Director Alison Ellwood talks to The Inside Reel about tone, visual approach, story structure and intention regarding her new docuseries “The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History Of Hollywood” on MGM+.
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00:00How much does it bother you that people got away with murder?
00:16I slept with one eye open.
00:21You know, the geography, you know, of Laurel Canyon, you know, having spent a lot of time
00:26up there.
00:27He said he had lived up there a long time.
00:28And obviously, I think you've probably lived or live up there.
00:32It's such an interesting puzzle, because it's not a canyon.
00:35It's so many different sort of interactive alleys.
00:39Could you talk about how that sort of plays into the idea of the Wonderland murders, but
00:44this story as a whole, where it's these, these, these paths that keep going around and around
00:50and around in the best way, you know?
00:53Yeah, it's funny, because we had just finished Laurel Canyon when we started development
00:57on this project a few years back.
01:00And, you know, the Laurel Canyon series was the beautiful music and, you know, the winding
01:06twisting roads were all this great music and artists were intersecting.
01:09And by the time the 80s came around, you know, the drugs that had once inspired young minds
01:14were now being designed to specifically addict them.
01:18And those artists had left and the houses became infested with, you know, drug gangs.
01:24And you know, so it was just the vibe we became from this beautiful, positive, angelic place
01:30to this absolute negative image of it, like seemingly overnight.
01:36Hollywood nightclubs, porn stars, drugs, money and Liberace, everything we know of Hollywood,
01:43this mystery has.
01:46Four murder victims were found today in a posh Hollywood Hills home.
01:49Now when you wanted to like, I guess, in talking to Michael and figuring out how visually you
01:54want to sort of portray this, how did you come to that?
01:58Because I mean, the podcast is its own thing.
02:00But this is sort of taking it one step further and showing how all these work.
02:04And I love how you use old footage.
02:06So it's not a lot of it's not new footage of LA.
02:10It's the from those times.
02:12Could you talk about blending that visual style, the music, but also the reenactments
02:17versus what was there?
02:19Because you have these great characters just who, you know, almost you can't replicate
02:23at times.
02:24Right.
02:25I mean, we wanted it to have a very noir feel to it and have Michael's rather than doing
02:30standard sit down interviews.
02:31We wanted Michael to be more interactive with the detectives and the prosecutors who had
02:36worked the case.
02:37And of course, obviously, with Scott Thorson, who had witnessed the sending of the guys
02:41to do the murders and their return of covered in blood.
02:44So we wanted to have that feel.
02:46And some of the footage we actually had shot for Laurel Canyon was made to look old.
02:50It actually isn't old.
02:52So we mixed that with actual you know, there's a tremendous amount of archival material from
02:57the time to that.
02:58We mixed it all together to give it a blend.
03:02I mean, you know, coming and having Michael be front and center, because as a crime reporter,
03:08he said, I never want to be at the center of the story.
03:11The story needs to be at the center.
03:12But can you talk about using that perspective?
03:14Because I think through his perspective, through Scott's, through the detectives, it really
03:18gives you a sense of sort of the behind the scenes machinations and the underworld that
03:24was at play.
03:25Yeah, as Michael says, early on in the film, if this were a work of fiction, it wouldn't
03:30be believable.
03:31It's stranger than fiction.
03:33And Michael has a history with these characters, because when he was a, you know, a crime journalist
03:39and doing the crime beat for years for LA, for the Los Angeles Times.
03:45So we have relationships that have existed over years.
03:49And so we wanted that to really feel like that we're getting behind the scenes, you
03:55know, so you see how the how the work, how it works.
03:58And then with Scott was unique, because in the podcast, what I loved about it was the
04:02sort of cat and mouse that Michael had with trying to, you know, is Scott believable?
04:07Everything he says is so outrageous.
04:10But it's kind of twists around.
04:11It's always believable.
04:12But to have that visually, that cat and mouse game visually, I think was a really exciting
04:15thing that we wanted to add to the to the story, because the podcast was great.
04:19But to see it visually act out is really fun.
04:22Well, because it's interesting, because you're recreating in certain ways, but you get the
04:27body language.
