In the late 1950s, Charles “Chuck” Dederich commenced a drug rehabilitation software out of a storefront in Santa Monica. A recovering alcoholic who’d gotten sober by way of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dederich made available no cost treatment method to self-explained “dope fiends” determined to kick their fatal practice and go chilly turkey.
Around the subsequent decade and a 50 %, the group, named Synanon, expanded across the place and evolved into a self-assistance movement with countless numbers of members, which includes a lot of who ended up not addicts but ended up merely drawn to its idealistic vision — no medicine, alcohol, or violence — and its key ritual, an intensely confrontational kind of group treatment recognised as “The Sport.”
However by the late 1970s, Synanon experienced strayed substantially from its original mission, devolving into a harmful quasi-religious paramilitary firm whose devotees, beholden to Dederich’s more and more erratic whims, had been inclined to undertake forced vasectomies, relinquish handle in excess of their personal small children and even endeavor to murder a popular critic by planting a rattlesnake in his mailbox.
The dim saga of Synanon is now the issue of a 4-part documentary “The Synanon Correct,” concluding Monday on HBO. Directed and govt generated by Rory Kennedy, the collection traces the group’s utopian origins and gradual descent into violence and manipulation. Arriving at a second when the public’s fascination in cults and significant-regulate teams looks almost insatiable, “The Synanon Fix” offers a specifically grim, resonant twist on the common tale of the California aspiration gone awry.
The story “had this truly spectacular, practically Shakespearean arc to it,” explained author and executive producer Mark Bailey, in a video clip chat with Kennedy from their residence in California (the pair are filmmaking associates and have also been married due to the fact 1999). “The intentions and achievements for the very first decade or so were being genuinely incredible. But in which it finished up was seriously dark and harmful.”
Kennedy, who has designed much more than a dozen documentaries which includes “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” and “Downfall: The Situation Against Boeing,” claimed she was not particularly intrigued in “quote-unquote cult stories,” but was struck by the drama of Synanon’s 180-diploma transformation. “In the commencing the pillars of Synanon were no medication, no alcoholic beverages and no violence. By the stop, they experienced purchased a lot more firearms than any individual in the historical past of California and had an open bar in the facility.”
Not only was the story spectacular, but it contained classes about the dangers of blindly subsequent a charismatic leader — a subject that feels politically suitable in 2024. Dederich was just these kinds of a figure, anyone who crafted a community and impressed intense loyalty from his followers. “Because they’re tethered to him, where he goes, they go. And which is the risk — as he begins getting fewer secure, whether or not it is from his alcoholism or mental health issues, he will take Synanon with it,” Bailey claimed. “That felt, to us, like an crucial matter to say correct now.” (Alongside with quite a few customers of her well known household, Kennedy, whose brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is working for president as an independent, endorsed President Biden past 7 days.)
Kennedy and Bailey initial discovered about Synanon about a decade back though studying “Straight Lifetime,” an autobiography by jazz musician Artwork Pepper and his spouse, Laurie, who met though having thoroughly clean in Synanon. “I had under no circumstances read of Synanon, but it’s ideal there on the beach, these people with shaved heads, taking part in ‘The Video game,’ which sounds like this quite radical therapeutic therapy,” Bailey claimed. “I was right away like, ‘Wow, what was this? And why have I hardly ever heard about it?’”
Charles “Chuck” Dederich, founder of Synanon.
(HBO)
The documentary is woven jointly working with considerable archival materials — which includes news stories and visceral footage of users participating in “The Recreation,” in which contributors ended up aggressively pushed to be brutally sincere about by themselves and each individual other. It also options audio recordings of Dederich lecturing his followers above “the Wire,” the group’s internal broadcasting procedure, as effectively as initially-particular person accounts from about 20 former users and interviews with journalists together with Narda Zacchino, who wrote about Synanon for The Instances.
Some previous members were being at first wary of sitting for interviews, Kennedy reported, since “everybody was knowledgeable that there was a way to notify this story which is pretty sensationalist.” But as she progressively received them in excess of, extra folks determined to take part in the documentary — together with Dederich’s daughter, Jady Dederich Montgomery.
