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.’”
Entertainment
Review: Muscling past a flat script, a big-screen ‘Masters of the Universe’ embraces its own silliness
What will today’s kids think of He-Man, the muscle-bound ’80s relic with the most iconic bob after Anna Wintour? Launched in an era where machismo meant a goofy wrestler or metal singer with an eight-octave falsetto, the steroidal beskirted barbarian has always been a bit ridiculous. C’mon, his name is He-Man. What in the testosterone is that?
And so, director Travis Knight (“Bumblebee”) has made his reboot of “Masters of the Universe” a dopey, friendly comedy about modern masculinity in crisis with a He-Man who openly wonders what kind of a man to be. Hurtled out of the kingdom of Eternia as a boy, this Prince Adam (a terrifically game Nicholas Galitzine) came of age in Oklahoma City as a sweet guy who happens to be obsessed with swords. Instead of transforming into the strongest man in the galaxy to protect his throne from the evil duo of Skeletor (voiced by Jared Leto) and Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie), earthbound Adam parries HR complaints while sitting behind a desk plate that labels his gender identity not as He-Man but He/Him.
Times have changed. Even He-Man’s talking pet tiger (Tom Wilton) asks for consent before giving him a lick.
Galitzine’s He-Man is more Clark Kent than Superman, a gentle, funny, under-estimated dweeb. On a blind date, his descriptions of magical griffins and burning deserts sound humiliatingly immature. Dumped before dessert, he sulks home where his bro-y roommate (Christian Vunipola) secretly watches the weepie “The Notebook” when no one is looking as the soundtrack spins an acoustic cover of the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.” Every man in this movie has a public persona and a private one. Even Adam’s irritable female boss, Suzie (Sasheer Zamata), hides under a people-pleasing mask. “This is my mega-serious face,” she says with an unnerving grin.
The performances are good; the plot, postcard-sized: Adam returns to Eternia, unleashes his alter-identity He-Man and wrestles with the pressure to live up to his new biceps. Although Adam must rescue his royal parents (James Purefoy and Charlotte Riley) from Skeletor, he reaches for empathy before a blade. Could Skeletor really be that bad, he asks his childhood friend Teela (Camila Mendes). “He has a skull for a face,” Teela insists. In this world, everyone’s measured against their looks.
Here’s another question: Could Skeletor really be Jared Leto? Physically, of course not. Skeletor is all pixels with a clattering jaw perfect for chewing the scenery. (The bully is especially hilarious when the story transplants him to an ordinary weight-lifting gym — call him Skele-Chad.) Leto’s grumbling Brit-inflected baritone is an unrecognizable concoction of trilled r’s and plummy vowels — and the best performance he’s done in years. With apologies to Bette Midler, you should hear the gravitas Leto brings to calling his minions “the buttworms beneath my feet.”
Yes, that’s the humor level of the dialogue. Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and Dave Callaham have written a heavy-handed script in which, when Castle Grayskull comes under attack, Idris Elba’s soldier is forced to yell, “We’re under attack!” You know, in case the exploding laser beams weren’t obvious.
Obviousness is this film’s handicap — and the main joke. In this movie’s lore, juvenile Adam, played by an adorable Artie Wilkinson-Hunt, is the guilty child who invented his meathead He-Man moniker, as well the nicknames of his allies Ram-Man, Mekaneck and Fisto, who all look exactly as they sound to their chagrin. “I don’t fist anyone,” Fisto (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson) protests. The grown-ups in the audience snicker.
Knight was a kid himself when the cartoon version of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” debuted on television. As with his “Transformers” spin-off “Bumblebee,” he makes movies like a child who loves taking his action figures out of the box and giving them a silly soul.
