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Communes, Cults & Alien Contact: Unraveling California's Countercultural Legends · Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show

• 0:06
  Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show.
• 0:08
  I'm Ted Bonnitt.
• 0:10
  Phil Proctor and I will be back next week.
• 0:12
  Today we're going to talk about two truly unique stories to California and the counterculture of the 1950s, where it started and the 1960s into the 1970s.
• 0:24
  We're going to talk about two documentaries that were made by filmmaker Jonathan Berman.
• 0:29
  Our guest today.
• 0:30
  The the first is Commune, which is a story about the Black Bear Ranch, a commune in Northern California.
• 0:37
  Very isolated, nine miles in a dirt road.
• 0:41
  A bunch of hippies got together and began an alternative communal lifestyle.
• 0:46
  When this happened in 1968, there was a lot of civil unrest.
• 0:50
  The Vietnam War was deeply unpopular and there was a mandatory military draft that many young people were evading.
• 0:58
  There was civil disobedience.
• 1:00
  There were bombings of establishment companies in the Bay Area.
• 1:05
  It was a very tumultuous time and the idea of forming Black Bear Ranch, a refuge from the norm that kids were rebelling against.
• 1:14
  We're going to play clips from the movie Commune as we talk to Jonathan and another movie he made called Calling All Earthlings about an extraordinary California landmark called the Integatron in Landers, California, in the high desert, built by
• 1:29
  George Van Tassel, who claimed to have been contacted by extraterrestrials and given instructions to build a free energy device that would extend the lifetimes of human beings.
• 1:41
  Only in California.
• 1:43
  But first, let's talk about Commune.
• 1:45
  Here's a little taste of the movie.
• 1:49
  After going to Washington D.C.
• 1:52
  for a.
• 1:52
  While and thinking, boy, it's going to be a long time before all these.
• 1:55
  People retire and get out of here and something changes.
• 1:58
  So I don't think I can stand to wait around.
• 2:01
  We thought the government was going to be overthrown in two years and there would be a new culture rising from the ashes.
• 2:08
  And we wanted to have an alternative, a non mercantile alternative that offered citizens the options of being something other than a consumer or an employee.
• 2:21
  I had this vision and, you know, I suppose I was pretty pompous about it, but it was basically, we're going to go and change the world.
• 2:30
  My slogan at the time was free land for free people.
• 2:34
  I moved there to get away from America.
• 2:37
  I just did not want to be an American as defined by the mainstream.
• 2:46
  Although I guess deep down I've always felt, you know, proud that I'm an American.
• 2:53
  But to me, those values are represented in open mindedness and free thinking and tolerance and the ability to do what you want.
• 3:05
  Welcome, Jonathan.
• 3:06
  Thank you so much.
• 3:07
  You made two movies that Both take place in California.
• 3:11
  Historically.
• 3:12
  One was commune.
• 3:13
  And then you made another movie, calling All Earthlings, which takes place in the high desert of Southern California and the integratron.
• 3:21
  These things were both happening in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s, and it really reflected the countercultural aspect of California at the time.
• 3:31
  Let's talk about commune first.
• 3:33
  Communes were fairly common, especially in Northern California up the coast.
• 3:37
  But all the way up nine miles in a dirt road was a place called Black Beach, Their ranch, started by a group of people.
• 3:45
  Elsa Marley, Richard Marley, and Michael Tierra and Peter Leif.
• 3:51
  This was 1968.
• 3:52
  There was a lot of civil unrest over the Vietnam War and civil rights.
• 3:57
  There were routine bombings in the Bay Area against establishment companies.
• 4:02
  These people wanted to set up an alternative to all that.
• 4:06
  People came for peaceful reasons.
• 4:07
  Some people came to get away from the police and the FBI as well.
• 4:11
  To be clear, getting away from the police and FBI sounds like they were manufacturing, like, psychedelic drugs in their attic.
• 4:18
  It wasn't that they were running from the draft, which was mandatory.
• 4:22
  Somebody from Black Bear said this.
• 4:24
  Running away or running towards?
• 4:26
  You know, so a little bit of both, right?
• 4:29
  Yeah, running.
• 4:30
  Running away from the 50s, conformity and the draft and running towards creating a transformed world.
• 4:37
  It was a completely alternative lifestyle.
• 4:40
  They were young, happy, they were beautiful.
• 4:44
  And of course, in a commune about happy.
• 4:47
  Happy.
• 4:48
  Yeah.
• 4:48
  Really?
• 4:49
  I may have said this before, but, you know, people drag this suitcase full of neuroses with them wherever they go.
• 4:56
  True.
• 4:56
  So there is.
• 4:57
  There is that.
• 4:58
  And there was a lot of conflict around what they were doing there and what you were doing there and what I'm doing there.
• 5:05
  Right.
• 5:05
  Happy loving hippies is not Black Mirror.
• 5:09
  That's interesting.
• 5:10
  One of the things at the ranch was the notion of free love and not pairing off into couples, that you pretty much were one big group.
• 5:19
  So there was a lot of passing around.
• 5:22
  A young woman climbed into bed with me and me upside and down.
• 5:27
  And I woke up in the morning and my bed was empty.
• 5:30
  And so I went downstairs and, you know, I went downstairs for breakfast and all the girls were sitting there eating the eggs, you know, chopping up the onions, you know, making the big omelette for the.