After a long time of wrangling, the filmmakers were being also equipped to safe accessibility to Synanon’s archives, which involved 1000’s of images and “a treasure trove of amazing footage,” in accordance to Kennedy. Due to the fact this transpired just weeks in advance of they were set to lock image, they had to talk to HBO for quite a few much more months and much more dollars to recut the documentary. “To their credit history, they agreed,” claimed Kennedy.
Interviewing people who used decades in Synanon actively playing “The Game” was each interesting and demanding, she reported.
“On typical for documentaries, which I have now been executing for 25 years, the interviews are maybe two to 3 hrs extended. None of these were being a lot less than 7 hrs. Some of them went for nine hours, in like a sitting down.” At occasions, Kennedy felt she was enjoying “The Game” with her topics. “They would talk back again to me much more about how they were experience about the interview as the interview was occurring.”
Kennedy takes a uncomplicated method in “The Synanon Resolve,” allowing for the tale to unfold chronologically and spending time conveying the group’s origins prior to diving into the rattlesnakes and mate-swapping.
“This was a group that was taking a major swing at a thing that was definitely ahead of its time, in lots of approaches, in terms of how it was managing drug addicts, who experienced been a incredibly ostracized community,” said Kennedy. “They either went to jail, or they went to a psychological clinic, or they died.”
Viewers learn how Synanon, which finally moved into the historic Lodge Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, began to attract a broader array of followers with the rise of the counterculture in the late 1960s. “Lifestylers,” as they had been regarded, had been people who joined Synanon for the reason that they had been in search of a perception of reason and belonging, not to handle their dependancy. They saw the team as “a remedy for loneliness and alienation,” claimed Bailey, and “The Game” as a way to heighten link and sense of neighborhood. Some also donated significant sums of dollars and skilled companies to the group.
All over the ‘70s Dederich became ever more dictatorial, generating bizarre calls for of his followers that had tiny to do with the group’s original mission. He necessary customers to shave their heads and adhere to stringent diets and physical exercise regimens. Guys were being pressured into obtaining vasectomies and women into owning abortions. Right after his spouse died and he remarried, Dederich urged married partners to divorce and acquire new companions assigned to them. Eventually, Dederich fell off the wagon and rolled back again the group’s ban on liquor. Little ones have been divided from their dad and mom and had to shave their heads and play “The Game” just like grownups, even if they lacked the capability to have an understanding of it. Some kids allegedly have been overwhelmed and forced to do grueling labor.
All over the ten years, Synanon faced mounting criticism which include expenses of kidnapping and youngster abuse, but its members grew ever extra militant, stockpiling weapons and forming a militia identified as the Imperial Marines. The team created national headlines in 1978 when a attorney named Paul Morantz, who had gained a $300,000 settlement from Synanon, practically died from a rattlesnake bite right after Synanon zealots planted the animal in his mailbox.
The incident marked a breaking stage for some adherents, but not all.
One particular of the far more putting features of the collection is how several previous members nonetheless seem to be to think in the Synanon induce — and remain grateful to Dederich, who died a lot more than 25 a long time ago, for saving their lives.
Rory Kennedy, one particular of the filmmakers of HBO’s “The Synanon Repair.”
(Jon Kopaloff / Getty for HBO)
The series’ central dilemma is “Did the heal turn into a cult?,” and the filmmakers really don’t solely concur on the answer.
Bailey is not entirely convinced Synanon suits the definition of a cult, if only because “there is anything that feels far too random and disorganized in what it was seeking to do,” he mentioned.
Kennedy is additional confident in making use of the time period. “I talked to sufficient individuals who felt like they compromised their moral compass to stick to an strategy that drove them in instructions that they didn’t come to feel they should have gone in. Which is a defining good quality of a cult,” she mentioned, gently needling her partner for his far more ambivalent choose. “If you ended up there, you would have stuck with it to the conclusion, obviously,” she said, laughing. “Sucker is what you are.”
Regardless of how they classify the team, the filmmakers see “The Synanon Fix” as a quintessentially Californian story about the kinds of religious seekers who’ve been drawn to the state for generations.
“You feel of the persons who go West as currently kind of obtaining browsing in their DNA,” said Bailey. “We arrived out listed here about 14 a long time in the past, but both equally of us were born and lifted on the East Coast. And it was really some thing to get applied to how you are allowed to just comply with your own odd jam and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, which is excellent.’”