04:28That's what's really interesting seeing with the detectives, seeing with Cone, you know,
04:33and with the district attorney, you know, they're trying to also be like, we did our
04:37best.
04:38And we did this.
04:39But the thing is, mistakes are made at every level, you know, for that kind of stuff.
04:43And even the feds that we're talking about, you know, well, they were trying to joke about
04:47it.
04:48But it's interesting how behavior keys into this, not just with Scott, although Scott,
04:52you know, the speaking out the sides of the mouth thing is so true.
04:55But I mean, even you just sitting there, you're probably going, okay.
04:59Yeah, I mean, everything that he says is, you know, wilder than the next thing.
05:06But all of these guys, the characters, all the detectives, the prosecutors, everyone,
05:09there's a nagging element to this story in this case for all of them, because justice
05:14was not served really, you know, or scratch of justice was maybe served, one could say
05:19for, you know, Nash finally being put behind bars for some period of time, but, you know,
05:24people got away with murder and, you know, a very brutal, vicious murder.
05:29The Wonderland Massacre, it plays out beneath the bright lights of Hollywood, who did this?
05:34Eddie Nash, the drug kingpin was robbed of a million dollars worth of drugs, wanted revenge,
05:39John Holmes, porn actor, right to the middle of everything.
05:42Scott Thorson, Liberace's lover, knew about the murders.
05:45He does, in fact, talk out of both sides of his mouth.
05:48I know there's other killers.
05:49Could you talk about tone, you know, finding the right tone?
05:52Because I know you probably didn't want to use that one video too much, but you have
05:56all this, you know, because we're following this path of Holmes and what Holmes did and
06:01how he played into it.
06:03I mean, I love, like, you have that cut of the Biltmore and then just the empty lobster
06:08shell, you know, because that says so much in such a small and such a minute detail.
06:14Can you talk about that and finding that balance with archival versus sort of that tone
06:20you wanted to create?
06:21Yeah, well, that was all that whole scene is stuff we shot.
06:24We shot the exterior of the Biltmore at night.
06:27We shot in the Biltmore, those scenes we wanted to be tight and eerie and suggestive of
06:32the scene that was taking place and the tension that was in that room to that, you know,
06:37all these cops surrounding John Holmes trying to, you know, and then he would go off and
06:41tell wild stories, too, that weren't believable.
06:43So, I mean, everybody was just the cops must have been scratching their heads the whole
06:47time. I mean, were you aware before this whole thing with Mike as much about obviously
06:53really got into the depths of what Wonderland was, but also, you know, with all the other
06:58murders and everything that happened as time went on, especially with the crack cocaine
07:03sort of, you know, ascension in the clubs down on Sunset, you know?
07:09I mean, I wasn't I mean, I was aware of the murder story, obviously, before I was aware of
07:14the depths of it, and I also had no idea that it all, you know, tangled in with the with
07:19the crack epidemic. I mean, that's just crazy that Michael was covering those stories from
07:25from a reporter's perspective.
07:27And then it comes back around in this story and all connects is just kind of unbelievable.
07:32To infiltrate these gangs, police officers would go undercover.
07:38Narcotics detective Bobby Egger, A&C Mark.
07:42So about 18 years of working narcotics during a pretty amazing evolution of drugs.
07:49What was that like?
07:50We saw a lot. We went from pills were the big issue to marijuana into a lot of cocaine.
07:59Back in the day, cocaine was very powerful.
08:03Everybody that had money had cocaine, and it was your way of showing people that you were
08:10powerful and you had money.
08:11Now, as a documentarian, when you saw all this material or what, you know, initially was the
08:17podcast, did you talk did you both talk about a structure through which you wanted to sort of
08:23move through it? Was it chronological?
08:25Was it just sort of, OK, this is the board and this is how these things sort of mixed
08:29together? How did you approach it?
08:31I mean, it was really tricky.
08:32The trickiest thing was figuring out how and when to introduce Scott, because, you know, he
08:37so much of the story, but he really if you introduce him too soon, it kind of deflates the
08:45mystery a bit.
08:46So that was the trickiest thing to figure out when to bring him in.
