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Allan Moyle is a Canadian-born writer and director whose previous films include Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records. Producer Nicholas D. Tabarrok says he approached him to direct Weirdsville because, "It's got drugs and Satanists and hookers and dead bodies. And I thought, man, these are his people, this is his world." Despite his fortean sensibilities, however, Moyle had never heard of FT, so we showed him a copy...
ALLAN MOYLE: This is an amazing magazine. I think this magazine is genius. I’m really into this shit. You know my hero is Terence McKenna? I made a movie about him; I paid my own money to do it; I was good friends with him for years; I did magic mushrooms with him many times. I met Timothy Leary; I did magic mushrooms twice last week – you know what I’m trying to say? I mean, I’m half in the body, and half out. I’m totally aware. In fact, I might be an alien; I feel like it sometimes. I have channelling sessions at my house, often. All by way of saying, the stranger the better. So if any of my work can be reviewed in your wonderful magazine, I’m thrilled.
FORTEAN TIMES: Tell me about yourself and how you came to direct such crazy movies.
AM: Well, you know, the craziest people don’t ever think they’re crazy. I think I’m completely normal and the rest of the world’s crazy. And I marvel every day that people believe that this table is real and things like that. So I don’t think the movies are crazy, I think the world we live in is just perverse and sick.
FT: But you have an affinity for unusual people?
AM: Yes. And I’d love to reach the point of power in life where I can do something that’s truly strange. You know, 'cause I’ve written some, but they’re hard to get made.
I’ve written a movie about this Irish girl who invents her own religion, kind of by accident. And because of the Internet it catches on quick. And I’ve written a movie – it’s a remake of a great old English movie called Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, about a guy who thinks he’s a gorilla. So, my taste in movies is a little bit not mainstream. But occasionally I get to do a movie like the VH1 movie about Michael Jackson, because I’m very, very, very pro-Michael Jackson; I think he’s extremely unusual, very positive. But he’s a freak – people hate freaks. And he’s very bad at promoting himself, very bad at seeing himself as other people see him. All by way of saying, in a small way I tried to balance a little bit of the negative press against Michael which is so easily generated. And I’m telling you about it because he’s an alien.
FT: Does he believe he is?
AM: I don’t know if he’d admit it. I don’t know if he has that terminology. But he’s a guy who has sold more records than the Beatles and Elvis Presley together. So clearly he’s got access to some immense source of power.
FT: Alien in a metaphorical sense, or he really is a being from another planet?
AM: Well, I don’t know if it’s his DNA, you know? We all have Atlantean DNA, and we all have some DNA from when Mars broke up. This is stuff I believe, and I hope I can talk to you about it. And I think that Michael, whether he knows it or not – 'cause he may go “Ooh, creepy” – because who knows what he really thinks? He may not want to define himself this way.
FT: But he must know he’s not normal, in the sense that other people think of normal?
AM: But we’re all so multi-faceted, right? I mean the world is so multidimensional. I don’t know if Michael’s taken magic mushrooms, gone beyond the curtain. I doubt it – he doesn’t need to, he’s high as a kite already. But I know he believes that you can create your own reality with your mind in the face of overwhelming obstacles. And he’s done it repeatedly. He’s trying to be pure. And everyone around him is saying “Michael, please be more normal, it would help us, it would help you.” And he’s saying, “No, I refuse. I want to be Peter Pan.” And they’re saying yes, but Peter Pan is like… you’re 40 now! Please try, for the sake of the cottage industry that you are, not to be Peter Pan.” And he’s saying no.
FT: So what are your beliefs? Would you describe yourself as spiritual?
AM: I think everything is spiritual. I believe that this cardboard box has form: a visible form and an invisible form, and the invisible form has so much more integrity than the visible form
FT: Like a Platonist ideal form?
AM: Well, it’s hard to talk about it because it’s just a cardboard box – and I don’t know what you mean by Platonism – but there is a visible form and then there is an invisible form, which came out of a design, which came out of somebody’s mind, so it’s a metaphor for how everything has integrity and everything has some kind of sentience. Now, I don’t know about a cardboard box, but everything in nature has some kind of sentience; and because I’ve studied all this on magic mushrooms and also from reading The Sedona Journal of Emergence. Sedona is a town in Arizona and it has all kinds of energy flowing through it. A lot of it is channelled material, and of course half the world is channelling now, you know. Ten years ago there was like Seth and Abraham; there was Edgar Cayce 50 years ago. Now everybody’s channelling, because they have channelling classes, and the channelled information is the best way to learn about the nature of reality. For example, what really happened in the time of Christ? Who was this teacher Christ, and how badly have they mucked it up in the editing? Am I making any sense at all?
