The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood (with Daisy Eagan)

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Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong.

Except this isn't going to be your standard episode.

This is the first episode of a new bonus series called Out of Frame, where we'll be focusing on the obscure and sometimes dark corners of Hollywood and also taking a little more time to discuss the off-camera lives of some of your favorite on-screen stars.

Today, we're investigating the mysterious death of Hollywood icon Natalie Wood and how it intersects in some very strange ways with her final film, Brainstorm.

I'm here, as always, with my lovely co-host, Chris Winterbauer, but because this is essentially a true crime episode, and we are not true crime experts, we've enlisted the help of an actual expert.

We have Daisy Egan here with us today of Strange and Unexplained.

Their show is in the fifth season.

It covers true crime and paranormal activity.

It's excellent.

If you have not listened, you absolutely have to.

The research is just top-notch.

I really love the writing.

It's so fantastic.

Daisy's also an actor, so kind of...

Preternaturally equipped to handle this episode.

Daisy, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Yeah, thanks so much.

I'm so excited.

I really love your show.

It's so fascinating.

And as somebody who's made a couple, a couple of pretty small movies,

it's just fascinating to see sort of the insides of it.

And it's true.

They are so hard to get made.

And anything can go wrong at any time.

It's a great, great show.

I really like it.

Well, thank you.

We love your show.

Good job, you.

Thank you.

You must go listen to Strange and Unexplained if you all haven't.

It's really good.

Although, honestly, some of your episodes have freaked me out quite a bit.

Oh, good.

And you have another connection to today's episode, which I believe you've worked with Christopher Walken before.

I sure did.

Oh, my God.

Okay, I can't wait.

So before we jump in, as I said, we're going to be talking about Natalie Wood, her death, and her last film.

So, Chris and Daisy.

A, what do you all know about Natalie Wood going into this?

And also, did you get a chance to watch Brainstorm, her final film?

Daisy, please.

Sure.

I did watch it.

I watched it on Sunday.

I had no idea what to expect.

Zero.

What I knew of Natalie Wood was obviously

her big, you know, Miracle on 34th Street and

West Side Story.

Thank you.

And I actually worked with Marnie Nixon, who did the singing of, well, at least breakfast at Tiffany's.

And I guess she did West Side Story as well.

She did Westside Story.

She's come up before in our Sound of Music episode.

That's amazing.

She's she was an odd duck, too.

Lovely, lovely woman, but weird as a $3 bill.

Yeah, so

she's incredibly beautiful.

I mean, I just,

and her performance as a child, because I was a child actor, that is hard.

That is hard to get a performance like that.

And it was so different from the other kids of that time.

You think of like, leave it to beaver and sort of, of, I don't know,

ah, golly gee, kind of acting.

And that wasn't her.

She was very natural and immensely watchable and just incredibly beautiful.

She was all of those things, Chris.

Yeah, I knew her early work better.

Miracle in 34th Street, The Searchers, through Westside Story, less Rebel Without a Cause, less what she did in the 60s.

I don't know that period of her her work quite as well.

And I know she took a bit of a break from acting in the 70s.

And

she dedicated herself to motherhood.

And so then watching Brainstorm was interesting because I was actually pretty unfamiliar with Natalie Wood at that age.

And

so she's very beautiful, as you mentioned.

She's a very captivating, natural performer.

And even the 80s can feel a little stiff in terms of performance sometimes, but she is grounded and Walkin is too, I think, to his credit.

I mean, like, Cliff Cliff Robertson stands out a little more as a little more stodgy or stylized.

A couple of things, she,

Olivia Coleman reminds me of her.

I don't know, like more Natalie Wood,

excuse me, at the time of Brainstorm than earlier in her career.

And in terms of the movie Brainstorm, The movie, I think, is structurally a bit of a mess and it doesn't entirely make sense, but

it's so interesting how, even though I think it's relatively obscure, you can see how it influenced so many movies that came after it and television shows.

Severance is one that comes to mind, obviously, but then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Matrix.

Even visually, with the helmets they have on and Brainstorm in terms of eternal sunshine.

As they try to sell the Apple Vision Pro in 1993, but I did

the movie, I think it struggles.

It's trying to figure out: is it a movie about a scientific breakthrough?

Is it a Cold War thriller?

Is it a love story?

And the element that works the best is Natalie Wood and Christopher Walken experiencing each other's memories.

Yes.

And there's a kind of a little romantic interlude that's actually very moving.

I agree.

And I think that one of the reasons it works so well is Douglas Trumbull, the director, who I know we're not going to talk about very much.

So I'll just briefly

talk about him a bit.

So you can hold on to that.

Well, he's like a special effects master.

That was his background.

And he did, if you guys are unfamiliar, Star Trek the Motion Picture.

He worked on 2001 Space Odyssey.

He does something interesting in this movie with the way that he films the memories.

Yes, he does.

And we're going to talk about that as well.

And you'll explain it.

Well, I'm actually going to make you explain parts of it.

So just get yourself ready.

If you guys watch this movie, it looks very beautiful.

It's a striking departure from the standard scenes.

And I actually think it's very effective.

And

again, Natalie Wood and Chris Frawal can fill those frames really beautifully.

And it actually does feel like you're stepping into memories.

And it's very, very moving.

I agree.

I agree that this movie is a mess.

I really liked it.

If you had

to see it, I did too.

Yeah, it's worth watching.

Very much worth watching.

100%.

It felt like this had influenced a lot.

Just so you all know, this is the log line on IMDb.

Researchers develop a system where they can jump into people's minds.

But when people involved bring their personal problems into the equation, it becomes dangerous, perhaps deadly.

That's like a, that's not a great log line for this, to be honest.

