You Can’t Make This Up

Wild Wild Country

Episode Summary

Wild Wild Country directors Chapman and Maclain Way sit down with Lindsey Weber, co-host of the podcast Who? Weekly, for an in depth conversation about the series. They talk about constructing the narrative, visiting Antelope now, what it was like interviewing Ma Anand Sheela, and so much more.

Episode Notes

Wild Wild Country directors Chapman and Maclain Way sit down with Lindsey Weber, co-host of the podcast Who? Weekly, for an in depth conversation about the series. They talk about constructing the narrative, visiting Antelope now, what it was like interviewing Ma Anand Sheela, and so much more.

Episode Transcription

[Music]


 

Rae: Welcome to You Can't Make This Up, a new companion podcast from Netflix.


 

[Music]


 

Rae: I'm Rae Votta.  I work at Netflix.  I'm one of the hosts of this podcast and I'm definitely not wearing monochrome red right now.  Every other week on You Can't Make This Up, we feature a new interviewer discussing a different Netflix series or film with special guests.  And all of the stories are surprisingly true, like Wild Country.  It's a six-part documentary series that follows a Rajneeshpuram, a so-called sex cult from India that takes over a small Oregon town.  And it's what we're talking about for our first full-length episode.


 

[Music]


 

Rae: Today's interviewer is Lindsey Weber, who you usually hear as the co-host to the pop culture podcast, Who? Weekly.  Lindsey sits down with the directors of Wild Country, brothers Chapman Way and Maclain Way.  If you haven't watched this series, pause this episode and go finish it.  There are spoilers ahead.  But, if you don't mind those, play on.


 

[Music]


 

Rae: And now, here's Lindsey Weber with Wild Country directors, Chapman and Maclain Way.


 

Lindsey: Hey there.  I'm Lindsey Weber, host of the pop culture podcast, Who? Weekly, but today, I'm on You Can't Make This Up.  I'm so excited to be here interviewing the directors of the insanely captivating Netflix original documentary series, Wild Wild Country.  I'm here with Chapman and Maclain Way.  Welcome to the show.  Do you guys—because there's two of you and one of me, and you're both dudes—why don't you introduce yourselves so people will know the difference between your voices, maybe?


 

Chapman: Yeah, hi, this is Chapman Way and I am one of the co-directors on Wild Wild Country.


 

Maclain: And my name is Maclain Way.  I think my voice might be a little higher.  I'm not sure, but I'm Chapman's younger brother and the other co-director on Wild Wild Country.


 

Lindsey: You sound a lot alike to me.  I was going to say, so you guys are brothers.  You're not twins?  How old are you guys?  Or how many years apart are you?


 

Chapman: Yeah, this is Chapman.  I'm 31 years old.


 

Maclain: Yeah, I'm 27 so there's about four, four and half year, age difference there.


 

Lindsey: And you guys have been working together as brothers and creative partners for like a while.  When did you start working together?  Because I feel like family—it's tough to work together as a family.


 

Chapman: We started working together in about 2013 and it's kind of Mac and I and then my wife, Julianna, who's our producer who produces all of our stuff and, so, the three of us kind of joined forces in around 2013/2014 to make a documentary—which was our first documentary, called The Battered Bastards of Baseball, which was a Netflix original documentary about a minor league baseball team that our grandfather owned and we've always just had a love for film and documentaries especially and we just really enjoy making them.


 

Maclain: Yeah, this is Maclain.  We kind of had a great like partnership—and obviously still do—Chap kind of went to film school proper and I was actually a history major at UCLA and he went to the film school there.  And, so, documentary was kind of like this great little, like, middle ground between us where it was kind of, like, I could do a lot of the research and the archive footage and do a lot of the interviews and then we would both kind of collaborate on the story and how we kind of wanted to edit the story together.  But then Chap has a deep knowledge of film and shoots the interviews and lights them and is also an editor himself and he edited our first documentary, The Battered Bastards of Baseball.  So, yeah, it's been a good fit from day one.


 

Lindsey: That's so funny that it really is a mixing of film and history because there's so much about storytelling and the way that people like to watch film and like to have the story, you know, unfurled for them—but, then, history is not always perfect in terms of storytelling so, having the negotiation between you guys—figuring out, how do we tell this in an interesting way but also be truthful to the history of what's happening—especially when it's your own family's story.  So that first documentary was obviously close to home, you know?


 

Chapman: Absolutely.  I think one of the things we're kind of really interested in is where the documentary field has been progressing in the last decade or so where they're not necessarily just informative pieces, but they really are these kind of cinematic journeys that you can go on and I think Mac and I are really excited about making these immersive experience for the audience—we don't have narrators that tell you what's going on or tell you how you should feel—we really kind of try to do these character pieces where you really get to know the characters and go on their journey with them.


