Original subtitles

- (room chatter) - (hair clippers buzzing)

(inaudible laugh)

(quiet folk music playing)

Judi Ehrlich: I was 18,

and I had just moved into Synanon.

I was a youngster who was very caught up in her image,

so I hated shaving my head.

My hair was definitely my crowning glory,

and at Beverly Hills High,

when you have long, beautiful hair,

you know, that's the thing.

I mean, I didn't have the greatest clothes,

I wasn't from the wealthiest family,

but, damn, I had the hair.

(soft music playing)

I called my parents right after head shaving,

and they said, um,

"So we heard about this thing that happened there.

That, you know, where everybody shaved their head."

And they're like, "But we know you didn't do that."

And I (laughs) was quiet, and they were like,

"Did you do that?" I said, "Yeah."

(jazz music playing)

And that's when they knew. It was like,

as far as they were concerned, that was, I was in a cult.

- (projector flickering) - (unsettling tone playing)

- (muffled shriek) - (tone fades out)

(gentle splashing)

(seagulls cawing)

("Psychotic Reaction" by Count Five playing)

♪♪

(quiet chatter)

♪♪

My mother learned about the Synanon Game

and started investigating it, I think, as a way

to fix their marriage,

and, initially, they loved it.

Basically, I was an anti-social girl

and a very shy girl.

(room chatter)

I loved Synanon because it enabled me

to really connect with other people.

And the next thing I knew, I was sorta hooked on it.

(song continues)

When I first joined up,

Synanon was a few different things.

It started to help people with drugs and alcohol problems.

And then other people,

non-addicts, started getting involved.

They were called Lifestylers,

and it sort of turned into a social movement.

(song continues)

(bus horn honking)

(crowd cheering)

Chuck Dederich: This is definitely the end

of one era and the beginning of another.

(applause)

In the past, Synanon attracted the attention

of a bunch of rather confused people.

And got them all somehow to gather under one banner.

(muffled chatter)

Some of the people who were part of this

are no longer with us.

(gentle splashing)

But we will continue to expand,

do our work better,

have better tools, buildings, and everything else

to give as many people as possible

an opportunity to change for the better.

♪♪

Bob Navarro: For me, Synanon was the place.

I felt like, at the age of 25,

I was already a failure at the business of life.

I was just really so...

shriveled up inside.

Synanon, when I got there,

it was just filled with people.

I mean, I'd never been around

any situation like that before.

The doors were completely open to the public.

Anybody could walk in.

The atmosphere was really pretty electric,

if you like being around a lot of people

and talking.

It was radical. It was experimental.

(curious music playing)

Rod Mullen: At Synanon, there was this...

willingness to experiment,

and this search for real meaning.

I think Chuck, like most charismatic leaders,

would be characterized as grandiose.

So, he developed this idea of building a city.

(swing music playing)

We're gonna build this city in Tomales Bay,

and we're going to live in a way

which is a model for how people could live in this country,

you know, for how societies should be run.

Narrator: In 1970, we acquired a sprawling,

beautiful ranch in Tomales Bay,

which is about 80 miles north of

the Oakland, San Francisco area.

Terry Hurst: When Chuck decided to buy land in Tomales Bay,

we got up there and turned it into a facility.

(swing music continues)

Rod: Synanon had a real farm,

you know, raising cattle

- (laughs) and then sheep. - (bleating)

Synanon built its own wastewater system.

I mean, it really became a self-sustaining community.

(clapping, cheering)

At the time in America,

there were lots of little living experiments,

all over the place.

Mike Gimbel: You saw a lot of this communal stuff happening,

and Synanon (sighs)...

was living better,

had more money, more resources.

We were growing very, very, very quickly.

(horses galloping, whinnying)

Chuck: We wanna provide an aesthetically pleasing,

a psychologically pleasing,

a philosophically pleasing, uh, place

in which people can dwell.

(indistinct chatter)

What am I describing?

- Paradise? - (breeze blowing)

(gentle splashing)

Mike: Chuck and Betty moved up there.

Wherever Chuck and Betty lived,

that was the home place.

If you were up where Chuck was,

you were like on sacred ground.

(dining room chatter)

Phil Bourdette: Living in Synanon, I would get up in the morning

and go to the dining room,

have breakfast and pack my lunch,

and go to work in court

because I lived in Synanon

and worked in the public defender's office.

- (soft music playing) - And then eventually,

more and more of the Lifestylers

started working within Synanon.

(rumbling)

And working outside of Synanon was totally phased out.

(indistinct chatter)

Ron Cook: When you were in Synanon,

we had something called "containment."

So, the notion was don't run outside of Synanon

and waste your energy.

Do whatever you're gonna do inside of Synanon

and the whole community can benefit.

♪♪

Rod: Chuck had a philosophy.

