Jon Ronson

Jon Ronson is an author, broadcaster, journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest book The Men Who Stare At Goats uncovers an improbable true story about some of the more bizarre elements of the US Army and their experimentation with new age techniques. It has just been made into a film with George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges and Ewan McGregor. The ever-anxious and self-deprecating Jon Ronson sits down with Pure Movies to give his thoughts on the film, the filmmaking process and why he learned to stop worrying and go with the flow.

I start by asking Jon why, when he has been uncovering incredible stories for years, what he thought it was about Goats that caught the attention of Hollywood.

He tells me that his 2001 book; Them: Adventures With Extremists was actually bought in 2005 before Goats although this was a full four years after it was originally published.

“The opposite was true with Goats, before it was even published I was getting calls from people like Ben Stiller, Ben Stiller’s mother, about the possibility of making it into a film. It surprised me. There was a little mini bidding war for the book and I was sitting there thinking, ‘I don’t know why they like it, but I’m not going to say that in case it puts them off!’

Of course there were elements of the book that I knew were quite cinematic, the whole first chapter with General Stubblebine trying to walk through walls… I thought as I wrote it that ‘this reminded me of the opening scene of a movie.’”

The film does indeed open with this scene as written on page one of the book, the only point at which the narrative of the book and film truly converge as the screenplay inevitably deviates along more cinematic lines.

“I always knew to make this into a film, it would have to be radically restructured, and I didn’t know how to go about doing that, but at the same time I was genuinely surprised when it shot off the way it did.”

“Was it quite flattering…this bidding war around your work?”

“Well I’m a bit too anxious and panicky to be flattered. I always look for something to worry about…perhaps I need learn to chill out a bit more?”

Jon’s trademark is his slightly anxious style. As a sceptic, when confronted with the bizarre beliefs of others, he knows that he is right. But his nervousness gives him a humility that is missing from some of his journalist peers. It’s unclear to what extent he plays to this persona; the previous night at the Goats premier in Leicester Square, he had seemed decidedly nervous on stage, wearing a dinner jacket at least four sizes too large. Clooney mocked his clear public unease with a hilarious routine involving raising the microphone stand uncomfortably above Jon’s head, playfully highlighting the juxtaposition between the Clooney Hollywood confidence and the anxious journalist that Ronson embodies. However, he tells me this was all entirely improvised.

“No, it wasn’t very flattering at all, much more anxiety-making. And this wasn’t helped by the fact that the producers were telling me right up to the day they started shooting that the whole thing might not happen and it could fall down at any moment. The lawyers were telling me the same thing. It was only when I read that George Clooney had arrived on set in Puerto Rico that I thought ‘well, it can’t not happen now!’ So there was no one great moment of satisfaction.

“Did you follow the production around?”

“No I went for just three days. The day they started shooting I was in a hotel in London and I saw in the paper a picture of George Clooney lying on a deck chair in Puerto Rico and I thought ‘this is unimaginable, they must be having this completely brilliant experience out there and here I am in London’. So I thought I needed to experience it all.

So, me and Peter Straughan [screenwriter] got ourselves off to Puerto Rico but, as soon as I got there, I realised it wasn’t as glamorous as I imagined. In fact it was all quite arduous.”“Long days, bad food?”

“Yup really long days, really bad food.

“I was slightly gratified to see that the hotels they were all staying in weren’t nearly as nice as the hotels I stay in when I go on holiday. The whole thing was just not anywhere near as exciting and glamorous as I thought it would be, so it really scratched the itch. On my first day, someone said to me that the most exciting day of your life is your first day on a Hollywood film set. The most boring is the second day.

“I now really admire the actors and crew that spend all day for months and months on end on these sets because it’s really hard work. So on my third day I said to Peter ‘let’s stay by the pool’ so we did. And I didn’t see them all again until the film was finished and we took it to Venice and Toronto and that was really fun obviously.

George Clooney and Jon Ronson last month at the London Film Festival

“We all hung out and George was very charming. One evening Marvin Hamlish was there and he played his classic, ‘The Way We Were’ on the piano in the hotel bar. And George was there leaning over with a glass of whiskey singing along. It was pretty special.”

“So how involved were you in the development of the screenplay?”

“Not at all. It was clear to me that the last thing you want when you’re writing a screenplay is for one of the real people to start interfering. In fact I saw Peter in a Starbucks one day when he was half way through writing it and the blood drained from his face and he must have thought ‘oh fuck, there’s Jon Ronson. I hope he doesn’t come over and talk to me!’

“I went over and said ‘how’s it going?’ (but really I was thinking what’s he doing in Starbucks? He should be writing the screenplay!) and he just said ‘fine’ and that was that and we didn’t speak again until after he finished it and sent it over to me.

