So the conjuring comes out and it makes a killing. It makes over $41 million in its first weekend. Now, something important to note that makes this unusual. Chris, what is the conjuring rated? Oh, I don't know. I didn't look. It's rated R.

Yeah, I would have assumed it was rated R. Well, that's actually interesting, though, because there's not really any blood or gore in it. There's no swearing in it. There's no nudity in it. It's rated R because it's too scary. Like, that's literally why it got the R rating. They were literally like, this is too scary for people under. 17.

Yeah. So now normally our rated movies are typically tougher to sell at the box office, which we've discussed before for obvious reasons. The biggest one being you are cutting out an entire audience because teens can't go without supervision. In theory. In theory. Yeah.

Let's just say Chris Winterbar bought quite a few tickets to Brother Bear to go see some other rated R movie back in the day. So how did the movie do so well? Well, they had a little help from one of the main characters in the film. God. Oh, yeah. No, I would say God kept his distance in the movie. They're always talking about him, but I never saw him showing up.

So this movie was always designed to be pretty deeply rooted in Christianity, which I think is interesting. And as you pointed out, it is heavily present in the script and in the movie itself. The screenwriters noted that the Warren's faith was their, quote, sharpest tool, and they made sure to show that. It's also worth noting that the villain in the movie, which Chris mentioned earlier, the witch Bathsheba. Bathsheba.

Yeah. Also, what do you expect when you're marrying someone named Bathsheba? Like, that was my, they were like, she was like, and then he married this woman named Bathsheba, and I'm just like, yeah, and what did you think was going to happen? Like, your kids, let's be honest. That's on the victims. So it is casually mentioned that Bathsheba is a descendant of, one of the witches in the Salem witch trials and therefore she is particularly evil. This is a moment

that did not stand out to me the first few times I watched the movie. Oh, I remember that because I was like, oh, I guess you just inherit your witchiness. Well, not even that. It means you have to accept without question that the women that were tried and sometimes executed in the Salem witch trials were witches. No, the Warrens were like, we did the right thing. We we nipped it in the bud, guys. Those witches, We got them. Like everyone else out to the fact is like, well, they didn't float. Like, maybe we did it wrong. And no, the Warrens are just like, you got it?

In fact, we could have gone further. Yeah, I really liked that. They just glossed over it so quickly in the movie that he's like, well, you know, she was a descendant. And she's like, oh, particularly evil. Okay. I thought we'd agreed that the witch trials were really sort of a tool of oppression. But whatever. Also worth noting that the witch sacrifices her child and pursues only other women.

to do the same does not appear to care about the husbands. So Warner Brothers, realizing that they had a truly scary film with very strong Christian undertones, turned to a familiar publicity firm that we have discussed on the podcast before, and that is Grace Hill Media. Chris, do you want to explain what Grace Hill does? Yeah, so Grace Hill Media is effectively a consulting firm, and I can't remember the gentleman who started its name. He was a former executive, and they basically consult with major studios and other production companies on how they can hone their film, be it as early as the script stage,

all the way to marketing, to appeal to the deeply unpredictable Christian audience in America, especially the evangelical audience, which is a very powerful audience when you can get them behind a movie. It will mean enormous box office success, but they are extremely, particular. And so it's hard to engage them. And studios oftentimes want to, or at least want to not

alienate them. Exactly. And The Conjuring, which is sort of surprising for a horror movie, actually manages to nail it. Screenwriter Chad Hayes says, quote, if the conjuring is successful, we will be able to present so many more religious themed films that can make a point and make a statement if they have the support of the faith community. So you can tell, like, they were writing this with this in mind. Absolutely. Very wholesome family. Like all the daughters of like the different ages, like the most rebellious thing that any child says is like, why are we here? And then she's like, and she's like, don't worry, she'll be fine when she meets a boy. Even when they're going to like make love one time in the movie, Ron Livingston, or she's like, do you have it in you to christen the bedroom?

