March 3, 2025 • 28 mins
Mike White engages in a conversation with filmmaker Elijah Sullivan about his 2024 documentary, The Hole Story. The film investigates the mysterious appearance of a 60-foot man-made hole on California's Mount Shasta in 2009, which sparked over a decade of speculation and intrigue.
Elijah explores the challenges of documenting such an enigmatic subject, the process of gathering diverse perspectives, and the broader implications of the public's captivation with mysteries. They also discuss Sullivan's approach to storytelling and his experiences filming on location at Mount Shasta.
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Elijah explores the challenges of documenting such an enigmatic subject, the process of gathering diverse perspectives, and the broader implications of the public's captivation with mysteries. They also discuss Sullivan's approach to storytelling and his experiences filming on location at Mount Shasta.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.
Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh jis boat. It's showtime. People pay good money to
see this movie.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas,
hot popcorn in no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Cut it off. The whole to me was a woitch hunt,
(00:45):
and it was a joke. You know, it's a cliche,
mind blowing, but that's what it was. I said, that's
the damnedest.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Thing I've ever seen in my forest service career.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I've never seen anything like that. What in the world is.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Going on.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
When you start out on any case, you don't know
where you're going to wind up or if you're going
to solve it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Had to do it the mountain.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
It's Mount Shasta. You can't keep anything a secret in
Mount Shasta.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Dude, you're famous, famous.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The FBI is here, the US Pharmas Service are here.
They want to talk to you about digging a hole.
They kind of think you did it.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They were trying to plan something like what's going on?
Like if I got myself into something, what happens when
we find it?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Whoever was digging this whole, whatever reason they might have had,
all of this crazy surrounding all of the theories. That's
all part of it. And when people don't have, you know,
any facts to work from, you know that just slaves
a hole that can be filled in with anything.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
On this episode, I'm talking with Elijah Sullivan. He is
the writer, director, producer of The Whole Story That's hol E.
It is a documentary about a hole, a giant hole
that was found right by Mount Shasta. We talk a
lot about Mount Shasta and the atmosphere around that place,
(02:45):
as well as this whole and how he came to
make a documentary his first feature length film, and had
a wonderful time watching it. I believe that you might
be able to see it at the slam Dance Channel
site slam Dance channel dot com. But yeah, definitely track
it down and check it out. I think you will
have a great time. Thanks so much for listening, and
(03:07):
I hope you enjoyed the interview. Tell me a little
bit about you before you even got into filmmaking, or
how did you decide to get into filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh, I'm one of those folks who knew I wanted
to do this when I was maybe fourteen something like that.
I'd always been the creative create, not in a self
congratulatory way, but like I was always interested in the arts,
and it was more like the dabbling went in the
other direction, like maybe I should try something practical, and
(03:36):
kept getting detoured and would have to come back and
be like, no, I'm not good at anything else. I
don't want to anything else. In fact, when I first
heard about this specific story, my initial instinct around it,
as silly as it sounds, was maybe I could turn
this into a newspaper article and get a job at
the paper, because at the time I was trying to
do journalism. How long ago was that that you heard
(03:59):
about this, Oh, it was twenty twelve, a little bit ago.
It was a little bit ago. It took a long
time to get the I thought when I decided to
make this into a documentary, I thought, this takes place
literally up the street from my house. It's a community
of thirty five hundred people. I know some of the
people involved already. This shouldn't take too long.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Famous last words, all right, So when did you decide, Okay,
I am going to make this a movie. I'm going
to make this a documentary.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
It was probably a couple of years later, I think,
when I started digging into asking around, assuming that it
would be easy to solve this mystery, and meeting some
initial resistance. Then I went out, does that mean that
the craziest version of this story that I heard is true?
Is that why people aren't hesitant to speak about it?
(04:49):
And it took a couple of years and then I'm
not sure which year this was, I imagine it was
maybe twenty fifteen. I distinctly remember a specific day where
I was lying in bed for just waking up thinking
about that it was a really good story and the
folks who were telling me that I should make a
documentary about it were correct? And why was I hesitating
(05:11):
to make it myself? Because when I thought about anybody
else making it, I was not only a little bit jealous,
but I went, they're gonna mess it up. I may
not know how to make a movie yet, but I've
seen all of that. Whenever Mount Shasta turns up in media,
it's always something like ancient Aliens or something like that,
which is really fun, but it's one specific take on
(05:32):
the subject. And I knew I wanted to see something
that was a different take. Mount shast has been in
the media and various different TV shows and books, and
it has its own little niche in pop culture, and
it's usually presented in one of two ways. One is
what I would call overly credulous things like ancient aliens,
(05:53):
where every single theory is true, all the most bizarre stuff,
Bigfoot is abducting and eating people, like the crazy, most
sensationalistic stuff. And also just basically overcredulously repeating things that
I would consider material out of like cult propaganda Pamphletskay,
maybe we shouldn't promote that too loudly, because I see
(06:14):
where that pipeline ends. When I bump into these people
on the street. I'm all her people practicing any religion
they want. But I think when it comes to this
specific type of cultural scenario we have in Mount Shasta,
I would put a buyableware thing, a couple stuff just
to be like, just see, you know these folks over here,
These people are pretty nice. There's a couple of things
(06:35):
you might want to know about these people. And then
the other end of the spectrum is the people who
are maybe excessively incredulous, where they say, oh, look, people
with funny hats and point and laugh, and it's low
hanging fruit of laughing at people for their spiritual beliefs
and not taking them seriously as human beings and just
taking that one dimensional approach. Whereas I grew up around
(06:56):
these folks, and I know that a lot of the
time is just totally regular people. I'd be working at
a video store and chatting with them, and they might
be somebody's parents, and you might not realize that they're
into something. Lou and they're lovely folks and they don't
come across as crazy, and it's not helpful to say, oh,
the reason that somebody ends up in a cult is
because they already like funny hats. That's not insightful, that's
(07:19):
not interesting, that's not humanistic at all. Growing up in
that situation, I had parents who were called to the
mountain quote unquote spiritually, which was something that I obviously
love my parents, and I don't consider them crazy. So
it's always been an open question to me, like, why
is what's going on? I'm agnostic myself, so I never understood,
(07:42):
and so I think I've always been interested in trying
to find a story to tell that would include some
of these elements where it's in the background of this documentary.