He’s no hack: Knight’s debut film, “Kubo and the Two Strings,” was nominated for an Academy Award for animation. Raised with an affection for brands (his father, Phil Knight, is the co-founder of Nike), he also feels obliged to include so much fan service for his generation that kids will have to swashbuckle through confusing callbacks to discover He-Man for themselves. One battle scene is scored to 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” simply as a nod to a He-Man mash-up video that went viral back in 2005, a clash as wonky as it sounds. Yet Daniel Pemberton’s opening theme music is a rousing crescendo of stadium rock synthesizers. You can hear Queen guitarist Brian May in the score — not merely as an influence. It’s actually him.
Culturally, hyper-machismo has oscillated from cool to lame to ironically cool and back again for decades. Even Queen itself was deemed lame until “Wayne’s World” resurrected “Bohemian Rhapsody” as headbanging slapstick. If you spot a guy swaggering like a brute from Eternia on the sidewalk, masked or not, he probably thinks he’s more awesome than everyone else does. Likewise, when He-Man smashes skulls to a wailing metal soundtrack, I no longer know if I’m meant to be snickering with the electric guitars or at them. Neither does the movie, which seems to decide each scene’s individual tone on a coin flip.
Frankly, the dorky version of Adam is more fun than the heroic He-Man, even with Knight hammering us every minute to laugh that he’s a total weakling. Galitzine embraces the indignity. Zooming through the air in a flying Sky-Sled, he wedges his face into a triple chin. Dazed and enthusiastic, Galitzine’s human charm counterbalances Eternia’s synthetic feel, a blandscape of bright forests and cliffside dungeons that looks dated — not to 1983 but to last decade’s greenscreen-heavy would-be fantasy franchises like “Clash of the Titans” and “John Carter.”
Please don’t make Galitzine do five of these movies, even though he’s very good. An unusually pretty leading man who is quirkier and funnier than he looks, Galitzine is the kind of rising talent Hollywood rarely knows how to handle. In his previous roles, he gave off the impression of being flummoxed by his own attractiveness, whether as a queer prince (“Red, White & Royal Blue”), a Harry Styles-esque pop star (“The Idea of You”) or a popular football jock whose high school classmates are oblivious that he has the IQ of a second-grader (“Bottoms”). Here, Galitzine multiplies that self-conscious gag times a thousand, visibly dazzled by his own six-pack when he transforms from himbo to gym-bro. Even Skeletor is agog over the “big long sword dangling between his thighs.”
Smartly cast, Galitzine could prove to have the potential of Brad Pitt, another blond hunk who longed to get weird, chafing against roles that made him take off his shirt until he hit 55 and realized it was a flex. But shouldering a wobbly, expensive summer tentpole is a risk — just ask Sam Worthington or Taylor Kitsch. If “Masters of the Universe” tanks, here’s hoping Galitzine summons the strength to dig himself out of the rubble.
‘Masters of the Universe’
Rated: PG-13, for sequences of violence/action, some suggestive material, and language
Running time: 2 hours, 21 minutes
Playing: Opening Friday, June 5 in wide release
NEW YORK (OSV News) – As America’s Catholic bishops prepare to mark the semiquincentennial by consecrating the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a French docudrama that can aid viewers in understanding the full significance of such an action makes its timely appearance.
A Fathom Entertainment presentation, “Sacred Heart: His Reign Has No End” will have a limited theatrical run June 9-11 and June 14. The version screening on June 10 will be dubbed in Spanish.
Following its initial release in France last fall, the film proved to be phenomenally popular, with ticket sales reaching the half-million mark in a country usually regarded as deeply secular. This unusual development clearly indicates that the movie resonated with audiences in a way that even its creators may not have expected.
Filmmakers Sabrina and Steven J. Gunnell examine the origins, meaning and enduring relevance of devotion to the Sacred Heart. They begin their exploration even before the landmark revelations received in the 1670s by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Burgundian Visitation nun, showing that earlier saints had focused on the subject in medieval times.
Using reenactments, interviews and archival images, the Gunnells also highlight the theological connection between the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist. This is done, in part, by recounting a few of the many Eucharistic miracles granted to the Church over the centuries.