Yeah, you're right. Which really grossed my wife out. She was like, why don't say that? Just say like, Hey, do you want to do it? And yeah, it's a very, like you said, no cursing really. The violence is contained to the possession scenes. Yeah. Yes, it is conservative. I do want to say that does not mean that it's bad. What they manage to do is they do an extremely good job at making, you know, a movie that really doesn't have blood, guts, gore, any of that stuff. And they make it unbelievably scary. Grace Hill did their job superbly, as did Chad and Carrie Hayes. And the Christian community came out in spades to date. The Conjuring has grossed $319 million worldwide. That is just the first movie. And that's again on a $20 million budget. Tired of Chardonnay with a little ice in it. Well, let me recommend Cannes. C-A-N-N, a cannabis-infused tonic, part-THC, part-C, a little bit of lemon lavender, a little bit of orange cardamom. I give up drinking 18 months ago. I started drinking

cans and I haven't looked back. Can. C-A-N-N. If you're 21 or older, please head to Drink Can-C-A-N-N.com and check out their website. So, given the success of The Conjuring, guess who pops his little head back up out of the Heidi Hole that it had been in? Oh, it's got to be Grundle. I don't remember his name. It is, in fact, Tony DeRosa Grund. He's been making the press rounds. He's been making the press rounds. doing interviews about the movie. The way he talks about it is like he wrote, directed, and starred in the thing. He willed it into existence. Exactly.

He also begins claiming that the movie used vast quantities of that treatment that he had floating around and that he's owed more money because, well, he basically wrote the screenplay. Now, this is interesting because in an earlier interview with Collider before the movie came out, here's how he describes the development process. quote, well, the rights went back and forth. A couple of different people tried to make it happen at different times, their life rights for television series, and I don't think they had the right take.

It was only because of Chad and Carrie Hayes and Peter Saffron, who brought them to the table and became part of this, that we were really able to refine it to the point where it was truly a good and tellable story. Maybe don't put that in print, sir, if you're going to turn back around. And that is what they called the Grundles Demise, was that one. interview. He has plenty of other missteps along the way. So what follows is a years-long battle where DeRosa Grun tries to get more and more money, claiming that Warner Brothers didn't have the rights to do all of the sequels and that he's entitled to tons of compensation. These lawsuits...

Well, that's the thing. The sequels are, because they have so... And sequels and spin-offs, because it's all the Annabelle movies, the Conjuring sequels, the Nun. And the Nunn will have a sequel also, I'm sure, because it made a ton of money worldwide. And they all are just like money minting machines. People love these movies. Even the ones that aren't great. They're still fun to watch. Now, I will say there is some light shadiness on both sides,

although I think firmly New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers are in the right on this one. There is an email from New Line saying that they didn't want his treatment because the writers were already working. So they were aware of it, but not interested in it. And they also didn't purchase it. Durosah Grund never disclosed the treatment itself in his bankruptcy suit, so they literally could not have bought it with what they bought. So you're saying he didn't disclose it as an asset during his bankruptcy suit. So it's like very existence means he couldn't even sell it. Exactly. It also means that he was hiding something that he felt might have been valuable.

So he tries to sue again, gets his ass handed to him again by a judge who does not rule in his favor, prevents him from referring the issue to authorities and delivers this ruling, quote, Sir Walter Scott's observation is unquestionably applicable to the debtor. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Okay. I like the color commentary, but Judge, it's a little harsh in this instance. And I will say, we're not rooting for corporate America. Like, I think in most instances, we'd say the studio is probably screwing the little guy. But in this particular instance, it really seems like that quote does apply.

I think he didn't realize the value of what he sold essentially. I don't think there's any way that he could have realized that. No, no. No one saw. Like there had not been a horror franchise. I guess Saw is the closest, and it's ironic that it's James Juan, is the closest duplicable comp. But there were so many attempts through the late 90s and 2000s to either reboot an existing

horror franchise or to launch a new one. And you start back to like scream, obviously petered out after two or three. really excellent movies. I know what you did last summer. Last did one. They tried to redo the Texas chainsaw masker into a new franchise like petered out. Halloween has, oh my God, how many times have they tried to reboot it only now kind of successfully? But this is an original IP horror film that then spawned these sequels that have made over a billion dollars at the box office internationally. It's insane. It's totally unprecedented. It is. And, you know, I don't feel bad for this guy, but I do kind of understand it's like, you sold this when you were hard up for cash,

