Speaker 1: Welcome to Nightcall, a production of I Heart Radio. It's
Speaker 1: ten pm in the Pine barrens and you're listening to Nightcall. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome Tonightcall, a podcast for your strange days and
Speaker 1: lonely nights. My name is Emily Yoshida. I am here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and with me, as always are Tessalynent
Speaker 1: Molly Lambert. We are super excited. This week we have
Speaker 1: a very special guest, Tom O'Neill on to talk about
Speaker 1: his book Chaos, UM, a new book about the Manson
Speaker 1: murders and the CIA conspiracies and all sorts of fun
Speaker 1: stuff that'll be in the second half of the show,
Speaker 1: but for right now, I just wanted to let go
Speaker 1: around and do some recommendations, just like stuff we've been consuming. UM.
Speaker 1: I wanted to point everybody real quick to Criteria, the
Speaker 1: Criterion channel, which if you're not a subscriber, I would
Speaker 1: highly recommend it, and I am not being paid to
Speaker 1: say this. UM. They are doing a little spotlight on
Speaker 1: Susan Pitt, who I feel like is a very Nightcall
Speaker 1: approved animator. UM. She did a film, an animated film
Speaker 1: called Asparagus that used to screen in front of Eraser
Speaker 1: head when it was on its like midnight movie run.
Speaker 1: She's just a very cool, kind of psychedelic um illustrator
Speaker 1: and animator, like doing stuff that's very kind of left
Speaker 1: the center of what when you think of the history
Speaker 1: of American animation, especially in the time she was working,
Speaker 1: which was like the seventies and eighties. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a bunch of her short films on Criterion
Speaker 1: right now, so check it out. I saw her stuff
Speaker 1: for the first time at a weird bar in Tokyo,
Speaker 1: so it's like very turned on. What are they Like,
Speaker 1: I'm you've convinced me to subscribe to the Criterion channel,
Speaker 1: but I haven't done it yet. Um, So what's like
Speaker 1: what what is asparagus Like? It's very hard to describe.
Speaker 1: It's sort of there's a lot of asparagus, like kind
Speaker 1: of phallic asparagus. There's a whole sequence where like a
Speaker 1: woman basically like filates in asparagus. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: kind of dreamy and sort of like free association, like
Speaker 1: all these sort of shape sort of melting into each other.
Speaker 1: It's just like, I don't know, it's you kind of
Speaker 1: have to just like watch it to understand it. But
Speaker 1: it does have that very kind of groovy seventies kind
Speaker 1: of zap Comex esque aesthetic and like texture and stuff
Speaker 1: to it, So I can't give a better explanation of
Speaker 1: it than that. Emily, what do you think of The Irishman? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would definitely recommend watching the short films of Susan
Speaker 1: Pitt because they are short shorter than The Irishman. I
Speaker 1: saw The Irishman. You are totally immune to the charms
Speaker 1: of the Irishman. What charms you were? You were confused.
Speaker 1: I wasn't fused, you were like, what did everybody else?
Speaker 1: I am confused by the general reception to it, though
Speaker 1: I do feel like the more people that see it,
Speaker 1: not to besmirche my former fellow critics, but I do
Speaker 1: feel like the more I talk to people who are
Speaker 1: not critics who have seen it, the more I feel
Speaker 1: a little more, uh, you know, backed up in my
Speaker 1: kind of antipathy towards this movie. It's just so long,
Speaker 1: and it's funny because now it's become such a binary
Speaker 1: thing of either you're like pro Scorsese or your like
Speaker 1: pro comic book movies. Like there's no one between. It's
Speaker 1: like the in between. Yah, he bridged the gap. Well,
Speaker 1: he's now, you know, part of the Star Wars universe.
Speaker 1: In the Star Wars University. Study's never seen any of
Speaker 1: the Star Wars movies, nor any of Jon Favreau's movies.
Speaker 1: He intends, same quote that I don't believe him because
Speaker 1: he always has the same quote anytime people ask him
Speaker 1: about like pop cultural things that are older. He's like,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a tiny village in Bavaria, and
Speaker 1: I never saw any cultures. That's so funny, Like what
Speaker 1: a good troll to say. He says, he never I mean,
Speaker 1: he was just doing I don't know her. He claims
Speaker 1: music until he was eighteen. Like, I'm pretty sure he
Speaker 1: gave me that exact same story when I interviewed him,
Speaker 1: Like it's just one of his it's like in his
Speaker 1: file of things that he says. But um, anyway, I
Speaker 1: believe him that he's never seen Star Wars. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he also didn't even some quote recently where he's like,
Speaker 1: we have to pay attention to the Kardashians, like we
Speaker 1: must keep our eyes open to like all the horrors
Speaker 1: of our culture. Really he's not wrong, though, Yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean that's I feel like that's our philosophy in general.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, no, it's like I even liked like. It's
Speaker 1: not that I'm not even a fan of late period Scorsese,
Speaker 1: although I wasn't a fan of Wolf of Wall Street. Like.
Speaker 1: I actually saw Silence somewhat recently because I didn't think
Speaker 1: I was gonna like it, and I watched it and
Speaker 1: I was like, it's great. He's a great filmmaker, like,
Speaker 1: and he's not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: But this just feels like Netflix paid him a bunch
Speaker 1: of money to like play all the hits. Um wow,
Speaker 1: Silence stand Emily, do not put that on my gravest.
Speaker 1: That is not a defining personality trade of mine. But
Speaker 1: it was disappointing because it's not like I'm I don't
Speaker 1: know I was. I wanted it to be good. I
Speaker 1: don't want to ask test now about a movie that
Speaker 1: she hasn't actually seen yet but closely monitoring her opinions
Speaker 1: on already know a bomb box marriage story. Oh guys,
Speaker 1: how did you know I'd have opinions on this? Did
Speaker 1: you know? Of course, I haven't seen it. Well, I
Speaker 1: put into the universe that it might be a Blue Valentine.
Speaker 1: I'm really upset because I re issued my very important
Speaker 1: Twitter pool asking if people's relationships had been destroyed by
Speaker 1: Blue Valentine. They always lie. I mean, it's like I
Speaker 1: know the truth and I people will email me using
Speaker 1: anonymous email addresses and tell me like my wife and
Speaker 1: I went on our first date to maybe about a
Speaker 1: relationship breaking up painfully. I guess what happened next. But
Speaker 1: marriage Story, I am concerned it's going to have the
Speaker 1: same effect. I'm very concerned that anyone who sees a
Speaker 1: marriage story with their partner will immediately break up. Obviously,
Speaker 1: don't see marriage story with your but isn't it worse
Speaker 1: to see it without in a way, Also, the Cusies
Speaker 1: movies like that except married Couples on Date. Well, soon
Speaker 1: it's going to be available on Netflix, so you'll just
Speaker 1: be able to beam it into your home and ruin
Speaker 1: your marriage from the inside. Well, I think the movie
Speaker 1: that we all actually want marriage story to be is Greenberg,
Speaker 1: which is you know, I've never gotten into Greenberg. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was. I was coming at it from a place
Speaker 1: in my life right it was inaccessible. I was saying,
Speaker 1: like Ben Stiller is a way better stand in for
Speaker 1: Noah bomb Bach than Adam Driver. Sure. Yeah, well, now
Speaker 1: they both seem too young to be a stand in
Speaker 1: for Noah bomb Back, like like Ben Stiller is legitimately
Speaker 1: his contemporary, so it makes a little more sense. I
Speaker 1: love Greenberg so much I'm gonna give it another whirl.
Speaker 1: I wrote about Greenberg on Tumbler back in the day.