• 5:42
  And I figured, well, I'll be able to, you know, as soon as I see the women there, I'll be able to tell which one it was.
• 5:51
  Well, I could.
• 5:53
  They all looked at me like that.
• 5:55
  I'll never forget that night.
• 5:57
  It was a great night.
• 5:58
  And not the sex so much, but just the what the.
• 6:05
  I want to cry.
• 6:06
  The open heartedness of it.
• 6:11
  That's Richard Marley, one of the founders of the Black Bear Ranch commune and one of the more endearing characters in this story.
• 6:19
  Even besides the sex aspect, the women were not included in the heavy labor.
• 6:26
  It was the man thing to do.
• 6:27
  And the women stood up to that and said, no, no, we can do this.
• 6:30
  And that was a bit of a conflict, wasn't it?
• 6:33
  I think it was.
• 6:34
  I mean, there is a rationale in quality of the film.
• 6:36
  Many different versions of what happened and continues to happen.
• 6:41
  Actually, one version from Haas, who's a American Indian, he was like, the guys didn't want to work.
• 6:47
  So I started working with the women and teaching them how to do all this stuff.
• 6:51
  These guys didn't know anything.
• 6:53
  According to Haas, you know, there were city people, right?
• 6:56
  So.
• 6:56
  But to your second point, they were coming out of the.
• 6:59
  Leave it to be your 50s.
• 7:00
  There was more of an actual middle class.
• 7:04
  So women were often homemakers, and so they were moving away from that.
• 7:10
  Now, what you were saying about like, you know, like, as this is a new idea, I think on a short term, sure.
• 7:16
  But in the long term, I think people mostly live tribally.
• 7:19
  Yeah, right.
• 7:21
  The first year the commune was established, they had a heavy winter, six feet of snow.
• 7:26
  They.
• 7:27
  They were quite isolated, and things got real fast.
• 7:31
  The hippies up there, they'll never make it.
• 7:33
  You know, they'll never make it.
• 7:34
  Your choices were real clear.
• 7:35
  Either do it or you're not gonna.
• 7:38
  You're gonna freeze to death.
• 7:39
  Either do it or you're not gonna eat either.
• 7:41
  Do you know?
• 7:42
  In other words, it wasn't like all these theoretical, philosophical, you know, I mean, you could do that if you wanted to, but basically chop wood, haul water, cook food, or become a dead Zen guy.
• 7:55
  That's an excerpt from Commune, a documentary made by our guest today, Jonathan Berman.
• 8:01
  Part of the freedom of it all.
• 8:02
  There was a lot of nudity.
• 8:04
  The whole community was at times naked.
• 8:06
  But unlike nudist camps, there was a lot of lovemaking too.
• 8:10
  That's what everybody thinks about in terms of a commune, right?
• 8:13
  The sex stuff.
• 8:14
  Well, I think that's Peter's version of it, and I'm sure that was true.
• 8:19
  Peter Coyote, who's a participant of Black Mirror.
• 8:22
  But in reality, there was just so many different trends running through the ranch.
• 8:31
  So one month everybody was, we're all.
• 8:34
  Going to be vegetarian.
• 8:35
  Eating meat is bad for the planet.
• 8:37
  And then the next month it's like, we're all going to only eat meat because that's really the way to keep, keep us strong and healthy, you know, whatever it was.
• 8:46
  And then one week it's we're not going to be monogamous.
• 8:50
  And then, yeah, so that was just a one of many movements or trends.
• 8:56
  But others said, yeah, the idea of free sex was great, but ultimately it was unfulfilling.
• 9:01
  You didn't have the relationship aspect to it.
• 9:04
  That's true.
• 9:04
  And some of the participants who did couple off because they did want more.
• 9:09
  One couples went off and lived nearby so they could raise their family as a nuclear family.
• 9:16
  So all types came to the ranch and there were a lot of them and it was initially funded by rock stars.
• 9:24
  The big problem is we didn't have any money.
• 9:27
  So a number of us decided to.
• 9:29
  Go down to LA and knock on.
• 9:31
  The doors of various rock and roll groups including Frank Zappa and the Monkeys.
• 9:36
  And let them know that, hey, listen, you're making money off of our lifestyle.
• 9:41
  And it's time that you give back some to us.
• 9:44
  The commune was supported by.
• 9:46
  By rock and rollers.
• 9:49
  Yeah, that's, that's what I've been told.
• 9:52
  So there you go.
• 9:53
  I believe it.
• 9:54
  One person at Black Bear, I think was.
• 9:56
  Grew up with Linda Ronstadt and so before she was famous.
• 10:00
  And so they had that in and I think that in helped them.
• 10:04
  They did have a pretty good pitch, little corny ditch there of.
• 10:08
  But, but you know, not, not necessarily off.
• 10:13
  Like we are actually living the lifestyle that you guys are portraying in movies.
• 10:18
  As the ranch became more known and of course the locals, even though they were remote, they did have local towns and people were suspicious of this non conformist lifestyle.
• 10:31
  The authorities assumed that these hippies were growing marijuana.
• 10:37
  And so they busted the place and they found the plants.
• 10:41
  They were like, guys, these are tomato plants.
• 10:45
  One of the participants said, well listen, we were consuming the drugs quicker than they could ever find them.
• 10:52
  Yeah, if somebody brought up a drug, they would do it, but they would run out pretty quickly because they were in the rural wilderness.
• 11:00
  But the tomato story is pretty funny.