If I'm going to sell you on it, I would say

basically, yeah, they developed the Apple Vision Pro, you know, long before it exists.

But what they do is they figure out a way to record someone's POV, including their senses.

So sight, smell, sound, touch, everything.

And then the person who is watching it is also experiencing all of those senses.

And, you know, they go for it in this.

Like one of the first things that happens is that someone essentially records POV porn

while using it.

And my favorite thing is that he basically calms himself silly.

Yes.

A guy who calms himself into like a

flashbacks to it when he's in the middle of conversations, which is so creepy and weird.

And then, yeah, he's just like, I'm going to go golf for the rest of my life.

He's like, I came enough.

I'll expect to golf.

Which is amazing.

But the big sort of turning point in this movie is that Louise Fletcher who of course played Nurse Ratchet she's an Academy Award winner I think she's phenomenal in this movie um must taste like an ashtray but yes she's phenomenal she is like an absolute chimney just constantly smoking cigarettes but she

uh has a heart attack and she recognizes that it's happening and recognizes that she may not have time to get help and so she hooks herself up to the machine and she records her own death and that is really the point of this movie is that this tape exists of her death should they watch it can they watch it will they let christopher walk and watch it what are they using this technology for of course the feds want in they want to mk ultra people with their memory machines and this should happen 30 minutes into the movie and this happens almost an hour into the 90 minute movie to show the structural problems i said to my my husband at one point i was like wow the pacing in this movie is

wild and yet

whatever you know i enjoyed it i did at the end of it i was like wow i'm actually i liked that I was I'm surprised it's very inventive I think she's wonderful in it she's beautiful I grew up loving Natalie Wood and you know I thought of her as like one of the most beautiful women in the world I watched Westside Story all the time when I was little I love gypsy that's probably my favorite Natalie Wood performance actually um

and if you haven't seen gypsy it's really long but it's worth it absolutely fantastic so Let's dive in.

We're going to talk about Natalie Wood's death, all the confusion, rumors, why mystery continues to surround it to this day.

And we're going to talk about Brainstorm, which really should have been kind of a big deal as her final film, but got buried after she died.

Did Natalie Wood's death sink the film, or did the film have something to do with her death?

We are going to find out today.

And so strange that this movie has to do with someone recording their own death.

Yeah.

All right, so it was released September 30th, 1983.

The director, as Chris said, was Douglas Trumbull.

We're not really going to get into the screenplay too much.

The cast, it stars notably Christopher Walkin, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, Cliff Robertson, and many more.

If you don't know who Natalie Wood was, a little brief background.

She was born in 1938 as Natalia Zacharenko in San Francisco, California.

And although her birth certificate listed her as Natalia, she was called Natasha as sort of a nickname.

Her parents, Nick and Maria, were Russian immigrants, and they were really counting on their daughters, Natalia and Lana, to sort of help them achieve the American dream.

Now, this is going to come into context in just a moment, but Maria had another daughter, Olga, from a previous marriage, making Natalia her second born child.

But she did not stay Zacharenko for long.

Her father changed their family name to Gerdin.

in 1939 in an attempt to improve job prospects by moving them away from the end of the alphabet.

Gerden.

Listen, if it doesn't make any sense to you, it is worth noting that Nick was a raging alcoholic.

So I don't know if there's a ton of sense to that.

However, her mother was an extremely intense stage mom.

Later on, when Natalie was achieving success, Maria famously said, quote, God created her, but I invented her.

Oh, so it's fitting that she was in gypsy.

Very, very fitting.

Now, Maria was also extremely superstitious.

As I said, she was born in Russia, but she was raised in China after escaping the Bolshevik Revolution at five years old.

And while in China, at a pretty young age, she visited a fortune teller.

The fortune teller told her that her second child would become a great beauty famous worldwide.

But most importantly, this woman told her to beware of dark water because someone was going to drown.

And this is not something that's made up after the fact.

Both girls, Natalie and her sister Lana, avoided water pretty much their whole lives because their mother told them this story constantly.

Maria did not swim.

She avoided water as well.

And understandably, Natalie developed a very deep fear of water that was due to her mother repeating this story.

Natalie's home life was extremely turbulent, as you might be able to guess.

According to Suzanne Finstead, author of Natasha, the biography of Natalie Wood, Natalie was, quote, groomed by her mom to succeed at all costs.

to be a pleaser, to do whatever directors and producers, even co-stars, wanted her to do.

So by 1943, Maria had successfully pushed Natalie, at this point still Natasha, into the spotlight.

And she made her acting debut at four years old in an uncredited role in Happy Land.

And an RKO executive named William Goertz gave her a new stage name, Natalie Wood, at this point.

By 1946, she was stealing scenes from Orson Welles in Tomorrow is Forever, and she'd firmly established herself as a very high-earning child star, about $1,000 a week, which would be around $15,000 a week today.

Wow.

One year later, at eight years old, she becomes a household name thanks to Miracle on 34th Street.

She was only eight?

Yeah.

Whoa.

She's eight.

She's so cute.

Yeah, she's so cute.

And also, she thought that the actor playing Santa was the real Santa Claus the entire shoot.

And they didn't bother to explain that to her.

That must have been so strange for her to have to say to Santa's face that you're not doing Santa.

Yeah.

That must have really been tough.

Yes.

Well, she did it.

She's a great actor.

Yeah.

Things are now going to take a disturbing turn.

In 1954, at the age of about 15, she allegedly engaged in a relationship with a 38-year-old Frank Sinatra.

The two had been set up by her mother,

allegedly bartering Natalie's virginity to try and help her career.

Oh my God.

According to Sinatra's valet, he was nervous about the situation because it was unclear to him whether Natalie was 15 or 18.