Is it is any of this real? And to what degree?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I'm obviously not from northern California. So what is it
about this particular place? Is that the mountain itself? Is
that the area itself? What is it that attracts this
attention and has these groups spring up around it?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
There are probably a few different answers that you could
get to that question. The answer that locals would give
is that it's the mountain itself is a spiritual place,
has a shangri law kind of atmosphere. It's been chosen
as a place of residence for spiritual beings for thousands
of years, and they are actively putting their tendrils out
(08:31):
and drawing spiritual people there to create a community. And
so people feel called to the mountain and feel like
it's a spiritual place where they're meant to gather. And
so even though it's a small community, there's a pretty
large contingent of folks there who are there for spiritual
purposes and are building a community. It's not all one
spiritual group, it's it's a cluster of many similar groups
(08:55):
with overlapping beliefs. But there's a huge amount of diversity
inside of it. Answer might be because it's a destination
already for outdoor activities. It's a popular ski destination. Skiing's
amazing apparently ilt ski, and it's a beautiful, a very
striking mountain. You do feel a sense of awe when
(09:17):
you're standing in front of it. It can immediately put you
in a maybe a receptive state to think that maybe
something special is happening here because it's so imposing visually,
and I imagine that has something to do with it
as well. And I think the last answer would be
because some of those things already had some traction. It
gets fed a lot by the Chamber of commerce, anybody
(09:40):
looking to drum up tourism and people. When the logging
and mining industries dried up around there, people had to
turn to something, so they turned to tourism and then
also spiritual tourism, where it's turned into oh, you want
to come meet the descended bastards who live in the mountain.
I can take you to a spot where you can
try to find one of the entrances to the mountain
(10:01):
and we'll stand there and meditate. And it's three hundred dollars.
Some people are just hustling to make some money. Some
can ride that line where they're doing it and keep
one foot in spirituality and being an ethical person and
getting permits and things like that. Some folks are pretty firebleware.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So walk me through your process when you decide, Okay,
this is going to be my project. I'm going to
make this documentary because you go down a lot of paths,
and I just want to know, like, how do you
mentally prepare for that to how do you pursue these things?
Or do you say this is the path I'm going
to go down. You start down that and then suddenly
you start to veer off this.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Story And kind of thought about it for a little while.
I realized, this is a through line, more of a
through line than if I just made a documentary about
the people who live here. Right then, I have no
cohesion at all. I could get lost going down all
the different rabbit holes. So I knew I had this mystery.
We found a giant hole on Mount Shasta. It was
dug by hand. Somebody was looking for something. Is this
(11:01):
a story of obsession? Is this something sinister with somebody
looking for something specific for nefarious reasons, was this just
a garden variety mining fraud thing, So that at least
narrowed down the Mount Shasta, all the different colors of
what was going on there down to a specific track
that I could go down, or at least I narrowed
down the tracks that I could go down. But then
(11:23):
when it came to making the movie myself, I didn't
have any money. I was the director, as a writer,
as a producer. I was doing the research and the
editing and most of the cinematography and things like that.
I honestly was going in every direction at once. And
because I had never made a movie any larger than
a several minute long experimental short, I did everything wrong
(11:44):
the first time, and I probably did everything wrong the
second and third, and fourth and fifth time. There are
shots in that movie. A lot of the interviews are
my second take at at interviewing that person, and there
are shots in that movie that took you know. I
just want to get a specific lenticular cloud that looks
like a UFO that appears near Mount Shast and that's
one of the things that kind of ties the UFO
(12:06):
culture into the Mount Shasta culture. I spent years waiting
for the perfect lenticular cloud. There are shots in the
movie where I spent three days just making sure that
I had the right lens on the camera, with the
track laid in the right place, and the light the
sunlight would fall right on the trail that I needed
people's eyes to go to, and I just waited. And
(12:28):
sometimes I had to wait a long time for interviews.