• 11:02
  But they weren't necessary.
• 11:03
  It wasn't like a druggie den.
• 11:04
  It was nothing like that as far as I know.
• 11:06
  No, it was more like somebody has three crates of tomatoes, you know, actual tomatoes or peaches or something.
• 11:14
  Oh cool.
• 11:14
  And then you eat them all.
• 11:15
  I can relate.
• 11:16
  There wasn't anything unusual really about what we were doing.
• 11:21
  What we were doing was what everyone else was doing, except we were doing it together in this one spot.
• 11:26
  And then we had a guy from one of the local towns he came in, we were sure that he was from the FBI and the CIA, that he was a plant.
• 11:35
  But he fit in very well also for a while, I mean, it was, you know, he was very pleasant.
• 11:41
  We just thought of him as being the guy from the CIA.
• 11:45
  That's another clip from Commune.
• 11:47
  There was never any criminal arrests or convictions related to the commune.
• 11:53
  Is that true?
• 11:55
  My understanding of it is that until recently there was some ne' er do well hiding out there, who was like an underage girl or something.
• 12:07
  And that was a bad scene.
• 12:09
  That was very recently.
• 12:10
  So.
• 12:10
  Well, the ranch is still going, but beyond that, I don't think there were any now.
• 12:16
  So with all the free love.
• 12:18
  The free love resulted in a lot of pregnancies.
• 12:20
  Yeah.
• 12:21
  And there was a little mini baby boom there.
• 12:24
  Exactly.
• 12:25
  And that changed the dynamic of the commune.
• 12:29
  It did.
• 12:30
  Because all of a sudden for some people, many people, it was like, okay, well now we should move back to the city and get our kids into better school.
• 12:41
  One of the members of the commune, the actor Peter Coyote, explained how the arrival of children created a schism in the commune between the parents and the non parents.
• 12:52
  Once you have a baby that's waking up at six in the morning, you may not want to hear, you know, your five friends out there in Win TomTom land at four in the morning keeping you up.
• 13:04
  And those kind of strictures and disciplines forced us to get more orderly.
• 13:12
  A lot of nuclear families, when they had children moved out of the communes.
• 13:17
  The film points out that the kids were left to their own devices in a lot of ways because the parents were still doing their thing and they guess they figured, hey, the kids should just do their thing.
• 13:28
  And so there was a bit of a separation.
• 13:31
  And some of the kids, Aaron Marley, for example, he rebelled when he was a kid at the commune and gave himself a crew cut so he wouldn't be a long haired hippie.
• 13:40
  And then ultimately he became a biochemist.
• 13:43
  It was a little tough on the kids.
• 13:44
  It makes it harder, right?
• 13:46
  One would think.
• 13:47
  On the other hand, I think it was Allegro who said, look, it was actually great because he if I got a no from one mom, I could go to another one.
• 13:58
  So all the kids that I met from Black Bear are all pretty wonderful.
• 14:03
  Most of them have gone on to do socially conscious things.
• 14:09
  Yeah.
• 14:10
  One kid that grew up there at the time was five years old.
• 14:14
  Her name was Cecilia Hanauer.
• 14:16
  And she got into a really weird situation when this group of nomadic idealists came to the ranch, the Shiva Leela, with a cult Leader by the name of Gridley Wright.
• 14:30
  See, part of my trip is that I don't have any children.
• 14:35
  I don't have any family that is mine, and everybody I'm with is me.
• 14:41
  Things changed, didn't it?
• 14:42
  Indeed.
• 14:43
  The cult came along and they were challenging Black Bear.
• 14:47
  There was no agreement that, okay, we'll do this with you.
• 14:50
  It was just like they just kind of came on the land and some of the people.
• 14:53
  Black Bear were into the Shivalela ethos, which involved life, worshiping the children and taking a lot of lsd and a scary cult leader.
• 15:01
  Magnetic.
• 15:02
  When people look at me, they just see a reflection of themselves because I'm there saying here now.
• 15:08
  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, no.
• 15:12
  About the only desire I could have would be that the whole world would go crazy because then it'd finally be safe for me and the kids.
• 15:22
  They were initially invited, but they came in and decided to take over the ranch and make it their scene.
• 15:28
  Right.
• 15:28
  And it got ugly, didn't it?
• 15:30
  Yeah.
• 15:31
  There were a lot of ideas floating around.
• 15:33
  And, you know, it became like a laboratory.
• 15:36
  The Black Bear Ranch.
• 15:37
  It was like a laboratory for ideas.
• 15:40
  So one of the ideas, not a good idea, in my opinion, is like, you treat the children like adults or like gods.
• 15:47
  You know, children were treated as full adults, I think, a few hundred years ago.
• 15:53
  So the group comes along, they're challenging everything about Black Bear, some of which might have made a little bit of sense, like saying, oh, you guys were just doing this till so you can party and whatever.
• 16:03
  Which people want to party.
• 16:04
  Who doesn't want their 20 something?
• 16:06
  So there were some things that they were maybe somewhat legitimately challenging, which was basically, you guys are bourgeoisie and you're here to just get high and have somebody babysit your kids.
• 16:18
  And we're doing it a different way.
• 16:20
  And that means that kids have full agency to choose their fate.
• 16:25
  So the Shiva Leela came there and they were messing with people.
• 16:30
  You know what I mean?
• 16:31
  Yeah.