 

Maclain: Yeah, and for me it was just, like, fascinating because we didn't really set out to become these archival documentary filmmakers, but those are certainly the stories that we're attracted to.  I think, for one reason or another, we're attracted to these, kind of, forgotten stories that were very significant to people who lived them and, so, we like to talk to people, you know, something very important happened to them 30, 35 years ago.  That was certainly the case with the Portland Mavericks which was the subject of our first documentary.  And that was very much the case of the story with Wild Wild Country where we are reaching out to people.  This story happened 30, 35 years ago and in a lot of ways the immediate feedback that we were getting from people who lived this was that, for better or worse, this was probably the most significant thing that had ever happened to them in their entire life.  And, so, as documentary filmmakers, when you're working with someone who has such stakes in the story—not only do you creatively feed off their stakes and their passion for the story, but it also does make the story more immersive and ultimately I think hopefully more entertaining for an audience who just is going to be coming to the story for the first time.


 

Lindsey: And that's kind of why I loved this so much was because you guys are my age, so we were born kind of slightly after this happened.  So not only, like, I'd never heard of this—never read about it—it didn't come up at any point.  And, you know, cults are kind of an interest of people.  They get fascinated and you kind of go down this key hole, but this one never came up.  So, I guess, where did you come across the Rajneeshes for the first time?  And, you know, how did you kind of put yourself in the mindset to make a documentary—like, did it help that you knew nothing about them?  Or do you feel like maybe if you had known a little bit more it would have given more context to the story?


 

Chapman: Yeah, so the whole journey for us kind of started about four years ago in 2014.  This is Chapman speaking.  We were basically given a tip from an archivist at the Oregon Historical Society up in Portland, Oregon, who basically said that he had this incredible collection of archived footage that detailed pretty much what he explained to us is the most bizarre story that ever happened in the history of Oregon and he told us about this cult and this guru that built this $125 Million utopian city.  He told us how they took over political control of the local town of Antelope and then they tried to take over the county.  They bussed in thousands of homeless people so they would have enough votes to take over the county and then ultimately ended up kind of poisoning a huge population of 750 people to prevent them from voting on election day.  My first reaction was just, how have I never heard about this story?  This is such an insane American story.  We've all heard of Jonestown.  We've all heard of Waco.  How has it been that this has kind of slipped under the cracks?  So, we immediately started doing some research and I think once we started researching the story and getting to know the characters, we actually found, like, a really complex underbelly to this story that dealt with a lot of really interesting topics like religious rights—it deals with the Second Amendment, it deals with politics, it deals with fear of the other, it deals with immigration.  And, so, I think once we started seeing all these really pertinent topics underneath the kind of sensationalist story that people were somewhat familiar with, we just really felt this would be an incredible story to do a deep dive, six-episode exploration of it.


 

Maclain: Yeah, and I think that almost not knowing anything about it actually, ultimately, ended up kind of helping us because I think for better or worse it kind of—we were in a great position where we were allowed to kind of suspend judgment on a lot of our characters and a lot of the people on both sides of this story—which I don't think is really possible if you grow up hearing one side of the story and you've been influenced by it from day one—or if your life was legitimately traumatized by the arrival of these people in Oregon, or if you were a part of this community and you felt like you had committed your life to building this utopian ideal and you felt like it had been destroyed by your neighbors that you had moved next to in Eastern Oregon.  I mean, I'm not even passing judgment on the people that have judgment of these people—I totally understand what that would be like—but the fact that Chap and I, we grew up in the 90's in Los Angeles, and just having no idea about this story growing up—as we started to dive into it, it kind of allowed us to, just with an open mind, kind of hear from two sides that just remained so entrenched against each other—just kind of what it was like in their sides of the story.  And, hopefully, that's kind of why we were so excited to do it in the episodic format.


 

Lindsey: Why do you think that the story of this cult kind of didn't get as much attention as, like, Heaven's Gate and Jonestown and all those places—because, it's just crazy to me that this is not one of those that's just mentioned alongside—I mean, I think now it will be but it isn't in that list of, you know, of cults that we always bring up?


 

Chapman: Basically, what we found out was there were kind of a few components to this and one was, you know, no one died and even how insane and bizarre the poisonings, and some of the political assassination attempts and—no one did die and I think with Jonestown and Waco, obviously the death toll was such a huge number that it became such international news—that this one kind of slipped under the radar.  I think another aspect to this is that the guru kind of changed his name from Bhagwan Rajneesh to Osho and the organization took this whole rebranding a couple years before he died.  This whole Oregon chapter was taken out of his biographies and they kind of whitewashed this chapter of the guru.  And I think because he was able to rebrand so successfully, a lot of people don't make the connection between the spiritual guru, Osho—who's pretty well known today and the guru Bhagwan Rajneesh.