FT: So where is this channelled information coming from?
AM: The same place as crop circles come from. Do you believe in crop circles?
FT: No.
AM: But then there’s people that believe in them, and they also can say that they’re impossible to explain away, if they’re good ones anyway; they don’t have the wheat stems trampled on for example.
FT: But they’re made by people with boards…
AM: So, I’ve never seen one, but I believe that a tremendous amount of what’s happening in the world, complete with karma, the Buddhist world, and past lives, is explainable by what’s happening beyond the physical. We have a karmic connection, almost by definition, - we’re in this room, we have this intense thing. I believe we are now meeting again after all these lifetimes, all these centuries or whatever, to do our real work, and also this laughable little work that we’re doing right now. I mean we’re concentrating on it, because we can inhabit both worlds at the same time. Does that make any sense?
FT: I’m struggling. So are there controlling powers behind these processes?
AM: No. I don’t believe… David Icke, who writes these wonderful books full of reptilians and stuff like that. I love it – I read it, but I read it as drama, because I can’t go as far as he does. But, it’s like my idea about the box, it’s a metaphor that resonates, and I happen to believe that on some realities that we don’t have access to, that we humans don’t have access to, there are reptilians trying to pull some levers somewhere. Now, where are they and what dimension do they work on? I don’t know. But I believe in all that. And none of my friends do. And here you have this magazine that looks at all kinds of weirdness, and you’re doing it partly for entertainment, and I believe a lot of your readers are hoping that some of this is true. And whether it is or isn’t doesn’t matter, because eventually it’ll all be true because someone thought it.
I’ll even argue that everyone here on this planet who’s human wants to believe in more than society is doling out in coffee spoons. And so we all have felt, either while dreaming or in glimpses of a red light, that there’s more to it and there’s more meaning resonating, and whether you call it God or the Universe or the source or whatever, a lot of that has some validity. All you have to do is take a heroic dose of magic mushrooms to know, to see with your own eyes that it’s a Multiverse, not a Universe. And so how do you make movies about that? Eventually, someone sends you a movie like Weirdsville, which just barely scratches the surface of what I believe, but at least it points to a world like I’m describing.
FT: How did you get round the drugs issue in Weirdsville? Because it’s not an anti-drugs movie by any stretch of the imagination.
AM: Well, I personally believe in drugs, but I believe in the same take on drugs that Terence McKenna, my guru, had, which is that a product that grows in nature but is not refined is cool. Like coca leaves are cool, but cocaine isn’t; opium is cool, but heroin isn’t; weed is cool, magic mushrooms are cool, but LSD is not cool. So anything that grows but is not refined is great. And that’s what I’m a strong believer in.
I think weed is one tenth as dangerous as sugar, for example. Or alcohol. So you could say, I’m a great believer in drugs. I’ve taken magic mushrooms all my life. And I still do and I love being happy and inhabiting other realities. As you are, every night in your sleep. So, when I was promoting the movie to the Canadian government, which is taking a big chance on putting money into a movie that some member of parliament could complain is promoting drugs, I had to write kind of a manifesto saying it’s an anti-drugs movie. And it is an anti-drugs movie in a sense. But then, you have eye candy like Scott Speedman taking drugs, and it’s a very, very strong message saying… And you remember the end of the movie?
FT: Yes. With the gnome.
AM: Leaves it kind of open.
FT: It doesn’t leave it that open!
AM: Well, the wizard says: “Take a pull on this, big boy”, right? And then they look at each other, and the girl’s like, are they going to go straight or not? And then there's the end titles with a very positive song: everything’s going to work out, but there’s a drug haze to it. Anyone could watch that movie and decide for themselves. Are they high or not? Hopefully they’re high without needing the drugs. But you could believe anything you want with that ending couldn’t you? What did you think?