• 16:31
  Like, you push the buttons in order to undo the buttons and move on to the new world that surely must be coming.
• 16:39
  So the only thing is they came there without you, didn't ask, like, can I come and push your buttons to mess with you so you can get into a new world.
• 16:47
  Yeah.
• 16:47
  So this group wears out their welcome.
• 16:51
  And then people from all over the area came to support the original residents and said, you need to leave, and forced them out.
• 16:58
  Right.
• 16:59
  And so these nomads decided to move on and they went to the Philippines.
• 17:04
  Why did some of the kids from the Commune, go with this group of people.
• 17:09
  Yeah.
• 17:10
  How did that happen?
• 17:11
  Because they were given the full choice.
• 17:13
  And in this particular case, Cecilia was five years old and faced with a thing.
• 17:18
  Should I go with my mom to India with this group, or do I stay here at Black Bear?
• 17:22
  So she wanted to stay with her mom.
• 17:24
  Just see the vision of, like, a child with one parent or some people from the ranch tugging on one way, stay here, and another saying, no, come with us.
• 17:32
  We're going to India on a.
• 17:33
  On a spiritual voyage.
• 17:35
  So, yeah, that's challenging and.
• 17:38
  And heartbreaking for sure, by the way, to take acid with the children.
• 17:45
  I don't think they gave the children acid, but it wouldn't surprise me.
• 17:49
  Oh, my.
• 17:50
  Tasilia went on camera to talk about when her mother took her with this cult.
• 17:55
  Being five years old and being given the option to choose between staying at Black Bear and going with a Shivalila.
• 18:03
  For me, at the time, it was just.
• 18:05
  I think I wanted to be with my mother, but I didn't realize that a huge part of the group was breaking the bond between mother and child.
• 18:13
  They sent me to live with his family in the Philippines up in this tree house, and it's this whole family.
• 18:17
  I didn't speak.
• 18:18
  We, like, didn't speak the same language.
• 18:19
  I freaked.
• 18:20
  I was crying for, like, the first amount of time, just kicking and screaming.
• 18:25
  When we went from the Philippines to India, don't remember the name of the village, but we ended up in a village where there was a.
• 18:32
  There was an epidemic, I think diphtheria.
• 18:35
  And a lot of the young kids got sick, and I don't know how many, but a good portion of the.
• 18:41
  Kids died to being compassionate.
• 18:44
  On the other side of it, we have Wakan, who was one of the Shivalila, and he was in the very early in the US Military killing women and children in, like, Cambodia, you know, like before Vietnam.
• 18:57
  So he came back traumatized and he wanted to make it right, you know,.
• 19:00
  I don't think you vilified them.
• 19:03
  I tried not to, but, you know, it was weird.
• 19:06
  Absolutely.
• 19:07
  I did a little research into Gridley Wright.
• 19:10
  He was attacked.
• 19:11
  He was stabbed by a psychotic person.
• 19:14
  Right, right.
• 19:15
  At a hostel in Europe.
• 19:16
  I heard he died of an infection.
• 19:19
  It was a tragic end to that particular group, but many kids died.
• 19:23
  What happened?
• 19:24
  I don't know about many, but one is too many.
• 19:27
  And I wouldn't say that's necessarily because of laxness.
• 19:30
  I don't know if there even was a vaccine at the time.
• 19:33
  I don't know but, yeah, people dying.
• 19:36
  Well, the good news is Tecelia eventually wound back to Canada and then found her family, found her biological father.
• 19:44
  Yeah.
• 19:44
  Reconnected.
• 19:45
  Right.
• 19:46
  So that turned out to be a happy ending for her.
• 19:50
  Yeah.
• 19:50
  Ultimately, the originators of the commune stayed true to themselves.
• 19:54
  They became activist lawyers, herbalists.
• 19:57
  Some people just became handymen, you know, I mean, it's not all.
• 20:00
  Some people are growing trees for free,.
• 20:03
  You know, but it seemed like ultimately it was a positive experience for them.
• 20:08
  I think so.
• 20:09
  I think it was like a university or an Outward Bound.
• 20:12
  Yep.
• 20:12
  You know, you discovered new skills on a physical level, but also on the inner level.
• 20:18
  You could do a lot worse in your 20s.
• 20:20
  Yeah.
• 20:20
  You know, and Black Bear still is around because they created a land Trust in 1987, had a ceremony.
• 20:28
  Right.
• 20:29
  And what they did is guaranteed that that land would never be repurposed for development or anything, and that it would always stay in the spirit of the ranch, which was a place to come together.
• 20:41
  So that's the result.
• 20:42
  My understanding of it was like every person of the hundred people who signed the thing would have to agree if they wanted to sell it.
• 20:50
  So that probably is not going to happen.
• 20:52
  I came away from the movie realizing that however they fell into it, everybody was pretty self realized and conscious.
• 20:59
  And in the present.
• 21:01
  Right.
• 21:01
  We probably would be in a lot better shape right now, politically and societally, if we were a little more self aware.
• 21:08
  I agree.
• 21:10
  You know, and another reason why it makes your movie relevant.
• 21:14
  One of the things I like to do is challenge history.
• 21:16
  Like, oh, the 60s.
• 21:18
  Oh, none of it worked.
• 21:19
  It was just.
• 21:19
  No, most of it worked, actually.
• 21:21
  It's just what happens is that there are real authentic things happening.
• 21:24
  Those become trends, and the trends get absorbed and adopted and become commercialized.