Frank, don't do it.

Ask her?

And also don't do it.

And also you're 38.

So even if she is 18, like old blue eyes.

I don't know that he's ever shown up in a particularly positive way across this podcast.

Yeah, nice voice.

Bad guy.

Yeah, I think so.

Regardless, he did become something of a paternal figure to her for the rest of her life.

Do we know if

if he, do we know if anything happened?

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure.

So one year later, and this is according to Natalie's sister, Lana's memoir, Natalie was assaulted by Kirk Douglas.

Natalie kept this secret for years until she was 22, and it allegedly happened at the Chateau Marmont after their mother dropped both girls off to meet with him.

Why are you dropping your daughters off at a bar to meet with Kirk Douglas?

I knew, like, I didn't know this, but I knew this was going to, like, I was like, well, she was, and I'm still really shocked and disappointed.

It's pretty bad.

It's a lot worse than I understood.

Also, Kirk Douglas probably deserves his own episode of this because there's an awful lot

out there, allegedly.

Anyway, he's dead.

How dare you?

In 1955, she earned an Oscar nomination for Rebel Without a Cause.

And in 1957, she married fellow movie star Robert Wagner, who I believe was 20, I think he was 27.

I think she was about 19.

They had met a couple years earlier when, again, she was a teenager.

He was in his mid-20s.

So they became Hollywood royalty immediately and understandably so, because I want you guys to look at a picture of these two.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Quite the pair.

I mean, they are

stunning.

Yeah.

And they look this, I mean, they do look the same age.

They do-ish.

She looked quite a bit older than she was, I think.

Even when she started to be.

I think she was right.

She was incredibly precocious and beyond her years.

Yeah.

I mean, compared to Frank Sinatra, their age gap is totally fine.

So, unfortunately, this marriage did not last.

As her star skyrocketed with the 1961 release of Westside Story, her marriage deteriorated.

Wow, what a surprise.

In 1962, she and Robert Wagner divorced.

Now, rumors swirled publicly that she'd had an affair with her splendor in the grass co-star.

What went wrong, alum, Chris?

Who is it?

Oh, I don't know.

It's Warren Beatty.

Warren Beatty.

Okay.

Well, you know, according to Warren Beatty, he did have a lot of sex.

That's true.

So she chose to never formally dispel these rumors, but

that may be because...

Again, allegedly, according to three of her friends and her sister, Lana Wood, this was to protect Robert Wagner.

Because again, I'm going to say allegedly a lot in this episode.

The rumor was that she had come across him in bed with another man and that that had been the impetus for the divorce.

Warren Baby.

No.

I was like, wait a minute.

Hold on.

No, no, no.

She did.

She overdosed on sleeping pills following this, although many believe that was more of a cry for help than anything else.

And Robert Wagner does obviously deny all of this.

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After this, she became extremely reliant on her therapist.

Chris, you mentioned this.

This is where the break in her acting career happens.

She actually even turned down the role of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde because she did not want to be away from her therapist that long to be on set.

Oh, wow.

In 1969, she married producer Richard Gregson.

She has a child by him, Natasha Gregson Wagner.

She's spoiler alert, she gets back together with Robert Wagner.

But this marriage didn't last either.

In 1971, they got divorced.

And by 1972, Natalie and Robert Wagner had reconciled and they had their own daughter, Courtney, two years later.

Now, Chris, you also mentioned this, but by all accounts, extremely devoted mother to both of her children.

And she really ends up taking a break for like most of the 70s.

Yeah, that's what I remember was she was kind of out for almost 10 years.

Yes.

Yeah, around seven years, I think.

She takes a pretty long break.

In the mid-1970s, director Douglas Trumbull, who, as you mentioned, was a special effects wizard, he had worked extensively on 2001, The Space Odyssey, and the Andromeda Strain.

He would go on to work on Blade Runner.

He was experimenting with a new process called Show Scan that was designed to make audiences feel more immersed in the movie.

Chris, you can probably explain this better than I can, but ShowScan involved projecting 70 millimeter film at 60 frames per second, producing brighter, sharper images due due to a narrower shutter closure, and then projected onto a very, very large screen.

Does that make sense, Chris?

Whatever I just said.

Yeah, so 70 millimeters, so traditional 35 millimeter film, right?

That's the diagonal measurement from one corner to the other.

So 70 millimeters is actually,

and I'll get the math wrong, but it's more than double the size of 35 millimeters.

So when you blow it up, when you project through it, the grain is far finer than when you project through 35 or 16, for example, millimeter film.

So you can get a much sharper image, which you can see if you watch the film even on Amazon or whatever today, the scan is really beautiful.

Wide screen, so you can project it on a

larger screen.

And then...

So 60 frames per second would traditionally be considered over cranked, right?

So

you film and project at 24 frames per second.

that's where basically the human eye stops seeing stuttering in the film.

So if you record slower than 24 frames per second, you see strobing because your eye can actually pick up on the gaps between the film.

The reason you stop at 24, it's because it's cheap, right?

Everything about this is meant to be done affordably.

So 24 is the least number of frames per second that you can have where your eye doesn't notice the stuttering.

So it looks smooth.

Great.

So he's just doing everything you possibly can to make this as expensive as possible.

Exactly.

Much larger film and two and a half times as many frames per second.

And then with shutter angle, it's just, long story short, it's a shorter shutter speed.

And so it's a, there's less motion blur as a result.

And so it's a sharper image.

And so it's, it's, what he's basically doing is early high def, what would become high definition television.

It's really like what HDTV became with 60 frames per second high definition, like he's doing it back in the early 80s to really gorgeous effect because it still looks like film.

It is film.

One last thing, Peter Jackson was attempting something similar with the Hobbit when he wanted to do 48 frames per second instead of the traditional 24.