FT: I didn’t think there was any chance they were going to go, “No, I’ll just have a cup of tea actually thanks”. But they thought about it.
AM: So there’s movement.
FT: And there’s a hope that it won’t end up as it did last time.
AM: It won’t end up in despair. They’ve been spiritualised somehow – that word’s such a loaded word, it’s like ‘love’, or ‘God’. Somehow, through the death of, or almost-death of Maddy, their consciousness has been expanded and deepened, and therefore they are now going to have more tools to be able to deal with the Multiverse, as you or I do every day as we become more or more conscious. So, if you’re conscious and you decide to be a drug addict it’s more fun than if you’re a victim. For instance, my brother, who’s had a fantastic life, has been in jail in more countries than I’ve visited,. He’s now at a certain stage that, when people ask him what he’s doing, he says: “I’m taking a life off”. And he’s very conscious; at the same time, people like my mother worry that he doesn’t fit into society. I, for one, love his company.
FT: So he’s gone clean?
AM: He’s not clean. He’s no longer trying to be a normal person. He lives for the moment, and he’s off the grid, and he’s on welfare, in Canada; and he’s got his health card and his semi-paid for apartment, and he’s no longer going to try to be what society asks him to be. And I have a lot of respect for him. And he meditates. I mean he’s mad. And he does a lot of drugs. And he’s obviously out of control. And I’m going to see him in a month, and we’re going to go on a car trip together, with my wife and his son. And Tommy and I are going to sit in the front seat of the car and drive, and they’re going to sit in the back seat of the car rolling their eyes. They love us, but you know? It’s these two different energies. All by way of saying that Weirdsville is really just a rehearsal for a movie I’d like to make some day. It’s not really that mad, is it?
FT: It’s surreal and it’s silly and it’s fun.
AM: Yeah the coincidences…
FT: And the kind of crazy energy of all the different strands of the plot crossing over…
AM: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And that came out of the mind of the writer, Willem Wennekers. It’s all his concoction. I was thrilled when I got sent the script – I was like “Oh, wow, here’s a great metaphor for the world that I believe exists.” But all metaphorically. Instead of reptiles and UFOs we have other icons. You could argue that if you half believe in all that stuff the movie is at least half way… or at least it’s going towards it, because it’s something behind. Yes. It’s left the grid. Perhaps not half way. It’s three per cent towards the reality that I’ve glimpsed.
FT: Is that reality transferable to film?
AM: Well nowadays with CGI being affordable more and more movies can capture realities that are invisible to the eye. And I’m thrilled about that. But it takes a lot of skill to make movies like that. You know, I believe in ghosts. I’ve never seen one. But I think I know they exist, because I’ve talked to them; and I think they’ve talked to me, or I’ve heard them. But movies like Ghost or Sixth Sense – I eat those movies out of a spoon. And I think more and more audiences are eating them up, because they believe there’s much more going on out there that isn’t ... In America over 50 per cent of people believe in UFOs. I've seen lights that were not explainable, and I’ve pulled my car over to look at them, and then the next car and the next car; and they’re saying “What is that? What is that?”. And it’s not a helicopter.
FT: Are people more ready to believe?
AM: They want to believe because the organised religions blew it, just like the organised governments blew it. Bush’s war is just a perfect example of how unconscious big organisations are. So it’s just every man for himself, and I think people are leaving big organisations and trusting themselves and their dreams and their meditation and their friends.
There’s a great British psychic called... somebody... kooky little lady with glasses, Molly somebody? I saw her last night on TV. I don’t have TV at home, but when I’m in a hotel in another country it’s my great pleasure to watch TV shows, and there’s a wonderful British psychic and her name is Molly. Very corny. And she blows the mind away of everyone she talks to, except all these people who think they are not searching for more meaning in their lives, when they’re introduced to her and she starts talking to them about their loved ones who’ve died they start weeping immediately. You can see that everybody is just sleepwalking like a robot through their regular life, waiting, hoping for more meaning.