 

Maclain: Even in Oregon—I mean, we kind of new that Rajneeshes would be hesitant to talk about this because I know, from their perspective, there was so much pain and trauma in this whole story—the ranchers I just thought—I was kind of naïve.  I just thought that they would be very eager to talk about this but they were just as hesitant.  I mean, the pain and trauma was just as much there for them, too.  And, so, it took us a while to kind of break through the obviously immediate hesitancy of being interviewed on camera about this.  It was certainly a struggle in the beginning.


 

Lindsey: When did you realize, when you're asking all these people, like, talk to us, talk to us—who was the person who was the lynchpin—when you go them, you were, like, we have this?  You know, like for me, the fact that you had Sheela and as it unfolded Sheela became such a central character which you kind of don't realize in the beginning, how important she is, you know?  Because for these documentaries it almost feels like if one person is missing, you couldn't do it and it would be a huge waste of a lot of time and effort if you can't get that one person to agree.


 

Chapman: That's totally true.  I think the first step we did in 2014 was really start to digitize and transfer this huge collection of archived footage that was, I think, a little over 300 hours and as soon as started watching the footage, the first character that really just jumped out at us was MaNong Sheela who was the guru's kind of right hand, arm, or right hand man, so to speak.  And we kind of—as we got deeper and deeper into the footage and the story, we just knew she was such an integral part of this whole Rajneeshpuram experiment that it would just—we almost just felt like we had to talk to her if we were going to make this in a long-form series.  And, so, you know, we kind of did some Internet/Googling and searching and tried to track down a website and somehow got an e-mail address that we found for one of her health institutions that she runs in Switzerland.  And we just sent her an e-mail and introduced ourselves and asked if we could get her on the phone to talk to her.  As soon as we started talking to her, she was a little hesitant the first few minutes, but it became clear after talking to her that she just really feels like she's never really been given an opportunity to kind of walk an audience through how she saw these events unfold.


 

Maclain: Getting Sheela was so essential to the story of Wild Wild Country—we knew that we absolutely had to get her onboard.  But it actually wasn't even until the end of the interview, at the end of the five days, when Chapman and I were kind of just as exhausted as Sheela was at the end of this whole process that I think we even looked at each other and it was like the first time that—we always knew we could make a documentary series on Rajneeshpuram but at the end of that interview we knew that we had something pretty special on our hands.


 

Lindsey: I go very back and forth on Sheela because I don't want to devalue—I don't want to say that she's good because she's clearly not, but I love her and she is so truly perverse and complicated.  She's so incredible and, like, I guess my question is, you spent so much time with her—did you go back and forth in kind of believing her or not believing her?  Buying her story, not buying her story?  I would join the cult that she was leading, like, I just—I felt it.  It was so—she's so compelling.  She's more compelling than Bhagwan.  We don't really get a ton of facetime but she was—I was, like, I'm in.  Whatever, I don't care.  You know, it was so crazy.


 

Chapman: Yeah, I think the really interesting thing about Sheela is, you know, there's been a lot of true crime shows about what we call "psychopaths" you know, and the really interesting thing about getting to know Sheela and getting to know people who knew Sheela before she joined this Rajneesh movement and as a young girl going to college in America and talking to friends of hers—it was just very clear that they all talked about Sheela as being this very ambitious, smart, charming, creative—she was a very talented artist—she was a fine art major—and this person that people really gravitated to, they really enjoyed her company, she was really precocious—and I think it's really fascinating to kind of watch this journey and watch her devotion to this man and to this movement and ultimately where it leads her.


 

Lindsey: I more just cannot believe that this was—first of all, you started with her very, very said story about her first love and how—and, you know, it really wraps you up in her story.  Like, clearly you guys knew what you were doing when you kind of wanted us to emphasize with her and feel like this woman needs directly, she just lost her love of her life—and then ending with her at doing good things in Switzerland which—it's just crazy because if you are not escaping something, who goes to Switzerland?  I'm sorry, like Switzerland . . . you know what I mean?


 

Chapman: Yeah—totally.


 

Maclain: Yeah, I think that's what really kind of what was fascinating to us because when we were doing—we did some pre-interviews with some, you know, state and government officials before we did our interviews—and this was a woman that they referred to us as "pure evil" and as someone who lacked zero empathy.  And, so that was the kind of tidbits of information that we were given before meeting Sheela and I think obviously when you see her grieving through the death of her first husband and becoming widowed at such a young age, you do see that there are emotions and that there is empathy in this woman.  I mean, we spent time with her—she works incredibly hard doing what she does now, which is taking care of mentally ill people.  And even when cameras weren't rolling or when she didn't think we were around, I saw first hand the kind of dedication that she gives to her patients now and it's not an easy job what she does.  And, so, hopefully that's kind of one of the interesting components of this series is you kind of have to reconcile this person who committed these kind of, like, atrocious criminal activities with someone who maybe also does have a good side.


