What did the studio at Wonderland Avenue do?

[Helen Reyes]

I think we also got our wires crossed a few times there, entirely unintentionally.

Maybe so. I was just trying to impress what a big coincidence this is/was. Really, honest, somebody believe me

An obvious example is the evolution of Apocalypse Now, from the original right-wing, Kurtz-loving, extreme Nietzschian, script of John Milius - inspired by tales of the Phoenix Program and, allegedly, Tony Poshepny - through rewriting by FF Coppola, the casting and filming of Harvey Keitel as Willard, his firing and replacement by the much blander Martin Sheen who goes malarially mad on location, onwards to the climactic scenes in the Montagnard/Hmong Laotian compound, TS Eliot & Joseph Conrad spirited through a seer...

Including Cao Dai elements would've made a lot of sense.

Apocalypse Now was only ever given solid form when the celloloid prints were made. And even these were altered days after release. Yes - I once saw the airstrike called in and blow Kurtz's compound, and its inhabitants, to smithereens. For years afterwards, I thought must have hallucinated it.

That's the one I saw too.

So, there are many layers of interference.

And interference is rather a good word for moving into the John Keel/Mothman territory.

Keel/Mothman reveals interference at the literal and material level. Men in Black. Deliberate distortions.

However, there is also interference at the metaphysical level.

As if some numinous figure is twirling the radio dial, and channels are bleeding into each other.

And the radio itself is, for want of a better phrase, able to receive intra-dimensional signals.

This is also David Lynch territory.

Polanski, rather like Lloyd the barman, exists in many forms.

Radio productions were lavish affairs back then, and popular shows like Suspense and Lux Radio Theater worked hand-in-hand with the film indutry, adapting for radio before release, starring the same stars, etc. Discovering the radio ties of the clandestine Wonderland studio might shed light on what they were up to.

I'm aware of editorial and political interference at BBC to a small degree, as an outside observer. I've also experienced it in my own work over the years. It almost seemspointless to even critique the MSM at this point, like flogging a dead horse. We've watched the newspapers, for example, lose so many readers that they are approaching the government with outstretched hands and a serious face asking for a handout. After publishing the government line for a decade, their credibility, the public perception of their independence, is shot. So New York Times for example takes a cash infusion from Mexican druglords and acts like this is a normal thing for the free press to do.

Realizing the sycophantic press, collaborators in the War on Terror/New Crusades, have lost credibility, the foundations begin casting about for alternatives to infiltrate, namely in the "blogosphere." Which is where the US military invested a lot of propaganda money too before the blogs, too, became passe, or at least recognized as containing a lot of disinformation.

In order to accomodate the internal contradictions and physical anomolies of the neo-con world view, including the New Physics that entered the universe on Sept 11, 2001, documentaries have also become quite shoddy and have lost a lot of public credibility, across the board.

And if the last Depression is anything to judge by, demand for real news will probably decline, not related proportionally to the supply of real news available, but because of the need to escape an unpleasant reality.

On Lloyd, Polanski and other ghosts in LC, I don't know what's going on there, but I'm willing to entertain the idea that there is spiritual interference at work with some kind of time slip. The kabbalists talk about dybbukim, fallen spirits who can sometimes deliver accurate information from the near future, but just as often convey information from alternate realities, from the lost kingdoms of Edom. Then there's Houdini's wife, poor old poisoned Houdini, sitting up all night holding seances to channel her husband's ectoplasm. There's blood spilt before, before the radio drama, and there's blood spilt after, and after 20 years there are subterranean rivers of blood flowing under the canyon. Maybe all that blood and gore, terror and death, coupled with a steady stream of Hollywood fan-pilgrims and weird occult activities by locals, set up some sort of time loop or "bleed-through" so that Polanski's name could float on the night wind in 1945.

The only thing I can imagine that would be worse than being trapped in that lodge in the Shining for an eternity is if I were trapped in that lodge for an eternity while the Eagles' Hotel California played on a continuous loop, forever and ever.

[David Guyatt]

It has occurred to me, more than once in this thread, that the geographical location under discussion (i.e., the canyon) may be one of those very odd places that seem to resonate in at least two different dimensions at the same time. A time portal or dimensional gateway if you will. And that tis might account for some of these oddities.


Just a passing thought.