• 21:30
  So your natural foods, your grist from the mill, literally that you're hand grinding, then becomes a trend.
• 21:37
  And then people are writing about it in a Life magazine.
• 21:39
  And then the next thing you know, you have Whole Foods.
• 21:41
  You know that's true.
• 21:43
  You're listening to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show.
• 21:46
  I'm Ted Bonnitt.
• 21:46
  Phil Proctor will be back with me next week.
• 21:49
  Filmmaker Jonathan Berman, our guest, Jonathan.
• 21:52
  Let's talk about your other movie, Calling all Earthlings.
• 21:56
  You've never been treated for any form of emotional upset.
• 21:59
  I've never had an emotional upset other than women.
• 22:02
  Except that night in Yucca Flats.
• 22:04
  Not Yucca Flats, a giant rock.
• 22:06
  When this ship appeared.
• 22:10
  Another wonderful story of eccentricity unique to California.
• 22:15
  I've heard about this structure out in the Desert outside of Los Angeles called the Integratron, and have always wanted to know more about it.
• 22:26
  And thanks to you, I do know now.
• 22:29
  Oh, cool.
• 22:30
  This is a fascinating story because the consequences of alternative thinking, however well intended, sometimes are not great.
• 22:40
  This is one of those stories that has all these elements.
• 22:42
  The Integratron was a structure built by a man named George Van Tassel, who seemed to be a very accomplished aeronautical engineer.
• 22:52
  Right.
• 22:53
  And he was a test pilot for Howard Hughes.
• 22:57
  Allegedly.
• 22:58
  Allegedly.
• 22:59
  I don't have the hard proof on that, but I'll tell you something about this film.
• 23:02
  Calling all Earthlings.
• 23:03
  Yeah, eccentric is for sure.
• 23:05
  But also just some genuine counterculture movements that do worry the powers that be.
• 23:11
  And Van Tassel worried them.
• 23:13
  Teletype 624080.
• 23:17
  Urgent November 16, 1954.
• 23:21
  Regarding spacemen, information concerning George Wellington Van Tassel, Giant Rock Airport, Yucca Valley, California.
• 23:30
  George Van Tassel, who was the gentleman who built the Integratron at the behest of the aliens?
• 23:38
  Not allegedly.
• 23:39
  Definitely allegedly.
• 23:40
  According to him, he was the first.
• 23:44
  First modern.
• 23:45
  Modern counterculture figure.
• 23:47
  You know, obviously.
• 23:47
  Obviously there's the right amount of people like that.
• 23:49
  Those who aren't familiar with it.
• 23:51
  The Integratron was intended to be a time machine.
• 23:54
  Yeah.
• 23:55
  It was built to specifications, adhering to sacred geometry.
• 23:59
  It took him 18 years to build this structure, which isn't huge, it's like the size of a house.
• 24:07
  But it was shaped and designed in a way to generate a field of waveform energy, sort of the middle ground between AC and DC current.
• 24:17
  And it was based on the Tesla coil.
• 24:20
  There was a foundational understanding that he was adhering to.
• 24:24
  But George Van Tassel claimed that one evening his son called him to see something odd.
• 24:33
  I was sound asleep when he awakened me.
• 24:36
  This man awakened me.
• 24:37
  Well, something awakened me.
• 24:39
  The man got off of the ship and approached me before I even knew there was a ship down.
• 24:44
  I asked him what he wanted, and he said, my name is Solgonda and I would be pleased to show you our craft.
• 24:49
  Solgonda.
• 24:50
  Solgonda.
• 24:51
  After we got off the ship, the man who invited me aboard, who didn't look a day over 28 years of age, told me that he was over 700 years of age in our time.
• 25:01
  Oh, come off it, George.
• 25:03
  That's right.
• 25:05
  Was this the guy who gave you the formula for the time machine?
• 25:07
  That's the man.
• 25:09
  And this began a relationship with aliens.
• 25:13
  Right.
• 25:14
  Who were coming to the Earth to help us.
• 25:17
  The idea was to build this structure, the Integratron because it would create an energetic field that would extend human lifespans.
• 25:28
  The only way that we can get out of this mess is to take the people in the older years of life and give them enough more years to straighten the mess out.
• 25:37
  Because they said in this short lifespan we live, by the time we get old enough to know anything, we kick the bucket.
• 25:43
  By giving George the gift to extend lifespan, the elders, sexy boomers would hang around long enough to know this ain't right, let's fix it before they died.
• 25:55
  And that was the essence of his project.
• 25:58
  Yeah, and going back to exactly to where you started.
• 26:01
  He was living in la, right there on Glendale Boulevard, you know, definitely working for sure for various aircraft companies.
• 26:07
  At one point he was a union representative of one of the companies.
• 26:13
  So George had had it.
• 26:14
  He moves out to the desert, Joshua Tree.
• 26:17
  There was no LA weekenders at that point.
• 26:20
  It was him and his wife and living on BLM land.
• 26:25
  And that's when he had his experience.
• 26:28
  But I would call him like one of the first real modern counterculture figures, because look at it this way, he leaves a paying gig in the city, moves to the middle of the desert and starts she Christian hymnals,
• 26:44
  inviting neighbors that he could find, including kind of some cantankerous veterans who are living out there, and then has his experience.
• 26:51
  So kind of eschewing money, living communally, people started living in the caves near there following George.