 

Lindsey: Right.  What I love—you know, it's like when you're structuring a documentary like this, everyone is waiting for the turn because, up until a certain point, you're like, there's these people.  They seem pretty chill.  They're doing their own thing.  They're really good at building stuff.  They all seem to like each other, blah, blah, blah.  Like, you're waiting for it to turn because in the beginning you're saying this happened and anyone could just hop on Wikipedia—and a lot of them probably did—and said, oh my God.  What is going to happen?  Because it isn't—there's no spoilers.  It happened.  It's an event.  So, I guess my question is: when did you know this is the problem with these people?  You know what I mean?


 

Chapman: For sure, yeah.  Well, I think, yeah, just to kind of step back—I think the first thing we realized once we started reaching out to the Sannyrasins and the ex-Sannyrasins—that's what they call themselves, the members of this movement—was really, like, how intelligent and thoughtful and highly accomplished these individuals were in their previous lives.  These were people that worked on Wall Street, these were high powered attorneys, these were civil engineers that kind of all bound together to create this ideal utopian vision.  So, we knew that it was important to spend some time early on in the series—at least the first episode—giving that background to the audience so that you understood their intentions and that you understand that these are not just a bunch of insanely, bizarre, crazy individuals—you know, these are your neighbors, these are your uncles—we were less interested in getting into the belief systems because every group thinks every other group's belief system is bizarre.  So, we were more interested in showing this ideal utopia that they wanted to build—you know, solar energy, greenhouse farming, organic foods—and then kind of show a little bit how this group was forced, through what they perceived, to be outside pressures.  They felt that they were being persecuted against, they felt that there was bigotry towards them—and, so, I think the first time, as the audience, you start to see, oh, no, this is maybe going to go off the rails a little bit, is when you see their response to the hotel bombing.  Basically, their hotel in Portland—they had two pipe bombs explode through their hotel—no one dies, but it's an incredibly traumatic event for them.  And Sheela's reaction to this is to arm several members inside the commune with AK-47s and assault rifles and they trained them with ex-military members on how to use these weapons to defend themselves from attacks from the outside world.  I mean, I think it's a shocking image when you see this pacifist spiritual group that doesn't believe in violence, that doesn't believe in arming yourself, turn to these very high grade, powerful weapons to defend themselves from the outside world.


 

Lindsey: Right, which is interesting because—and you mentioned this and this is one of the questions I did have for you—is that you hadn't focused so much on what they actually believe in at all.  So, as you're going through this, you're like, what are their beliefs?  What's their belief system, again?  I know they don't love God, they don't have a God, but, do they?  What do they do?  They like sex and they meditate or whatever.  But, like, because you don't focus on it, you're losing track of what is this centralizing force, aside from now this place, you know?


 

Chapman: Yeah, it's been really interesting because a lot of people have kind of mentioned that to us, like, well, what did they believe in?  And we truly felt like we kind of covered it in episode one which is, you know, this wasn't a bizarre belief system where they believed if you do this, you'll go to an afterlife, or things like this.  So, it was really that they believed in meditation, they believed in open sex, they believed in accumulation of wealth and it was really more of just like this new age, human potential movement that was kind of sweeping the nation and the world.  It was less of like a religious doctrine than it was more of a new age movement. And, so, by today's standards, their belief system is pretty, you know, not that sensationalist compared to what it was in the early 80's.


 

Lindsey: They're kind of like chill capitalists or something.  They're like capitalists who want a break and live together.


 

Maclain: Yeah, exactly.  It was one of those things where, like as Chap and I would talk to Sannyrasins about their devotion to Bhagwan—it kind of was something that was hard to intellectualize, like, it wasn't something that I totally understood myself.  But, it was something that you kind of just end up taking them at their word for it, if they're telling you that this is how they felt about this man.  I mean, on a certain point, I think it would be comparable to, like, a family member.  Like, I don't think that there's a very explainable logic for why you feel such a deep connection to the members of your own personal family—but I think that when they looked up and saw Bhagwan, they certainly had that same type of, you know, love and feeling and connection to him.  The fact is is that we kind of started out to tell a story of Rajneeshpuram and that was always our intention—the fact is is that he takes a vow of silence right when he gets to America, so, it's like, as filmmakers working with archived footage and also talking and doing our own interviews, it actually was hard to bring Bhagwan, the leader of this movement, into the story fully because he was quiet for the first four years and it created a massive power vacuum within that community that obviously Sheela filled up and then some.  I mean, Sheela kind of ran that community top down while Bhagwan was kind of hanging out in his house.  And, so, obviously when Bhagwan breaks his vow of silence after Sheela leaves the ranch, then we start to see him kind of try to take control again and grab the reins of the movement.