Speaker 1: I was like, I am both characters, and isn't that
Speaker 1: how everybody who loves it feel? I used it as
Speaker 1: a verbal lot to Greenberg. I would say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they got Greenberg nice? Is that mean you'll figure it
Speaker 1: out when you watch? But I watched the movie? What
Speaker 1: is it mean? I don't know, Like like an older
Speaker 1: man was annoying to you, Oh, talk down to you,
Speaker 1: And that's that's now what I say to everything. It
Speaker 1: always works, um. I saw The Squid in the Whale
Speaker 1: when I was on a road trip and we were
Speaker 1: rough one for me, see, I loved the Squid in
Speaker 1: the Whale. I loved it. But I saw it on
Speaker 1: someone's ancient television in like I don't even remember where
Speaker 1: we were, might have even been in like a motel
Speaker 1: or something, and it was in black and white because
Speaker 1: the TV was a black and white TV and I
Speaker 1: was like, what a fine film, beautifully shot in black
Speaker 1: and white. And I only realized it was not shot
Speaker 1: in black and white literally last week. Wow. Really, And
Speaker 1: it's so weird when things like that happen, where there's
Speaker 1: information that's so obvious and you've seen this, Like, how
Speaker 1: did I miss it? How did I miss the list?
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I've been living in a bubble. That's like
Speaker 1: miss hearing a song lyric times a hundred of all
Speaker 1: the movie like he made Francis Hall in black and white? Right,
Speaker 1: hated Francis by the way. That's wild. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I also think I may not really take to credit apologies.
Speaker 1: I try. I don't know what it is. The cinema
Speaker 1: of New York intellectuals is overrepresented. That could be I
Speaker 1: don't need any more Woody Allen movies. We also don't
Speaker 1: even need the ones we have. Yeah, well see, I
Speaker 1: never I was never into Woody Allen to begin with.
Speaker 1: But I guess it's just like if we, like I
Speaker 1: understand where Scorsese is coming from, if we stopped paying
Speaker 1: tribute to these things, they will fade out of the
Speaker 1: cultural memory. And that's just like what should probably happen
Speaker 1: with a lot of them. Yeah, but it won't if
Speaker 1: people keep going like, we have to make more fake
Speaker 1: Scorsese movies and fake Woody Allen movies because that is
Speaker 1: what we think is movies are Like, I have a
Speaker 1: question that's not related to these things. But Molly had
Speaker 1: looked at Live Science, our favorite website, and found an
Speaker 1: article asking should we splice human and water bear DNA
Speaker 1: for Martian travel? Should answer what would a human water
Speaker 1: bear hybrid look like? Water bears look like? Faceless bears?
Speaker 1: Kind of? If you really look stretched bears, Look, they
Speaker 1: have a bottle face, for sure, they kind of look
Speaker 1: like a like a flesh colored centipede. Sure we would
Speaker 1: a human and a water bear cross look kind of
Speaker 1: like squid? Word? Is that right? So wait? So so
Speaker 1: life science is just like posing this question just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think what we we do what is normally done
Speaker 1: in science? We see something interesting, let's try it in
Speaker 1: mice first. I don't know that splicing mice with water
Speaker 1: bears is a good idea because I have mice to
Speaker 1: live forever. I mean, it's good for mice. You know,
Speaker 1: mice have had it so rough for so long. I
Speaker 1: think we owe it to mice to give them immortality,
Speaker 1: not their fault that they spread the plague. Like, no,
Speaker 1: they didn't make the plague. So I had to really,
Speaker 1: I had a snake and I had to feed at
Speaker 1: the baby mice. And I still feel so bad about that,
Speaker 1: Like I know that the snake would have eaten the
Speaker 1: mice in the wild, but when you have to face
Speaker 1: it yourself, it's a whole other conundrum. And I have
Speaker 1: the breats. What are we talking about splicing water bears
Speaker 1: in mice, Emily? Okay, let's take a night call about
Speaker 1: a critter of the week, and it's technically a night email,
Speaker 1: but there has a new critter that is very cute.
Speaker 1: Unlike some of the critters that we've covered on this podcast,
Speaker 1: this one is a winner. I I actually really like
Speaker 1: this critter. There have been some where every own's like
Speaker 1: did you see that? And I'm like, how don't you
Speaker 1: know it's it's not it's my atom driver, Like I
Speaker 1: don't care, but this one I do care about. So
Speaker 1: we have a night email from Colleen writing this from
Speaker 1: under the covers as I try to fall back asleep
Speaker 1: after being jarred awake from a faulty fire alarm scare
Speaker 1: at two am. That's another night call to be had.
Speaker 1: Came across this very exciting, scintillating discovery of the silver
Speaker 1: backed chevrotaine on camera in Vietnam, a k a. A
Speaker 1: mouse dear. They are rabbit sized animals that, despite having
Speaker 1: mouse like features, are not rodents. They're hooved and most
Speaker 1: importantly they have fangs. And then she includes some links
Speaker 1: lastly alive in I think this is so cool and
Speaker 1: I will now be kept awake looking at picks of
Speaker 1: extinct chevertrain chevro chevrotaine just risk tricky. Has there been
Speaker 1: any discussion on extinct animals and species you'd wish to encounter? Colleen?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Colleen. This chevrotaine. It's cute. It's really cute.
Speaker 1: It's like a like a more Kauai version of a deer.
Speaker 1: It's just like so little and but fangs. I like
Speaker 1: the deer with fangs, but where I I can't see
Speaker 1: the fangs in the photos which we will link to.
Speaker 1: It's very Yeah, it's very fetching. I like its coloration.
Speaker 1: It's but I don't like how it looks like. I'm
Speaker 1: not a fan of its stance, but I'll let it
Speaker 1: fly because I like its ears. It kind of is jackalopus.
Speaker 1: It's Tod's jackalopus, little cuter. Do you guys have extinct
Speaker 1: animals that you wish were not extinct anymore? That was
Speaker 1: what I was going to say. Was so fun. There's
Speaker 1: so fun. Imagine if you were just like on a
Speaker 1: road trip, you know, and I don't know, the Great Plains,
Speaker 1: and you saw a wooly mammoth, just like a wild
Speaker 1: hooly mammoth, like that would be very exciting. I would
Speaker 1: like those like really giant versions of things that are
Speaker 1: now small, Like you know, there was like a beaver
Speaker 1: that was as big as right, like that giant sloth.
Speaker 1: Beavers are not very friendly. I would be scared to
Speaker 1: see a giant beaver. Were you scared during the full
Speaker 1: beaver Moon? No? I charged. I was made fun of
Speaker 1: actually recently at dinner for charging my crystals and my
Speaker 1: tarot card deck under the beaver moon to get more
Speaker 1: powers to make rain. You kept saying beaver Moon. I
Speaker 1: love that Cristy movie The Beaver Moon. Yeah. My husband
Speaker 1: brought it up in front of my parents and I
Speaker 1: was like, God, stop there don't think I'm so crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like, but I totally I did it, and I
Speaker 1: guess I deserve to be called out. Um My powers
Speaker 1: are increasing, however, and there's a slight chance of rain
Speaker 1: when we were recording this, and there maybe rain next week.
Speaker 1: So thank god for the beaver moon. Thank God for
Speaker 1: the beaver. Should we take a little ad break, Let's
Speaker 1: do it. Hey everybody, and welcome back to Night Call.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about something we've been talking about, wanting
Speaker 1: to talk about for as long as we've been podcasting
Speaker 1: The Sopranos. Tess, why don't you tell our listeners about
Speaker 1: your November tradition? Okay, ten years ago I started a tradition,
Speaker 1: and I haven't done it every year. I try to,
Speaker 1: but sometimes, you know, I'm just doing other stuff, as
Speaker 1: one does. But I try to start watching the Sopranos
Speaker 1: right before Thanksgiving, sometimes on Thanksgiving from the beginning. In
Speaker 1: previous years, I start with the pilot and I worked
Speaker 1: my way all the way through and usually I can
Speaker 1: usually get it done by New Year's Like, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: really committed. But this year I took last year off.