• 26:59
  And apparently they.
• 27:01
  They opened the cafe and had some great apple pie.
• 27:05
  So the building is incredible.
• 27:07
  Yeah, the cafe was the giant rock, which is a large giant rock out in the desert.
• 27:15
  And he built a cafe under this rock.
• 27:20
  That's right.
• 27:20
  And his wife made burgers and supposedly the best apple pie imaginable.
• 27:25
  He built an airstrip.
• 27:27
  People would fly in for the apple.
• 27:29
  Pie, including allegedly Howard Wobard Hughes.
• 27:33
  With bags of money.
• 27:34
  Yeah, with bags of money to support.
• 27:36
  George's project and possibly for another reason.
• 27:39
  And this is something about Black Bear too, how everything personal is political.
• 27:45
  Everything is political.
• 27:46
  So what was happening at that point?
• 27:48
  The government was setting off atomic bomb tests right near Hughes's base in Las Vegas.
• 27:54
  And the aliens were very anti nuclear.
• 27:58
  The reason for these ships being here is because of these atomic detonations.
• 28:04
  And they started appearing here right after the two bombs were dropped in Japan.
• 28:08
  The men who create these things in Washington, they've got a classic glare in their eyes and all they eat, sleep and drink is a bigger and better explosion.
• 28:16
  That whole idea continues with some modern movements about alleged alien activity, like shutting down of weapons Bases and stuff in North Dakota actually.
• 28:27
  Yeah.
• 28:28
  You know.
• 28:28
  Yeah.
• 28:28
  A lot of like very like prestigious military people.
• 28:32
  They've seen some really weird stuff.
• 28:33
  Yeah.
• 28:34
  Who knows?
• 28:35
  I mean it's very possible use did support.
• 28:38
  I didn't find any cold hard facts on that.
• 28:40
  This his project because he was also supporting possibly this burgeoning anti nuclear movement which definitely brought the George and that whole thing to the attention of the authorities.
• 28:55
  And COINTELPRO started there, I believe not.
• 28:59
  Not literally at that particular place, but that kind of movement.
• 29:03
  People going to the desert, they would have their spacecraft conventions.
• 29:08
  A good place also for hookups of let's say gay and other at that point, non conventional types of sexuality and peace.
• 29:17
  Nick.
• 29:17
  So it's like a hotbed of dissent.
• 29:20
  The Bureau is aware there are numerous individuals operating in Southern California under the guise of religion or religious cults.
• 29:28
  He is apparently working up a new religion based on flying saucers, spacemen, thought control and metaphysics all combined in his college of universal wisdom.
• 29:38
  Like all good sci fi, let's say.
• 29:41
  Wrapped in a nice package of the future.
• 29:44
  Yeah, I mean people followed him out there.
• 29:47
  He started the UFO conference gig 1954.
• 29:51
  The Interplanetary Convention.
• 29:54
  Right.
• 29:55
  He did it every year from the 50s through the 70s.
• 29:58
  Thousands attended one.
• 29:59
  Evidently nearly 10,000 people attended.
• 30:02
  Yep.
• 30:05
  Counterintelligence agents attending Van Tassel's interplanetary conventions suggest this is a front for Communist party activities.
• 30:13
  The Bureau will assist in monitoring and influencing these events.
• 30:18
  You read excerpts of these reports the FBI were issuing on George?
• 30:23
  Yeah, the great Ron lynch who does a show at the Elysian Theater on midnights, on the weekends.
• 30:29
  He's a really great comedian who's been on Bob's Burgers and stuff like that.
• 30:32
  He reads the part of John Malone.
• 30:35
  Oh, he's great.
• 30:37
  George became eccentric.
• 30:39
  He would channel these aliens that were influencing him and giving him the recipe for the integratron.
• 30:45
  That happened from the beginning.
• 30:46
  But remember, he came from some Christian roots that maybe dealt in those kind of, you know, channelings.
• 30:54
  Like speaking in tongues is okay?
• 30:56
  Yeah, speaking in tongues.
• 30:58
  Yeah.
• 30:58
  I don't think he came from that, but there's a connection there.
• 31:02
  We extend our greetings and love from the council here at Blayo until we register through to you there again, in love, I am Steppes.
• 31:25
  You know, he was obviously a very bright person.
• 31:28
  Maybe.
• 31:29
  Maybe he was getting a lot of attention and people were coming from far and wide to learn more about this.
• 31:35
  In the 1950s, during the Red Scare.
• 31:39
  Yeah, exactly.
• 31:41
  That was a really rough time to be doing anything counterculturally.
• 31:45
  FBI sent out several alerts calling them Aquarian Pioneers.
• 31:51
  There was also a strange character portrayed in your movie.
• 31:55
  A woman in the area who was a self styled informant to the FBI, a Mrs.
• 32:00
  Reed.
• 32:01
  And she wrote letters to the FBI and Special Agent John Malone expressing her fears.
• 32:08
  Dear Agent Malone, I know you are very busy protecting America and that's probably why I haven't heard from you.
• 32:16
  The enclosed pamphlet is something.
• 32:19
  My first reaction was one of fear that someone might see me reading it.
• 32:24
  I could not help find in it many things that might be as though one were reading Marxism.
• 32:31
  The very layout of this place is ideal for one or a group to be of danger.
• 32:37
  I do hope I have not given the impression of a busybody, but these facts are on my mind and I know of no agency more respected.