 

Lindsey: Yeah, I mean, that was kind of incredible and also proof that if you want to lead a movement you should just not talk, you should write a book and then stop talking because people will think that you're very wise and you won't have to . . .


 

Chapman: Yeah, I think that with a lot of these—it's really interesting, the projection that we can put on people, you know, I mean—and if you are in silence there is obviously a lot to project.


 

Maclain: Yeah, I mean, and that was so interesting because even one of our talking head interviews who was a Sannyrasin back in the ranch and still considers himself a Sannyrasin, talked openly to us about, like, it's a razor's edge where basically they're—a fundamental core of their belief system is that they want to walk a path to enlightenment.  They want to reach enlightenment in their lifetime and that, through that path of enlightenment, like, you've got to drop the ego and sometimes you need to devote yourself and surrender yourself to something.  But he talked about how that devotion and surrender is a double-edged sword and how it's so dangerous on the other side, too, and how ultimately, in his words, he says, it can lead people and it did lead people into doing things that they shouldn't have done.  And this is coming from a guy who still considers himself highly devoted to Osho and Osho's teachings.  So, I never got the sense that they weren't aware of what they're devotion to Osho means.  In fact, they were openly willing to engage with us and talk about the downfalls, or the pitfalls, that sometimes can come along with that, for some people.


 

Lindsey: Yeah, I want to ask you because you did bring it up: so, you talked to very specific people in the group and the lawyer; and you talked to Jane—who was the one who ended up trying to kill someone—but, I assume you did also just talk to kind of normal, more every day type followers who were living there.  I mean, there were so many of them there.  How did you decide who to leave in and take out?  I feel like—do you feel like maybe we were missing kind of that every day person who just kind of joined up and wasn't really part of any type of leadership or anything like that?


 

Chapman: Yeah, we kind of wanted to give a wide range or wide gamut of different experiences and different kinds of Sannyrasins and, so, kind of one of our pet peeves in documentaries is when you get too many talking heads sometimes.  It's hard to really relate to these personal journeys that these characters go on, so, just as a rule of thumb we try to limit the amount of talking heads that we have in our stories.  Kind of the main talking heads that are Sannyrasins are kind of three different experiences:  you have the lawyer, Swami Prem Niren, who is still very much devoted to Osho and his teachings to this day; and then you have Sheela who is kind of in the middle.  She no longer really identifies as a Sannyrasin.  She doesn't speak too highly of the community today, but she's still very much devoted to the guru and still has a very deep profound love for the guru.  And then kind of our third main character was Jane, this Australian woman.  She's someone now, today, who definitely feels like she was a member of a cult.  She definitely feels like maybe that she was, you know, manipulated into doing things that she shouldn't have done.  But, yeah, that said—we did have kind of an archival section which was called, like, "a day in the life" and it was basically like a four-minute section that kind of walked the audience through what it was like for Sannyrasins to kind of wake up in the desert and go to breakfast and work their jobs and do meditations at night and it kind of just walked you through what a normal day was.  But, because of time restraints, we weren't able to get it in.  But, maybe it's like a special feature we can release at some point to just give the audience kind of an immersive look inside the commune.


 

Lindsey: Yeah.  We have some questions, too, from fans and one of them is a little bit interesting and it kind of relates to what you're talking about—they're asking, should past members of the cult be called survivors, which is, a lot of the time, what people will be called when they leave an organization like this?


 

Maclain: Yeah, it's a great question.  It's, like, I think it comes down to basically what members of this community think that their experience was.  It was really interesting—I have to be honest—our vast experience talking to Sannyrasins, whether—even former ones—they just talked highly about their experience on this ranch.  I mean, they definitely said that any pain and trauma they'd experienced came from the fact that this ranch just collapsed and ended in failure.  But, other than that, like, the sense of community that they felt on the ranch was something that they really wished that Wild Wild Country and what we were doing could hopefully capture.  It was one of those things where, at a certain point I think even their devotion to Bhagwan or their relationship to Bhagwan sometimes became secondary to just the feeling of community and family that they felt.  At least—and that's not my analysis or perception, I'm literally just being the messenger, passing on just what we heard from, like, the 50 or 60 Sannyrasins that we spoke to on the ranch—


 

Lindsey: Yeah, it's not unusual—


 

Maclain: . . . but that's not to say that there aren't people who are, like, yeah this was—I was a part of a cult and I was brainwashed.


