Entertainment
'The Synanon Fix' shows how the California dream went awry for a rehab group turned cult
In the late 1950s, Charles “Chuck” Dederich started a drug rehabilitation program out of a storefront in Santa Monica. A recovering alcoholic who’d gotten sober through Alcoholics Anonymous, Dederich offered free treatment to self-described “dope fiends” desperate to kick their deadly habit and go cold turkey.
Over the next decade and a half, the group, named Synanon, expanded across the country and evolved into a self-help movement with thousands of members, including many who were not addicts but were simply drawn to its idealistic vision — no drugs, alcohol, or violence — and its primary ritual, an intensely confrontational form of group therapy known as “The Game.”
Yet by the late 1970s, Synanon had strayed dramatically from its original mission, devolving into a dangerous quasi-religious paramilitary organization whose devotees, beholden to Dederich’s increasingly erratic whims, were willing to undergo forced vasectomies, relinquish control over their own children and even attempt to murder a prominent critic by planting a rattlesnake in his mailbox.
The dark saga of Synanon is now the subject of a four-part documentary “The Synanon Fix,” concluding Monday on HBO. Directed and executive produced by Rory Kennedy, the series traces the group’s utopian origins and gradual descent into violence and manipulation. Arriving at a moment when the public’s interest in cults and high-control groups seems almost insatiable, “The Synanon Fix” offers a particularly grim, resonant twist on the familiar tale of the California dream gone awry.
The story “had this really dramatic, almost Shakespearean arc to it,” said writer and executive producer Mark Bailey, in a video chat with Kennedy from their home in California (the couple are filmmaking partners and have also been married since 1999). “The intentions and accomplishments for the first decade or so were really amazing. But where it ended up was really dark and destructive.”
Kennedy, who has made more than a dozen documentaries including “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” and “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing,” said she was not particularly interested in “quote-unquote cult stories,” but was struck by the drama of Synanon’s 180-degree transformation. “In the beginning the pillars of Synanon were no drugs, no alcohol and no violence. By the end, they had bought more firearms than anybody in the history of California and had an open bar in the facility.”
Not only was the story dramatic, but it contained lessons about the dangers of blindly following a charismatic leader — a topic that feels politically relevant in 2024. Dederich was just such a figure, someone who built a community and inspired intense loyalty from his followers. “Because they’re tethered to him, where he goes, they go. And that’s the danger — as he starts becoming less stable, whether it’s from his alcoholism or mental illness, he takes Synanon with it,” Bailey said. “That felt, to us, like an important thing to say right now.” (Along with many members of her famous family, Kennedy, whose brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president as an independent, endorsed President Biden last week.)
Kennedy and Bailey first learned about Synanon about a decade ago while reading “Straight Life,” an autobiography by jazz musician Art Pepper and his wife, Laurie, who met while getting clean in Synanon. “I had never heard of Synanon, but it’s right there on the beach, these folks with shaved heads, playing ‘The Game,’ which sounds like this pretty radical therapeutic treatment,” Bailey said. “I was instantly like, ‘Wow, what was this? And why have I never heard about it?’”
Charles “Chuck” Dederich, founder of Synanon.
(HBO)
The documentary is woven together using extensive archival material — including news reports and visceral footage of members playing “The Game,” in which participants were aggressively pushed to be brutally honest about themselves and each other. It also features audio recordings of Dederich lecturing his followers over “the Wire,” the group’s internal broadcasting system, as well as first-person accounts from roughly 20 former members and interviews with journalists including Narda Zacchino, who wrote about Synanon for The Times.
Some former members were initially wary of sitting for interviews, Kennedy said, because “everybody was aware that there was a way to tell this story that’s pretty sensationalist.” But as she gradually won them over, more people decided to participate in the documentary — including Dederich’s daughter, Jady Dederich Montgomery.
After years of wrangling, the filmmakers were also able to secure access to Synanon’s archives, which included thousands of photos and “a treasure trove of extraordinary footage,” according to Kennedy. Because this happened just weeks before they were set to lock picture, they had to ask HBO for several more months and more money to recut the documentary. “To their credit, they agreed,” said Kennedy.
Interviewing people who spent years in Synanon playing “The Game” was both fascinating and challenging, she said.
“On average for documentaries, which I’ve now been doing for 25 years, the interviews are maybe two to three hours long. None of these were less than seven hours. Some of them went for nine hours, in like a sitting.” At times, Kennedy felt she was playing “The Game” with her subjects. “They would talk back to me more about how they were feeling about the interview as the interview was happening.”
Kennedy takes a straightforward approach in “The Synanon Fix,” allowing the story to unfold chronologically and spending time explaining the group’s origins before diving into the rattlesnakes and mate-swapping.