• 32:48
  Hence this note to you.
• 32:49
  Dear Mrs.
• 32:50
  Reed, we have received your communications.
• 32:53
  Please be assured that the Bureau takes these matters very seriously.
• 32:57
  Sincerely, Special Agent John Malone.
• 33:01
  What was that about?
• 33:02
  Losing neighbor syndrome?
• 33:03
  Yes, Mrs.
• 33:05
  Kravitz from Bewitched.
• 33:06
  Exactly right.
• 33:08
  Because it was a very square scene out there, you know, it's like America.
• 33:13
  Dear Agent Malone, I hate to stir up the hornet's nest, but we happen to be driving by Landers and as luck would have it, the saucer convention was on.
• 33:23
  The pamphlets talked about peace and love, but we saw two men brawling and quickly left in fear for our lives.
• 33:31
  I couldn't help but think of Mr.
• 33:33
  Manson and his crazy followers.
• 33:36
  Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.
• 33:39
  The FBI took it seriously?
• 33:40
  Evidently.
• 33:41
  Oh yeah.
• 33:42
  Well, for good reason, in my opinion.
• 33:45
  Not that I'm against it, but I'm saying if they see people blowing off money because, you know, be it Black Bear Ranch or be it Georgian Tassel and his Desert Dome group living happens.
• 33:58
  Starting to happen there.
• 34:00
  When it comes down to it, when you have a place to stay and you're around crops, maybe less so in the desert, you don't need that much money.
• 34:07
  Yeah.
• 34:07
  No.
• 34:08
  So a lot of people just blow off capitalism completely.
• 34:12
  I personally like stuff, but you can make stuff too.
• 34:15
  When it was espoused that George Van Tassel was creating a free energy machine, that got a lot of attention and that's been a thread through society for years about how anybody coming up with an alternative to big oil
• 34:29
  gets in somebody's sights pretty quickly.
• 34:32
  This appeared to happen to George and there was suspicion and concern by the FBI about this so called free energy thing.
• 34:41
  And to some degree it was a valid concern because Big Energy of any kind is dangero.
• 34:47
  I mean, here's the thing, Ted.
• 34:49
  I'm not here to advocate any of this.
• 34:52
  Okay.
• 34:52
  I'm here more as an amateur anthropologist.
• 34:56
  Yeah.
• 34:56
  So what I'm interested in personally is sharing this with people.
• 35:01
  But also how did this whole desert UFO counterculture movement affect the people who were living there when we, when we filmed it?
• 35:09
  You know, you meet a lot of people who live there now and see like, George is their kind of, you know, fairy godfather.
• 35:17
  Wow.
• 35:18
  Yeah.
• 35:18
  Because he was the first guy to move out there and do cool stuff.
• 35:21
  Now I don't want to neglect the whole science side of it.
• 35:24
  Yeah.
• 35:25
  There's this guy named Daniel Paul.
• 35:28
  He wrote about the Integratron for it to become a historic site because it did become a historically registered significant place.
• 35:38
  Some kind of, you know, official designation.
• 35:41
  But he knows so much about the science of it, which is pretty good.
• 35:44
  Considerable.
• 35:45
  He's not coming from like full believer thing, but he is coming from a lot of stuff that I didn't know about as just some filmmaker guy, you know.
• 35:54
  Yeah.
• 35:54
  The Huntington in Pasadena has acquired Van Tassel's archive, which includes the books he's written, many hundreds of photographs and a 3D model of the Integratron itself, which were saved by an elderly couple in Landers in the high desert.
• 36:10
  They kept it in their home in a climate controlled room.
• 36:13
  Daniel Paul knew of this archive and helped digitize all of the materials which the Huntington has since acquired.
• 36:20
  And it's already available to the public to come to explore it.
• 36:24
  Yeah.
• 36:25
  But getting back to George, as time went on and the pressure mounted, it took its toll on George Van Tassel.
• 36:33
  He becomes pretty paranoid.
• 36:36
  He says that men in black are following him.
• 36:39
  Right.
• 36:39
  I don't know if they're mythical or real, but they're supposedly quasi human, odd looking twin fellows in black outfits and fedoras that often visit people after they report an experience with a ufo.
• 36:52
  And it's usually an intimidation tactic to shut them up.
• 36:57
  Wow.
• 36:57
  There are photographs of men in black.
• 36:59
  I can't tell you for sure whether it's real or not.
• 37:01
  I haven't had an experience.
• 37:03
  Yeah, there's a lot of.
• 37:04
  I mean, intimidation as a tactical government.
• 37:07
  You see it now, right?
• 37:08
  Now, not men in black so much as it's men in masks.
• 37:12
  But then there were, according to the film, several assassination attempts on George's life.
• 37:17
  That's right.
• 37:18
  There was an unhinged character who did try to get killed.
• 37:21
  George.
• 37:22
  That's what I heard.
• 37:23
  Yeah.
• 37:24
  Just as he was about to start the Integratron up for the first time and start extending life and offering free energy.
• 37:33
  According to what he was saying, he died of a massive heart attack, or at least that's what the report was.
• 37:40
  But his grandson and his son questions.
• 37:43
  His cause of death was suggested in the film, or the grandson says as much.
• 37:48
  Doris, George's second wife, was weird.
• 37:53
  She would go down to the Mayan pyramids and study the Mayan sacrifices of children.
• 37:59
  Bloody, terrible, horrible sacrifices.