 

Lindsey: Right.


 

Maclain: And I, like, hated my time on the ranch and it was a very traumatic, bad experience.  So, they're out there.


 

Chapman: Yeah, it was really interesting because, when we talked to the federal officials who were investigating this group, they were trying desperately to get these members of this group to flip on the guru and turn over some sort of evidence that would link the guru to these crimes and they spoke openly to us in our interviews how they—everyone that they interviewed on this ranch just spoke so highly of the guru.


 

Lindsey: Right.


 

Chapman: They had no resentment.  They had no anger.  And they could not get anyone to give any evidence that would link the guru to any of these crimes.


 

Maclain: Yeah, and also, just to add on—this kind of just popped into my head—one of the things that's interesting is, you know, Wild Wild Country has been out for a while now and we've gotten a tremendous amount of feedback from a lot of our subjects in the documentary and a lot of people on kind of both sides of the story—and I saw that one Sannyrasin had written how, like, actually lucky he felt to have survived, not the movement so much but kind of this armed invasion that was coming towards them at the ranch.  So, in a weird way—I know it's not probably how "survivor" was meant by the man or woman who asked the question, but for someone like this man, he was, like, I can't believe how in danger I was and I'm just so thankful that I'm alive.


 

Lindsey: Right, yeah.


 

Maclain: So, it's just a—it's a wide variety of experiences out there.  And, hopefully, Wild Wild Country can tap into that.


 

Lindsey: Yeah, and, kind of talking to—I'd love to keep talking about the people that you did choose to feature because we talked about Sannyrasins, but we didn't talk about the people of Antelope and I felt like the town was really a town in transition.  Like, a lot of older people kind of, you know, conservative—is that the case—when you went there and saw—either both at the time of when they were living there, and now?  Because it almost got set up as a story between the fight between the conservative people and kind of Christians versus this new whatever coming in and taking over?  Whether or not they were a productive community or not, it almost wouldn't have mattered because their ideals were so, like, crazy and liberal and free love and whatever—you know what I mean?


 

Maclain: Yeah, definitely.  One of the interesting things in spending a lot of time in Antelope and getting to know the Bowerman family and spending a lot of time with John Silvertooth who, you know, is the current-day mayor of Antelope and getting to know that community—they actually all kind of have different political beliefs.  Silvertooth, who we interviewed, was actually a huge Bernie supporter and had Bernie stickers up around—and, you know, a lot of them were Trump supporters and a lot—actually a lot of them are Libertarians, these really, like, extreme Libertarians—that want to live off the map; they don't want government involved in their life.  And, so, I think just to call them conservative would be a little bit of a stereotype, although there definitely are a lot of conservatives out there.  I would say that yes, Christianity is the predominate religion out there—they have a church right in the middle of their community that most of the members of the town go to every Sunday and during week nights—it's an integral part of that community.  But, yeah, getting to know them, you realize that all had differing viewpoints on what they were afraid of and what they disliked about this Rajneesh community.  For some of them, it was as simple as hey, they're not Christians, I don't like them.  For others, it was hey, we have a way of life here that we enjoy.  We don't want a city of 50,000, you know, those are valid concerns, too.  And, so, yeah, we just found that they weren't as easy to stereotype also—just like we like to stereotype kind of cult members, it was just a little bit too easy just to stereotype these as one-dimensional bigots.


 

Lindsey: Yeah, it's so interesting because it really is both a lot about land use and laws about the land and the Constitution, but also about religious freedom and kind of the experience of living through the 60's and the 70's and deciding what we do now in the 80's—because they were really almost a little bit of a relic of the 60's in what they were doing, which was all this meditation and free love and all of that—and coming to this kind of small town where maybe that experience was a little bit different.  These people who were coming from the other side of the country or from other places, like, to bring that there—it felt very, like, what do we do in the 80's, you know I mean?

Chapman: Yeah, it was really interesting because it's—this wasn't even really something we realized until we were doing interviews for Wild Wild Country—but it was actually the bizarre similarities between Antelope and Raneeshpuram, because you would hear each side talk about the towns that they had built.  And, you know, Antelope is by and large a pioneer town that they had kind of built their little city with their church in the middle of it and their school that was a public school but there was prayer in that public school and it was certainly a way of life.  They had transformed their land to build kind of their houses and, even though it's a city, it's very communal in Antelope, too, and it was—and that's exactly what Raneeshpuram was.  This is kind of a story of people uniting because they have a shared spiritual or religious belief and they wanted to build their kind of utopian commune.  I guess what was really interesting was is just the cultural divide between these two groups which was just so far that it just really couldn't be bridged.  And, in a lot of ways, Wild Wild Country is kind of a story about what happens when two groups just continue to take steps farther and farther away from conflict resolution or compromise, and just become kind of more and more entrenched in a war that ultimately becomes violent at the end.