and now it's worth, as Chris said, a billion dollars. As of 2017, he was still finding different ways to try and get back at Warner Brothers, despite that ruling, including enlisting author Gerald Brittle, who had written a book called The Demonologist, which was the life story of Ed and Lorraine Warren, to file a copyright lawsuit against Warner Brothers. Eventually, Brittle reached a settlement out of court and also revealed that DeRosa Grun had essentially coerced him

into the whole thing, which is another knock against DeRosa Grund. He just keeps digging himself into deeper and deeper debt with these lawsuits and like doing borderline illegal things and it's not working. I can just see like smash cut to him like outside the Warner Brothers lot flinging eggs over the wall just being like. Basically, but perhaps nothing on this project went more wrong than the portrayal of Ed and Lorraine Warren themselves. To say that the film is based on truth requires quite a bit of an imaginative stress.

not about the haunting of the parent family, which, as we said, does appear to be relatively real, but about the Warrens themselves. Even if you know nothing about the real Warrens, which I don't really, I've just seen the photo of them. Well, buckle up. The warrants just seem like fake people. What they have to come up with is like, she wants to be there and he's worried about her safety. That's the level of conflict in their relationship. They're both super hot, super Christian. Smoking.

Smoking. Just going straight to heaven, hoddies. So let's get this out of the way first. The Warren's first big claim to fame was a haunting that is actually referenced at the end of the conjuring. Do you remember at the very end, then they're standing in their little museum and Ed gets a call saying that they're wanted to go take a look at a haunting in Long Island? Oh, it's got to be Amityville. It is Amityville. So that is the Amityville horror.

And I remember clocking that when I watched The Conjuring for the first time and getting really excited, thinking that maybe Jamesville. James Wan would be tackling that infamous haunting next. But the franchise has smartly never really touched on it more than the brief setup covering Amityville at the top of the Conjuring 2, which we watched last night maybe. And it's interesting because the way that they handle it, they don't really show any of the haunting in Amityville. They just show her saying how much it affected her and a little bit of sort of the demon that she sees present there, not any of the actual things like the green slime or the flies that we know from, from Amityville. And then the bigger conversation about Amityville is them defending the fact that people say it was a hoax. Now, people say it was a

hoax because it was almost certainly a hoax. And here is the story behind that. To give you a tiny bit of background on Amityville, essentially what happened was there was a young man named Ronald DeFay who lived in this house in Amityville, Long Island with his family, and he murdered his whole family one day. The defense that came up was that he was possessed, and, you know, that it had been at the behest of a demon, basically. Although that wasn't, like, super strongly present in court, as it is in some other cases we'll get to in a minute. So after Ronald DeFaio had killed his family, another family moves in. That family is the Lutz's, and it's this family. that actually experiences the Amityville horror as we know it. It's also this family that enlists the warrants.

However, it's also this family that allegedly called the defense attorney for Ronald DeFaio, William Weber, and started asking him about what had happened in the house. He, along with the author of the Amityville horror book, Jay Anson, all agree that it was heavily, quote unquote, amplified over many bottles of wine. According to Weber, he was contacted by the Lutzes when they claimed they were experiencing supernatural occurrences. As he was meeting with them and telling them about Defeo, he noticed they were weaving bits of information he was giving them into their own experiences. For example, the slime oozing from the walls, the flies, the stench. Those were all things

that came from conversation with him. Yet despite this, the Warrens continued to profit off of the Amityville horror and their involvement in other supposed hauntings for years, acting as consultants on movies and authors of books. Because you may remember, I think it's mentioned in The Conjuring, they don't charge for their services, quote unquote. That's not how they make money. They make money off of their public personas, off of their lecturing, acting as consultants, all of that.

So in a Washington Post article about the case on which The Conjuring 3, The Devil Made Me Do It, is based, very excited for this one personally. This is a case in which the Warrens contended and even gave sworn statements saying that the defendant was possessed by the devil to kill his landlord, which, by the way, resulted in a somewhat reduced sentence for the murderer, Lorraine had this to say in this article

when interviewed about that particular case. Quote, will we have a book written about this? Yes, we will. Will we lecture about it? Yes, we will. And then when she was asked if they were talking to anyone about a movie deal, she said, quote, no, we're not. Our agents at the William Morris agency are.