By profiling contemporary devotees of the Sacred Heart, including formerly inactive Catholics, the picture demonstrates the impact the insights given to St. Margaret Mary continue to have on the lives of people around the world. Locations visited range from the gang-infested streets of a Parisian suburb to the once war-torn Central American country of El Salvador.
An excellent and enjoyable catechetical resource, the feature is also both moving and uplifting. It can be recommended for all but the youngest kids.
For theater locations and showtimes, go to: sacredheartfilm.us
Dubbed into English.
The film contains gory images of the Crucifixion. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. Not rated by the Motion Picture Association.
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Copyright © 2026 OSV News
According to data from the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, Pratt’s supporters include two members of the record industry’s most powerful family who have donated the maximum amount allowed by law.
Los Angeles’ music industry, in recent years, has generally supported progressive causes. But as the primaries for the city’s mayoral race and California‘s governorship wrapped up Tuesday, some music executives and performers have supported and donated large amounts to Spencer Pratt, the right-leaning activist and reality TV star running for mayor.
According to data from the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, Pratt’s supporters include two members of the record industry’s most powerful family who donated the maximum amount allowed by law.
Pratt is a registered Republican whose heated rhetoric about homeless “zombies” and AI-created advertisements have rankled progressives and delighted conservatives. He has received support from President Trump, who told reporters that “I’d like to see him do well. He’s a character. I don’t know him, I assume he probably supports me… I heard he’s a big MAGA person.”
In response, Pratt told TMZ that “Everybody wants me to succeed because L.A. is the most important city in the country. The only support I need is from moms that wanna feel safe in Los Angeles. I’m laser-focused on that.”
Universal Music Group is home to some of music’s most outspoken progressives, including Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish, whose brother and collaborator Finneas O’Connell donated $250 to the progressive mayoral candidate Nithya Raman on May 6.
Earlier this year, UMG’s chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge presented Rodrigo with the company’s Universal Music Group x REVERB Amplifier Award, which advocates for “social and environmental nonprofit campaigns through the cultural power of music,” according to a release.
On May 9, Grainge (listed as a resident of Pacific Palisades, where Pratt lost his home in the 2025 fires) maxed out with an $1,800 donation to Pratt’s campaign, as previously reported in The Times. A representative for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment on Grainge’s donation.
He’s not the only Pratt donor in the family.
Grainge’s son Elliot ascended through the record industry with his 10k Projects label, and now heads UMG’s competitor Atlantic Records. Vocal progressives like Cardi B, the Marías and Charli XCX are some of the label’s most high-profile acts.
On May 8, Elliot Grainge also gave $1,800 to Pratt‘s campaign. A representative for Atlantic did not immediately return a request for comment.
Last month, the record producer and composing titan David Foster and his wife, singer Katharine McPhee, performed at a fundraiser for Pratt where they crooned a version of Tina Turner’s hit “The Best” to the mayoral hopeful. “Spencer, you’re simply the best. Better than all the rest. Better than Karen Bass and Nithya Raman,” McPhee sang.
At Warner Music, Gabz Landman, the senior vice president for A&R at Warner Chappell, its powerful music publishing wing, who has worked with Dua Lipa, Laufey and Amy Allen, gave $105.24 to Pratt on Feb. 4. Through a Warner Music representative, Landman said the donation was for merchandise given to a friend, and was not intended as support for Pratt’s campaign.
The superstar EDM producer and DJ Kaskade has left supportive messages on Pratt’s social media, commenting on one of the candidate’s posts that “At this point, who is buying in to Bass’s fairytale narrative?! I am still shocked she hasn’t resigned!” The DJ and producer Diplo also left a supportive comment — a prayer-hands emoji and “please” — on one of Pratt’s social media posts. Records do not show any personal donations to Pratt’s campaign from either artist.
Public records do not show any donations to Pratt’s campaign from live-industry executives atop firms like Live Nation, AEG or Goldenvoice.
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Review: Muscling past a flat script, a big-screen ‘Masters of the Universe’ embraces its own silliness