There was one interview in the film that took seven
years to get. I just had to wait, And so
in the meantime, I would I just had a long
to do list, and I would go, which one of
these can I do today? And I'd go all the
way down the list until I ran out of things
to do, phone calls, to make emails, to write, And
then if there was still any daylight left, I'd be like,
(12:48):
the light's nice, it's Karen's Malick. This in just in
the last forty five minutes of each day. When the
light is nice, go get two shots. And what was
it twenty four or something when I maybe shot the
last footage in the fall, Oh my goodness. It was
a long process.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
And you're working a full time job at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I ticket, Oh, yeah, No. There were times when I
was working five jobs at one point. I don't think
I got very much done for about thirteen months because
I was running a public access television studio. When I started,
I was working at a video store for the first
two years as a video store clerk, and that was
actually very helpful. I actually made a lot of connections,
found a lot of people through that.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I don't want to be too nerdy, but there are
two shots that I want to talk about in particular,
or two types of things, the Russhot test, the mirroring
of things. Were you doing that in camera or was
that all post Oh I.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Wish I had done that in camera. That would have
been fun to have done in camera. I honestly hadn't
thought of it at first. I knew that was an
element of the story, but I was dealing with it
more like coming from the direction of I knew that
people were already psychologically projecting onto the mountain, that people
were obviously projecting a lot of positive things onto the mountain, right, spirituality,
things like that, And then I thought, with the whole
(14:07):
but it's out of balance where people mostly talk about
the fun, beautiful, spiritual, groovy things about the mountain and
not the dark sides. So then we have this hole
where people started projecting onto that, and it tended to
be all of the darker things about the mountain that
you know, like the four service people saying, ah, I
think this might be mining fraud, or somebody being like,
I think that this was like a cult up to
(14:29):
something creepy, and I went, okay, so we're going to
get both by just examining this image. But then one
of my friends said, with like a rorshack test you've
got and I said, yeah, that came up in interviews,
but I cut it and he said why did you
cut it? And I said I didn't want to be
too on the nose. I just wanted to let it
be that he said, you got to put a scene
in there. Said okay, and I thought about it, and
(14:51):
at some point I came up with the idea of
mirroring one shot and it was pretty odd, honestly, pretty
simple effect that I just dragged and dropped on it
and devincu resolved. That's another thing. I edited this on
a twenty thirteen Mac with Devinci Resolve fifteen the free version.
I had my hands tied in a lot of ways
(15:12):
on this project, but Luckily it had this effect on it,
and I went, oh, that's cool, and then I get
a few shots that way. It probably took about forty
five minutes to do that. That's one of the only
scenes in the movie that maybe I did one version
of it in forty five minutes and then didn't change.
I went okay, And I actually still debated putting that
in the movie. I still go, is this two on
the nose? But everybody responds to it so well.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I totally responded to it. I thought I was great,
and I don't think that you overuse it. I think
it's just a nice spice that you throw in there
at the right time.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's what I tried for. Great. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
The other thing, obviously, this movie is called The Whole Story,
so you're going to be thinking about that whole the
whole time. Sorry for the pun, but how do you
get the shots of the whole? They talk at the
very beginning about the whole being filled in? So how
do you get these shots? How are you doing that? Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, so none of those. It's too bad. I was
never able to photograph it because, as you say, it
got filled in within a few weeks or months, depending
on who you ask, And I was never able to
photograph it myself, so everything in the film is based
on a photograph that somebody took, and I had to
just get creative with putting pain and zooms and things
on things. As much as I like experimental films and
(16:22):
stuff like that, I went back to nuts and bolts
ken burns, how does he get so much emotion out
of an old photograph with a little bit of painting
and zooming and some voiceover and some music, and just
being like, I just need to keep this, keep our
eye moving, keep the mesmerism going, keep the interest going.
And I've gotten that note a couple of times from folks.
(16:44):
You didn't realize that none of those were video, and
I went, oh wow, I have no objectivity left on
this movie. I've been editing it so long, and of
course it's hard to be objective in any situation ever anyway,
if not impossible, And at this point, I'm just shocked
that anybody says something like that. I still cringe when
I see those.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
I bought into it one hundred percent of Climb and Cinker,
So yeah, I thought that was a recreation of some
sort or some sort of double plane where it's here's
the bottom of the hole, and here's the time that
you were doing this. In some sort of weird post effect,
I'm like, yeah, and I'm looking at this stuff in
the hole and thinking about what the scale of it is.
(17:23):
Because they talk about how it looked like a bucket
that was actually this huge garbage can. I'm like, okay, yeah, no,
I bought into it. And I can really see your
experimental film background in so much of it, like the
Worshock test, but really even just those moments of quiet
where you're looking at the wildflowers and talking about how
long it takes for the wildflowers to come back, and
(17:43):
just it's such a beautifully shot film.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I really spent a
long time on it. It was a dream project in
so many ways of that it really tied into something
like I said that I've been deeply interested in my
entire life. Even though I'm not in the film, it's
a very personal movie for me, and I got to
do things like what I used to do when I
was a kid, would go out with a camera and
just photograph things. It was the subject of what I loved,
(18:09):
my community and the area, I could spend so much
time in nature, and I could take my time with
the editing. I just had such a great time with
it in so many ways. And then of course the story.
Stories like this don't come along very often for me.
It was like I knew I was hooked, and everybody
I talked to about it immediately got hooked. Every time
they had asked me, what's up with the whole of
you found any more information? Is that people actually want
(18:30):
to see this, and nobody's ever wanted to see one
of my movies before.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
When you do a good job of leading us down
a path and then pulling the rug out, and then
leading us down another path and doing the same thing,
and it was done so masterfully that I was not
angry at you. I was just like, oh, he got
me again. All right, now let's do another thing. And
you're presenting all of these ideas like this could be
true or this, and I just I love that that.