Out of here, Peter Jackson, with your Hobbit.

No one wanted that.

They've done these studies where they've shown, I believe Trumbull even did this, where he hooked people up to an EEG machine to see how their heart rate responded to.

the same images at higher frame rates.

And he had concluded that people have a stronger emotional response to the high frame rate images.

But it actually, it can break the reality in the sense that it also doesn't feel like a movie anymore because it's not at the motion, it doesn't have the texture that we're used to either.

So it's a fine line that you're walking.

I think he treads it very well.

I don't think The Hobbit works.

I think this movie works very well for reference.

Well, so Chris, you mentioned that everything he's discussing here is very expensive, not least because what he's pitching here would actually require the movie theaters to retrofit their screens to have an ability to project, as you said, a much, much larger image.

Paramount's like, that's way too expensive.

People are not going to do this.

We're out.

So they put the project in turnaround.

It gets effectively shelved, but he was still under contract at Paramount.

And this is where Star Trek the motion picture came in.

He stepped in and agreed to take over the special effects in exchange for his freedom from Paramount, essentially.

So at this point, he takes Brainstorm to MGM and he changes his pitch.

Theaters don't need to retrofit for ShowScan anymore, but he's going to film the movie in both 70 millimeter and 35 millimeter.

Now, Chris, you referenced this, but what you're seeing for all of the POV virtual reality shots, those are in 70 millimeter film with stereo sound.

When it cuts back to quote-unquote reality, it dips back to 35 millimeter.

The idea being that the POV virtual reality shots are clearer and more immersive than actual reality, which I think is a really cool idea.

And I think it's very effective in the movie.

So, Trumbull casts Christopher Watkin, fresh off his Academy Award win for the Deer Hunter, and Louise Fletcher, also pretty fresh off of an Academy Award win for Nurse Ratchet and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Cliff Robertson, also an Academy Award winner.

But his casting in this was a little controversial.

Fun fact, he had exposed a financial scandal at Columbia when the president of the studio cashed a check in his name that was forged.

And Robertson actually ended up getting blacklisted because he outed this guy for doing this right of course future uncle ben with great power comes great responsibility yeah he made a comeback of course he also casts natalie wood as dr michael brace's estranged wife karen christopher watkins' wife in the movie This was meant to be her big return to movies.

And according to her agent at the time, quote, Brainstorm was her first major movie in a long time.

She knew it wasn't a solo star turn nor a fabulous script, but it was MGM, not an independent, not TV.

Here she wouldn't have to carry the film, and Natalie was still beautiful.

She wasn't ready to play mothers of 30-year-old actresses.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

How old was she at this point?

43.

43?

I think that's right.

Also, this movie sounds like it's going to make a splash.

It's introducing, you know, cutting-edge technology.

Honestly, on paper, this looks a lot better to me than Avatar.

So, you know, Trumbull wanted the cast to study the concept of life and death at an experimental research facility by taking a hallucinogenic drug that apparently simulated death.

And unsurprisingly, the MGM lawyers said no.

Oh, good.

No.

Do you know what research facility that was?

The Assalen Institute.

Yeah.

Have you watched the finale of Mad Men?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is that where?

Do you know where Don Draper ends up at the end?

That's what it is?

That like culti place?

My understanding is that's they're riffing on, that's the Assalen Institute.

Yeah.

It's up in Big Sur.

Yeah, that's the the one.

Yeah, you can go there.

I believe they might still offer this because I had some friends in college who wanted to do this and none of them actually did, I don't think.

You can stay more or less for free, but you have to like a work study, like a work study, basically.

Maybe it's just for college students.

I'm not sure.

It has a weird vibe.

It was not for me.

I might be good, unless I'm going to leave with the next world-changing Coke campaign.

We'll see.

So, filming began in September of 1981, and the cast all got along really, really well, particularly Natalie Wood and Christopher Watkin.

Oh, boy.

Daisy, as we mentioned, you have worked with him before.

So tell me, what do you remember about him?

What was your experience just of him like as a personality?

I think this experience changed him, which we're going to get to.

Well, yeah, I mean, I also think that this experience had to have changed him because

God bless Christopher Watkin, but that man lives in an alternate universe.

He exists on a different plane of reality from everybody around him.

And I'm not a psychologist, but I would imagine that, you know, whatever went on, which I guess we're going to hear about,

had a massive effect on him.

It is interesting how grounded he is in this movie.

Yes.

Do you notice about Christopher Watkin that he always, always

has a slight smile on his face, like a little evil twinkle?

Like sometimes it's just inappropriate.

Like I still like it, but there's times in this movie where it's like his kid is getting institutionalized and there's a little tiny smile, and you're like, Yes, all right.

Or the government's, you know, gonna militarize his products.

And Louise Fletcher is saying, What is wrong with you?

Do you not understand what's happening?

He's like, It's fine.

That's great.

It's okay.

That's actually the weirdest line in this whole movie:

she understands what's happening.

Their project's being taken away from them.

The feds are coming in.

And she's like, You really don't get it, do you?

And then they kind of all walk out of the room.

And he just like sort of looks at the camera with a half smile and goes, I don't get it.

Yeah, in the show that I was in with him, there were some very sad moments, and he still had that look on his face.

And I remember just being like,

what's happening over there?

Yeah.

Do you want to hear some fun Christopher Walking stories?

Yes.

I mean, that's what I'm here for.

So I'm going to tell you the one that everybody who has worked with Chris will tell you.

This is no big revelation, but he carries half-eaten apples and pickles in his pockets.

And he wears this

long cotton black trench coat.

And he'll just, in the middle of a conversation, pull out a half-eaten apple or pickles covered in lint and just eat it.