Well, Lorraine, you're repped at the right place. you money grub and cheat. Yeah. What this did give us, though, and I do mean this wholeheartedly, is that Lorraine and Ed's willingness to straight up lie to make a profit, led to the mid-2000s Ryan Reynolds' Amityville Horror remake

that may have been the low point of his career that eventually pushed him toward Deadpool greatness. Yes, it did. Maybe butterfly effect? That's what we got. but I don't know. We're not done with the Warrens yet. I'm waiting for the reveal that they're into weird swinger stuff.

Like that's what I feel like is coming. Hold that thought, please. You're on the right path. So I do, I again want to say, I'm not saying that every single haunting they were involved in was a hoax. I actually don't think that's true. I think things like the parent family. That's fine. I'm saying that, though.

So just so we're clear. Okay. Well, I do think the Amityville horror was 100% a hoax. There are so many people involved in it who literally just said, yeah, we made this shit up. We were drunk. We made it up. So I think you can take that one at face value as a hoax. But just remember, it's a hoax that Ed and Lorraine Warren were fervently standing behind until they died.

Of course. So just a few weeks after the Conjuring released in theaters, top studio executives at Warner Brothers and New Line were made aware of some allegations against Ed. Warren. A woman named Judith Penny came forward and said that she had begun a sexual relationship with Ed Warren starting in 1963 when she was 15 years old. Whoa. She claimed that she had actually moved into the house with the Warren's and that Lorraine was fully aware of and supportive of the relationship. Now, her moving into the house, that is a fact. That is substantiated not just by her, but also by the Warren's child. How did Lorraine go? Did

Ed just tell Lorraine that she was a ghost? What's the logic here? This is so creepy. Yeah. Remember I said there's a real horror behind it? It's this. Yeah. So you might ask, how did he meet this 15-year-old girl? He drove the bus she took to school before his career as a demonologist really hit the big time.

Oh, God. That's awful. She says that the relationship continued until three years before Ed's death in 2006. And as I said, her story is somewhat substantiated. In fact, someone reported the situation to the police in Connecticut when Penny was still underage because it does not go unnoticed when a 15-year-old girl moves in with an adult couple she's not related to. She ends up spending the night in jail. And the cops spend the entire night trying to convince her to sign a statement saying what was really going on with the warrants, but she refused. She was then forced to visit a court-mandated counselor for troubled youths. And guess who drove her to all of her meetings. Oh, in the school bus? Ed Warren? Good Lord. Good old Ed. It gets significantly worse. She also says that she became pregnant and that the Warrens tried to convince her to say she was raped. When she refused, they pressured her into an abortion. I'm just very godly of them. Of course. Yeah, they're Catholic, remember. According to Judith, Lorraine was allegedly the one who pushed the hardest. After all,

their faith wasn't just the selling point of the conjuring. It was also the same. selling point of their entire career. Penny put it best when she said that, quote, her real God is money. Penny also said that Ed was physically abusive to Lorraine, sometimes backhanding her so hard that she would black out. She said of her time with the Warren's quote, as I'm older now, I can't even fathom why Lorraine let me stay there. Lots of times I think about why did I do this? Why did I screw up my life like this? Sometimes I get angry thinking about how so much was taken away from me. So, of course, it merits saying the Warren's children denied these claims, although they did not deny that Judith did live with the Warrens for some time. And Lorraine Warren's attorney said that her health was

declining and she was unable to comment. But, you know, obviously, they essentially denied these allegations. They also pushed the narrative that Judith was being manipulated by none other than Tony DeRosa Grund. Grunt, back at it again. Good Lord. Get out of here, Grundle. I know. There's a little bit of truth to that. It does seem like he began kind of pushing her story when it began to suit him. So that being said, there are plenty of reasons to believe that she was telling the truth, not the least of which is the fact that she didn't seek any money from the production. Also, it's very gross that DeRosa Grund, who once proudly touted himself as a close personal friend of Ed Warren,

did start using Judith's harrowing experience as a weapon against New Line when he realized that he needed more ammunition in his ongoing lawsuits. He would reportedly threaten that she might want to talk to the media, even though Judith herself was not a part of the settlement negotiations and does not appear to want to talk about this. Essentially what happened is that she wanted the writers and the studio to not paint the warrants, her alleged abusers, as such a lovely Christian couple.