(18:56):
Too many times Hollywood movies are just like, no, you
always need to find the truth. Maybe in the last
five minutes, we'll do a little twist and show you
who Kaiser show as I really was. But no, I
love that I can hold different ideas in my head.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I wasn't. I didn't want to do the usual
suspects approach. But one film that I really studied, like
literally shot by shot, was Picnicked Hanging Rock. It's a
beautiful story about a mystery at a geological location, and
I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but I
really studied how much story could they create with a
minimum amount of exposition and execute an ending that should
(19:33):
theoretically really upset people, but it is really emotionally satisfying.
I love that film so much. That was probably one
of the ones that was the most influenced by I.
Not that I could come anywhere close to that film, but.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Obviously you don't have the same cinematographer as Peter Weird
did or anything. But it's you out there with the
camera alone. Rather than I would not even ask you
about your crew because I imagine it's you, it was me.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Most of the time. I did have help. My brother
did the score. My friend Audie Carlisle, who's a wonderful
documentary filmmaker her self, helped me with a few of
the interviews. I think about twenty minutes of the film
is her, but it's mostly the talking head stuff. But
that's great because I could delegate some of those interviews
in there. Like the guy who's most of the last
thirty minutes of the film. I had to shoot that
(20:20):
an hour and a half as he was passing through town,
and all the stuff in the hotel room that was
done that night, all the stuff with him up on
the mountain that was in like forty five minutes after
the interviews. It took twelve thirteen years to make the movie,
but there's like a twenty something minute section of the
movie that was shot in twenty two hours.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Was he the one that you had to wait all
those years to get?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
No, he found me.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I was about to give up on finding one of
the diggers, and he popped up in my chat while
I was chatting with somebody saying I think I'm about
to give up, and this other chat pops up and
this guy says, I have a story to tell you.
And then even greater luck because he had moved away.
He was passing through town like the next spring, and
I had a couple hours with him. I got lucky.
If so many things hadn't gone perfectly, I would not
(21:04):
be here. I pinched myself every day.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Well, and it's just so remarkably to me that this
is your first feature length film and that you're in
slam Dance, and it's just it's such a compelling and
beautifully shot. I'm sorry I keep saying that, but it
just looks so good, and like I said, it just
keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Thank you so much. Yeah, I did want to make
it a little bit accessible this time, and I was
worried about, like you said, the rug polls, but then
I went, that's what happens to each thing, even if
I want, I couldn't answer those if I wanted to,
so I just had to make sure that it was
of a piece of where I said, this is built
into the story we're gonna And people kept trying to
talk me into intercutting things, and I said, the approach
(21:46):
of getting into somebody's story and forgetting that we left
the last thing dangling and getting sucked into their story
and then getting spat out the other end, going wait
a minute, what and then going into the next thing,
and trying to just get people into one person headspace
one after the other and then hope that it added
up to more than the some of his parts at
the end.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Have you seen this with an audience yet?
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I showed it to a local film festival in Sisku County,
so they're just a handful of people in there, none
of whom I think heard about this. And this is
before I knew I'd gotten into slam dance. Otherwise I
might have waited for him premier status. Although it was
nice to show it for the first time in the county,
and I don't think they knew what they were about
to see, and they had a lot of questions. P
(22:33):
I'm really curious to play it in the city of
Mount Shasta. I played it about forty five minutes away.
I'm really curious to see how this will play it
to an audience in Mount Shasta. Am I gonna have
to what's the film? Was it a Boonwell film or
win war film? Where he he was like sticking rocks
in his pockets as he went in there and somebody
tried to light the screen on fire. I hope it's
not one of those, but there are gonna be some
(22:53):
people who are upset. I think they might be.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Upset, but that I'm also curious to hear if you
get follow up as far as people saying I know
the real story and coming up to you afterwards.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Even on the day that I was as I was
sitting there exporting the movie for slam Dance, somebody slimmed
to my DMS and said, hey, I know the people
who dug the hole and gave me a lot of
information that nobody should have known unless they were an insider.
But then a completely different explanation of who did it
or why, And they were very much these people have
(23:24):
guns and they're serious and you need to be careful.
And she was like, I haven't shown this anybody, right,
And I'm like, I'm sporting to slam Dance. I mean,
he's screaming this in LA for the Oh I hope
it's not like the Russian mob or something.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, it's the people that were taking those dinosaur eggs
out of the hole.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Right, Yeah, that's all it was. They were just some
it's in or something.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I did their call John Hammond, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, oh, I hope. So those would be the cuddliest
people that actually know. I think the people who did
this probably, I don't think they were a bunch of
crazy Ukrainians with machine guns?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Who did it?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That was like? Or no? Checkloads of Awkians? Anyway, I've
lost count of how many different versions of the story
that I've heard and how many different nightmares I've had
about it.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Is there a good place for people to keep up
with the movie online so we can actually hear if
it's going to play other places or once it comes
out on streaming or Blu ray or any of that.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram and on Facebook
and things like that. I'm not super active on social media,
but I'm trying to learn.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I am so excited for you to have your premiere,
and I hope that other people click with this movie
as much as I did. And I really appreciate you
sending this my way.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Oh really, I thank you so much for saying that.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Of course, do you have your next project picked out?
Any other mysteries you're going to tackle?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Am I ever going to find another mystery like this?
I'm worried that I just peaked. I do have other ideas.