"Let's put all of our energy into creating

this community to its best and highest level."

Chuck: We need muscles in Synanon.

We need moral muscles,

social muscles, political muscles,

emotional muscles, and physical muscles.

We are a self-supporting organization.

We must produce at all times.

Phil Bourdette: Synanon had properties

(sighs) throughout the United States.

There were Santa Monica, San Francisco.

In Marin County, there were three facilities.

We owned property in New York and other places.

And they were all basically run the same.

They were all run as communities.

Norm Johnson: Synanon was able to grow quickly.

And I think Synanon changed, um...

somewhat to the better, somewhat for the worse

as a result of Lifestylers like me moving in.

But I think Chuck had such an iron hand

on that organization

that most of the changes were driven by changes in Chuck.

Chuck became preoccupied

with having everybody hear

every word that he uttered.

Chuck (on radio): I suppose this is a rebirth...

(scrubbing, radio static)

Individual Singers: ♪ W... I... R... E... ♪

- Quartet: ♪ Wire ♪ - (beeping)

Elena Broslovsky: The Wire was an internal radio network

that connected every facility in Synanon.

Quartet: ♪ It's a communications tool that also entertains ♪

♪ 88FM is where my dial will remain! ♪

Elena: There were these little boxes

that were all over the place that you could turn on.

Get the news, listen to Games.

You had 24-hour connection with every facility.

- (beeping) - You could hear what was happening in Santa Monica.

- (wire chatter) - You could hear what was happening

in San Francisco house.

We had Marin County, we had Oakland,

San Diego, Detroit.

Chuck: The parts of this organization

are so far apart.

Now, we have an instantaneous

speed-of-light communication

both ways, operated all the time!

(indistinct chatter)

Mike: The Wire really allowed Chuck to be

everywhere all the time.

Chuck: Synanon has an investment in you,

and you have an investment in Synanon.

Mike: 99% of the time,

it was Chuck either playing the Game,

giving a seminar,

even his table where he ate his meals

had a microphone in the middle of it.

Chuck: If we examine ourselves,

we, we can actualize ourselves.

Everything he said was taped,

and he would just bring up various topics.

Part of my job was to listen to those tapes,

make excerpts, and play them later on.

Chuck: Everybody on the outside, that I know of,

lives under a whole flock of dictatorships.

The man's being dictated to by his...

Mike: The way Chuck worked,

he would be talking, you know,

and as he would talk, ideas would come out.

And then, he started slowly

mandating behavior throughout Synanon.

♪ Where do they go ♪

("Smoke Rings" by Sam Cooke playing)

♪ Smoke rings I blow ♪

♪ Each night ♪

Synanon was founded on non-violence,

no use of drugs or alcohol.

It was also founded on

free cigarettes.

♪ Puff ♪

♪ Puff, puff ♪

♪ Oh, you can puff your cares away ♪

Chuck: I've been a compulsive smoker since I was 15 years old.

Probably three packages a day.

A doctor scared me into thinking

that I had fatal emphysema,

and, uh, I quit smoking.

And I raised so much hell about it,

that everybody quit smoking.

Bill Goodson: It's an interesting thing how Synanon seemed

to always be a mirror

of what was happening in Chuck's life.

In the early stages of Synanon,

he was fighting to stay clean.

So, that's what Synanon did.

(soft music playing)

And then later on,

he needed to stop smoking, all of Synanon stopped smoking.

(Chuck speaking indistinctly)

Mike: Everything up to this point

was you bought into the concept,

and, you know, you got into it.

This is the first time that he really...

It really felt like you had to do something.

Judi: When the edict came down for no smoking,

my parents ended up leaving shortly after.

They were both smokers, and that pissed them off

because they did not really like being told what to do.

But, try as they might to get me out, they could not.

And then after that, I just didn't talk to them

for a couple of years. (laughs)

I just had nothing to do with them at all.

Mike: Chuck was challenging people,

and if you don't like it,

you can leave.

And then, he said the people that stayed were stronger,

more committed to Synanon.

That was the deal. That's how it worked.

You know hundreds of people left Synanon when we quit smoking.

That was probably the first big exodus

with that first edict.

Some people said, "Well, I'm not doing that.

I'm leaving," you know?

And then, other people didn't.

And then, a lot of people moved in after.

- (birds chirping) - (quiet chatter)

People had children who were in Synanon,

people who were moving in with children.

So, just like any family,

it was this continuum of raising children.

- (birds chirping) - (bike rattling)

Synanon Member: Okay, who knows how to hop like a kangaroo?

- (kids chattering) - You do? Okay, everybody...

(indistinct)

Miriam Bourdette: My mother, who was a nursery school director,

decided to talk to Betty and suggested

that we do what they do on,

or did, on the kibbutzim in Israel.