That was her request, was that she was upset by the portrayal of them. Because once again, they are portrayed as perfect people. Yes. Just not even, leave the religion, aside from it. They're so perfect. It's actually almost boring when you're watching just their scenes.

That's why we've got to get back to the scares because the characters are so flawless. And you can see how if this is something that had happened to you and you're watching this couple being portrayed as like literal Earth angels on screen, that would be incredibly hard to stomach, especially when it has then spawned sequel after sequel

and they continue painting them in this light. It's interesting. I'm not going to get in the weeds on this too much. But the question came up whether New Line and, you know, the team behind the movies was doing anything potentially illegal by painting the Warrens this way and labeling the movies as based on a true story. The general overwhelming consensus on that is no, they are not. I was going to say, this doesn't seem like as much of a stretch as other movies. You know what I mean? Like they just take such a wide liberty. And when they say based or inspired by a true. true story. That's exactly right. So one of the most important things to remember from this episode is when you see that a movie is quote unquote based on a true story, just always take that with an enormous grain of salt because it can cover such a wide swath of truth. And what is allowed to be manipulated is significantly more pervasive than I even realized. Oh yeah. I mean, in recent years, the story that really exploded and you can do more research outside of this podcast on it is

Foxcatcher. The wrestler, whose name I've forgotten, who's played by Channing Tatum, when the film came out was very upset at how he and his brother were portrayed, his brother played by Mark Ruffalo in the film. And it was a big deal because the argument was basically like, well, we did this for creative purposes to restructure the story, to make it more compelling for audiences and give your characters arcs. All these things. things that, sure, if it's a fictional story, makes sense, but his point was, you have so grossly misrepresented. I don't know the stories well enough to comment. I just know his reaction to it was pretty extreme. And I do think he took legal action. I don't know what the result of it was.

But the movies are sold as like the actors look exactly like the characters. You know, Foxcatcher was an example. They gave Steve Krell all this prosthetic makeup to make him look just like that gentleman, you know, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, the postures they took, their hair and makeup, everything. So it gives the sense that you're achieving this unparalleled level of realism and dedication to the original story. But at the end of the day, it's still a movie and it's going to adhere to movie conventions. Right. And with The Conjuring, like, I actually think the fact that they cast this super hot couple as Ed and Lorraine Warren, in some ways, they are already divorcing the movie from reality. They made less of an attempt, I think. Actually, this is me. Yes. It's actually

like better because like from the get-go, you're just kind of like, okay, well, that's absurd. Exactly. So I actually do think that that was intentional, that this was, though it says based on a true story, I think right from the get-go, they were aware that they were fictionalizing large parts of this and were okay with it. I understand it. I don't think the writers did anything wrong. Honestly, they were not in any way aware of this information about Ed Warren when they wrote it. I do not believe that they were at all. I also think horror is different. Horror is not a biopic. You know what I mean? So like an audience goes in with a suspended sense of disbelief. Exactly. And they're playing on that. This is all to say, I still really love this movie, but it does make it quite a bit harder to watch when you know that these allegations are out there about both of them.

It should also be mentioned that the conjuring condenses almost 10 years of a haunting into this one movie. So already what you're seeing is a manipulated timeline, which again, is fine. Now, lest you still believe that this is some horse shit that DeRosa Grun concocted all the stuff about Judith Penny. I would like to read to you this little clause in Lorraine Warren's contract when she signed on as a consultant for the film. Now this is according to the Hollywood reporter. Quote, the films couldn't show her or her husband engaging in crimes, including sex with minors, child pornography, prostitution, or sexual assault. Neither the husband nor wife could be depicted

as participating in extramarital sexual relationship. Which in theory could have been boilerplate. We No, no. I looked into this a little bit, and they actually, in this article from the Hollywood reporter, they had an entertainment lawyer weigh in. It feels very specific. It's very specific. That's exactly right. So she said basically, and I'm paraphrasing, but of course it is not unusual for people when their story is being adapted or some part of their life is being told, they do want to protect themselves. And usually the clauses in the contract will say, like, You can't show them doing anything that they didn't do. You can't show them doing anything illegal.