No matter where,

where we are.

I don't like that.

So that's one thing.

He wore these really bizarre rubber shoes, black rubber shoes.

And one day one of our castmates, he came in and she said, Chris, what are those shoes?

And he goes, they're my rocket ship shoes.

Just, he was, he lived somewhere else.

As far as I know, in any production he's doing, he has them type up a script with no punctuation.

Oh, which explains his cadence.

I think interesting.

Yeah.

I do love Christopher Walken.

Interesting.

So, this is from Louise Fletcher.

She said that he was crazy and a lot of fun.

He'd do crazy things on the set, like dropping his pants.

I don't know why he did that, except to just maybe give himself a shot in the arm, give himself some energy of some kind that he needed.

He would do shocking things right before the take to create an atmosphere, kind of like mooning everybody.

It was fun.

So this is like very fun, very energetic.

It sounds like very connected to his castmates, which I think is interesting.

But apparently Trumbull became so focused on the special effects that he kind of loses control of the cast, which I think big time comes across in this movie.

It feels like all of the actors are in different films.

And apparently, everybody started looking to Christopher Watkin for direction, including Natalie Wood.

She was particularly drawn to his pedigree, and she was very interested in anyone who had studied at the actor's studio, which he had.

So, MGM is hearing some of this from Seth.

They're already getting a little worried about this movie.

Additionally, by October of that year, rumors had again started to swirl that Wood, who spent most of her time on the North Carolina set hanging out in Christopher Watkins' trailer, was having an affair with Christopher Watkin.

Worth noting, her sister Lana is adamant that she would not have risked her second marriage to Wagner with an affair, especially after all of the Warren Beatty rumors the first time around.

She seems to think that at most this was potentially an emotional affair, which, as we're going to see in a second, Robert Wagner kind of backs up.

So Wagner caught wind of the rumors.

He took a few days off from filming Heart to Heart and flew to the North Carolina set.

In his memoir, Pieces of My Heart, Wagner wrote, during those couple of days, the little bell in my head went off.

Christopher Watkin was a very exciting actor and a very exciting guy who delighted in taking great risks.

The bell wasn't exactly clanging, but I was aware that I didn't have her full attention.

She was more involved with the movie than she was with her family.

And the thought occurred to me that Natalie was being emotionally unfaithful.

I chose not to confront her with my feelings.

I flew back to my series, and Natalie continued production on Brainstorm.

I can't tell what the deal with this memoir is, to be honest.

It comes out in, I believe, 2008.

And while this at initial read to me feels potentially very honest, very, you know, sort of like a, he's burying his soul talking about this experience, the more I started to look into this, and I think the more we'll get into the story of what happened, I do wonder if there's a bit of retrofitting happening here, whether intentional or not, who knows?

So in November of 1981, Brainstorm paused for Thanksgiving break.

On November 27th, this is Thanksgiving weekend, Wood, Wagner, and Walken went sailing off the coast of Southern California near Catalina Island.

They were aboard Wagner's yacht, Splendor, named after Natalie's film Splendor in the Grass.

Weird.

Is that weird to anybody else?

The movie that they kind of got divorced over because of Warren Beatty affair rumors?

It's weird to me.

It's got cuck energy.

It's got something.

So the boat's full-time captain, Dennis Davern, was also aboard.

Important to note here, according to Finstead, her biographer, and several other sources, Natalie was terrified of open water.

And although her family often went out in the splendor, she refused to go jet skiing.

She would stay on board reading scripts, and she never took the dinghy out alone.

There is not one instance of her doing that.

According to the documentary, Natalie Wood, What Remains Behind, she'd invited multiple friends, not just Watkin, to join them on the trip, but they had all declined.

Watkin likely accepted only because he was in LA filming, but he wasn't from there and he had nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving.

So realizing she was about to be stuck on board with her husband and the man who her husband maybe thinks she's having an affair with, she made one last-dish effort to get her friend Delphine Mann to join them.

But unfortunately for everyone, it was Mann's son's birthday that weekend, and so she too declined.

And it would just be the three of them on board the yacht.

The first day, the boat docked on shore and all three went out shopping and drinking Catalina Island.

It's very cute.

I don't know if you've ever been.

According to Davern, again, the captain, Wagner was getting increasingly annoyed by Wood and Watkins' banter and the attention that they were giving to each other.

But that night passed uneventfully back on the yacht.

However, the second night, things took a turn.

All three of them, and Davern, had dinner at Doug's Harbor Reef on Catalina Island.

This would be Natalie Wood's last time setting foot on shore.

They drank a lot.

Witnesses reported the group getting drunker and drunker.

At one point, this is interesting, either Wood or Walkin threw a glass at the wall, apparently a Russian tradition post-cheers.

We're going to come back to this because there's another glass breaking, and I wonder if this is another case of sort of memories getting mixed.

In fact, they drank so much that the night manager of the restaurant was concerned enough about them being able to get back to the yacht safely in their dinghy that he called the harbor patrol and asked them to keep an eye on the group.

But they did make it back.

At 10.30 p.m.

on November 28th, they left the restaurant and boarded the Splendor.

From this point forward, the only initial information we have about the evening comes from Wagner, Walken, and Davern.

But the one thing we do know for sure is that they kept drinking.

At some point, Natalie Wood also took a painkiller and a motion sickness pill.

This, on top of the alcohol, would have caused slurred speech, unsteadiness, and slowed reflexes.

The next piece of information, according to Robert Wagner, is that he and Walken got into a fight.

He said the argument centered around Walken encouraging Wood to pursue her career in Wagner's mind at the expense of her husband and her family.

He also said Natalie was not part of the argument and that he thought she had gone to bed.