House the children separately from their parents,

and have caretakers looking after them.

- (kids chattering) - (soft music playing)

Chuck: We know it's a better way to raise children.

The nuclear family way of raising children

doesn't test the child's brain!

There's not enough input.

Kids would grow up around 30 or 40 adults

instead of two, Mama and Papa.

Talk better, run better, are much smarter.

♪♪

(kids chattering)

Synanon Member: The object of the hikes is

it's a real way for us to teach

how to, uh, use this land around here.

(chatter continues)

It was an alternative experiment.

It was an effort to do something better.

To give all of our kids

a better experience than we had had.

(birds chirping)

Synanon Member: Look at the bunny rabbit.

Look at the bunny rabbit up on the hill.

Child: A rabbit's in there?

Synanon Member: That's a rabbit in there.

Jady Dederich Montgomery: By 1971,

it had been decided

that the kids should go into the school at 7 months,

so that they wouldn't attach to the parents,

and then therefore, wouldn't experience

separation trauma when they went into the school later.

The father of my children was Bill Crawford,

my first husband.

We had two kids, including Rebekah.

Rebekah Crawford: Both of my parents were in Synanon

when I was born,

you know, ex-dope fiends.

So I lived with them for six months,

and then, when I was 6 months old,

I moved into the hatchery,

which is where the babies were moved into.

- (babies crying) - Miriam: All the cribs

were put in the bedrooms,

and their parents did not live in the house.

(gentle music playing)

They were welcome to visit,

take their kids out for an outing.

Elena: We took care of each other's children.

So we nursed each other's children,

and we gave each other time off.

Now, for me, I was breast-feeding my baby,

and my friends' babies

and it was not odd for me at all.

It was completely natural.

It was completely joyful.

(baby crying)

The looking into the eye of an infant

who has just come into the world

and is getting nourishment directly from your body.

It was a very, uh, for me,

wonderful experience to nurse a lot of children.

(baby fussing)

We were supposed to be the community's children,

and we were supposed to be the future.

(kids chattering)

Rebekah: I think that my mother,

she thought she was giving me the best possible

life that she could give me.

Which was by not being my parent.

And she might've been right.

(indistinct)

I don't think my mom is,

or was, a very maternal person.

I don't know if I could've handled it,

and because I... (laughs)

I don't know that I'm fit to be a mother

of two infant toddlers at once.

(gentle music playing)

This is... this is a picture of my dad

with Leida, my daughter.

The truth was that she was not the priority in my life.

Day to day.

That Synanon was the priority, day to day.

I was the founder's daughter.

So I had to, had to be at the front of the pack

with the latest...

you know, the latest war on convention.

(swing music playing)

(swing music ends)

Bob: Chuck, you know, he was a thinker.

And he had

a very sort of aggrandized sense of himself.

He sort of got bored with the rehabilitation program.

I think we went into the period

of the institute of social experiments at that point.

Chuck: This community is now consciously, and by design,

conducting all kinds of different living experiments

that will enhance the human experience.

(quiet chatter)

Bob: Part of the experimentation

was to go into longer Games.

The Stew was a form of game that was continuous.

Oh, the Stew.

It didn't have an end and a beginning.

It would have different people scheduled in

at different times. So, it was a lot of gaming...

Oh, it also had a gallery so people could watch,

and people could tap in

if they had something to say to somebody.

(indistinct chatter)

Bob: Sometimes when I'd come home at night,

I'd go up to the Stew Room and just sit there.

And you got to hear them talk.

Stew player: And they don't see that in you, Jack!

Bob: We were like carrots and peas and-and potatoes

thrown into this thing

that was bubbling on the stove for 24 hours.

(Stew chatter)

We tried the 24-hour sessions, and they were, they were good.

But we felt there was more.

So from that, we started to develop the Trip.

(dramatic mystical music playing)

Phil Ritter: The original idea of the Trip

was based on Chuck's prior experience with LSD.

A couple of professors and researchers at UCLA

were conducting LSD studies.

Chuck: August 26th, 1957.

I was given some LSD.

Something began to well up and boil up in me.

- (baby crying) - There was a curtain shot back.

(bees buzzing)

Things became exquisitely important

and exquisitely unimportant at the same time.

Rod: Chuck attributed a lot of his vision about Synanon

from his LSD trip.

So these intensive workshops, which were called "the Trip,"

were really kind of a...

let's-let's do it without drugs.

(indistinct chatter)

On the Trips, there was lots of deep...

intrapersonal stuff that happened and came up.

I was 17, and my first Trip

just opened me up.

It was an encounter with my dad.

I never really knew if he liked me,

you know, or loved me or anything.

He wasn't demonstrative in certain ways.

I was living at the Santa Monica facility.

And there were these Trips every weekend.

Every weekend, there were a hundred people

going through these experiences in the building there.