Speaker 1: I only dabbled. I didn't watch the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: I watched some this year. I decided that I am
Speaker 1: going to watch it. Well. At first, I was like,
Speaker 1: I might just go with the episodes I remember best
Speaker 1: and then go through all of the episodes and kind
Speaker 1: of a random order and see how that feels. But
Speaker 1: now I think, having watched two of my favorite episodes,
Speaker 1: the finale very divisive obviously, and Kennedy and Heidi, I
Speaker 1: think I might watch the finale that I just watched
Speaker 1: two days ago again and then go backwards through the series. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm crazy. I respect this. Thank you. If
Speaker 1: you learn anything new from that, you should tell us immediately.
Speaker 1: That feels like listening to a record back where clocks
Speaker 1: will start, like finning in Revers Twin Peaks, Remix. It
Speaker 1: is um. It's really interesting when you start from a
Speaker 1: strange place in the Sopranos, because it also kind of
Speaker 1: reminds you. I first saw the Sopranos um when I
Speaker 1: was home. I think I might have been in college
Speaker 1: and I was in Connecticut over winter break with my
Speaker 1: mom and she was what she had just gotten really
Speaker 1: into the Sopranos, and it was like on HBO, and
Speaker 1: it was the Tracy episode, which is also one of
Speaker 1: my favorite episodes. And I was like, what is this
Speaker 1: and I sat down and we just watched it kind
Speaker 1: of like even in high school, but anyway, we we
Speaker 1: were like watching it in silence, and it was so
Speaker 1: awkward because the Tracy episode is like, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: all extremely violent, but it was very violent and liked
Speaker 1: to watch Tracy. Oh oh yeah, that's like one of
Speaker 1: the most horrifying. It's a horrifying episode. But it also
Speaker 1: that's the Sopranos for you. That's I think that's that
Speaker 1: might have been one of the first TV episodes that
Speaker 1: ever made me cry. Oh yeah, that was the I
Speaker 1: mean it was so a fact, like it was incredible,
Speaker 1: and I think she's actually a yoga teacher. Now the
Speaker 1: actors who played Tracy every so happened. I'm like, what's
Speaker 1: up with Tracy the actor? Because she's an amazing Actually,
Speaker 1: she's so phenomenal. I don't think i'd seen her in
Speaker 1: anything else since then. Um, but yeah, Tess, you're really
Speaker 1: viewing of the Sopranos made maybe like that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: I'm going to copy you. And then I started doing
Speaker 1: it too. It's a really great holiday thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's just like I could watch it all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and now that we're so far away from it in
Speaker 1: the oversaturated TV world, but like, so few things are
Speaker 1: as good as that. Um, I always say, nothing is
Speaker 1: as good, nothing is as good. But it's always weird
Speaker 1: to me to be like the first batch of shows
Speaker 1: that were prestige shows that I loved, We're all like
Speaker 1: not famous people and just really character driven, we're not
Speaker 1: super high budget, and now it feels like it's turned
Speaker 1: into movies where people are just like whoever spends the
Speaker 1: most is going to win, which also isn't proving to
Speaker 1: be true. And that's one of the things I'm really
Speaker 1: stoked about Elena Smith's show Dickinson doing so well is
Speaker 1: that it is a very specific vision by a specific person,
Speaker 1: which is also what the Sopranos has going forth. So
Speaker 1: you're you guys are going to murder me for saying this,
Speaker 1: but like I did watch I actually started watching Sopranos
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, and just like watched about
Speaker 1: I think I watched the first season, or maybe I
Speaker 1: didn't get through the entire first season, but like one
Speaker 1: thing that I was struck by because I haven't watched
Speaker 1: it rewatched nearly as much as you guys. But man,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go back too far for this.
Speaker 1: But Sopranos is a great example of it. TV shows
Speaker 1: that are actually shot on film. There's like a nice
Speaker 1: feeling there and you can you can you can taste
Speaker 1: the difference. I mean, it's true. It's also like it
Speaker 1: makes New Jersey look like the most beautiful in the world,
Speaker 1: and New Jersey is beautiful and it's weird. I was
Speaker 1: always trying to convince my folks to move to New
Speaker 1: Jersey because I was like, it's so cool because you
Speaker 1: could just go into New York and then you get
Speaker 1: to be in beautiful New Jersey. And they just like
Speaker 1: relentlessly made fun of me because they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just can't even you can't say that. It's like,
Speaker 1: but it is. It's very beautiful in New Jersey. It's
Speaker 1: just across the river, but it's a thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: It's true. Um, but yeah, we I'm in a force
Speaker 1: Emily and Molly to be watching more Sopranos throughout the
Speaker 1: next couple of months. Um. But I did want to
Speaker 1: recommend if you are just wanting to watch a single episode.
Speaker 1: I'm going to make them recommend which ones they love
Speaker 1: the most, But I'm I'm going to stand for Kennedy
Speaker 1: and Heidi as one of my favorite episodes. It's the
Speaker 1: eighty three I believe episodes. It was in the sixth season. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's great for a number of reasons. It's a
Speaker 1: lot happens, uh and what happened? I dragged my memory
Speaker 1: because it's been a way long time since I watched
Speaker 1: a sixth season of The Sopranos. Okay, spoiler alert, go
Speaker 1: away if you if you don't know anything about The Sopranos,
Speaker 1: go away. It is comfortably numbs is playing in the
Speaker 1: car with Tony and Christopher when Kennedy and Heidi are
Speaker 1: two teens and they just are in this it's titled
Speaker 1: Kennedy and Heidi, but they're just like two teenagers on
Speaker 1: their learners permit driving at night, and you see them
Speaker 1: for a brief second. They're having a conversation, at which
Speaker 1: point Christopher is driving the car. He swerves to avoid them,
Speaker 1: the car rolls over, and then something else happens that
Speaker 1: I just can't bring myself to spoil. It's such an
Speaker 1: interesting one for you to be like, watch the climactic
Speaker 1: point of the series. Well, I don't know if you should.
Speaker 1: If you haven't ever seen in the Sopranos, obviously you
Speaker 1: have to start from the pilot and work your way through.
Speaker 1: But if you've seen the Sopranos and you want to
Speaker 1: like dip back, dip back in, I there's also because
Speaker 1: so Paul, you know, Polly's adopted mother has recently passed away.
Speaker 1: She's having a dueling funeral with another main character who
Speaker 1: has also died. And I feel like there are no
Speaker 1: bad episodes. There are no bad episodes. But also I
Speaker 1: think in Kennedy and Heidi, the cat who stares at
Speaker 1: um a picture and miaw is a lot, I think
Speaker 1: that that or maybe that's in the finale, but that
Speaker 1: was like another one of my favorite elements is like
Speaker 1: the animals who are reincarnations of people who have passed um. Yes, So, anyway,
Speaker 1: we are all going to be watching the Sopranos for
Speaker 1: months and months, and you are invited to join. And
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts about the Sopranos, give us a
Speaker 1: call at two four oh four six night. I think
Speaker 1: I know which one I'm when I rewatch which one,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is a good episode. I picked
Speaker 1: a weird up. I did Mr Ruggierro's Neighborhood, which is
Speaker 1: the season three opener, which is like about the FBI
Speaker 1: bugging the house uh as a aiming device, so it's
Speaker 1: like only intermittently about any of the main characters. But
Speaker 1: it features one of my favorite moments of the whole show,
Speaker 1: which is Tony singing dirty Work by Steely Dan alone
Speaker 1: in his car. It's just like a ten second getaway.
