Sixth-sense soldiery

Jeff Bridges and Jon Ronson on their real-life psychic spy caper The Men Who Stare at Goats

WEIRDO WARRIOR: Bridges

A secret U.S. military program where soldiers were taught to harness their latent psychic powers, to walk through walls, to use their minds to kill people (and goats), to basically adapt the tenets of the ’70s New Age movement to warfare, sounds like the stuff either of satire or a particularly ridiculous thriller. In Grant Heslov’s new film, The Men Who Stare at Goats, it’s both of those things—but it’s also, incredibly, based on real events.

Loosely adapted from the non-fiction book of the same title by U.K. journalist Jon Ronson, Goats stars Ewan McGregor as an American newspaperman who hits on the story of his career when he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), an intense dude who claims to have been a “remote viewer,” or psychic spy, in a top-secret initiative called the New Earth Army, conceived and run by the Jedi-like Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). Through a kooky series of events, McGregor finds himself in the Iraqi desert with Clooney, searching for his lost master.

A disclaimer at the beginning of the film announces “More of this is true than you would believe.” Though some of it is clearly fictionalized, Ronson, speaking to the Mirror at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, says, “Probably about 70 per cent of it is true! Even a lot of the present-day stuff is true. I mean, I didn’t go to Iraq but a lot of the stuff that happens between Ewan and George in the movie did happen to me.”

“It all had the government’s stamp of approval—isn’t that wild?” says Bridges, who brings a chilled-out enlightened—and pretty hilarious—vibe to his portrayal of Django. If there’s an obvious point of comparison in his career to this performance, it’s definitely The Big Lebowski’s the Dude. “I think a lot of people see a relationship between Django and the Dude,” Bridges says, broaching the topic himself. “I can see it, but that’s not how I worked on the character or anything. I didn’t say ‘How would The Dude do this?’ I didn’t think of it in those terms.”

SKEPTICS AND SPOON-BENDERS

Ronson originally stumbled across the story through a bizarre series of coincidental meetings. The first was, weirdly enough, with self-proclaimed psychic and alleged spoon-bender Uri Geller. “Just after 9/11, I met Uri Geller because I’d heard that he had claimed to be a secret psychic spy working for the CIA. So I thought it would be quite fun to talk to him about it. But rather than him boasting about it, he said ‘It’s not true.’ And I kind of went, well, ‘But you told the Daily Mirror that you worked for like 10 years for the CIA!’ He says, ‘Not true.’ So I thought it was a bit odd. And then suddenly he took off his glasses and said ‘If you repeat what I’m about to tell you, I will deny it.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ And he said, ‘I have been reactivated.’ Which is a line that Clooney actually uses in the movie! He said ‘Yes. The man who reactivated me, I will tell you nothing about him except his name is Ron.’ And that was it! So that was my first inkling.”

Later, in a conversation with professional skeptic and debunker Ray Hyman (who was hired in the ’90s to assess the program), Ronson came across the names of Jim Channon (the basis for the Bridges character) and Major General Albert Stubblebine, who sincerely believed he could walk through walls. All of them seem to share a sort of serene self-confidence in their strange ideas. “General Stubblebine turned to me at one point and said, ‘I just don’t know why I never managed to master walking through walls. It’s a disappointment,’ he said,” says Ronson, laughing. “And Jim Channon was very much like that. When you meet the various people that George Clooney’s character is based on, they’re all quite similar, actually. And they’re all the same. They’re all quite serene and still believe it’s all possible.

“Weirdly, the most rational person in the whole story is Jim Channon. He’s the one person who kind of knew that it wasn’t possible to walk through walls. He was putting these ideas out there, but he kind of knew it wasn’t possible. His philosophy was that if you try and do something unbelievable, something amazing might happen. So he was kind of a rationalist. But all the generals and colonels who were inspired by his ideas were kind of literal-minded, so when Jim said try and walk through your wall, they really did!”

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
OPENS THIS FRIDAY, NOV. 6