And there I was, you know?

(soft music playing)

Elena: The Trip was a three-day guided experience.

All of your makeup comes off. All of your jewelry comes off.

(indistinct chatter)

You change into a white robe,

and you go into a room.

And the hierarchy of the Trip

was there were shepherds, and there were guides.

(clapping)

And Chuck put me in charge as the Trip Conductor.

It was built around

trying to get people to have deep insight into themselves.

♪♪

(indistinct yelling)

It started out with Compression Gaming.

(yelling continues)

Very angry, very aggressive in your face.

(indistinct)

"You're a fuck-up, you're lying."

To soften up the subject.

Why don't you let me talk?!

Fucking bad rap!

Terry: So for four hours they had confrontive therapy

- through the Game. - (whistle blowing)

- (applause) - (friendly chatter)

After that, they were laid out,

and I put them in an alpha state.

- (quiet chatter) - (soft music playing)

You either didn't sleep,

or you slept for a few minutes, or...

Your time was broken up in different, in different ways.

But it was difficult. (sighs)

Staying up for those three days was really, really hard.

(quiet chatter)

It was a way to really get into people's psyches.

Chuck: The biggest tool we have is fatigue.

The toxic effect of fatigue!

It distorts the way they look at themselves.

Then, you can make the person believe anything.

(foreboding music playing)

Miriam: And then, the guide would start drawing out

the painful parts of their life,

most of which they had never talked about.

(whooshing)

We had Holocaust survivors.

They still had dreams and fears.

Judi: Experiences in Vietnam.

Killing people, seeing people die.

Phil Ritter: Injecting their partners

and having them die of an overdose.

Terry: The most startling confession

was one of the drug addicts said

that he threw a baby in a trash can.

(music stops)

In a dumpster.

(sniffles)

(indistinct chatter)

And I remember him saying, "I can't live with this."

(soft crying)

For somebody to be that disturbed by what they did,

even if they were using, even if they were high,

it had to be horrible and traumatic.

Practically everybody in the group got up and hugged him.

(soft music playing)

They forgave him.

♪♪

At the end of the Trip,

people were tired and hungry and, you know, very emotional.

- (crying) - Elena: Everybody goes down

to the one room where the band is playing.

(cheering)

Everybody's hugging each other

and lifting each other up and thanking each other.

(music gradually builds)

Jady: I remember coming down from the Trip.

We'd been up for days.

- (clapping) - I was just a kid

in this emotional soup.

(inaudible)

I turned around. I looked at my dad.

You know, Betty was sitting there,

and I ran over to him.

(inaudible)

I just remember, you know, falling into his arms,

and him, you know, holding me and...

telling me that he loved me,

you know, which he had never said.

- (calm music playing) - (indistinct chatter)

(inaudible)

You know, so many people are just crushingly lonely,

and don't have community.

(inaudible)

It was tribal.

And it was such a deep comfort.

There was this love.

And this need for connection.

(gentle crescendo)

- (gentle splashing) - (music fades out)

- (kids chattering, laughing) - (seagulls cawing)

Lance Kenton: Synanon was the single greatest place

you could grow up as a kid.

I went into Synanon when I was 11 years old.

- (jazz music playing) - My father was Stan Kenton,

and he was one of the first to begin

playing concert forums with jazz.

(jazz continues)

Being on the road 12 months a year, you know.

♪♪

My father decided to enroll me in Synanon.

To live there.

Instructor: One, two, three.

Lance: I would see him maybe sometimes twice a month,

but infrequent. My mother didn't come very much at all.

Basically, you treated every single person there

like they were in your family.

(chattering)

My kids moved into the school,

and I started working at the school.

I didn't really have any other skills

that were... You know, I wasn't like a carpenter or a lawyer,

or anything like that.

Uh, so that was kind of my assignment.

The academic structure

vacillated and changed,

and sometimes, it was very...

rigid and focused...

Well, I... Wait, let me just stop.

It was never really rigid and focused.

It was always, um, experimental.

- (curious music playing) - (school chatter)

(all exhale)

(indistinct chatter)

Lance: The school's philosophy was

let a kid decide what he wants to learn,

and let him go in and play with whatever it is he wants to do.

♪♪

I mean, we didn't have homework. We weren't really studying.

You know, at that point, we were self-teaching.

Bill: They would, like, put us in front of typewriters and go,

"Free expression, just... (sighs)

Just let it go." And so, we would just... (laughs)

(inaudible)

And then, we had things like "reaches and searches,"

which were very avant-garde learning sessions

that would go on for hours

where you would search out things

like "How does chalk stay on a blackboard?"

(inaudible)

They used to test us,

you know, every now and then. Like the same tests

that all the high sc... all-all kids in America take.

♪♪

Rod: The study is, is a-a comparative study

of Synanon versus non-Synanon children.