 

Lindsey: Yeah, I mean some of the footage that you guys—the other thing that I was really like, wow—it's crazy to make a documentary about, you know, an experience like this that is kind of more modern than a lot of the documentaries we're used to seeing that maybe took place a little bit farther back in time—is how much footage you guys were able to get.  Was that because, like, they were so into filming themselves and their accomplishments and their life and kind of to have as a record, because that was part of their world?  Or, were you really just able to kind of piece together a lot of different stuff?  I was just so curious how you got—there's so much footage, like, that you guys have.


 

Maclain: We got really lucky.  There were kind of two great sources.  One of the kind of first main sources was that a lot of this archival footage—there wasn't just footage that was taken from what aired on the nightly local news—we actually had the raw tapes that those cameramen filmed—all the unedited footage that didn't make the news broadcast.  So, we just had hundreds of hours of this unedited raw footage of life on the commune and these newsmen going around and interviewing random people on the ranch.  It just gives the viewer such incredible access to inside the commune.  And, so, that's really rare, but, to have—as a documentary filmmaker—especially a story that's taken place around 1981, 1982—but these local news stations at the time, they just—they knew that this was such a significant story that was unfolding that they decided, you know, not to take over the footage that had been shot the previous day, which was customary for news stations—and, so, we were just incredibly lucky that they decided to keep it and archive it and they ultimately ended up donating it to the Oregon Historical Society that has kept the tapes in great condition over these years.  And also, the guru, Bhagwan, was very kind of on the forefront of digital technologies and tape technologies and they would film his discourses and life on the ranch and then they would send VHS tapes out to all their communes around the world and they were very much a big believer in documenting this grand experiment.


 

Lindsey: Yeah, well they had a prideful vibe—they were proud of their work.  It would make sense for them to be really into documenting everything—especially kind of the, like, kind of work that they did in terms of building an infrastructure because that felt like—that was something I had never seen before in terms of creating a community where it was like a lot of what they were really into was like how productive they could, right?  Like, as a group where they were just, like, we meditate and we do all that other stuff but mostly we're really proud of our new cafeteria hall.  And it's like, that is such a wild kind of way—


 

Maclain: Yeah, that was kind of one of the things that struck us most when we were actually just starting to watch the footage, you know, four years ago, was you really just see this city sprout from nothing in the middle of the desert.  They built their own hospital, they built their own airport, they had their own police station, they had their own shopping malls.  I mean, it's absolutely incredible to see what they were able to build, you know, through their devotion and dedication, is almost kind of mind boggling and something that we had never really seen documented to that extent—to just watch a city get built right in front of your eyes.


 

Lindsey: Right, and kind of, like, in—you could show how, in many different perspectives, it would be seen as a good or a bad thing where it's like if you are someone—I don't know, like me—if I just saw that I was kind of just, like, more impressed by what they were doing.  Like how you could just kind of go somewhere, supposedly uninhabitable, and make something out of nothing.  Whatever your beliefs are,  whatever you're trying to do—like, that was just very impressive because they kind of were, like, we want to live on the outskirts of society but we trust ourselves to make a life there that is valuable and worthwhile and, you know, good for the world or whatever.  I mean, I think, like—


 

Chapman: Yeah, we kind of felt the same way, just—despite your religious beliefs—we found it ultimately kind of inspiring what a dedicated group of individuals can do to kind of create their community.  I kind of saw it as this almost Herculean effort to create their own happiness.  There's just some people, you know, that find they're unhappy in their life and, you know, they turn towards depression or drugs or alcohol or whatever their escape is, and I actually found this to be quite a noble cause to kind of all bind together and try and create a community where they could kind of find their own happiness.


 

Lindsey: Yeah.  What are your kind of big—I know it's so new, it just came out, but you have been working on it for a long time—what are your takeaways from this in terms of maybe the way you, like, live your life or for future kind of projects that you're going to work on?