• 38:01
  That's right.
• 38:02
  And then she'd come home and paint depictions of these sacrifice.
• 38:06
  That's right.
• 38:07
  He died in a hotel room and Doris had his body cremated before any autopsy could be conducted.
• 38:14
  The grandson posits that possibly she may have poisoned him.
• 38:18
  Of course, there's no evidence or proof of that, but what a strange, weird end.
• 38:23
  Yeah, well, you know, huh.
• 38:27
  You know, it's my job, in my opinion, not to.
• 38:31
  There's no neutrality in media, but there is fairness.
• 38:36
  So I try to kind of go in the direction that people are going.
• 38:40
  I think people want to create myths.
• 38:44
  It's part of the human condition.
• 38:46
  Right.
• 38:46
  Storytelling, Joseph Campbell, all that stuff.
• 38:49
  So did George just eat a lot of greasy burgers and have a massive coronary?
• 38:54
  It's very possible.
• 38:56
  He was under a lot of stress.
• 38:57
  He was under a lot of stress.
• 38:59
  Or was there something more nefarious?
• 39:01
  Certainly that whole thing.
• 39:02
  I don't know what I'm talking about.
• 39:03
  Archetypes.
• 39:03
  The archetype of the step.
• 39:05
  Stepmom.
• 39:06
  You know this.
• 39:06
  The second wife is.
• 39:08
  Is never that good.
• 39:09
  She's always kind of evil.
• 39:11
  But in this case, the woman was painting some weird stuff and involved in some weird stuff.
• 39:16
  So, yeah, you have to really see the film to know for sure.
• 39:19
  Available from Freestyle Releasing, which is part of Byron Allen's Great company.
• 39:23
  I think this film should be seen now.
• 39:26
  After George, there are stewards of the Integratron.
• 39:29
  Well, George's son was pretty pessimistic about it.
• 39:33
  He said, look, it's all about who controls energy.
• 39:35
  The oil companies control the energy, and they weren't going to let that happen.
• 39:41
  And he feels that the Integratron now has very negative energy.
• 39:46
  One of the ironies of it, it was literally adjacent to the 29 Palms Marine Base where they do a lot of war games.
• 39:52
  And that is true.
• 39:53
  And he's making that point, saying, look at the war machine next to us with the explosions constantly.
• 39:58
  And look at what war wars are based on.
• 40:00
  At least recently have been on oil.
• 40:02
  And how ironic it is that these explosions are happening within earshot of the Integratron.
• 40:10
  When I made this film, conspiracy wasn't.
• 40:12
  It didn't seem.
• 40:13
  It seemed more like a hobby.
• 40:15
  You know, it's become something that's really.
• 40:17
  I mean, I guess that was always in the air, but it can be very negative.
• 40:21
  You know, people get really into it.
• 40:23
  But let's just say why was he that close to that giant base?
• 40:29
  The right on the fence of it?
• 40:30
  You know, maybe that was part of the plan.
• 40:35
  I don't know.
• 40:37
  The suppression of this information from the American people is the highest type of treason.
• 40:45
  They're going to destroy this planet if they can do it, because their God is destruction.
• 40:53
  I was struck by one interview you did with a tattoo artist.
• 40:56
  Yeah.
• 40:57
  And he was asking all these big existential questions about what is reality.
• 41:02
  That's right.
• 41:04
  And there are churches and there are shamans and it's like there's a little industry there as a result of George's imprint.
• 41:12
  Yeah.
• 41:13
  What he did there still resonates and.
• 41:16
  Or other people who are just of a like mind also gravitate towards that space which, you know, I was out there.
• 41:22
  I really loved it.
• 41:23
  I hope it hasn't gotten too.
• 41:25
  To ally ified.
• 41:26
  Ally in the negative way.
• 41:27
  I'd never gone to the Integratron.
• 41:30
  I would love to get inside that thing.
• 41:32
  Well, just like Black Bear, like how you have to write to them.
• 41:36
  You can't just show up anymore.
• 41:38
  Don't just show up at the Integratron, especially if it says it's closed.
• 41:41
  You have to sign up for an advance to go in there.
• 41:45
  These two movies telling these stories, it's interesting how they remain relevant.
• 41:50
  The countercultural thing, particularly now to show that things just don't change.
• 41:56
  That the modern UFO movement was born out of the nuclear era.
• 42:02
  Right.
• 42:03
  The idea of free thinking, whether it's free energy or communal living, things haven't changed.
• 42:10
  Boomers.
• 42:10
  We were misled because we were brought up in peak of empire where liberalism was affordable.
• 42:17
  And it all changed beginning in 1980 and the bitter fruits of this we're reaping now.
• 42:25
  I think that's why your movies have something to offer now as much as ever.
• 42:29
  Oh, thank you.
• 42:30
  Thank you.
• 42:31
  Jonathan Berman.
• 42:32
  Appreciate you coming on the show today to talk about your two movies, Commune and Calling All Earthlings.
• 42:37
  You can see Jonathan's movie Calling All Earthlings on several different platforms, including YouTube.
• 42:43
  And we've included a link to the movie on our website at SexyBoomershow.com and on our podcast page as well.
• 42:50
  I'm Ted Bonnittinfo@exyboomershow.com..Phil Proctorwill bebacknextweek.We'dlovetohearfromyou.Youcanreach usatinfoexyboomershow.comSeeyou next week.