He returned to their cabin, according to him, at around 11 p.m.

or midnight.

And when he got there, she was not in bed.

She was missing.

I, can I just say, I hate this?

Like, you know what I mean?

I hate it.

I know it's going to happen and I don't want to, like, I'm like, isn't there a way that it could not happen?

I know.

I'm so mad.

It's awful.

So he informed the captain and then they noted that the boat's dinghy was also missing.

According to Davern, in a revised police statement, which we will come back to, he wanted to look for Natalie immediately and advocated that they turn on the boat's searchlights, but Wagner would not let him.

Again, this is according to Davern, but he said that the reason was Wagner didn't want to disturb the other boats.

There were probably potentially over 50 boats moored at this time.

So there were quite a lot of other people not too far from them.

Walk-in apparently remained asleep through all of this.

Either of you guys think it's weird nobody woke him up.

Yes.

Unless he was completely blackout, drunk, passed out.

And, you know.

That is possible.

I think it's strange.

I think you would at least try to get him up or check his cabin or something, especially if you're looking for her.

It wasn't until 1.30 a.m.

that a ship to call was made, and another two hours before the Coast Guard was called at 3:30 a.m.

Six hours later, her body was discovered floating face down about a mile from the Splendor and 200 yards off of Blue Cavern Point, and the dinghy was wedged into the rocks in the cove.

She was wearing a nightgown and wool socks.

I would say reasonable for going to bed at night on a boat in the winter, and a down jacket.

What do you guys make of what she's wearing?

I mean, if she was going to sleep,

she had her nightgown and her socks on, and then she was, and then she was, you know, I don't know,

out of her mind drunk, and was like, I'm gonna go get something.

And, you know,

isn't making proper decisions.

And yeah, puts her jacket on and for some reason gets in the boat, the dinghy.

Sure, maybe.

I guess the thing that strikes me as potentially odd about this is no shoes, which I guess could have been kicked off, come off in the water.

Sure, that's possible, but they don't ever turn up.

And the jacket is maybe a little strange because that says to me that she intended to be outside,

but if she's not wearing shoes, potentially did not intend to go very far.

Unless she was really just making really poor choices.

That's a good point.

And as we're going to get to, she was absolutely blacked out drunk.

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So all three men told the police that they assumed Wood had of her own volition left the boat on the dinghy.

A couple of reasons that this does not make a ton of sense.

She hated water and she couldn't swim.

We all know this at this point.

She was known to avoid the dinghy.

This was not a calm day at sea either.

It was extremely stormy and the water was very, very rough.

But again, Daisy, as you just pointed out, she probably was not in a particularly logical state of mind.

So that could all go out the window.

Because also she'd had a painkiller on top of the drinking.

Yes, and a motion sickness pill.

So Thomas Noguchi, aka the coroner to the stars, what a title, ruled the death accidental, even though the autopsy noted superficial bruises on her body.

There were also some scratch marks on the dinghy, and the dinghy's motor was in neutral.

So it had drifted to the cove.

It had not been driven.

But both the dinghy and her body were where the current would have taken them.

The scratches on the dinghy, that doesn't seem that crazy to me.

He theorized that she'd tried to untie the dinghy but had slipped and fallen, which would account for some of the bruises, that she then would have tried to get out of the water and back into the dinghy,

but wasn't able to, which again, that would account for the scratches on the outside of it.

Now, he did dig deeper into her dynamic with Wagner, but chose not to release that information to the press at the time because he was under fire for revealing too much about William Holden's death, particularly including his intoxication.

So we've mentioned this, but she was very drunk that night.

She had a blood alcohol level of 0.14%.

Yeah.

Two weeks after her death, the case was officially closed and ruled an accident.

Yeah, that's very fast.

So at the time of the accident, here's what Wagner said happened.

Natalie must have taken the dinghy to try to road to shore, potentially to call her daughters.

It wasn't until his 2008 memoir that he mentions the argument with Watkin.

That was not part of the initial statements at all.

Watkin, for his part, denies the argument between himself and Wagner ever happened.

And this is the biggest problem with this entire case is that Robert Wagner's story constantly changes.

This is where he's landed over time.

Quote, there's only two possibilities.

Either she was trying to get away from the argument or she was trying to tie the dinghy.

But the bottom line is that nobody knows exactly what happened.

So according to him, option one is that she didn't want to hear him fighting with Christopher Walken and was trying to take the dinghy to escape to shore.

But also, if she, let's say she did try to get in the dinghy and fell, right?

And that's where the bruises came from, wouldn't she be yelling?

Yes, she would.

And

screaming.

She was terrified of the water.

Well, so yes, I agree with you.

But again, I think the problem we keep running up to here is that she was extremely drunk.

So

there is a possibility if you hit your head, you may be unconscious and not able to yell.

Oh, sure.

But did she have like a contusion on the head?

Not that I know of.

Option two, this is more believable to me.

The dinghy was loose and banging against the boat.

So she got out of bed to try and tie it down.

That one I could see.

You're drunk.

And then you're trying to go.

Yes.

And then fell.

You're drunk.

You're trying to go to sleep.

Again, the clothes she's wearing makes sense.

She's got her nightgown socks.

So she's in bed.

Like you said, pull on the down parka.

You go up, you try to retie the dinghy to the boat, you slip.

That one, I think that is completely possible.

For now, there are some complications we're going to get to in a minute.

I do want to say both of Natalie Wood's daughters do not think that Robert Wagner had anything to do with their mother's death, and they are adamant about that.

So let's talk about Captain Davern and his version of events.

Initially, he supported Wagner's original police statement, but remember I mentioned there was a revised one.