 

Maclain: This is, like, super deep in the weeds—it's kind of inside baseball—but we've gotten feedback from our subjects, from the people who participated in the series and obviously a lot of people on both sides of the aisle here, where this story was really important to them—and I think that the most interesting thing has just been—not just the positive feedback we've gotten, from a lot of different people—but also people just talking to me about, wow, I didn't even really hear the other side of this story, like, ever in my life.  It wasn't that they weren't listening, it's just they didn't really hear it, and this is kind of the first time that they're really listening to what it was like for these Rajneeshes to come and build—and put their dreams in this city and build this city.  And then I think for a lot of Sannyrasins they're hearing for the first time what it was like for Antelopean residents to look out their window and see people dressed head to toe in red with semi-automatic weapons walking down their house.  And, so, this is just—the only reason I'm bringing this up is because when we were doing this show—when we were producing this show—it just seemed like these groups were never, ever going to take an inch towards each other—towards any form of understanding and just recently, just for me at least, what I've been hearing, isn't really mea culpas or compromise—it’s not there yet—but a lot of people still have very, very strong feelings about it.  But for just the first time that I've ever been involved in this story, it's the first time that anyone on either side has been at least willing to tell me, like, yeah, you know, I—this is kind of the first time I could understand what it would be like for them.  So, that's just been really fascinating to hear.


 

Chapman: Yeah, and I think that's even applying to audiences who weren't involved in the story.  It's been really interesting seeing the reactions on Twitter and Facebook and I think in today's age we're just so conditioned to devour news and politics through a very simple prism of right and wrong and left and right.  And I think this story does a really fascinating job of—you kind of can't come into it with any easy answers—you have to do some real critical thinking to see where you fall on these issues because they're not so black and white.  And, so, it's been really fun to see people on Twitter have such a strong reaction in episode one and two and then completely flip their viewpoint—


 

Maclain: In a good way.


 

Chapman: And I think that's something good that, you know, like you do have to use your mental faculties to do some critical thinking and that it's not so easy to pin group versus the other and that sometimes both groups are right.  Maybe sometimes both groups were wrong.  Hopefully the takeaway is that people are just kind of reserving initial knee-jerk judgment and doing a little bit more work to see where they fall on these issues.


 

Lindsey: Yeah.  When is the last time you were Antelope?  When is the last time that you were out there?


 

Maclain: We were probably there about four months ago just to do our kind of last final pick up shots.  Yeah, we kind of went in October.


 

Maclain/Chapman: [overlapping] Oh my God, that feels like year ago.  We haven't been back since.


 

Chapman: But we've talked to, you know, John Silvertooth who is the mayor of Antelope—who we interviewed in the overalls and, you know, he told us that the town has been really enjoying the series and that it's been a big hit in that community.


 

Lindsey: Good.  Now I'm curious, are people going to go there for tourism?  If John Silvertooth put on his overalls and gave tours of the area, that would be an amazing business idea.


 

Chapman: I've already seen on Instagram people taking photos and going through Antelope, so maybe it will become a little bit of a tourist attraction for that community.


 

Maclain: I don't know, that community likes to be left alone.  I can have—I have first-hand knowledge, so, I don't know.  If you're going through that town—they feel like they've been through a lot.


 

Lindsey: Well, thank you so much for talking to me for so long and congratulations.  I've literally—like, everywhere I go, I stumble into a conversation or debate surrounding Wild Wild Country, which is truly crazy.  And I love contributing my bad ideas, so thank you for giving us an excuse.


 

Maclain: Wait, so, so, so, so would you join Rajneeshpuram?  Or would you—are you on Antelope's side?


 

Lindsey: You know, I've thought about this a lot and, like, I probably would have been in the mindset as a 20-something to have joined this cult.  And I'm wearing red and red is a good color on me and I just really—it's hard to say that because there's so much problematic stuff so it's, like, kind of, you know, you don't really want to join the bad cult.  But I think there is a lot of community stuff that I find that I personally would have been very excited about.


 

Chapman: Cool.


 

Maclain. That's awesome.


 

Rae: That was Lindsey Weber which Chapman and Maclain Way.  And now let's hear from you.  Here are some of our favorite fan reactions.


 

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[Music]


 

Rae: If you want to share your thoughts on any upcoming shows, make sure to find us on Twitter @can'tmakethisup or on Facebook @youcan'tmakethisup Netflix.


 

[Music]


 

Rae: On every episode of You Can't Make This Up, we also have a segment we like to call, What You Watching.  It's where we find out what the people who make these Netflix original series and films are watching on Netflix.  Here's Chapman and Maclain again.


 

Chapman: I'm a little bit late to it so I'm almost embarrassed to be saying this because it's so late, but my wife and I have really gotten into Mindhunter lately.


 

Maclain: Yeah, I've been watching, again—like this is a really popular one—I've been watching The Crown, which I thought was amazing and then I actually didn't watch Wormwood until we had finished Wild Wild Country.  I'm a huge, huge Errol Morris fan, but I watched Worwood and I loved it and the stylization that Errol Morris can do is just, like, top notch and the fact that he can still pull that stuff off is incredible.


 

Rae: And that's it for this week's episode.  We'll be back next Wednesday with a new series for you to dig into.  You can find this show on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts.  Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. This is You Can't Make This Up.  I'm Rae Votta and thanks for listening.