Catching Up With... The Men Who Stare at Goats Author Jon Ronson

Jon Ronson knows his way around weird.

The author and documentary filmmaker has spent his career tracking down some of the most wildly weird people on the planet to bring their stories to us normal folk. His bestseller, Them: Adventures with Extremists, chronicled the tales of wannabe global dominators like Islamic fundamentalists and neo-Nazi Ku Klux Klansmen. But it’s his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, that’s putting his name on the map—in part thanks to George Clooney. The book, about the secret army unit of soldiers with psychic power called the First Earth Battalion, was just made into a movie starring Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and a whole slew of goats.

Ronson told Paste about his own adventures with the movie, the Battalion and doing 19 interviews in one day.

Paste:How are you?
Ronson: I’m alright. I’m a bit talked out, I’ll tell you that. I’ve been talking about this movie nonstop for a couple of weeks. I think I’ve actually done some damage to the inside of my mouth from over-talking. Turns out I don’t love the sound of my own voice; my wife was wrong.

Paste: Is it weird to be on other side of an interview?
Ronson: You feel really self-conscious. You feel like a dick to answer people’s questions. What I want to do is ask people why they’ve chosen that particular Dictaphone. But it is a fun ride. I’m enjoying the whole promotional side of it. As a writer, you know, you want to do anything else but write.

Paste: How is this publicity different than what you’d do for a book?
Ronson: It’s a million times more intense. Loads more people want to talk to me when I write a book. And of course there’s the whole red carpet side of things, which is a wild, surreal experience. I usually go to Dublin to do interviews for my book—for my last I did three in a day. For this movie, I did 19. I felt like I’d been hit by a train. I’ll tell you what—if I was ever going to be an opera singer, I won’t be now.

Paste: The movie comes out this weekend, so hopefully you’ll get a breather. Are you nervous at all?
Ronson: No, I made a decision at the beginning of this to chill out and enjoy it, and not be anxious at all. It helps that I didn’t make the movie. I don’t need to be doing what I normally do, which is looking at the reviews to see whether people like what I’ve done or not. I just wrote the book, so it’s been an easy emotional experience for me. And I’m thrilled that the book has come back to life. It was kind of dead by 2006. I’m glad that the movie is a very sweet, funny, engaging movie. I thought, why worry? Which is very unlike me—usually worrying is my first response.

Paste: Will movie draw more attention to the book?
Ronson: I think some people will be surprised. The first half of the book is the same comic, absurd tone as the movie. But the second half is really dark. I hope people who see the movie aren’t upset that the book doesn’t carry on the loveliness.

Paste: Peter Straughan was brought in to transfer book to screenplay. How did it feel watching your work change in someone else’s hands?
Ronson: I was so excited that this mysterious new thing was happening. Early on these big names were being mentioned—Ben Stiller was a fan of the book, George Clooney’s name was mentioned early. So really, I didn’t get beyond the excitement. But I sold another two stories at the same time for movies, and the three screenplays came together at the same time. Two were terrific and one was really bad. So the two that were terrific were Goats by Peter Straughan and Them by Mike White, who wrote School of Rock.

The one that I didn’t like I made a bit of a stink about—the writer hadn’t got the voice right, it just wasn’t working. And they studio agreed, so it died a bit of a death. I did have the capability to get involved if I had to, but with Peter and Mike’s scripts, I didn’t feel the need. I was very happy with them. Peter was really relieved—he let out a huge sigh of relief when I phoned him to tell him I liked it. I was happily surprised that he was concerned about what I’d think. We’ve since become great friends—we’ve written a script together.

Paste: There’s the saying that almost always applies, that the book is usually better than the movie. How do you feel about that here?
Ronson: I think people will really like the movie in a different way than the book. The movie is really engaging—I had a Little Miss Sunshine-type feel when I saw it. It’s very humane, with a gentle spirit. A lot of that has to do with George Clooney. But the book’s different—it’s darker. What I’m hoping is that people will like both. That’s the ideal scenario. You know, I said I didn’t need to read reviews, but that’s a bit of a lie. I grew to really like Peter and (director) Grant Heslov and George Clooney—I do feel a bit of emotional investment. I want it to do well because I like them.

Paste: Did you have a roll on the set of the movie at all?
Ronson: No, but I went to visit for a couple of days. I felt the urge to go out and experience it; quite a strong urge. Had I not gone, I’d have felt that I missed out on a great adventure. It was enough to scratch the itch. I got the very clear idea when I got there that films are autocracies. Grant was king, and he was making the film. That’s the way it was. Had I saddled up to Grant at the end of a shooting day and said, “Could you get them to do this?” he wouldn’t have taken it kindly. Nick Hornby said to me—not to name drop so ridiculously—that these people know how to make films, and we don’t. So let them get on with it. That was very wise.