Well, in the early 90s, Davern started calling Natalie's sister Lana, and while drunk, he would repeatedly tell her Natalie's death wasn't an accident.

Come the 2000s, he starts publicly changing his tune, and in his 2006 book, Goodbye, Natalie, Goodbye, Splendor, This guy is also gross, he came right out and said he thought Wagner was involved in Natalie's death.

Now, very worth noting, this man, his reliability is very questionable.

He has never stopped trying to sell this story to the media and has admitted to lying to the police about his initial statement.

So take everything he says with a monumental grain of salt.

See, Captain Davern is highly questionable.

But all these changing statements around the mid-2000s were red flags to investigators.

And in 2011, they reopened the case of her disappearance.

And again, that's

2011, because remember, Robert Wagner's memoir comes out around 2008.

So that coupled with this guy who's been trying to bring this back up, the cops are like, okay, you two are telling totally different stories.

You've both changed your story.

We're going to look into this again.

All they had to do was shut the fuck up.

Literally all they had to do, shut your pie holes.

That's it.

Nothing.

Can't do it.

Wow.

The only person who did that was Christopher Walkin.

So the police talked to numerous people who had been reluctant to come forward during the initial investigation.

And most critically, Davern gives a whole new statement to the police.

Now he says that he did indeed hear a screaming argument, but it was not between Wagner and Walken.

It was between Wagner and Wood.

And the content of the argument was strikingly similar to Wagner's account of the argument with Christopher Walken, except this time he was arguing with Natalie Wood directly about the attention that she was paying to her career.

Now, again, interesting what the context of Brainstorm is, because memory across this story is so flexible and fluid.

there are also accounts that he and Wood had had an argument at dinner of similar context.

So again,

you don't know.

Like, is that what Davern is remembering?

Who knows?

But was Davern at the restaurant?

Yes, he was at dinner with them.

Okay.

But Davern claims that this was on board the boat and he heard thumping, shouting, and things breaking.

And critically, the last words he heard Wagner say were, get off my fucking boat.

And that's when Robert Wagner came in and told him Natalie Wood was missing.

According to Davern, Wagner also insisted that Davern move into his guest house right away and told him not to speak to anyone.

Yeah.

It's tough because like the most incriminating things that we have come from that man and he is just, he's a mess.

Yeah.

So while Wagner and Davern, again, as you pointed out, have been yapping about this night for years, Christopher Walkin has not.

He cooperated with police during the initial investigation.

He has never wavered from his initial theory, which is that he had no idea what happened that night because Natalie was alone.

He told Playboy in 1997, quote, she had gone to bed before us and her room was at the back.

A dinghy was bouncing against the side of the boat and I think she went out to move it.

There was a ski ramp that was partially in the water.

It was slippery.

I had walked on it myself.

Again, I think that's the most believable version of this story.

So my question is, why?

do these two keep changing things up.

At least that's what Christopher Watkins said publicly.

Privately may have been a different story.

According to Finstead, again, the author of Wood's biography, she talked to at least one source who had information that Watkin had told a friend he too heard the fight between Wagner and Wood that night, but he would not talk about it on the record ever.

So let's go back to Brainstorm, because I see Chris drifting off into the abyss.

I'm here.

So was filming not finished at this point?

It was not finished.

Okay.

But there wasn't much left.

There were three weeks of shooting left.

And Natalie Wood had actually finished all of her major scenes.

There were only two left and they were quite minor, which is why it was surprising that MGM immediately shut down production.

Apparently, within hours of her death, and this is a quote from Douglas Trumbull, the studio declared force majeure and filed a $15 million insurance claim to recoup their losses on the movie, and that they were terminating the production on the movie.

I was taken into a meeting with then MGM president Freddie Fields, and he said, Doug, it's over, terminated.

I was notified that I was fired, and everyone on the crew was fired, and the entire cast was fired.

They also locked the sets and would not let anyone in or out without express permission.

Chris, Daisy, any guesses why MGM did this?

They just think they'll make more money through the insurance payout than they will.

That's what it sounds like.

Yeah.

And they don't have to spend the whatever the whatever's left to spend on production and post-production, they don't have to spend.

And so they'll just make more money.

Yeah, right.

It's like a husband killing a wife.

Like, yeah, it's just seasonal.

Yeah, I mean, it's just opportunistic.

It's just, you know, David Zazoff's doing it right now.

Yeah.

And of course, they'd heard that their, you know, things on set maybe weren't great, that he was losing control of the cast.

So, yeah.

Well, they're seeing dailies.

I mean, and they know the script.

I mean, I think they probably knew this is a tough commercial sell.

Yeah.

And despite Walken and Fletcher's pedigrees, it had been a long time since Wood had been on screen.

Neither Fletcher nor Walken are going to be box office draws.

You know, they're critically acclaimed actors.

You've got a pretty big marketing opportunity there, and they just don't care.

I'm not saying I agree with their assessment from an ethical perspective.

Yeah.

I do not.

But it's also

her last film, but it was also like she'd been out of the game for a while.

She'd been out.

That's the thing.

It's not the last film of somebody that you've been watching consistently for a long time.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, you're both spot on.

They had $675 million in debt thanks to a string of box office flops, and they just decided to pull the plug.

But Trumbull is like, uh, fuck you.

So he rewrote the script to remove Wood's two remaining scenes, and he locked himself in the editing room, cutting together a version of what they already had to show them he could easily finish the movie without her.

And he's like, surely they're going to see.

So he brings them this cut, and they're like,

no, no, sir.

You have to take it to to the insurance company.

And he does, Chris.

So Trumbull took it all the way to the insurer Lloyds of London.

He presented them with the revised script

and the cut saying we can absolutely make this movie.

And they sided with him over MGM, giving him $2.75 million to complete the film.