I do have other stuff kicking around, a couple of
feature dok ideas and a couple of narrative features. I
guess it's going to be a bake off, but am
I ever going to find another thing that is obsessed
about with this? I feel like I'm gonna go into
withdrawal when this is over.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Elijah, thank you so much for your time. This is
great connecting with you.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Likewise, Thank you so much. Thanks, thanks stops t E
(28:10):
exactly
Oh jis boat. It's showtime. People pay good money to
see this movie.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas,
hot popcorn in no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Cut it off. The whole to me was a woitch hunt,
(00:45):
and it was a joke. You know, it's a cliche,
mind blowing, but that's what it was. I said, that's
the damnedest.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Thing I've ever seen in my forest service career.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I've never seen anything like that. What in the world is.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Going on.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
When you start out on any case, you don't know
where you're going to wind up or if you're going
to solve it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Had to do it the mountain.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
It's Mount Shasta. You can't keep anything a secret in
Mount Shasta.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Dude, you're famous, famous.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The FBI is here, the US Pharmas Service are here.
They want to talk to you about digging a hole.
They kind of think you did it.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They were trying to plan something like what's going on?
Like if I got myself into something, what happens when
we find it?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Whoever was digging this whole, whatever reason they might have had,
all of this crazy surrounding all of the theories. That's
all part of it. And when people don't have, you know,
any facts to work from, you know that just slaves
a hole that can be filled in with anything.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
On this episode, I'm talking with Elijah Sullivan. He is
the writer, director, producer of The Whole Story That's hol E.
It is a documentary about a hole, a giant hole
that was found right by Mount Shasta. We talk a
lot about Mount Shasta and the atmosphere around that place,
(02:45):
as well as this whole and how he came to
make a documentary his first feature length film, and had
a wonderful time watching it. I believe that you might
be able to see it at the slam Dance Channel
site slam Dance channel dot com. But yeah, definitely track
it down and check it out. I think you will
have a great time. Thanks so much for listening, and
(03:07):
I hope you enjoyed the interview. Tell me a little
bit about you before you even got into filmmaking, or
how did you decide to get into filmmaking.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh, I'm one of those folks who knew I wanted
to do this when I was maybe fourteen something like that.
I'd always been the creative create, not in a self
congratulatory way, but like I was always interested in the arts,
and it was more like the dabbling went in the
other direction, like maybe I should try something practical, and
(03:36):
kept getting detoured and would have to come back and
be like, no, I'm not good at anything else. I
don't want to anything else. In fact, when I first
heard about this specific story, my initial instinct around it,
as silly as it sounds, was maybe I could turn
this into a newspaper article and get a job at
the paper, because at the time I was trying to
do journalism. How long ago was that that you heard
(03:59):
about this, Oh, it was twenty twelve, a little bit ago.
It was a little bit ago. It took a long
time to get the I thought when I decided to
make this into a documentary, I thought, this takes place
literally up the street from my house. It's a community
of thirty five hundred people. I know some of the
people involved already. This shouldn't take too long.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Famous last words, all right, So when did you decide, Okay,
I am going to make this a movie. I'm going
to make this a documentary.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
It was probably a couple of years later, I think,
when I started digging into asking around, assuming that it
would be easy to solve this mystery, and meeting some
initial resistance. Then I went out, does that mean that
the craziest version of this story that I heard is true?
Is that why people aren't hesitant to speak about it?
(04:49):
And it took a couple of years and then I'm
not sure which year this was, I imagine it was
maybe twenty fifteen. I distinctly remember a specific day where
I was lying in bed for just waking up thinking
about that it was a really good story and the
folks who were telling me that I should make a
documentary about it were correct? And why was I hesitating
(05:11):
to make it myself? Because when I thought about anybody
else making it, I was not only a little bit jealous,
but I went, they're gonna mess it up. I may
not know how to make a movie yet, but I've
seen all of that. Whenever Mount Shasta turns up in media,
it's always something like ancient Aliens or something like that,
which is really fun, but it's one specific take on
(05:32):
the subject. And I knew I wanted to see something
that was a different take. Mount shast has been in
the media and various different TV shows and books, and
it has its own little niche in pop culture, and
it's usually presented in one of two ways. One is
what I would call overly credulous things like ancient aliens,
(05:53):
where every single theory is true, all the most bizarre stuff,
Bigfoot is abducting and eating people, like the crazy, most
sensationalistic stuff. And also just basically overcredulously repeating things that
I would consider material out of like cult propaganda Pamphletskay,
maybe we shouldn't promote that too loudly, because I see
(06:14):
where that pipeline ends. When I bump into these people
on the street. I'm all her people practicing any religion
they want. But I think when it comes to this
specific type of cultural scenario we have in Mount Shasta,
I would put a buyableware thing, a couple stuff just
to be like, just see, you know these folks over here,
These people are pretty nice. There's a couple of things
(06:35):
you might want to know about these people. And then
the other end of the spectrum is the people who
are maybe excessively incredulous, where they say, oh, look, people
with funny hats and point and laugh, and it's low
hanging fruit of laughing at people for their spiritual beliefs
and not taking them seriously as human beings and just
taking that one dimensional approach. Whereas I grew up around
(06:56):
these folks, and I know that a lot of the
time is just totally regular people. I'd be working at
a video store and chatting with them, and they might
be somebody's parents, and you might not realize that they're
into something. Lou and they're lovely folks and they don't
come across as crazy, and it's not helpful to say, oh,
the reason that somebody ends up in a cult is
because they already like funny hats. That's not insightful, that's
(07:19):
not interesting, that's not humanistic at all. Growing up in
that situation, I had parents who were called to the
mountain quote unquote spiritually, which was something that I obviously
love my parents, and I don't consider them crazy. So
it's always been an open question to me, like, why
is what's going on? I'm agnostic myself, so I never understood,
(07:42):
and so I think I've always been interested in trying
to find a story to tell that would include some
of these elements where it's in the background of this documentary.
