Who is David Wolper?
 David
Wolper's autobiography, "Producer", is available at some public
libraries. Christopher Bollyn and I read this book to see if we could find
connections between David Wolper and the criminals behind 9-11 and other
scams. As is typical of autobiographies, it does not have much of value.
However, I found a few interesting remarks in his book.
For example, on page 20 he describes a concept that I mention in both
my video, Painful Deceptions, and on my web site. Specifically,
I think the Urban
Legends web site was created to deceive people. They build up a reputation
for honesty, and then they slip a few lies into their mix of truthful statements.
This also seems to be the concept behind the Penn & Teller television
show and Michael Shermer's Skeptic
magazine. Wolper describes this technique like this:
And my sales technique was based on a story I'd heard about
a dry cleaner. The first time a new customer left a suit or jacket with
this dry cleaner, when that customer picked it up, they dry cleaner would
tell him, "Oh, by the way, you left this dollar bill in your pocket." The
dollar bill came from the cash register, but invariably the customer was
so impressed by the dry cleaner's honesty that he would return. So it cost
the dry cleaner a dollar to get a customer for a lifetime.
I discovered that, if I began by telling the truth about the worst thing
I was selling, the buyer would trust me about everything else.
An early version of Jerry Springer
On page 25 he admits that he took advantage of people in order to create
more emotionally titillating television shows.
Gerber introduced me to two of his clients who had a concept
for a show entitled divorce hearing. Dr. Paul Popenoe, of the American
Institute of Marital Relations, acted as a mediator for couples considering
a divorce. He took this show seriously. He really wanted to help people.
...
He would sit at a judge's bench and a couple would stand in front of
him, separated by a railing. Theoretically, each of them would explain
to him the problems in their relationship, and he would try to help them
bridge gaps, solve their problems, and save their marriage. The stated
goal was to keep couples together. In reality, we really wanted them to
fight for the camera.
We brought the people into the studio by separate entrances and kept
them apart and until we were on the air. Each of them was briefed by one
of my coproducers, Ralph Andrews and Harry Spears, whose job it was to
remind the person why he or she was so angry. Sometimes, the first time
they'd seen each other in person in months was on the show. We wanted confrontation,
and often we got it. One husband, I remember, got so angry with his wife
that he suddenly reached across the set and took a swing at her. She hit
him right back ...
... One couple I'll never forget was separating because the husband
was always drunk and the wife was always complaining. The day of the show,
the husband did a terrible thing -- he came in sober. Harry and Ralph took
the guy to Diamond Jim's, the bar next door, listening sympathetically
as he bought drinks for him. By the time the show started, the guy was
smashed. Seeing him that way, his wife became irate. They started screaming
at each other, and the future it was secure for Jerry Springer and all
those other shows that exploit human relations.
How can anybody justify such television programs? This behavior could be
described as exploiting the guests of the TV show, and exploiting
the television audience. It could also be described as immoral behavior.
Wolper faced resistance during the early years
Wolper started producing documentaries for television in the late 1950s.
He encountered a lot of resistance from the television networks because
they considered his documentaries to be a form of entertainment or idiotic
exploitation, not "documentaries". For example, on page 109 he writes about
his struggle to create a program about a curse on the Hope Diamond. The
Smithsonian thought the concept of a "curse" was idiotic. He also
admits that his primary goal was money, not intelligent documentaries:
While in 1974 we made three successful documentaries with the
Smithsonian, we had a fundamental disagreement over our programming objectives:
we wanted to attract as large an audience as possible, they wanted to impress
academia.
The Hope Diamond, which carries with it a curse that misfortune will
befall the person who possesses it, has been in the Smithsonian since 1958.
....
We planned a show entitled "The Curse of the Hope Diamond." It took
twenty-eight meetings and a Smithsonian committee before they agreed to
the format of the show -- and insisted we change the name to The Legendary
Curse of the Hope Diamond.
Like many successful salesman, when Wolper was told to get out of the office,
he would come back again, and again, and again. After 28 attempts, the
Smithsonian committee gave in.
Wolper continues to explain another show he did for the Smithsonian,
and notice his technique of trying to please everybody in the audience.