Speaker 1: That's one of the best parts of the show. And
Speaker 1: I watched things around the Sopranos like The Matrix, which
Speaker 1: co stars Joe Pantoliano right of course, and the movie Fallen,
Speaker 1: which co stars Uh, James Candalfeni and Aita Tutuo as
Speaker 1: I love Jannis. The other another really good one is
Speaker 1: the Janis under the Boardwalk thing, but well, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: get into that later. Emily, what were you going to?
Speaker 1: Which one were you going to start with? I don't
Speaker 1: know the title of the episode off the top of
Speaker 1: my head, but it's the one where Christopher is gonna
Speaker 1: write a movie. Yes, I just remember that. The closing
Speaker 1: credits on that are Cake, Frank Sinatra and for some
Speaker 1: reason that like stuck in my head. I thought that
Speaker 1: was like the most epic like black cut to credits
Speaker 1: that I had ever seen a very they were so good.
Speaker 1: That was one of their their finest little flares. Song
Speaker 1: by Cake. Oh great song. Yeah, put it on many
Speaker 1: A Mix CD. Yeah. Before we wrap up the Sopranos segment,
Speaker 1: we did get a night text I believe. I don't
Speaker 1: know that their night text or gave a name, but
Speaker 1: they say, hey, night call. Just wanted to share that
Speaker 1: people always forget that Polly's car horn is the theme
Speaker 1: from the Godfather, And that's one of my favorite small
Speaker 1: things on the show is that that's a and that's
Speaker 1: a real car horn, Like that's a that's a thing you. Oh,
Speaker 1: you can get a car one that does a song. Yeah. Here,
Speaker 1: there's a cuaracha one you hear sometimes. Yeah, that one's
Speaker 1: that was very common out here, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I've heard the Godfather one in New York. Yeah. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: Well we're going to take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll be talking with Tom O'Neil. Our
Speaker 1: guest this week joining us now is author Tom O'Neil,
Speaker 1: author of the book Chaos Charles Manson, The CIA and
Speaker 1: the Secret History of the Sixties with co author Dan
Speaker 1: Pipe and Bring and Ring. Welcome Tom, thank you, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me, Thanks for having us, Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: us on this journey. People were suggesting Chaos to us
Speaker 1: before we even picked it as a book club book
Speaker 1: because they were like, you just should talk about this
Speaker 1: book on your show because you talk about all the
Speaker 1: things in it anyway, And then we all just crunched it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, guys, crunched it, finished it today. Perhaps we
Speaker 1: went on the spree. Yeah, so this is our book
Speaker 1: club pick this month for our Patreon and Molly had
Speaker 1: already read it. She's been on a Manson journey UM
Speaker 1: and a Laurel Canyon journey also, so she had read
Speaker 1: the book. But then Emily and I had about two weeks.
Speaker 1: So in a way it worked out really well because
Speaker 1: we two became very obsessed, had no choice. I could
Speaker 1: feel horrible, I mean if I'm responsible, but no, it
Speaker 1: was great. We all I think highly recommend. This is
Speaker 1: a very night call book and it's it's super readable,
Speaker 1: but it also leaves you feeling so confused. Yeah, tell us,
Speaker 1: I mean just for readers who haven't aren't familiar with
Speaker 1: the book yet if you just give us. We were saying,
Speaker 1: this is probably hard, but the elevator pitch on this
Speaker 1: massive book about conspiracies and you know, graph charts and
Speaker 1: everything else that you put together. It didn't begin as
Speaker 1: a conspiracy book and began as a magazine assignment that
Speaker 1: was supposed to commemorate the then thirty anniversary of the
Speaker 1: crimes in and I was just looking at different ways
Speaker 1: to make that story interesting because it had been written
Speaker 1: to death obviously, and I didn't even want to do it,
Speaker 1: but I took it. And the kind of elevator pitch
Speaker 1: is I went on a rabbit hole and never got
Speaker 1: out for years. Exact interviews we set a thousand because
Speaker 1: we decided if I told the true number, I look
Speaker 1: even more crazy. And it's also how do you define
Speaker 1: an interview? Is it like so many people hung up
Speaker 1: at me or shut doors in my face, but I
Speaker 1: get one sentence from them before, but multiple thousands, you know,
Speaker 1: people that I returned to an interviewed again and again
Speaker 1: who agreed to talk. It almost got into a thousand, probably,
Speaker 1: but the one hits are some of them? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: weren't the pleasantest ones, and there's so much that didn't
Speaker 1: end up in the book. But what happened was I
Speaker 1: found out that the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, who became famous
Speaker 1: at the trial and with his book Helter Skelter, which
Speaker 1: to this day is the number one true best selling
Speaker 1: true crime book of all time. Let's say he cut
Speaker 1: some corners. That's a polite way, but the true way
Speaker 1: is he subordined perjury during the during the case and
Speaker 1: hit evidence, fabricated evidence, manipulated witnesses, threatened people, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And when I found that out in the beginning, like
Speaker 1: in the first year, that's when things started taking a
Speaker 1: lot of detours, and I started uncovering other stuff connected
Speaker 1: to other historical events and found out that there was
Speaker 1: a good possibility that there were darker forces at work
Speaker 1: than just a crazy, quote unquote hippie guy who was
Speaker 1: telling his followers what to do for him. That might
Speaker 1: explain it. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that sets this book apart is how much your
Speaker 1: voice and your own skepticism about what your reporting comes
Speaker 1: through and just you know, by the time you're starting
Speaker 1: to get into the g f K assassination. Even in
Speaker 1: you're in the moment, you're like, oh God, I'm getting
Speaker 1: into the GfK assassination. It just has this thing of
Speaker 1: you note you can see, you know, the next year
Speaker 1: of reporting or more, because it really in ability to
Speaker 1: for us all we've all done some interviewing. Just the
Speaker 1: idea of getting addicted to interviewing people, Yeah, obsessed with
Speaker 1: just reporting, getting addicted to the reporting. Especially when you're
Speaker 1: like a freelance journalist doing celebrity interviews that some of
Speaker 1: us also may have been trying to do something more important.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I gotta like that's going to be
Speaker 1: the thing that's going to get me out of this. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you also got your haircut three times just to interview. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the stylists to the Stars, Little Joe, who
Speaker 1: charged a lot of money. But my magazine, which doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore, I think I put them out of business.
Speaker 1: To Premiere was a monthly film magazine. They were the
Speaker 1: ones that assigned it. I had an expense account, so
Speaker 1: I told them before. You know, I always would take
Speaker 1: people for meals and stuff like that, but that seemed
Speaker 1: a lot. It is also like you're telling tales of
Speaker 1: like a land are away that none of us have ever.
Speaker 1: Don't magazines give you a budget and they're like, it was, well,
Speaker 1: they didn't. They did in this case, but it wasn't you.
Speaker 1: It was an anomaly that they let me do that
Speaker 1: because I got the editor in chiefs as obsessed as
Speaker 1: I was and as desperate to get out of I
Speaker 1: think entertainment journalism, because he really believed believed in the story.
Speaker 1: But the expense account that I got from Premiere, I
Speaker 1: ended up having to reimburse them for all those hundred
Speaker 1: dollar haircuts and everything else. When the whole thing fell apart. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of in the process of reimbursing pay
Speaker 1: there's no Premiere anymore. That's actually we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: When it was complicated, At what point did you become
Speaker 1: obsessed enough and have enough information that was knew that
Speaker 1: you could get your editor in chief to agree that
Speaker 1: this was worth Really just a couple of months in.