Those things are very normal. This is so specific. It's that thing where, like, no one's brought up. You cannot show Ed having sex with Judas. Like, that's literally what they're getting at. No one brought up child pornography. It's a movie about, like, demons that's coming from a Christian backdrop. And all of a sudden she's like, that's cool.

But just make sure no prostitution, no sex with mine. no child porn. And the Hayes brothers are like, there goes Act 3. And then... Oh, no. Oh, God. I feel a little bad laughing

because this is rough. No, I mean, it's terrible. The point is, when you watch a movie that claims, as Lizzie said, that is based on a true story, do not assume anything you are seeing is true.

No. Even when you watch a documentary, go and do the research separate. The pursuit of telling a good story will trump the truth at every junction. I'd like to end with a quote from Ed Warren that is featured at the end of the movie. Quote,

diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which we elect to follow.

Well, I think we know which way Ed went. So let's give him a roundup applause and look down at him right now. I'm going to put a big old allegedly on the top of that. But yes, I agree. I don't believe in hell. So I don't, so it's fine.

Well, had disappeared into the universe when he died in my mind. My disclaimer at the end of the movie would have been like, this is all fake, God is dead, thank you very much for watching the movie. I'm sorry, Mom.

I actually should probably put a spoiler warning at the top of this to tell my mom not to listen to it because she is a very Christian woman and really loves the conjuring, and I think it would really upset her if she were to hear about the truth behind Ed Warren. So, mom, don't listen to this one. All right. So that wraps up. What Went Wrong on the Conjuring. That was a very interesting different episode.

I'm really glad that you did that one. Yeah, it was a lot to dig into. And an interesting story about not believing everything you see. True. So, as always, we conclude these episodes with a little bit of positivity in a section called What Went Right. Lizzie, do you want to lead or finish with this one? I will lead.

So it's just an excellent horror movie. I think my biggest thing with this in terms of, of what went right is that they do my favorite thing, which is they don't really show the monster until the very end. And all of the scares are about what's unseen versus what is seen. And I love that. I think in particular the moment in the bedroom with Joey King and the other sister, where she just looks into a dark corner where you can't see anything. And she just says, can't you see it? It's looking right at us. It's just one of the scariest moments in the whole movie. And I just, love that. I think it's so smart. I think it's excellent storytelling. I agree. I thoroughly enjoyed

this film. I still think it's the best in the franchise. I will say, I think Lily Taylor's performance is criminally underrated. She's great. I think if horror was ever given its due in awards circles, she would be recognized because she is exceptional in her portrayal of the mother of the parent family who becomes possessed and ends up wanting to murder her own children. She's a wonderful underrated actress and she's great in this movie. And I just think without that committed performance, especially the second half of the movie just would fall apart. But she's absolutely wonderful and terrifying at the end. Yeah. The one thing that sticks out to me with her is that moment where she realizes where the other daughter is under the house. Yeah. And she like scurries into the

The way she skitters off. She turns into a spider. Yeah, exactly. It's great. Yeah. It's really good. So, yeah. Fantastic horror movie based on some maybe not fantastic people. Yeah. As always, guys, please leave us a rating and review. Smash that subscribe button. And if you can, call a friend, check up on a bud. And right when they start telling you how they're feeling, interrupt them and tell them of about our podcast and just lay it on thick. We know, we really appreciate everybody listening and all of the recommendations you've been sending us. We're going to continue to hit those films as we move on through this pandemic. Thanks again for listening to you guys.

Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. Wear a mask. And also don't talk to your bus drivers, maybe, if you're under 18. They could be nice, but just you don't know. Wow. We just lost all of our breast driving audience. I'm sorry.

The bus driver that literally has to listen to our podcast to tune the children out every time is just like, well, I got to find a new podcast now. No, I'm just saying they don't need to talk to the children. Oh, cut this out. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Uthana Uos.