I think the graph speaks for itself. (laughs)

The Synanon kids

exceeded the comparison group on every measure,

including having IQ points 15 points above.

It's one of the most interesting things that occurred in Synanon.

- (seagulls cawing) - (curious music playing)

(gentle splashing)

Mike: I was in the Santa Monica facility.

I find out that I was selected

to go to Tomales Bay, at that facility where Chuck was.

(waves splashing)

Ron Cook gave me the job that I'd be working

for the board of directors.

The board members, some of them were

Chuck's brother,

his son, his daughter.

And then, they would bring in a couple outsiders.

People that either gave their businesses

or held executive positions.

And I was to make sure they were all taken care of.

We got on the Synanon bus, and we drive up,

and one of the girls that was taking us,

her name was Stephanie Andreucci.

And she was a tough cookie, too,

because she came from Detroit,

and her father was in the Hell's Angels.

At Synanon, she was the chef.

And so, Stephanie would cook, and I would help.

We were around each other all the time.

We had built a really good friendship,

and we were really, really close.

And then one day,

we were doing the lunch, cleaning up, pulling the stuff,

and Chuck and Ron Cook,

you know, were looking at us,

and-and Chuck said, "You know?

The two of you are very good for Synanon."

Three days later, we were married. (laughs)

♪♪

I mean, it was wonderful.

I was in love.

- (birds chirping) - (motorcycles rumbling)

We both had motorcycles,

just like everybody else at Synanon,

so Stephanie and I would take our motorcycles out together.

And we really were a good team together.

For me, and for her,

it was the first relationship we ever had...

without drugs.

(leaves rustling)

I think we really enjoyed it.

- (splashing) - (indistinct chatter)

Judi: When you hear about communes

and social experiments,

you hear about, you know, a lot of free-floating sex.

(birds chirping)

That didn't happen at all at Synanon.

People were not expected to just flit from one relationship

to another. That was frowned upon.

Mike: In Synanon, if you had a girlfriend,

you couldn't shack up.

You couldn't live together.

Only until you were married.

If you wanted to have sex,

they had a special place called the Guest Room.

And it had a book, and you had to make an appointment. (laughs)

♪♪

Elena: One of my jobs when I-I first came in

was somebody gave me the Guest Room book,

and couples would have to come to me

to book the Guest Room.

And it would be a lovely room.

Usually, the woman would go and set it up

with pretty sheets and flowers and candles

and incense and music,

and you would have it for the night.

And you'd be walking down the hallway,

and everybody would be seeing you walking down and says,

"Oh, I know where they're headed," you know.

Mortified, absolutely mortified.

♪♪

Elena: At one time, people were encouraged

to have sex as much as possible.

And literally, there was a chart,

like in an organization that is marking people's sales.

Every time the couple had sex, they put a star on the chart.

♪♪

Jady: At Synanon, there was so much beauty and love

and learning and relationships being built.

And my dad and Betty, they were a model.

He loved her, and she loved him.

Synanon was totally woven into their love

and their relationship because they were this team.

- (gentle music playing) - (inaudible)

♪♪

Rod: Betty was deeply grounded.

Chuck is one of those kinds of people

who have enormous energy, but is very unstable.

Betty was the opposite.

He was the businessman,

the hard hitter and everything like that.

Chuck: I'm not talking about anything else! I'm not...

Ron: If she thought Chuck was a little over the board

in a Synanon Game, saying something to somebody,

'cause he had a lot of power,

she'd go around the next day and pick up the person,

take 'em out to lunch

and bring 'em back into the family.

(quiet chatter)

♪♪

Betty Dederich: My job has always been

one of an integrating force, I think.

(inaudible)

And I would like to somehow use the power invested in me,

backed up against the Chuck Dederich maleness,

to meld Synanon together...

(inaudible)

...to keep an idea and a principle alive.

- (applause) - (crowd cheering)

Elena: Betty orchestrated group marriages,

meaning that we all got married at the same time.

(funky music playing)

(inaudible)

She orchestrated it like a theatrical event.

One had a ranch theme.

What we have out here today are a little more than 2,000 people,

150 of them decided to get married,

and the story is the fact that the community decided

to make this a people event, a community event.

(meat sizzling)

Officiant: Perhaps what we are signifying here today

is really the death of the nuclear marriage,

and the real affirmation of the kind of marriage

which will bring to you far more meaning, and beauty.

(applause)

Elena: The idea is to celebrate our marriage to each other,

our marriage to the community,

and just celebrating commitment.

(applause)

I thought it was beautiful.

- (waves crashing) - (seagulls cawing)

("Oh, What A Feeling" by Crowbar playing)

♪♪

(applause)

♪ Oh ♪

♪ What a feeling ♪

- ♪ What a life ♪ - Mike: At that point,

Synanon was a golden child of the world.