Speaker 1: Really I had some big breaks a couple of months in,
Speaker 1: but then you know, stuff will kind of level off
Speaker 1: and then something else would happen. It was a magazine
Speaker 1: story for almost two years, I think eighteen months after
Speaker 1: I missed the first three month deadline. Jim, the editor
Speaker 1: in chief, who believed in this, and really I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be sitting here now if he hadn't. Uh. He just
Speaker 1: gave me an open contract. He paid me monthly to
Speaker 1: keep reporting, so I would report back to him every
Speaker 1: month or two. You know, we blew the thirtieth anniversary
Speaker 1: deadline in the beginning, and it wasn't until he got
Speaker 1: fired from the corporate owners for let's say, probably the
Speaker 1: story that the new guy came in and said we
Speaker 1: wanted in a month or two. And at that point
Speaker 1: I obtained a book agent and I said, I can't
Speaker 1: report this stuff now because I'm giving too much away
Speaker 1: without the answers. So give me another couple of years,
Speaker 1: give me a book deal, and then we'll reimburse Premiere.
Speaker 1: He said, I can get you out of your obligation
Speaker 1: to them, but later we'll have to resolve that. Later
Speaker 1: is now. So this was originally supposed to be, as
Speaker 1: you said, a thirtieth anniversary story, and now it's a
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary story. And so you know it being an
Speaker 1: anniversary year of the Tate La Bianca murders and um
Speaker 1: the trial and everything. You know, it's it's been very
Speaker 1: much in the air. Your book is a part of
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that's been came out about not
Speaker 1: only the last fifth of the moment. I have to
Speaker 1: say that reading your book really put that movie in
Speaker 1: a new light for me, of like it being just
Speaker 1: such a fairy tale, especially with regards to just Sharon
Speaker 1: and what was going on with her personally at the time,
Speaker 1: and made a lot of sense to me, you know
Speaker 1: that the maybe a pregnant woman wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: living at like a party house, right, especially with that
Speaker 1: kind of there was violence at that Yeah, but even
Speaker 1: I feel like in some of the other books, like
Speaker 1: I've been reading The Family by Ed Sanders as well,
Speaker 1: just that you know, they sort of loss over that
Speaker 1: aspect of it more because Polanski was still sort of
Speaker 1: playing the grieving husband for a long time. Yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: there's been other things about Polanski that, Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of it is a sort of armchair
Speaker 1: psychology that everybody has about Roman Polansky just being this
Speaker 1: like extraordinarily fucked up person who had a lot of
Speaker 1: fund up stuff happened to him, but also obviously did
Speaker 1: a lot of funked up stuff and you know, wanting
Speaker 1: to understand him as a victim in that in that moment,
Speaker 1: just because it was so horrific. You know, it's obviously
Speaker 1: so much more complicated, and that moment where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the end of the innocence because like a
Speaker 1: lot of Yeah, what's interesting about the Sharon and Romans
Speaker 1: stuff is UM the UK Publishers, which was Penguin Random House,
Speaker 1: ironically the same company that UM sued me when I
Speaker 1: didn't deliver when it became a book deal. This is
Speaker 1: all in the book if your listeners read it. About
Speaker 1: seven years into that deal, the same thing happened. The
Speaker 1: publisher pulled the plug on it, canceled the project and
Speaker 1: that was devastating, and then they sued me for a
Speaker 1: return of the advance, which was horrible. And but when
Speaker 1: we sold it in seventeen to Little Brown Penguin, actually
Speaker 1: the same publisher who had sued me, and that had
Speaker 1: taken two years to resolve. For the first ones to
Speaker 1: make an offer for it didn't make any sense. I
Speaker 1: thought I was being and they offered exactly as much
Speaker 1: as Little Brown did, and I said to my agent,
Speaker 1: I can't even consider this unless they offer more as
Speaker 1: a sign of good faith. And he said that's reasonable.
Speaker 1: He said how much more? And I said, don't tell them,
Speaker 1: but I'd be even happy with five or ten grand,
Speaker 1: just you know, something symbolic. They wouldn't even do that,
Speaker 1: and I told him to go to hell. So then
Speaker 1: their UK branch bought the UK rights of this, you know,
Speaker 1: so they published it there and the only thing their
Speaker 1: lawyers had a problem within the book, and it was
Speaker 1: a serious problem, was everything about Roman mistreating Sharon. And yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think I hate to admit this. I had to,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to give in to the lawyers
Speaker 1: over there. The libel laws are much stronger, and he's
Speaker 1: successfully sue advanity fair. I think we've seen also that
Speaker 1: one of the ways that people keep stories like that
Speaker 1: out of the press, it's by being like, well, it's unapprovable.
Speaker 1: How did Weinstein keep anyone from reporting on that on
Speaker 1: his you know, being a rapist for so long? It's
Speaker 1: because they would go after anyone who intimated anything being
Speaker 1: like him. But that also seems so futile, because even
Speaker 1: as recently as last week, there was another rebelligation against
Speaker 1: Herman plants. I know they're like, yeah, I got in touch.
Speaker 1: A woman got in touch with me. A lot of
Speaker 1: people that are kind of crazy get in touch with me.
Speaker 1: Since the book has come out, this woman sounds legit.
Speaker 1: She's gotten some press. She says she was raped by
Speaker 1: him in Hollywood when she was I think fifteen, and
Speaker 1: you know she than sending me stuff. I get a
Speaker 1: lot of that. But you know, they were so scared
Speaker 1: of him over there that I'll tell all of your
Speaker 1: people if they're I don't know. If you have listeners
Speaker 1: in the UK, try to get the United States version
Speaker 1: if they read Polish, even the Poland version, which is
Speaker 1: you know, his home country, and we sold that quickly
Speaker 1: to the rights they didn't ask for any change. Is
Speaker 1: just in UK shocked. The UK libel laws are hard
Speaker 1: because I feel like they published crazy thing. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: you have the tabloids. But that was a compromise I
Speaker 1: had to make. So if your listeners are going to
Speaker 1: get the book and they're in the UK, I don't
Speaker 1: know how easy it is to buy an American version
Speaker 1: on Amazon. I mean imagine it's just more shipping fees.
Speaker 1: Get that one. Maybe you can download the American version
Speaker 1: and give it away from free. Um. Speaking of lawsuits,
Speaker 1: how many? So I know like BULIOSI threatened you with
Speaker 1: what a d million dollars lawsuits? That was one figure
Speaker 1: he threw out, but he basically said you'll be working
Speaker 1: for me the rest of your life. And to Penguin
Speaker 1: who were still was still my publisher, then he said,
Speaker 1: I will own your company and every prophet, any of
Speaker 1: your books made in perpetuity. My family will if you
Speaker 1: published this band's book. So um, yeah, he was trying
Speaker 1: to scare me. I would like to corroborate that Bilioc
Speaker 1: is a crank. According to a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: worked at the Lemley Pasadena, I love these stories, and
Speaker 1: he said Biglio would come in and like throw a
Speaker 1: fit at the staff and be like don't you know
Speaker 1: who I am? Really? Yeah, like all the time, and
Speaker 1: be like read Voltaire, Oh my lord. He was mentally ill.