Paste: It’s just like if a director tried to comment on your book as you were writing it.
Ronson: Exactly. There’s one occasion with the book when you do welcome input, and that’s after the first draft. An editor tells you to do that, and that, and that, and you welcome it. But it’s not when you’re writing the book, so it couldn’t be when I was on the set.

Paste: Can you tell me about the original process of researching and writing Goats? It must’ve been an interesting world to dive into.
Ronson: For the first year or two it was hard—we didn’t know what the story really was and we weren’t finding it. And then we had this breakthrough in Hawaii, when I met a guy named Glenn Wheaton, who was a special forces solider. I knew bits and pieces of what was going on, and that was it. But Glenn was part of this unit that he called the Jedi. I began asking him about it, and he said Level 1 is when the solider learns to eat nuts and grains for a month. Level 2 was invisibility. Now that’s a giant leap. I asked if he meant actual invisibility and he said, “Yes, but eventually we adapted it to simply be a way of not being seen.” I asked if he meant camouflage, and he said “No.” And Level 3 was learning to stop the heart of a goat. I asked, “Just by wanting it to stop?” And he said, “Yep.”

So I immediately wanted to track down everyone involved in this, and that’s what I did for another year or two.

**Paste**_: Was that the dam breaking, and the stories began to flow?
Ronson: Yeah, and there was another dam breaking just before that with a CIA psychologist named Ray Hymanrhyman.html, who’d been brought in to assess some of the psychics. I asked if there anything I should know, he said, there was a guy called (Major General Albert) Stubblebine and a guy called (Jim) Channon (author of First Earth Battalion manual) who had some crazy ideas. So from there I had these names. That was a breakthrough.

Paste: Did you begin to believe in the psychological power of these guys?
Ronson: No, I never did. In some ways I wish I’d been able to. Maybe the book would’ve gone into some strange different direction. But I was always certain—or pretty certain—that none of it was true. But, still, it was on my mind. One of the psychics had told me that the London Zoo would get blown up by a bomb. She could feel the elephants screaming in agony. I went to London Zoo shortly afterwards with my son and I suddenly felt really sorrowful—like I was the only person who knew. But then I realized it couldn’t be true; all the elephants at London Zoo had been moved three years earlier to a wildlife park about 50 miles outside of London. That burst that bubble for me.

Paste: A lot of your work deals with people on the fringe of society. What draws you to your subjects?
Ronson: When I find one of these stories, an engaging, absurd, unexpected, on the fringe story, I feel really alive. When I’m doing a more mainstream story, I’m a bit bored. Maybe I’m a bit nuts myself, and I connect with these people, or maybe it just so happens that these catch 22-type stories are just the ones that appeal to me. They always have to have a more serious resonance—not a bunch of crazy people being crazy, which never makes a good story. But if it’s a crazy story with a serious resonance—which is totally The Men Who Stare at Goats—then it’s perfect.

Paste: As a writer who tries to capture the weird and fantastic, how do you balance immersing yourself in your subjects and being an observer?
Ronson: That’s the great challenge. I sometimes think the perfect way of doing that is when you’re in the information gathering process, allow yourself to be immersed in it, to not know what’s true, to get paranoid and weird. And then when you sit down to write, you regain your rationality and think objectively. I’ve been through the whole process a few times now—I know to enjoy the confusion.

Paste: Even when you’re gathering information, isn’t there still a sense that you’re a writer with these people, but you’re not of these people? Do you ever feel like you could become your subjects?
Ronson: It’s happened a couple of times. In my first book Them, I was investigating a secret society. They started following me, and they set henchmen on me that would chase me all around Portugal, following me into my hotel room. I totally freaked out, and was able to see the world through the group’s mad paranoia. I really hated the whole thing. But you’re right—the perfect thing is to be both at once. It’s hard, but it’s a good hard. A good challenge.

Paste: Do you think there’s something in a writer that separates himself from his subjects innately, even if you wanted to be who you are writing about?
Ronson: When I was a kid, I saw a bit of news footage of a cameraman filming his own death. He filmed a guy picking up a gun, then pointing the gun at the camera and shooting. And the cameraman died. All us writers could be the cameraman. We think we’re in a separate bubble—and it’s nice to be on this side of the story—but we can be in danger.

Paste: Do you have any projects in the works right now that you can tell me about?
Ronson: Well…not really. Peter and I wrote a screenplay, a comedy called Frank. We haven’t found a director yet. It’s a comedy about the music industry. I think it’s really good. If any of your readers happen to be A-list movie directors…

Paste: We’ll definitely send out a memo. And good luck this weekend!
Ronson: Oh, yeah! Obviously I’m going to try to find the first weekend box office. But I’ve no idea what’s good and what’s not good. If they say it made a million pounds, I’d be happy, I’d say wow. I’m so un-Hollywood I have no idea what’s a lot of money. I’m sure if it made a million pounds someone would tell me that it’s horrible.

Paste: Well then find out the number, but don’t let anyone tell you it’s good or bad. I’m sure it’ll sound better that way.
Ronson: Exactly—a million pounds!