Here's this group, no violence,

no drugs, no smoking,

living a good, healthy lifestyle.

More and more Lifestylers moved in.

♪ We got the feeling ♪

You know, they gave a lot to Synanon.

They gave their businesses, their skills.

We had TV crews from all over the world

coming to study what we were doing.

(speaking French)

♪ Oh, what a feeling ♪

♪ Ba... ♪

Mike: You know, we lived in this little bubble of Synanon,

but it just seemed like the media loved the place.

Elena: What a great place. What great people.

What good hearts.

We were the darling of the media,

and then, oops. They hate us.

(song stops)

Ron: The "San Francisco Examiner" came out with an article.

"Synanon, 'Racket Of the Century.'"

(somber music playing)

The "Examiner" had written, you know, a terrible article.

It was libelous because it wasn't true.

Phil Bourdette: You know, it hurt Chuck.

His feelings, that these terrible things

were being said about him and his...

the organization that he started.

You think about a narcissist,

you think about somebody who has that kind of power

and people love him so much.

No one had questioned him for years

and years and years and years.

And then all of a sudden, there's a story that says

you're not what you say you are.

He got pissed off.

♪♪

Phil Bourdette: We all had our various jobs to do.

Mine was in, in the legal stuff.

You know, I had an obligation

as a lawyer to pursue them.

Judi: The whole concept in the "San Francisco Examiner" story

was we were not helping drug addicts.

We were not doing anything good.

But we felt like we were doing good things.

(breeze blowing)

We were helping people get off drugs and alcohol.

We were donating our extra food.

We were, you know, doing whatever we could, really,

to help the community at large.

Chuck decided that we needed to file a libel case

against the "San Francisco Examiner."

Reporter: The "San Francisco Examiner" was accused

of maliciously defaming Synanon by stating

or insinuating that Synanon obtained

millions of dollars under false pretenses,

utilized false accounting,

provided a zombie-like existence

for fugitives from reality, and was no longer engaged

in drug addict rehabilitation.

(somber music playing)

Phil Bourdette: We filed our lawsuit.

The Hearst Corporation, who owned the "Examiner,"

had two or three law firms working on the case,

and we were doing all of our stuff in house.

They started their own law school in Synanon.

They needed lawyers. (laughs)

Phil Bourdette: The law office took off,

growing in size.

This is the entire legal department.

I am right here.

I was a legal secretary there.

You felt like you were working toward this common goal,

and, you know...

(sighs) It was kind of exhilarating.

That case was settled for $600,000,

which was, at that time,

the largest libel settlement, I think, in history,

It made the "Guinness Book of World Records."

Chuck took half the money for himself, $300,000,

and he took the 30 people

who had been in Synanon the longest,

and gave them each $10,000.

(tense music playing)

Chuck: We received a windfall, you might say,

owing to the fantastic efforts

of the legal department and a couple of sales tricks

that I threw in at the last minute.

I'm a good business executive.

Phil Bourdette: Unfortunately, while the "Examiner" case

settled satisfactorily for us,

the amount of negative publicity we got

was just astronomical.

Later on our news, I'll have a close-up look at Synanon,

the reports of changes within the organization

that have caused new controversy.

You know, it put us in a bad light.

But, you know, the libel cases

were a potential revenue stream for us.

Chuck, I think he felt, "Well,

if this is what happens, then bring it on."

Phil Bourdette: We started filing a bunch of libel and slander lawsuits.

Dan Garrett: So, it wouldn't be bad.

Chuck: You think there's good money in libel?

Dan: There could be good money in libel.

Chuck: We might have a good thing going for us.

Who's next? Step right up, boys. Who's next?

Judi: One of the things I hated about Synanon at that time

was its preoccupation with money and wealth.

Chuck, in particular, began to amass a lot of wealth.

And he was pretty open about it.

He didn't try to hide it.

(helicopter whirring)

Chuck: I like to be rich. All Americans like to be rich.

♪♪

We've had some rich people

living in Synanon,

who have given large amounts of money to Synanon.

Companies have given

millions and millions of dollars' worth

of goods and services.

- (tape player whirring) - And then we made

$2.5 million...

(over loudspeaker) net profit on our AdGap sales.

We are in the people business.

I'm trying American business methods

to do something about social problems.

(quiet warehouse chatter)

And I'm going to be paid

in a way that is commensurate with my abilities

as a business executive.

♪♪

We went from the power of poverty, which was sort of

Synanon's ethic,

to much more of an emphasis on wealth.

Newscaster: Like many successful corporations,

it has its own airplanes and boats

and thousands of vehicles.

So, this was kind of a flip.

You're talking about this enormous organization,

with a lot of Lifestylers who,

from the outside, look like,

"Well, this is a pretty cushy deal for a lot of people."