Speaker 1: I truly believe it. Mentally well, well, all the stuff
Speaker 1: about you know, everything that came out when he what
Speaker 1: was he running for for d A And there were
Speaker 1: two different cases he was involved in and he was
Speaker 1: running for office. I mean he was kind of like
Speaker 1: Trump is now. I mean he was just fearful of
Speaker 1: repercussions and thought he was above the law. And the
Speaker 1: Milkman case and the mistress case both really were the
Speaker 1: reasons he He might not have one anyway, because everybody
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, especially in law enforcement at the d
Speaker 1: a's office, knew he was crazy. He was only there.
Speaker 1: People don't understand that he was only there like six years.
Speaker 1: He left as soon as he finished this case because
Speaker 1: he wanted to be more famous. But Buck Compton, who
Speaker 1: was the famous uh I forget what they called managing
Speaker 1: d a's guy who assigned the attorneys. I interviewed him
Speaker 1: and he said it was the biggest mistake in my
Speaker 1: career to assign that case. Events. He said, I created
Speaker 1: that monster. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think what you
Speaker 1: do find as a new angle about the case is
Speaker 1: you really address the sort of police corruption and uh
Speaker 1: sort of the and as well just sort of the
Speaker 1: general incompetency of the l A p D is one
Speaker 1: of the things. That's what I was always trying to balance.
Speaker 1: Is it incompetence where is it deliberate? And I had
Speaker 1: this one retired d A. Lou Watt, who told me this,
Speaker 1: and it was so important at that stage of my reporting,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I'm looking at this. I had
Speaker 1: shown him Manson's federal parole file where he kept getting arrested, released, arrested, release,
Speaker 1: and I had gotten that through a lot of Freedom
Speaker 1: of Information Act request. It took me like two years
Speaker 1: to get it all. I brought it to him and
Speaker 1: he was literally dying. I can't remember where the disease was,
Speaker 1: but he was not a respirator and he's wheezing, and
Speaker 1: he's like, chicken ship, this is all chicken shit, Like
Speaker 1: what do you mean, Mr Wattnick. He goes, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this can sometimes be explained by incompetence, but this was intentional.
Speaker 1: They were releasing him when they should have not only
Speaker 1: violated his parole, convicted him, then sent him back with
Speaker 1: the new New Year's at it one And when you
Speaker 1: sort of make that connection of like, well, like the
Speaker 1: l a p D would probably be stoked if people
Speaker 1: were doing crimes in the name of white supremacy, because
Speaker 1: that's also what they're did. The the part about the
Speaker 1: a up of the you know, you really frame it
Speaker 1: in this great way because I think the sixties, it's
Speaker 1: like the cool people are always very overrepresented, and the
Speaker 1: idea that everybody was like, you know, with it and progressive.
Speaker 1: It's like no, a lot of people were super square
Speaker 1: and they wanted to crush whatever else was happening. I
Speaker 1: guess Tarantino kind of got that in his movie because
Speaker 1: Leo Dicabrio and Brad Pitt's character were old Hollywood. I
Speaker 1: just I wrote the intro for this Eve Babbitt book,
Speaker 1: and she wrote this piece about the Godfather and if
Speaker 1: there's this quote where she's like everybody in l A
Speaker 1: wants guys who look like al Pacino, because in l A,
Speaker 1: like guys who look like Brad Pitt are everywhere and
Speaker 1: they pump your gas. That's exactly what that movie gets, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want her to read my book. I could go
Speaker 1: on to her for a blurb. She's great, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think for me that was probably the
Speaker 1: section of the book where I started to go galaxy.
Speaker 1: Mine the whole section about the Sheriff's office and uh
Speaker 1: and all this you know, repeated opportunities that people had
Speaker 1: to put Man's in a jail, between the parole and
Speaker 1: the surveillance they had on the red I found a
Speaker 1: document showing that they knew he was coming back from
Speaker 1: the Bay Area the day that Sharon Tate was killed
Speaker 1: with this runaway girl, and all that was correct, except
Speaker 1: that he was really coming back from Big Sir, which
Speaker 1: is just a little bit below the Bay Area. But
Speaker 1: all that stuff was suppressed and not shared with the defense.
Speaker 1: And one thing that always bugged me about the case
Speaker 1: was I was like, how could they squat on this
Speaker 1: land for so long without anyone getting mad? Because like,
Speaker 1: one thing I know about unoccupied land in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: is that people get fucking furious occupied and you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to Well. Also, I mean they had visited so
Speaker 1: many times and he was on parole, and they knew
Speaker 1: that he had like an arsenal. It's just absolutely not
Speaker 1: underage girls, drugs, a machine gun. Uh. And when the
Speaker 1: cops or sheriff's would come on to spawn rash, she
Speaker 1: threatened their lives. And he said when he lost the
Speaker 1: ammunition for I forget what it's called the banana eclipse
Speaker 1: for a machine gun full off a doom bug, he
Speaker 1: told the cops he wanted it back. He called he's
Speaker 1: on federal parole. I mean, nothing made sense. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's a famous line of man since there's no sense
Speaker 1: makes sense. Well, yeah, like putting it in the context
Speaker 1: of all these other sort of operations that we're going
Speaker 1: on at the time to discredit the counterculture and student
Speaker 1: protests and activism and the Black Panthers and all of that,
Speaker 1: it makes you know, I would I would hesitate to say,
Speaker 1: like your thesis, because I think they're still like I
Speaker 1: think there are many questions that are left open at
Speaker 1: the end of the book, but in general, the premise
Speaker 1: that like, it would be very possible if one wanted
Speaker 1: to at this time to create an example out of
Speaker 1: somebody like a Manson like figure um to you know,
Speaker 1: spook everybody out of the out of the sixties basically um.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't feel far fetched when you look at
Speaker 1: stuff that's actually on the record that happened on that time.
Speaker 1: You do have great job of building it, of being
Speaker 1: here's the first thing that kind of didn't seem right,
Speaker 1: and I went into it more and like found all
Speaker 1: these bugs under the rock, you know, so that by
Speaker 1: the time you get to like, here's the JFK assassination,
Speaker 1: I didn't sound as crazy like go with me here, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think because you're coming at it like you're
Speaker 1: not a true crime person. And that's that was the
Speaker 1: hardest part of the book, was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the structure. And that's where I got gifted with the
Speaker 1: fantastic collaborator of this young guy Dan, who now has
Speaker 1: the best selling book with Prince Health. He wrote with prints,
Speaker 1: the beautiful one. You're that great thing about writing that
Speaker 1: thing with Prince. Yeah, that's a prologue to the book.
Speaker 1: I mean he got him, damn, because Prince died, so
Speaker 1: you know, everything got halted because the family was dealing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say fighting, he says, don't say
Speaker 1: fighting there, but they were fighting over the estate and
Speaker 1: the book got stopped. So he had probably he thought
Speaker 1: a year or two years, and I'm like, oh damn,
Speaker 1: it took me twentys, gonna take us five. And he
Speaker 1: was just so kind of self possessed and not in
Speaker 1: an arrogant way. He said, we'll figure out how to
Speaker 1: do it in a year or two and he helped
Speaker 1: me with all. I couldn't have done it without him
Speaker 1: because I had lost my Well, you need someone to
Speaker 1: come in at a certain point, organize the files for you, yeah,
Speaker 1: and tell me what I mean because I lost perspective
Speaker 1: on what was most important, what wasn't We still do.
Speaker 1: We're talking about possibly doing um a second book, and
Speaker 1: I was telling you guys earlier there might be a podcast.
Speaker 1: So I mean, there's so much stuff that I do
Speaker 1: want to get out there into the world that's sitting
Speaker 1: right now into ours. But at least I got this much,
Speaker 1: because there was a lot of years that I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm gonna get run over by a bus.