The third show we did together was Monsters! Mysteries or
Myths?, an investigation into the existence of the Loch Ness monster,
the Abominable Snowman, and Bigfoot. The Smithsonian did not want us to
make this documentary -- these monsters don't exist, end of story. Producer
Bob Guenette convinced them that these creatures were an important part
of cultural fascination with unsolved mysteries. Reluctantly, they agreed,
and we did a balanced show: we offered enough to support for those people
who wanted to believe these creatures existed and debunked their existence
for those people who did not.
The recent show about UFO's
that Peter Jennings narrated for ABC also used this technique of providing
some support for the UFO's, while also providing some evidence that they
are imaginary.
ABC also recently broadcase 15 hours of a program called Kingdom
Hospital in which they hinted that Stephen King's novel might be accurate
about the ghosts at that hospital. Do we really need television shows to
promote such nonsense?
Why are television executives producing such deceptive and idiotic shows?
Looking at Wolper's book shows that he may not have any interest in contributing
something of value to the human race. For example, on page 178 he writes
about entering his documentary about insects in a Cannes Film Festival:
The theater was packed for the screening. I couldn't believe
it. People were fighting to get in at four o'clock in the afternoon. And
they were cheering at the end. As Wally and I walked out, I said to him,
"Well, looks like we fooled 'em again!"
He doesn't explain what he means by "we fooled 'em again". But on
the previous page he complained to his employees that he did not like the
first version of the documentary. He complained,"I want something to make
money." So they ended up adding a mysterious character to the documentary
called "Dr. Nils Hellstorm" who claimed that insects are going to take
over the earth.
The end result was not a serious documentary about insects. Rather,
it was almost as silly as a movie called "Attack of the Giant Tomatoes".
Wolper's documentary could be described as exploitation of the television
audience.
Wolper may have been fully aware that he was exploiting people. That
would explain his remark that "we fooled 'em again".
Recreating history - a good idea?
Wolper would often use actors for events where there was no video available.
This practice was shunned by the television networks during the early days
of television because it can give people a distorted view of the issue.
An example is Wolper's documentary about Montezuma. As Wolper describes
it on page 134:
When we filmed "Cortéz and Montezuma: Conquest of an
Empire", the story of the confrontation between cultures that changed the
course of history, we had no idea what sort of costume the Aztec emperor
Montezuma might have been wearing when the Spanish conquistadores landed
in Mexico. We assumed it was elaborate and extremely colorful. One of our
production assistants solved the problem: he found a gorgeous cape with
colorful feathers being worn by a drag queen in a striptease parlor we
rented it for almost nothing -- and Montezuma had his robes.
The dressing of Montezuma as a drag queen might help you understand
why the television executives of the late 1950's and 1960's considered
Wolper's documentaries to be "entertainment" or "exploitation" rather than
"documentaries".
Does he really believe Oswald did it?
One of the documentaries that Wolper never got funding for was a documentary
about the material in Gerald Posner's book. As Wolper describes it on page
101:
I was equally disappointed by my inability to sell Gerald Posner's
book detailing his investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy,
Case
Closed. Posner was an investigative journalist who had been hired by
a major publisher to examine in depth all the Kennedy assassination theories.
He persuasively argued that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. This well researched,
highly detailed book served as a response to the intellectually dishonest
garbage produced by Oliver Stone. But when I try to sell it, all three
networks told me it was just too boring if there was no massive plot to
kill the president. Posner seemed to have made one big mistake -- he debunked
all the conspiracy theories. .... For years, I have heard people say, knowingly,
that we will never know the truth about the Kennedy assassination. The
truth is, we already know the truth. But it is more fun to believe there
exists some great mystery that will never be solved.
In chapters 11 and 12 of my book "Painful Questions, An Analysis
of the September 11 Attack", I point out that the Warren Report
makes
it obvious that Oswald did not shoot president Kennedy. Therefore, Posner
is helping to cover the crime. So why would David Wolper praise Posner,
insult Oliver Stone, and insist that Oswald killed Kennedy? And why did
Wolper want to create a documentary about Posner's book? Did he really
want to provide us with the truth about the Kennedy assassination?
Meyer Lansky and some other Zionists, were among the masterminds of
the Kennedy killing. Christopher Bollyn points out that David Wolper seems
to have a connection with some of those Jewish gangsters. Perhaps Wolper
is trying to convince us that Osawald killed Kennedy in order to protect
his friends who were involved in the killing.
Even if Wolper does not have connections to the people who killed Kennedy,
he could not possibly be so naive as to believe Oswald killed Kennedy,
in which case he is trying to decieve us about the Kennedy assassination.