And at the same time, our tax exempt certificate

is based on us being a social service agency,

and we're really not getting very many drug addicts anymore.

There was more people saying, "We need to inspect you."

That led to another one of Chuck's wonderful edicts.

Chuck: We do things in...

in Synanon, we do them together.

We do them for a purpose.

We do them because they make us feel good,

because they make it possible for us more fully

to appreciate the gift of life.

(tense music playing)

Everyone in Synanon

must participate

in the establishment

of a church.

Ron: Chuck, I believe, truly believed

it was a religion.

And he said, "Listen, if you're a Catholic,

"you're always a Catholic. I was raised as a Catholic,

"I'm a Catholic. End of story.

"If you're a Jew, you're always a Jew.

"Synanon is an add-on religion.

"Synanon adds on to whatever your beliefs are,

"and whatever your religion is, and helps you...

move towards dealing with the world we live in today."

(applause, cheering)

Ours will be a talking church.

It will come out of the Synanon Game.

Stews. Reaches. Searches.

I think we should talk,

and we should exchange ideas,

and I think that our...

our church will happen.

Phil Bourdette: We notified the IRS,

and we started filing papers with the IRS,

saying we were a religion.

My perspective on it, and I think a lot of people...

share this is that it was a total scam.

I think that, uh, calling it a religion

just meant that you would, you would retain a status,

uh, as a 501(c)(3)

to avoid regulation.

Synanon just really couldn't survive

in the way that it was configured at that point

without being able

to have donations

both of goods,

services, and money.

Jady: You know, were we worthy of a tax exempt certificate

for claiming that we were a religion?

I guess people could argue that we were.

In my heart, I didn't feel that we were.

(applause, cheering)

I had a lot of conflict about that.

But my dad was running the show.

There was just never any question

that when he wanted to exert control,

he would exert it.

(waves splashing)

And then that, you know, trickled down to the kids.

(seesaw creaking)

Josh Silvers: When my family moved into Synanon,

we lived in Santa Monica.

It was kinda nice, you know? (laughs)

Sunshine and playing.

My sister and I lived in the school.

(child laughs)

There was apartments, and there was, like,

two sets of bunk beds

in each bedroom. And I had my parents,

so I had lots of love that I felt.

But I also felt part of a community,

and we knew everybody. Like...

And they watched out for you.

And then, they moved the kids all up to Tomales at the ranch.

♪♪

We were bussed up there, and it was a long ride.

I mean, we left LA to Tomales,

and I just remember being on a bus

and-and feeling scared.

When we moved, then I stopped seeing

my dad and my mother

the whole time we were in Tomales.

Rod: The idea of Tomales was let's get the kids,

uh, contained and educated,

so that their parents can go to work

and be more productive in terms of the community.

All the kids were finally in one place.

There were, there were about 200, maybe more.

If Synanon needed the parent to be in a different facility

to work from where their kid was in the school,

that was okay.

And the parent would just have to deal with it.

(quiet office chatter)

Synanon Member: Do you know why Karen's taking a picture of you?

- Why? - Your moms and dads.

They're gonna get to see what you look like.

They wanna know if you're growing up to be really big.

What do you think of that?

(kids playing)

Norm: My daughter stayed in

the Santa Monica facility for a while,

but was almost immediately, uh,

shipped up to Tomales Bay with the other kids.

I was concerned about that.

Uh, my wife kinda talked me down from my concerns.

Said that she knew people up there,

and they were really good people,

and that, uh, Kimberly would be well-cared for.

And that turned out not to be the case.

- (crow cawing) - Teacher: Ready!

Josh: I don't ever remember people holding me

and-and-and like feeling there was a safe place

to, like, get a hug.

There wasn't like somebody that would put you to bed

and hold you or read to you. Like, to you.

There were probably some kids

who needed more and didn't, maybe,

get what they needed in terms of physical affection

or-or, you know, one-on-one or love.

There was one kid.

He was just a baby, and he was crying all the time.

And they had to shut the door,

and then he would crawl towards the door

and put his fingers under, crying. (sniffles)

And every 20 minutes, someone would come and pick him up

and put him back into the center

so that he didn't keep coming to the door with his fingers under.

And, obviously, this is a child

who needed someone to pick him up

and just carry him.

(somber music playing)

Chuck: Is it really true that...

that men are consumed with a great...

(over loudspeaker) paternal love for their children?

I've always thought that was nonsense.

I don't think that's true at all.

(kids chattering)

I think it's totally unnatural for a woman

to have much interest in her own children

over other children after the child is weaned.

(indistinct chatter)

There was this attitude from Chuck, right from the beginning,

that parents are basically bad for kids. (laughs)

You know, and that was his, uh, his primary theory

that, uh, parents are, uh...

create all these neuroses for-for children.