Speaker 1: My family is gonna not I told them, you know
Speaker 1: what's important what's not, But there's too much that they're
Speaker 1: just going to say, all right, crazy brother, do put
Speaker 1: in a dumpster get rid of it. Did you become
Speaker 1: paranoid while you were working on it? I ever, really?
Speaker 1: I mean people everybody asked me that infect you with
Speaker 1: the paranoia? And the only thing I was really frightened of.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the first couple of years of the
Speaker 1: drug guys that I was investigating, who are the big dealers?
Speaker 1: At the time, they were making some pretty serious threats,
Speaker 1: but I kept thinking, and you know, one of them.
Speaker 1: I have a scene in the book. I took him
Speaker 1: to Cocoa's for lines place and he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair and I have to lift him, Charlie Taco,
Speaker 1: and he's you know, he used to be a very
Speaker 1: big strong man, but he was eight and dying and
Speaker 1: he's threatening me while I'm putting him from my car
Speaker 1: to the wheelchair, and I will kill you on theology, right, Charlie,
Speaker 1: I could just drop you on the drive away. You can't.
Speaker 1: Can you reach that point to where you're like? I
Speaker 1: realized that when someone said they were going to kill
Speaker 1: me or sue me, that man I had gotten yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then scared me. I mean some of the stuff
Speaker 1: I learned that he had done, and as I learned it,
Speaker 1: I hope it comes out in the book. I started
Speaker 1: realizing I wasn't dealing just with somebody who was possibly
Speaker 1: First I thought I was dealing with someone that just
Speaker 1: wanted to make a lot more money by having a
Speaker 1: more sensational case. Then I realized it was something much
Speaker 1: more sinister than that dark and then I saw what
Speaker 1: he did to other people who had caught him and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, he went full on attack again like Trump
Speaker 1: kind of does you make the parallels between him and
Speaker 1: Manson too, that they were the same age it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I could never decide who was crazy. But they were
Speaker 1: both like they like thirty four, like thirty two, thirty three,
Speaker 1: I think when the trial started. Yeah, but they're on
Speaker 1: the same. Yeah. It was just such a different version
Speaker 1: of you know, yeah, but just that violent male ego. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same. You kind of have to be a sociopath
Speaker 1: to be either a cult leader or district attorney. True. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was there any point at which you just wanted to stop? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like every other day. At one point you described
Speaker 1: you had a hundred and ninety I think binders in
Speaker 1: your apronment and a white word with the word manson
Speaker 1: in the middle, and then lyne, I'm going out. I
Speaker 1: thought it was very brave of you to put that,
Speaker 1: Like in the photo section in the book. You know,
Speaker 1: my Dan went through some of my personal pictures. He said,
Speaker 1: I want a progression of photos from you aging through
Speaker 1: this and he said, I want to see you have
Speaker 1: a picture of the white board, and I said, I've
Speaker 1: got it, like I think just the first year, so
Speaker 1: you don't see it with like twenty pages of paper
Speaker 1: tacked up around the white board, you know, beyond the perimeter,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I just said, you know what
Speaker 1: I want to be. That's what happened. I created a
Speaker 1: white board as part of the story. Yeah, we'll put
Speaker 1: it in so um. But yeah, I used to. I
Speaker 1: never once, I think, seriously considered stopping. But I would
Speaker 1: think what if? And then I just thought, how can
Speaker 1: I get out of bed? I would have wasted many
Speaker 1: years you were. And it wasn't just that. I also
Speaker 1: wanted people to be accountable, you know. I wanted to
Speaker 1: report what I found to set I know it sounds
Speaker 1: real presumptuous, but to set the record straight about also
Speaker 1: chasing people before they die. It's like that kind of
Speaker 1: the thing about the fiftieth anniversary is you're like, I
Speaker 1: got to get these people while there's still a lot
Speaker 1: and then at the end you're like, I have all
Speaker 1: this evidence, like doesn't mean anything. Yeah, the people that
Speaker 1: could have been held accountable or dead. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people have accused me. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are not happy with this book.
Speaker 1: The Manson blog people, oh yeah, yeah, the Manson blog people,
Speaker 1: Internet people, but also people who are part of Vince's world.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot of defenders, but I've had
Speaker 1: some serious they've come threats and I know this person
Speaker 1: really is a member of the family because I said
Speaker 1: in one response, and I know I'm not supposed to respond,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, you have to be Vince is relative
Speaker 1: because you're the threats are identical to his, and he
Speaker 1: said he was a member of the family. I was like,
Speaker 1: which one exactly? Um this story? Like, you know, we
Speaker 1: were friends with Crean along Worth who did Death and
Speaker 1: the Poet. Remember this series on Charlie Manson, and I
Speaker 1: think like it's in her series and a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that we've read, like this is really understood as
Speaker 1: has been understood historically as like a Hollywood story. It's
Speaker 1: a Hollywood crime story, and obviously your book goes into
Speaker 1: how it goes a lot further than that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's maybe it's a California story, but it's definitely a
Speaker 1: California story. But I kind of wonder, like, having gone
Speaker 1: through all this reporting and having talked to all these
Speaker 1: people and gotten such a kind of cross section of
Speaker 1: like all these different places that people were at in
Speaker 1: the culture in this time period, and like since then,
Speaker 1: can you still even think of it as a Hollywood
Speaker 1: story or is it transcend that. I mean, it kind
Speaker 1: of ruined me for having any kind of perspective on
Speaker 1: it as something that just wasn't so sinister and deep,
Speaker 1: even if I couldn't prove or if I could only
Speaker 1: present a circumstantial case, but it made me lose such
Speaker 1: faith and like stuff that I used. I was never naive.
Speaker 1: I've always been um, you know, raised by lefty parents
Speaker 1: and um. But and I always was a little bit
Speaker 1: careful about authority. But at this point now I feel
Speaker 1: like I don't trust cops. I don't trust the judicial system.
Speaker 1: I don't trust the freeing in a way though I
Speaker 1: guess it is Yeah, do you realize I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the d A earlier, like the current
Speaker 1: d A of l A like hasn't prosecuted any cops
Speaker 1: who've murdered anybody like a decade or something insane. It's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, if you put your trust in those
Speaker 1: systems to sort of and you really do a good
Speaker 1: job also of talking about the connections between the l
Speaker 1: A p D and the l A times again, something
Speaker 1: I would have suspect, you know, once you said it,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there was more there too. I wish well the l
Speaker 1: A Times too. I started looking into like the guy
Speaker 1: who founded the l A. Times. This guy otis total
Speaker 1: citizen Kane. You know, he was like a hearst. I mean,
Speaker 1: you published whatever served his interest. He hated communists, anarchists,
Speaker 1: and the power structure in Los Angeles in the late sixties.
Speaker 1: Was him at the l A. Times. You already who
Speaker 1: was a very right wing mayor Reagan who was the
Speaker 1: governor and H. Nixon became president in January. I mean
Speaker 1: he was elected in the fall, but he was inaugurated
Speaker 1: January sixty nine. And Evil Younger, the d A who
Speaker 1: was in charge of the case, you know, Vince was
Speaker 1: working for him, was an ex oss guy, which is
Speaker 1: what the c I A evolve doubt of it. He
Speaker 1: was a spy and the FBI, and not that that
Speaker 1: makes him automatically, you know, suspicious, but when you look
Speaker 1: at everything else I lay out about what was hidden
Speaker 1: and all that he had to be part like the
Speaker 1: center of that. Whell. Maybe I'm the only person to
Speaker 1: take an optimistic view point away from this book fight Like,
Speaker 1: given all the effort they did put into trying to
Speaker 1: crush leftism and crush counterculture in Los Angeles, like to me,
Speaker 1: the fact that it always comes back in some way.