“This was a community that was taking a big swing at something that was really ahead of its time, in many ways, in terms of how it was treating drug addicts, who had been a very ostracized community,” said Kennedy. “They either went to jail, or they went to a mental hospital, or they died.”
Viewers learn how Synanon, which eventually moved into the historic Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, began to attract a wider array of followers with the rise of the counterculture in the late 1960s. “Lifestylers,” as they were known, were people who joined Synanon because they were seeking a sense of purpose and belonging, not to treat their addiction. They saw the group as “a cure for loneliness and alienation,” said Bailey, and “The Game” as a way to heighten connection and sense of community. Some also donated large sums of money and professional services to the organization.
Throughout the ‘70s Dederich became increasingly dictatorial, making bizarre demands of his followers that had little to do with the group’s original mission. He required members to shave their heads and follow stringent diets and exercise regimens. Men were pressured into getting vasectomies and women into having abortions. After his wife died and he remarried, Dederich urged married couples to divorce and take new partners assigned to them. Eventually, Dederich fell off the wagon and rolled back the group’s ban on alcohol. Children were separated from their parents and had to shave their heads and play “The Game” just like adults, even if they lacked the ability to understand it. Some children allegedly were beaten and forced to do grueling labor.
Throughout the decade, Synanon faced mounting criticism including charges of kidnapping and child abuse, but its members grew ever more militant, stockpiling weapons and forming a militia called the Imperial Marines. The group made national headlines in 1978 when a lawyer named Paul Morantz, who had won a $300,000 settlement from Synanon, nearly died from a rattlesnake bite after Synanon zealots planted the animal in his mailbox.
The incident marked a breaking point for some adherents, but not all.
One of the more striking aspects of the series is how many former members still seem to believe in the Synanon cause — and remain grateful to Dederich, who died more than 25 years ago, for saving their lives.
Rory Kennedy, one of the filmmakers of HBO’s “The Synanon Fix.”
(Jon Kopaloff / Getty for HBO)
The series’ central question is “Did the cure become a cult?,” and the filmmakers don’t entirely agree on the answer.
Bailey is not fully convinced Synanon fits the definition of a cult, if only because “there is something that feels too random and disorganized in what it was trying to do,” he said.
Kennedy is more confident in using the term. “I talked to enough people who felt like they compromised their moral compass to follow an idea that drove them in directions that they didn’t feel they should have gone in. That’s a defining quality of a cult,” she said, gently needling her husband for his more ambivalent take. “If you were there, you would have stuck with it to the end, clearly,” she said, laughing. “Sucker is what you are.”
Regardless of how they classify the group, the filmmakers see “The Synanon Fix” as a quintessentially Californian story about the kinds of spiritual seekers who’ve been drawn to the state for generations.
“You think of the people who move West as already kind of having searching in their DNA,” said Bailey. “We came out here about 14 years ago, but both of us were born and raised on the East Coast. And it was really something to get used to how you are allowed to just follow your own weird jam and everybody’s like, ‘Oh, that’s great.’”
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Universal Music Group is investing $80 million for a stake in one of India’s biggest Bollywood production companies, Excel Entertainment Pvt.
Universal Music India, a division of Universal Music Group, will acquire a 30% equity interest in the Mumbai-based movie studio. In the deal, announced Monday, the companies will work together on forthcoming films, series, music and emerging formats.
While getting involved in India’s local film industry, Universal Music will also now receive global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks attached to projects produced or owned by Excel. There are also future plans for the companies to launch an Excel-linked music label that will allow UMG and Universal Music India artists to appear in various Excel titles.
The investment underscores the rapid growth in the Indian entertainment industry.
India is the 15th-largest recorded-music market globally.
Founded by producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in 1999, Excel is responsible for making over 40 different films and scripted shows. Its most popular titles include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Don” and “Talaash.” The company is currently valued at approximately $290 million.
“India’s entertainment landscape continues to grow from strength to strength, and this is the perfect moment to build meaningful global collaborations,” said Sidhwani and Akhtar in a joint statement. “Together, we aim to take culturally rooted stories to the world.”
Universal Music Group, with its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands and another office in Santa Monica, was founded in 1996. The music giant behind artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish is valued at roughly $48 billion on the U.S. stock market, with shares selling around $25.80.
UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot of UNTIL DAWN puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Strong humanist worldview that twists the concept of modern psychology into a supernatural hellscape with unexplained time loops and reoccurring nightmarish horror filled with excessive violence and gore, but with unexplained pagan supernatural elements (such as a storm circling a house, the appearance of more buildings, the time loop itself, and many more), the time loop perverts the laws of mortality and implies that the consequences of violence, murder, suicide, etc., don’t apply, the psychologist controlling the time loop discusses the situation with modern psychology in vague circles meant to confuse and disorient the nature of the reality in which the victims are trapped, religion or God is not explicitly discussed, but there’s an unexplained cross in front of a house that isn’t explained and a character references the belief that a possessed person cannot become possessed through contact but rather weakness of faith, and some occult content where one woman is a self-described psychic and is into “woo-woo” stuff as another character describes it, she tries to amplify her psychic abilities with help from the others by holding hands and meditation, and she often has strong feelings and seems to have a sense the others do not have, but no worship or symbols are shown, plus a girl dating a guy is said to have previously dated a girl as well as other men;
Foul Language:
At least 101 obscenities (including 62 “f” words), two strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and four light profanities;
Violence:
Very severe violence and gratuitous blood and gore throughout including but not limited to dead bodies, monsters, scarred masked psychopath, stabbing, beating, and people spontaneously exploding;
Sex:
No sex shown, but a person puts on a VHS tape and a pornographic movie is heard playing briefly but not shown, and a woman is said to date a lot of people and one time dated another woman;
Nudity:
No nudity;
Alcohol Use:
No alcohol use;
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
No smoking or drugs; and,
Miscellaneous Immorality:
A psychologist is a callous antagonist whose motives are relatively unknown beyond having a morbid curiosity that led to awful experiments and playing games with other people, he purposely keeps people trapped for no known reason other than his sick and twisted observations that end in gruesome murder and unnecessary torture.
One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they will be murdered again and again.
UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances, but it has a strong humanist worldview overall with some occult elements is filled with gruesome violence, gore, lots of strong foul language, and a time loop that leads to an increasing amount of horrific murder and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.
The movie begins with a woman named Melanie clawing her way through the dirt with an unknown monster chasing after her. Digging her way out, she looks up to a masked psychopath standing over her with a scythe. She begs him, “No! Please not again. I can’t!” He fatally stabs her without a thought. It cuts to the main title, and an hourglass is shown with a ticking clock sound and unsettling music.
Cut to a group pf people in a red car driving up a winding mountain, an obvious nod to THE SHINING. It’s been one year after Clover’s sister Melanie vanished without a trace. The group consists of Max, Nina, Megan, Abe, and Clover. Shortly after their mother died, Melanie had decided to start a new life in New York. Clover decided to stay, which created tension between the sisters before Melanie left.
Clover and her friends are looking for more information about her disappearance. Their last stop is the last place she was seen in a video message taken in front of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. Megan, a proclaimed psychic, wants to join hands outside and see if they can feel any mystical energy regarding Melanie. Their attempt is cut short when an RV blares its horn and almost hits them, scaring them all.
Clover goes inside the gas station for a cup of coffee while the others talk outside. Clover asks the man behind the register if he worked here last year. After confirming he’s been working there for years, she shows him a picture of Melanie from the video. He asks if she was missing and clarifies saying that Clover is not the first to come asking. When she asks if many people around here go missing, he says people “get in trouble” in Glore Valley. As their only lead, the group decides to go there and stick together.
Nervously driving to the valley in an increasingly dangerous storm, the group begins to question what they are doing. Suddenly the storm stops but is still raging behind them. They park in front of a house with a “Welcome Center” sign, with the storm circling around the area but leaving the house dry. Confused, they get out of the car and look around. Nina decides to see if there’s anyone inside so they can come up with a plan. Everyone goes in except Clover, who walks up to the strange rain wall.
Inside the house, they find a dated and dusty interior. The power and water don’t work, and they conclude that they are the first people to come there in years. There is a strange hourglass with a skull on the wall. Checking the guest book, Nina finds Melanie’s name signed multiple times, with increasingly shaky handwriting. In another room, Abe finds many missing posters with faces on a bulletin board and finds poster with Melanie’s face.
Outside, Clover thinks she sees a person in the rain. She also hears Melanie’s voice and runs after it. Concerned, Max calls after her and he pulls her back in. As Nina signs the guestbook, the sun suddenly sets and the clock starts ticking.
Inside the house now with the hourglass turned over, they try to understand what’s happening. The car is out in the rain now with someone revving the engine threateningly. Some of them go to the dark basement, where the lights don’t work. There is an eerie sense of dread as Abe goes to check out a noise, and Nina finds a scarred and masked psychopath standing in a room as the top half of Abe’s body falls to the ground.
Hearing the commotion upstairs, the others go to see what happened and Max spots the killer. They run to hide, and the apparently invincible psychopath horrifically stabs each of them as they try to fight back. The sand in the hourglass runs back, as each character returns to where they were when Nina originally signed the book (she now signs it a second time). They remember what had just taken place, and how they were all murdered. Clearly stuck in this time loop escape room situation, they will now have to figure out how to escape this terrifying hellscape as the situations get worse with every loop.
UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.
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