They all cry. They have a little weep. That what they expected – that there’s more to life than this... these small mouth noises that these human apes make. We’re all just going through the motions, you and I, compared to what’s really happening. I believe that while our human bodies are sitting here talking, these chemical sacks, meanwhile our souls, who know each other intimately… I don’t know exactly how it works, but there’s a real you, the person who is flying around in your sleep, and a real Alan, who I’ve identified as the recipient of many lifetimes I’ve dreamed, and seen and imagined. I have tape recordings of me hypnotised talking about them, so I have enough belief to prove to myself that these exist on some level. Maybe it’s all my imagination, but even if it is only my imagination, it is an imagination that is so much richer than little Alan who’s sitting here trying to make movies and mostly failing.
FT: Do you think that’s given you a positive outlook? You seem to like people – your films are warm towards them.
AM: Yes. I feel warm towards people. I think you guys do as well in this work you’re doing – scratching at a door, scratching at many doors, in search of the miraculous. And I think this magazine, since it throws everything up and says “You decide”, is just as humanistic. It’s like with the drugs – you’re not saying whether this is true or not, whether you believe it or support it, you’re just saying: “Here’s a fascinating creepy story that’s entertaining and amazing, and you be the judge”. And if it turns your crank, great, you’ll buy another magazine, and if you think, oh, this doesn’t make any sense to me, then go back to reading the bible, or whatever you do read. So I think you’re in the vanguard. Most people are only working at one per cent of their potential – maybe you’re working at four per cent, but no doubt in my mind that you are 1000 times more than what you think you are.
FT: So what would be your prescription to try to get everyone to realise as much of their potential as they could?
AM: Well, the best way to do it is through meditation, but I don’t have the patience or the brain power to meditate, so I use magic mushrooms or ayahuasca, the very powerful hallucinogenic drug that they make in the Amazon.
I wish that everyone in government could take some peyote and could see how futile all the paranoia is. Yes, you need people to take care of business, but there’s a whole other class of people who want to control other people; people like Bush, who’s basically a fearful little bitch who believes that with his Christianity he can make everybody better. I feel like I could make everybody better. You just asked me what my prescription was, I said: “Take magic mushrooms”. Bush’s prescription is: “Believe in Jesus”. But I have direct access to Jesus through these channels, and they are telling me that Jesus was more like Michael Jackson than George Bush.
But Christianity as it’s currently understood – it’s ridiculous. The whole thing, going back to the Old Testament is based on Adam and Eve sinning, therefore we’re all born with original sin, which is guilt, and we’re all walking around feeling guilty instead of joyful . So a whole society is built on keeping your head down and working hard and trying to stay kind of invisible, instead of being the full version of you, unseparated from the source. There’s a world out there, and I leave my body and visit it, whether it’s real or not. Maybe it’s like going to Disneyland, and people say, “Oh well, that’s just a day trip, the real world is right here.”
But I write movies. When I’m sitting down, making up a movie, writing it – like this movie about a girl who invents her own religion. I wrote it, hasn’t been made yet, but what’s more real? That invented story, or the invented story of me sitting here with you now? Or the invented story of what my parents wanted me to be, which is some kind of professional with three kids and all that? What is more real, what is more satisfying to anybody?
You can make a movie like Weirdsville, which I didn’t write, but I did sign up to, I did have a choice, and I did say please let me direct this, and I begged the writer to be with me on the set every day and all that kind of stuff. And I’ve never even talked to the writer the same way you and I are talking right now. The writer is pretty weird, but he’s also got one foot in reality, he’s got three kids. And as I said earlier, Weirdsville is a warm up.
FT: So what did you bring to the movie?
AM: I brought a lot of belief in the meaning behind the weirdness. It’s called Weirdsville because we have these weird people; but I don’t believe any of that is weird, it’s all completely normal that in a perfect evening they’d all be aligned and all show up together. And in my dreams they do. So I think it was a miraculous metaphor for how life really is, instead of the much more banal lives that we all live. So I was happy to contribute my efforts to make it come out as a thing that would be fun and entertaining, and also be a trojan horse for spiritual values, which you could see or not see, your choice. And it’s funny too. And I also believe what Jesus was preaching was that to stay joyful is ten times more important than to stay good. So it can make people laugh, can make people joyful.
I have an Indian friend who never stops laughing. He just laughs out loud for three hours. And I have to laugh with him. And my wife’s in the other room saying what are you people laughing at? We don’t know, but we have an excuse to be joyful for three hours, and why not join us? Life is a very, very funny trip.
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