I think Synanon went too far on this.

And I think a lot of these kids suffered.

Instead of having a balance between

this wonderful enhanced environment of caregivers

and maintaining the special relationship

with their parents,

the Synanon school turned too far toward

the parents feeling that they were not welcomed.

Rebekah: Very early on, very quickly,

it was a "we versus them,"

um, environment. We were the kids,

they were the adults. And we, you know,

in the place of having parents

that we were bonding to, we bonded with each other.

(quiet chatter)

We could look at one another and know, "Okay,

"they're screwed up. These people are weird.

You know, what are they doing?"

♪ Gimme a head with hair ♪

♪ Long, beautiful hair, shining... ♪

Newscaster: This is mass insanity coming to you live.

All the women have just shaved their heads.

Speaker: Given the fact that the whole culture

seems to hair crazy right now,

I suppose these guys are pioneers in their own way.

♪ Hair... ♪

♪ Grow it, show it ♪

♪ Long as I can grow it ♪

♪ My hair! ♪

Shaving heads started as a negative

for the men.

In the early days,

if you got in serious trouble, you might get your head shaved.

(quiet chatter)

Judi: One day, there was a women's Game

that was being broadcast over the Wire,

over the loudspeaker, to all the facilities.

Synanon Member: Well, you know she'll never do anything about it

because she just whines.

She won't take care of anything, and...

Judi: One of the women in the Game

was talking about a camera that she had acquired

and then she turned around and sold it.

Everybody came down on her really hard.

"You stole that. That was theft."

Mike: Chuck made it clear that if you were a man,

and you got caught doing this,

we'd shave your head.

She was a feminist, so she said,

"Damn right, I'll shave my head. Fine."

- (clippers buzzing) - (room chatter)

Then, I think it was like wildfire,

and all of these women jumped up and decided

that they would shave their heads, too, in comradery.

("Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet" by Bonnie St. Claire playing)

♪♪

Speaker 1: Mass bedlam in Tomales Bay.

All the women shaving their heads.

Speaker 2: I heard Betty shaved her head, Dorothy's head was shaved.

I'm talking about everybody shaved his head.

♪ Well, clap your hands ♪

- (clapping) - ♪ Mm ♪

♪ And stamp your feet ♪

♪♪

There were women at the sidelines,

who were sitting, going,

"I'm not gonna do this! I don't wanna do this."

And initially, not everybody did it.

♪ Humalalalala, humalala ♪

I had very long hair at the time,

and I did not wanna shave it all off.

So, I shaved my head, except for this long braid.

(laughs)

And then eventually, I got on board.

(clippers buzzing)

Mike: I believe Chuck was goading them on.

"Go shave your head."

They've got more clippers in Santa Monica

than we have up here, so there are already more women

- shaved down there than up here! - Synanon Members: No!

Member 1: We gotta get more women up here!

- Come on, let's go out! - Member 2: Go get 'em!

- (overlapping chatter) - Elena: I know it must sound crazy to you

but it was, it was fun, and it was...

There was music,

and I think there were snacks, too.

That always, that always got me.

Betty: The women, at last,

have reached some degree of freedom

and a total degree of equality in Synanon.

- Free at last! Free! - (cheering, applause)

Rebekah: The adults were very excited.

They were, you know,

kind of like in the throes of ecstasy practically.

- (applause, cheering) - (soft music playing)

But, as a kid, it's just very different.

You had no choice.

Judi: After the initial explosion

of that one-time head shaving,

Chuck decided that this would be a good idea.

And that, in fact,

all members of Synanon would keep their heads shorn.

Rebekah: For me, as a child,

I would've given everything up just to have had hair.

We were really like zoo animals.

(laughs) And we would, you know, be stared at and...

Because we had bald heads.

So we looked, we looked like freaks.

♪♪

Josh: You have no say of what you do,

and how you do it, and when you do it

because you're a kid.

That's just how your life is.

But we really started to feel that changes were coming.

The wind was blowing in a cooler direction.

Instructor: Left! Left, right, left!

Rod: What happened in those next few years,

Chuck systematically broke the philosophy,

the things that undergird, I think,

the healthy community that I had seen.

Chuck: That menopausal goddamn fool.

If Betty hadn't let her out of the room,

the next day, I was gonna throw her out the window.

Rod: And I think that was, again, his thing.

(inaudible)

"I'm gonna do it 'cause I can do it."

(applause, cheering)

Hey!

Jady: My dad changed the culture.

You know, it wasn't enough for him.

(inaudible)

But there was no plan.

I think it was an organic process, like always.

There were cardinal rules on which Synanon was founded.

(tense music playing)

And those were solid until they weren't.

(police radio chatter)

And that was the beginning of the end.

(tense music fading out)

(solemn music playing)

(music fades out)