Is it is any of this real? And to what degree?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I'm obviously not from northern California. So what is it
about this particular place? Is that the mountain itself? Is
that the area itself? What is it that attracts this
attention and has these groups spring up around it?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
There are probably a few different answers that you could
get to that question. The answer that locals would give
is that it's the mountain itself is a spiritual place,
has a shangri law kind of atmosphere. It's been chosen
as a place of residence for spiritual beings for thousands
of years, and they are actively putting their tendrils out
(08:31):
and drawing spiritual people there to create a community. And
so people feel called to the mountain and feel like
it's a spiritual place where they're meant to gather. And
so even though it's a small community, there's a pretty
large contingent of folks there who are there for spiritual
purposes and are building a community. It's not all one
spiritual group, it's it's a cluster of many similar groups
(08:55):
with overlapping beliefs. But there's a huge amount of diversity
inside of it. Answer might be because it's a destination
already for outdoor activities. It's a popular ski destination. Skiing's
amazing apparently ilt ski, and it's a beautiful, a very
striking mountain. You do feel a sense of awe when
(09:17):
you're standing in front of it. It can immediately put you
in a maybe a receptive state to think that maybe
something special is happening here because it's so imposing visually,
and I imagine that has something to do with it
as well. And I think the last answer would be
because some of those things already had some traction. It
gets fed a lot by the Chamber of commerce, anybody
(09:40):
looking to drum up tourism and people. When the logging
and mining industries dried up around there, people had to
turn to something, so they turned to tourism and then
also spiritual tourism, where it's turned into oh, you want
to come meet the descended bastards who live in the mountain.
I can take you to a spot where you can
try to find one of the entrances to the mountain
(10:01):
and we'll stand there and meditate. And it's three hundred dollars.
Some people are just hustling to make some money. Some
can ride that line where they're doing it and keep
one foot in spirituality and being an ethical person and
getting permits and things like that. Some folks are pretty firebleware.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So walk me through your process when you decide, Okay,
this is going to be my project. I'm going to
make this documentary because you go down a lot of paths,
and I just want to know, like, how do you
mentally prepare for that to how do you pursue these things?
Or do you say this is the path I'm going
to go down. You start down that and then suddenly
you start to veer off this.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Story And kind of thought about it for a little while.
I realized, this is a through line, more of a
through line than if I just made a documentary about
the people who live here. Right then, I have no
cohesion at all. I could get lost going down all
the different rabbit holes. So I knew I had this mystery.
We found a giant hole on Mount Shasta. It was
dug by hand. Somebody was looking for something. Is this
(11:01):
a story of obsession? Is this something sinister with somebody
looking for something specific for nefarious reasons, was this just
a garden variety mining fraud thing, So that at least
narrowed down the Mount Shasta, all the different colors of
what was going on there down to a specific track
that I could go down, or at least I narrowed
down the tracks that I could go down. But then
(11:23):
when it came to making the movie myself, I didn't
have any money. I was the director, as a writer,
as a producer. I was doing the research and the
editing and most of the cinematography and things like that.
I honestly was going in every direction at once. And
because I had never made a movie any larger than
a several minute long experimental short, I did everything wrong
(11:44):
the first time, and I probably did everything wrong the
second and third, and fourth and fifth time. There are
shots in that movie. A lot of the interviews are
my second take at at interviewing that person, and there
are shots in that movie that took you know. I
just want to get a specific lenticular cloud that looks
like a UFO that appears near Mount Shast and that's
one of the things that kind of ties the UFO
(12:06):
culture into the Mount Shasta culture. I spent years waiting
for the perfect lenticular cloud. There are shots in the
movie where I spent three days just making sure that
I had the right lens on the camera, with the
track laid in the right place, and the light the
sunlight would fall right on the trail that I needed
people's eyes to go to, and I just waited. And
(12:28):
sometimes I had to wait a long time for interviews.