08:49At one point, we didn't bring him in until more than halfway through episode two.
08:54And they were like, no, we've got to bring him into episode one.
08:56And then we figured out a place where he could rejoin the story once the Holmes trial began.
09:01So that was the trickiest thing structurally.
09:03Otherwise, it was fairly chronological.
09:06But it's also that you have the villain.
09:07I mean, that's what I was talking about.
09:09You have the villain. But it's interesting because Eddie Nash is like that.
09:13He's he's just outside of range.
09:16And it's could you talk about that?
09:17Because it's about pushing that mystery.
09:19But obviously he was the kingpin of it all.
09:22And yet there was all these others like, you know, from Las Vegas or over in Burbank with the
09:26Armenian. You know, could you talk about that?
09:29It's just it's unbelievable.
09:31Well, Eddie Nash was sort of, you know, untouchable because I mean, he was paying people off
09:35left and right. And, you know, we have no idea how many people he did pay off.
09:39But clearly it was working.
09:41And, you know, some people, you know, the the detectives he tried, that didn't work.
09:45But clearly he had people on his payroll because he had information from LAPD that he
09:50shouldn't have had when those raids happened.
09:53You know, just his fingers were in everything.
09:55He's an amazing villain in that regard.
09:57And he was just untouchable and would bribe people.
10:01And, you know, like the Cohen says, you know, he's never heard of a juror being bribed
10:07before that or since.
10:08So it's a little bit about your undercover work.
10:10What was your assignment and how did you carry it out?
10:12When I first went to narcotics, we tried to see if we could infiltrate the entertainment
10:18industry. I mean, just playing a role kind of enticed me.
10:24Can I convince you that I'm a drug dealer?
10:28What was your undercover name?
10:29Angela.
10:30And so is that when you were doing the kind of personal buys in the clubs?
10:34Yes. We were going to bars, restaurants, places that
10:40we knew a lot of drug trafficking was going on, kind of out in the open so we can become
10:45friendly with them and eventually make a buy from them.
10:50It was pretty cutthroat.
10:53There was no loyalty except to the drug.
10:56If the people involved in those crimes, which Wonderland was, they were all users, their
11:01only loyalty was to that drug because they needed it.
11:05They'd do anything to get that drug.
11:07But the one thing I thought was very interesting that you captured in terms of behavior is how
11:11scared everybody, either they were pretending to be scared or they were scared, like Holmes
11:16would not talk when he was inside, you know, for contempt.
11:20He wouldn't talk. Scott wouldn't talk.
11:22You know, it's just it's interesting to see.
11:24And now a lot of them are dead.
11:27So, you know, they took stuff to the grave.
11:29You know, I mean, Scott passed away less than a week ago.
11:34And it's just one of those things that mystery.
11:37I mean, could you talk about that?
11:38Because the irony of that is sort of overwhelming in certain ways.
11:43Yeah, I mean, I mean, look at what he did, the Wonderland massacre was truly a massacre.
11:48I mean, you talk about sending a message, he sent a message.
11:50So people were rightfully terrified of him.
11:53And God knows what else he did that we don't know about.
11:57You know, he was surrounded by thugs who were willing to carry out his his dirty work.
12:01And, you know, he was a Nash was an addict.
12:04Scott was an addict.
12:05I mean, you know, the the addiction level of so many and John Holmes was an addict.
12:10There were so many. So all these guys were tied to addiction that,
12:15you know, makes for very bad behavior.
12:18Could you sort of talk about perspective and perception in in this kind of story
12:23and how it it changes and it'll change for the next generation, I would think.
12:28Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, Scott's story, as wild as it is,
12:32you know, has mostly been vetted out for the most part.
12:34I mean, I'm sure he exaggerated a lot of things.
12:37But again, you get back to that addiction and all these people,
12:41so many of them were addicted and what that does to their perspective is,
12:46you know, who knows what if they're drinking their own Kool-Aid.
12:51There have been so many TV shows.
12:53We want to tell the real story.
12:55There's a little truth in every lie.
12:56There may still be some outstanding suspects.
13:00People still know about this case.