Speaker 1: You know that you can't crush ship crushed like diverse.
Speaker 1: That's the reasons. Yeah, I'm from l A, so I
Speaker 1: have a in defending it against being like well, I
Speaker 1: was also like it was satisfying to me because there's
Speaker 1: so many like apocalyptic Day of the Locust narratives about
Speaker 1: l A. Reading the Manson murders to be like no,
Speaker 1: this was a like a government engineered Yeah yeah, this
Speaker 1: was not like something that was born out of Yeah
Speaker 1: here again like that I can blame Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that I like was the most
Speaker 1: paranoid about after reading this book was just the idea
Speaker 1: of like what if everybody who ever runs for any
Speaker 1: office is just like being planted there? Like the book
Speaker 1: after this, because I definitely kept going down the hall,
Speaker 1: I read weird scenes in the canyon. I gotta be
Speaker 1: careful with that. That one was like fascinating because that
Speaker 1: one was like I was like, Okay, this is too
Speaker 1: crazy for me, but also that I would like fact
Speaker 1: check things and they'd be true, you know. But he's
Speaker 1: the person who thinks like everybody's in the CI parents,
Speaker 1: so they have to be in. Then he makes the
Speaker 1: first point he makes is like Jim Morrison's dad started
Speaker 1: Vietnam and it turns out to be true, like his
Speaker 1: dad was the navy officer who I don't know if
Speaker 1: I knew that. He said. He's like, oh, yes, Jim
Speaker 1: Morrison's dad was the navy officer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 1: And there's a picture of Jim Morrison like with him
Speaker 1: as a kid on a boat, and I don't send
Speaker 1: me down on another rev. I was gonna say, So,
Speaker 1: now that this book is out and then you're talking
Speaker 1: about kind of how to adapt it and what's next
Speaker 1: in that, do you have any desire to look into
Speaker 1: a new mystery? Well, I mean I left substantial reporting
Speaker 1: about the RFK assassination hand, and obviously if people have
Speaker 1: read the book, you see there are parallels. And not
Speaker 1: only that, it was literally a year and like two
Speaker 1: months before the Tate La Bianca more, same city, same DA,
Speaker 1: same cops. Uh and I found out a lot of
Speaker 1: really important information and at one point it was going
Speaker 1: to be part of the book, and then we finally
Speaker 1: decided so that book, I think it's five d some pages.
Speaker 1: Little Brown. The contract only wanted less than three because
Speaker 1: it's hard to sell. I don't think they knew who
Speaker 1: they were dealing with. But they were great. I mean
Speaker 1: when we got to uh, I think about for fifty
Speaker 1: or something or four or sixty, I was so pleased.
Speaker 1: Then I had to do the end notes and they said,
Speaker 1: we'll give you about ten pages and I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I need let the hundred and they said, are you crazy?
Speaker 1: We gave you an extra hundred and fifty. So I
Speaker 1: ended up getting I did a hundred twenty pages. We
Speaker 1: got it to sixty of end notes at the back.
Speaker 1: And that's the most important part of the book to
Speaker 1: me because it shows all my sourcing that and you know,
Speaker 1: the depth of it. But um, the RFK s or
Speaker 1: hands stuff that could be a book in and of itself.
Speaker 1: And there's other stuff that I did find out connected
Speaker 1: to the same scene in Hollywood at sixty nine that
Speaker 1: ended up not having any real events are connection, but
Speaker 1: I found out some amazing singular like standalone story in
Speaker 1: the dead ends are the most interesting part deciding that
Speaker 1: driving around l A you know, and skirts, Yeah, very cinematic,
Speaker 1: and it's like the book is cinematic because it's framed
Speaker 1: that way, like, now I got to drive to this valley, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Santa Monica rooftop. Yeah, it's very like a Raymond Chandler novel.
Speaker 1: I like that. That's a nice comparison. The guy who's
Speaker 1: doing the adaptation for the movie spent about a week
Speaker 1: with me about a month ago, and I said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you're gonna have a nervous breakdown too, and
Speaker 1: he said, I just I don't care this. We're not
Speaker 1: supposed to say this, but I don't care. I wanted
Speaker 1: it to be a limited series. We sold it to Amazon,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to be a feature film. And this
Speaker 1: guy is a big deal and he's like, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how to, you know, compress the story twenty
Speaker 1: years into two hours. And I said, that's my life.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's I didn't know how to do it
Speaker 1: in the book, and now you're trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be like a limited series. And
Speaker 1: I actually think he's at the end of the week.
Speaker 1: He had a good angle on it. But now I
Speaker 1: have to wait and see the first draft, and I'm
Speaker 1: not a little nervous about that. We talked about Zodiac
Speaker 1: a lot too. It's like the movie. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people say that, Um, I guess his obsession was
Speaker 1: that I can't remember enough. It was a copy of
Speaker 1: the Journalists Journalists. But also it's the same thing where
Speaker 1: like it drives everybody to well, it's contagious because once
Speaker 1: you start to realize that this is true, then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, nothing else. Tom, Tom What do you
Speaker 1: do to decompress? What do you watch in your off
Speaker 1: time when you were doing this? Uh? Rank at had
Speaker 1: like really bad you know, bad partners, anything that could
Speaker 1: really be dramatic enough to make me not think about
Speaker 1: it for a few hours. Um, what do I watch?
Speaker 1: Like on in movies and TV? I kind of like
Speaker 1: detective drama and stuff. I mostly only watched streaming now
Speaker 1: because I need to see stuff that seems as really
Speaker 1: I mean, I finally started watching Succession. Yeah, so I've
Speaker 1: actually got like I'm going to Death Valley tomorrow. I've
Speaker 1: never been to the Barker Ranch where they were captured.
Speaker 1: And the cop if you get near the end of
Speaker 1: the book, Paul Dusty was a cadaver dog cop who
Speaker 1: thinks he has sights in the around the two ranches.
Speaker 1: He's been trying to get me to go there for
Speaker 1: ten years and I finally agreed to go tomorrow. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go for two or three days, but I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to go out tonight and I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna finish Succession. I gotta see the
Speaker 1: last couple episodes. Anything really good? Be careful in Death Valley? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: why would you say be careful? It's called death Valley?
Speaker 1: But something are talking about the elements, but maybe you
Speaker 1: mean Manson family, the haunt, don't fall in the hole.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the whole. We're all still looking for. Well, Tom,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: This is fun and uh for our Patreon subscribers, will
Speaker 1: be releasing our book club episode on Chaos, so we'll
Speaker 1: be talking even more about it behind the paywall. But
Speaker 1: good of reason is any to pick up the book
Speaker 1: and check it out if you want me to come
Speaker 1: back for a Q and anything or something when they're
Speaker 1: all done reading the book, If they read it, if
Speaker 1: they get any questions for Tom, you can put them
Speaker 1: through us to four oh four six Night or Nightcall
Speaker 1: Podcast at gmail dot com and we'll pass them to
Speaker 1: Tom and hopefully I've been back on the show. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me guys, thanks for picking the book
Speaker 1: as a book club. Yeah. Absolutely, thank you for listening
Speaker 1: Tonight Call. We'll be back again next week. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to follow us on social media, we are Night
Speaker 1: Called Pod on Twitter, Night Called Podcast on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 1: Um you can leave us a night call at to
Speaker 1: four oh four six night or a night email at
Speaker 1: Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. As always, we would
Speaker 1: love if you would support our Patreon It's patreon dot
Speaker 1: com forward slash Nightcall. We have a lot of different
Speaker 1: tiers available and lots of different bonuses for our supporters,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much to everybody who's already supported
Speaker 1: the pot. We'll see you next week. Nightcall is a
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