There was one interview in the film that took seven
years to get. I just had to wait, And so
in the meantime, I would I just had a long
to do list, and I would go, which one of
these can I do today? And I'd go all the
way down the list until I ran out of things
to do, phone calls, to make emails, to write, And
then if there was still any daylight left, I'd be like,
(12:48):
the light's nice, it's Karen's Malick. This in just in
the last forty five minutes of each day. When the
light is nice, go get two shots. And what was
it twenty four or something when I maybe shot the
last footage in the fall, Oh my goodness. It was
a long process.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
And you're working a full time job at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I ticket, Oh, yeah, No. There were times when I
was working five jobs at one point. I don't think
I got very much done for about thirteen months because
I was running a public access television studio. When I started,
I was working at a video store for the first
two years as a video store clerk, and that was
actually very helpful. I actually made a lot of connections,
found a lot of people through that.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I don't want to be too nerdy, but there are
two shots that I want to talk about in particular,
or two types of things, the Russhot test, the mirroring
of things. Were you doing that in camera or was
that all post Oh I.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Wish I had done that in camera. That would have
been fun to have done in camera. I honestly hadn't
thought of it at first. I knew that was an
element of the story, but I was dealing with it
more like coming from the direction of I knew that
people were already psychologically projecting onto the mountain, that people
were obviously projecting a lot of positive things onto the mountain, right, spirituality,
things like that, And then I thought, with the whole
(14:07):
but it's out of balance where people mostly talk about
the fun, beautiful, spiritual, groovy things about the mountain and
not the dark sides. So then we have this hole
where people started projecting onto that, and it tended to
be all of the darker things about the mountain that
you know, like the four service people saying, ah, I
think this might be mining fraud, or somebody being like,
I think that this was like a cult up to
(14:29):
something creepy, and I went, okay, so we're going to
get both by just examining this image. But then one
of my friends said, with like a rorshack test you've
got and I said, yeah, that came up in interviews,
but I cut it and he said why did you
cut it? And I said I didn't want to be
too on the nose. I just wanted to let it
be that he said, you got to put a scene
in there. Said okay, and I thought about it, and
(14:51):
at some point I came up with the idea of
mirroring one shot and it was pretty odd, honestly, pretty
simple effect that I just dragged and dropped on it
and devincu resolved. That's another thing. I edited this on
a twenty thirteen Mac with Devinci Resolve fifteen the free version.
I had my hands tied in a lot of ways
(15:12):
on this project, but Luckily it had this effect on it,
and I went, oh, that's cool, and then I get
a few shots that way. It probably took about forty
five minutes to do that. That's one of the only
scenes in the movie that maybe I did one version
of it in forty five minutes and then didn't change.
I went okay, And I actually still debated putting that
in the movie. I still go, is this two on
the nose? But everybody responds to it so well.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I totally responded to it. I thought I was great,
and I don't think that you overuse it. I think
it's just a nice spice that you throw in there
at the right time.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's what I tried for. Great. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
The other thing, obviously, this movie is called The Whole Story,
so you're going to be thinking about that whole the
whole time. Sorry for the pun, but how do you
get the shots of the whole? They talk at the
very beginning about the whole being filled in? So how
do you get these shots? How are you doing that? Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, so none of those. It's too bad. I was
never able to photograph it because, as you say, it
got filled in within a few weeks or months, depending
on who you ask, And I was never able to
photograph it myself, so everything in the film is based
on a photograph that somebody took, and I had to
just get creative with putting pain and zooms and things
on things. As much as I like experimental films and
(16:22):
stuff like that, I went back to nuts and bolts
ken burns, how does he get so much emotion out
of an old photograph with a little bit of painting
and zooming and some voiceover and some music, and just
being like, I just need to keep this, keep our
eye moving, keep the mesmerism going, keep the interest going.
And I've gotten that note a couple of times from folks.
(16:44):
You didn't realize that none of those were video, and
I went, oh wow, I have no objectivity left on
this movie. I've been editing it so long, and of
course it's hard to be objective in any situation ever anyway,
if not impossible, And at this point, I'm just shocked
that anybody says something like that. I still cringe when
I see those.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
I bought into it one hundred percent of Climb and Cinker,
So yeah, I thought that was a recreation of some
sort or some sort of double plane where it's here's
the bottom of the hole, and here's the time that
you were doing this. In some sort of weird post effect,
I'm like, yeah, and I'm looking at this stuff in
the hole and thinking about what the scale of it is.
(17:23):
Because they talk about how it looked like a bucket
that was actually this huge garbage can. I'm like, okay, yeah, no,
I bought into it. And I can really see your
experimental film background in so much of it, like the
Worshock test, but really even just those moments of quiet
where you're looking at the wildflowers and talking about how
long it takes for the wildflowers to come back, and
(17:43):
just it's such a beautifully shot film.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I really spent a
long time on it. It was a dream project in
so many ways of that it really tied into something
like I said that I've been deeply interested in my
entire life. Even though I'm not in the film, it's
a very personal movie for me, and I got to
do things like what I used to do when I
was a kid, would go out with a camera and
just photograph things. It was the subject of what I loved,
(18:09):
my community and the area, I could spend so much
time in nature, and I could take my time with
the editing. I just had such a great time with
it in so many ways. And then of course the story.
Stories like this don't come along very often for me.
It was like I knew I was hooked, and everybody
I talked to about it immediately got hooked. Every time
they had asked me, what's up with the whole of
you found any more information? Is that people actually want
(18:30):
to see this, and nobody's ever wanted to see one
of my movies before.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
When you do a good job of leading us down
a path and then pulling the rug out, and then
leading us down another path and doing the same thing,
and it was done so masterfully that I was not
angry at you. I was just like, oh, he got
me again. All right, now let's do another thing. And
you're presenting all of these ideas like this could be
true or this, and I just I love that that.
(18:56):
Too many times Hollywood movies are just like, no, you
always need to find the truth. Maybe in the last
five minutes, we'll do a little twist and show you
who Kaiser show as I really was. But no, I
love that I can hold different ideas in my head.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I wasn't. I didn't want to do the usual
suspects approach. But one film that I really studied, like
literally shot by shot, was Picnicked Hanging Rock. It's a
beautiful story about a mystery at a geological location, and
I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but I
really studied how much story could they create with a
minimum amount of exposition and execute an ending that should
(19:33):
theoretically really upset people, but it is really emotionally satisfying.