Therefore, how can we trust him when he produces documentaries about other
subjects? How many times does a person have to lie to you before
you wonder what else he lies about?
Rearranging the truth into lies
Wolper is fully aware of how the media can distort the truth and fool people
into believing nonsense. He discusses this on page 73 in his section about
Teddy White, who wrote the chronicle of the 1960 presidential campaign,
"The Making Of The President". He also slips in an insult for Oliver
Stone:
Teddy White once said that the script-writing experience had
been frightening for him, because the medium can easily invite men to rearrange
visible truth into historical lies -- that unless goodwill and conscience
dominate the entire production, what the viewer sees may actually be untrue.
"Rearrange visible truth into historical lies." I have often thought
about that warning, particularly many years later when I saw Oliver Stone's
perversion of truth, the movie JFK.
He wants us to belive that Oliver Stone rearranges the truth into lies,
but the evidence suggests the rearraging of the truth is being done by
Wolper.
How did he become friends with astronauts?
In his later years, Wolper bought a golf course in California. He points
out on page 334 that Neil Armstrong played in a "tournament" at his private
golf course, and that Neil Armstrong is not easy to contact:
Among the celebrities who played in my tournament were three
of the most private people I've ever known: Neil Armstrong, Sandy Koufax,
whom no one ever sees, and Joe DiMaggio. Neil Armstrong doesn't even have
an answering machine; if he doesn't answer the phone himself, you can't
reach them.
How did Wolper get to know somebody as private as Neil Armstrong? Why would
Neil Armstrong travel to Wolper's golf course in California and play golf
with a man who is trying to cover up the murder of Kennedy?
Perhaps because Wolper was involved in filming the fake trip to the
moon. Therefore, the astronauts feel comfortable around him. Wolper
will not ask what it was like to walk on the moon, nor will Wolper let
the secret out.
Any connection to the Beatles?
Wolper made a documentary about John Lennon, but he avoided the murder
of Lennon. On page 210 Wolper writes:
One of our most difficult decisions was how to deal with his
murder. We did not want to get any more notoriety to the crazed individual
who killed him. So, in the film, the killer's name is never mentioned,
and rather than a stark image or footage from that night, we show the huge
crowds paying silent homage to him by standing vigil outside the Dakota.
A person with the pseudonym Salvador Astucia argues that the murder of
John Lennon is another government operation disguised as a murder by one
of those mysterious "lone nuts". Perhaps Wolper did not want to include
the killing of John Lennon in his documentary because he did not want to
bring attention to the suspicious aspects of the murder. And perhaps the
reason is that his friends were involved in that murder, also.
Salvador
Astucia's site
Sex was not a topic in the early years of TV
On page 180 we read that Wolper discovered a great idea for a documentary:
Because we were producing films primarily for television, we
rarely explored anything concerning sex, but when we began looking for
ideas for our next feature-length documentaries, I met with Nick Noxon
and Irwin Rosten to figure out what we wanted to do. What do people want,
I asked, what subjects are they interested in?
"Sex and food," Rosten said.
Exactly. We discussed many different ways of approaching the subjects
until finally someone mentioned animals. I responded to that immediately:
"Right. Animal sex. That's what we'll do." This was followed by a long
silence.
Finally Nick said, "What an incredible idea -- animal sex."
Advertisements, television programs, and movies are full of sexual
titillation, but there is no serious information about sex, our digestive
system, or the reproductive process. People like Wolper are part of the
reason. Their goals are not to educate people with their advertisements,
television shows, or movies. Rather, their goals are to increase profit
and bring them fame. They consider the common person to be an animal
to exploit, or a retarded girl to rape. They have no concern
about whether they create anything of value for the human race.
There are some interesting aspects to animal and human sex, but Wolper
was not interested in discussing this issue from a serious point of view.
He was discussing animal sex only to titillate the common people.
Does Wolper have Redeeming Social Value?
Has David Wolper or any of the executives in television, Hollywood, or
advertising provided anything of value to the human race? Do we really
benefit from their television shows, movies, or advertisements? I don't
think so. Actually, I think everybody, especially children, would have
a much happier life if we were free of their manipulation, deception, and
sexual titillation. I think children are picking up distorted views of
life, money, sex, drugs, and jewelry from these people.
I think David Wolper is analogous to a doctor who offers people whatever
prescription drugs they want, regardless of whether they need them.
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