“I thought it was fantastic, really terrific and as a result we ended up being the best of friends. In fact we’ve just written a new screenplay together…a film called Frank and we’re looking for a director. It’s a comedy about music.”

“And your earlier book. Them is being developed for the screen with Edgar Wright down to direct. Is that happening?”

“Well Edgar is so busy with Scott Pilgrim and I don’t think he’s going to know what he wants to do next until that’s finished and nobody is going to do anything other than wait for him to decide. So it’s really up to him. Mike White has written a first draft of the script and it’s really, really good. But we’ll see what happens.”

“Mike White is very much a comedy writer, so will this be an out-and-out comedy?”

“Well I think Them is very much a comedy. Goats is a bit darker. At least the book is.”

There are funny elements in the book but I put it to him that a lot of the themes are very dark indeed – especially the way he linked the First Earth Battalion and some of what went on to the catastrophe at Waco and methods employed at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, which is only hinted at in the film.

“Well you can only rely on your first response to a film. When I first saw it, it hit me in the same way that Little Miss Sunshine hit me,” says Jon. “It’s a very warm, sweet, charming film, with an almost home made feel. What I haven’t asked Grant Heslov [the director] is whether this was the mood he was going for, or if this is what evolved. But that’s what it was and I think the film really works on that level…it really surprised me because I don’t think the book is that warm hearted because I’m a sceptic and they are all believers, so there’s all that tension between us. That tension doesn’t exist in the film.

“I think that’s the success of it and I think the people that really like it, like it for that reason, because it’s so warm. I think it succeeds very much own its own terms, in its own bubble.”

He asks me if I agree; and I do but I was also quite attached to the original book and I was struggling to wipe it from my mind perhaps enough to look at the film objectively.

“Well it was easy for me because I was just so thrilled that all this was happening. I think adventures are what make life what it is and it was all a huge adventure. Having a book turned into a film filled me with such a sense of adventure that I didn’t care about anything else and I never have. I’ve loved every minute of it, from the days on set to the Venice, Toronto and London Film Festivals. I didn’t want to interfere and if I had wanted to interfere it wouldn’t have gone down too well anyway.

“I have a friend who I won’t name, who has had a story of hers turned into a film and she’s really interfering and everyone’s getting really annoyed. I’ve seen this backfiring with my friend so I thought the best thing I could do was support the film in every way. And there’s a really nice film out of it and we’ve all had fun and nothing bad has happened.

“It’s not just me. That’s the one thing I’ve really learned about filmmaking is that it’s like a relay race. I start off with the baton and I hand it on to the screenwriter who hands it on to a producer who hands it on the director who hands it on to the distributors and it goes on and on. Although Grant Heslov and George Clooney are so powerful, that they get involved in the distribution process, a bit like Kubrick was.

“But usually what happens is that once you give the baton on to someone, it’s gone. The race is over. I think that’s just how films are made.

“For all my worries and anxieties in life, I did take the decision to just enjoy this and just go with the flow. And I’ve got to say that ‘go with the flow’ is one of the sentences least recognisable to my psyche. But on this occasion I made the decision to do just that and I think it was the right decision.”

“Are we going to see another On… series for BBC Radio 4?”

“Yeah in fact we’re editing the second episode right now, it’s not quite as brilliant as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty good. I thought it was going to be the best one ever. But it’s not. I find that a lot; when you think the thing you’re working on is going to be simply fantastic it ends up being crap. And visa versa.  When I wrote Them and Goats, I thought ‘this is shit and nobody will care. I’m writing a crap book that no one will be interested in and I’ve put myself through absolute agony.’ And those are the things that end up being the best things I’ve done.”

I ask in jest; “With your books all being sold and turned into major films, do think HBO might pick up On… for a multi million dollar mini-series?”

“That would be nice! The BBC won’t even release it on cassette!

“In fact I’m writing another book, that’s what I’m really focusing on at the moment.  I think it has the potential to be really great. That’s what I should do all the time really, it’s definitely what I’m best at and I don’t do it enough.”

It’s fairly clear that more people will see the film than read the book and I was interested in how Jon felt about the way this story will now rest in the zeitgeist.

“Well I was sitting next to Peter in the Toronto screening and it got to that moment where they’re releasing the goats…Clooney is cradling one in his arms, they are all on LSD and the prisoners are running away into the sunset. I turned to Peter and said ‘we’ve contributed to a very strange film here’. I like to think that it’s so barmy, and not in a deliberate or ‘whacky’ way. It’s accidentally crazy in a low-key way and I think that’s what people will like about it.”

“I heard someone describe it as a ‘feel-good war movie’.”

“Yeah, which is good for these bad times I think.”

“Improbable perhaps then that it should have got made?”

“I know, it is. And I like that a lot.”

Last edited: 4th November 2009