I love that film so much. That was probably one
of the ones that was the most influenced by I.
Not that I could come anywhere close to that film, but.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Obviously you don't have the same cinematographer as Peter Weird
did or anything. But it's you out there with the
camera alone. Rather than I would not even ask you
about your crew because I imagine it's you, it was me.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Most of the time. I did have help. My brother
did the score. My friend Audie Carlisle, who's a wonderful
documentary filmmaker her self, helped me with a few of
the interviews. I think about twenty minutes of the film
is her, but it's mostly the talking head stuff. But
that's great because I could delegate some of those interviews
in there. Like the guy who's most of the last
thirty minutes of the film. I had to shoot that
(20:20):
an hour and a half as he was passing through town,
and all the stuff in the hotel room that was
done that night, all the stuff with him up on
the mountain that was in like forty five minutes after
the interviews. It took twelve thirteen years to make the movie,
but there's like a twenty something minute section of the
movie that was shot in twenty two hours.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Was he the one that you had to wait all
those years to get?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
No, he found me.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I was about to give up on finding one of
the diggers, and he popped up in my chat while
I was chatting with somebody saying I think I'm about
to give up, and this other chat pops up and
this guy says, I have a story to tell you.
And then even greater luck because he had moved away.
He was passing through town like the next spring, and
I had a couple hours with him. I got lucky.
If so many things hadn't gone perfectly, I would not
(21:04):
be here. I pinched myself every day.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Well, and it's just so remarkably to me that this
is your first feature length film and that you're in
slam Dance, and it's just it's such a compelling and
beautifully shot. I'm sorry I keep saying that, but it
just looks so good, and like I said, it just
keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Thank you so much. Yeah, I did want to make
it a little bit accessible this time, and I was
worried about, like you said, the rug polls, but then
I went, that's what happens to each thing, even if
I want, I couldn't answer those if I wanted to,
so I just had to make sure that it was
of a piece of where I said, this is built
into the story we're gonna And people kept trying to
talk me into intercutting things, and I said, the approach
(21:46):
of getting into somebody's story and forgetting that we left
the last thing dangling and getting sucked into their story
and then getting spat out the other end, going wait
a minute, what and then going into the next thing,
and trying to just get people into one person headspace
one after the other and then hope that it added
up to more than the some of his parts at
the end.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Have you seen this with an audience yet?
Speaker 1 (22:09):
I showed it to a local film festival in Sisku County,
so they're just a handful of people in there, none
of whom I think heard about this. And this is
before I knew I'd gotten into slam dance. Otherwise I
might have waited for him premier status. Although it was
nice to show it for the first time in the county,
and I don't think they knew what they were about
to see, and they had a lot of questions. P
(22:33):
I'm really curious to play it in the city of
Mount Shasta. I played it about forty five minutes away.
I'm really curious to see how this will play it
to an audience in Mount Shasta. Am I gonna have
to what's the film? Was it a Boonwell film or
win war film? Where he he was like sticking rocks
in his pockets as he went in there and somebody
tried to light the screen on fire. I hope it's
not one of those, but there are gonna be some
(22:53):
people who are upset. I think they might be.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Upset, but that I'm also curious to hear if you
get follow up as far as people saying I know
the real story and coming up to you afterwards.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Even on the day that I was as I was
sitting there exporting the movie for slam Dance, somebody slimmed
to my DMS and said, hey, I know the people
who dug the hole and gave me a lot of
information that nobody should have known unless they were an insider.
But then a completely different explanation of who did it
or why, And they were very much these people have
(23:24):
guns and they're serious and you need to be careful.
And she was like, I haven't shown this anybody, right,
And I'm like, I'm sporting to slam Dance. I mean,
he's screaming this in LA for the Oh I hope
it's not like the Russian mob or something.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Well, it's the people that were taking those dinosaur eggs
out of the hole.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Right, Yeah, that's all it was. They were just some
it's in or something.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I did their call John Hammond, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, oh, I hope. So those would be the cuddliest
people that actually know. I think the people who did
this probably, I don't think they were a bunch of
crazy Ukrainians with machine guns?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Who did it?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
That was like? Or no? Checkloads of Awkians? Anyway, I've
lost count of how many different versions of the story
that I've heard and how many different nightmares I've had
about it.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Is there a good place for people to keep up
with the movie online so we can actually hear if
it's going to play other places or once it comes
out on streaming or Blu ray or any of that.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram and on Facebook
and things like that. I'm not super active on social media,
but I'm trying to learn.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I am so excited for you to have your premiere,
and I hope that other people click with this movie
as much as I did. And I really appreciate you
sending this my way.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Oh really, I thank you so much for saying that.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Of course, do you have your next project picked out?
Any other mysteries you're going to tackle?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Am I ever going to find another mystery like this?
I'm worried that I just peaked. I do have other ideas.
I do have other stuff kicking around, a couple of
feature dok ideas and a couple of narrative features. I
guess it's going to be a bake off, but am
I ever going to find another thing that is obsessed
about with this? I feel like I'm gonna go into
withdrawal when this is over.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Elijah, thank you so much for your time. This is
great connecting with you.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Likewise, Thank you so much. Thanks, thanks stops t E
(28:10):
exactly
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.