Yeah.

MGM still tried to weasel out of this by offering it to other studios around town.

But when they realized that, hey, people might actually want to buy Natalie Wood's last movie, they're like, just kidding, it's ours.

We want this.

And they strike a deal where Lloyd's financed the rest of the film for a percentage of the profits.

Now, Trumbull was very much on MGM's shit list for this.

He'd cost them their $15 million insurance settlement, and as Chris pointed out, additional production costs.

He said he was afraid to get on the planes that they chartered for him.

Yeah.

That may be hyperbolic.

He was serious.

Perhaps.

She's a

drama queen.

We love him.

He's a magnificent technician and a pioneer within film.

Who may have been prone to a bit of exaggeration?

I love him.

Yeah.

On February 8th, filming did start again, and the vibes were understandably quite bad.

Yeah.

He was able to finish it pretty easily without her.

He modified one scene that she was supposed to be in, replacing her with a lab assistant.

He cut her from

Wood's sister Lana was brought in as a body double for some long shots and profiles that were still missing.

And this is fun.

One of the final scenes where Walk-in, I believe, is being chased.

Sassmaster Trumbull filmed that in the hallway outside the offices of the MGM executives who had tried to shut production down.

It's funny.

I will say too,

the vision of hell at the end.

Also,

you can see influences throughout like Event Horizon later, you know, things like that as well.

It was the, it was the death experience.

It was really cool, I thought.

It was really cool.

And in that moment, I thought, is this based on a short story?

It was very, very much like a short science fiction story, but it wasn't.

It was an original screenplay.

Yeah, the angelic stuff at the end was that was pretty beautiful.

And I actually thought the sequence you're talking about with hell.

It almost looks like people are encased in human hearts, which I thought was intentional because she just had a heart attack.

Oh, yeah.

And it was really disturbing and creepy.

And Daisy, you've done something on, you've done an episode on near-death experiences.

I wonder if any of them mimicked what you see in the movie in terms of like pulling back.

Yeah, I mean, this one guy definitely actually had an experience where he was convinced he was tied to a slab and being tortured by demons.

Oh, yeah.

It was wild.

And

he had an option at one point, apparently, like of two doors at the end, I guess.

And then he went through the one where he was alive again.

Oh, I'm bad at those games.

I would pick the wrong door for sure.

Well, the film was released on September 30th, 1983, to essentially zero fanfare.

Watkin did almost no interviews to promote it, did not receive any major marketing push.

Despite its budget of over $18 million, it grossed only 10.2 million in North America.

And the critical reception was pretty mixed.

Although, some people, I think, did recognize that technologically and sort of ideologically, there's a lot to this movie that's very advanced.

All right.

Remember, I mentioned the investigation was reopened in 2011.

Yeah.

That is because it's more than just Davern and Wagner who we're talking.

Stockbroker Marilyn Wayne's yacht was moored just 50 yards from the Splendor on the night of Natalie Wood's death.

She told police in 2011, not at the time, quote, a woman's voice crying for help from drowning awakened my husband and he awakened me.

Help me, someone please help me, I'm drowning, we heard repeatedly.

Alarmed, I called out to my son, who also heard the cries and looked at his digital watch.

It was just minutes after 11 p.m.

She also heard a man's voice, slurred and aggravated, saying something like, oh, hold on, we're coming to get you.

Just after that, the woman's cries stopped.

A few days later, she found a note in her client mailbox.

It allegedly said, If you value your life, keep quiet about what you know.

Additional witnesses came forward saying they too heard yelling at around 11 p.m.

but had assumed it was coming from a party on another boat.

In 2012, her cause of death was changed to drowning and undetermined factors, and this time the medical examiner was, quote, unable to exclude non-volitional, unplanned entry into the water.

Additionally, you pointed this out, Daisy, the lack of head trauma and location of the bruises seem to indicate that they may have happened prior to her entry into the water.

Couple things here that I think are worth noting.

One, she heard someone saying, hold on, we're coming to get you.

That's the weirdest thing in this whole story to me.

Who is we?

They feel pretty confident that that's Robert Wagner, who they thought they heard.

So who is he talking about?

I mean, there's so many factors here.

Like it's so many years later that these people come forward.

I know maybe they felt threatened at the time, but there are ways to like come forward quietly and anonymously.

And you'd think that somebody would.

And yes, there are a lot of them, but like to your point before, memories get distorted over time.

Totally.

You can add things in.

You can take things away.

I do wonder if she,

you know, if she came out, maybe he was being, maybe he was throwing a tantrum, you know, a drunken tantrum, and she came out and put her jacket on and was confronting him, you know, you're being a baby, whatever it was.

And maybe she slipped or not.

I think I agree with where you're headed.

In 2018, her death was classified as suspicious and Wagner was officially named a person of interest.

Again, both their daughters maintain they do not believe Wagner was involved in her death, but Lana Wood feels very differently and always has.

She remains convinced that Wagner absolutely had something to do with her sister's death.

She believed he may have knocked her unconscious, panicked, and placed her in the water.

To me,

I think that's potentially the most believable version of events.

It could explain the exchange that the stockbroker heard,

especially if Wood had come too briefly after being placed in the water.

I don't know.

Again, she could have also slipped.

They're all so drunk.

But also, if she'd slipped and he was there, you would have heard him yelling, oh my God, oh my God.

Well, some they heard someone saying, we're coming to get you.

I don't know.

I think there's totally a version of this where it is just a bizarre accident that they are so drunk that they can't figure it out.

I think the other problem with that, though, is the gap in telling anybody, the gap in going to look for her.

Like if she slipped, if it was an accident and you saw it or were there and you saw it, then you would get her immediately.

You would call the Coast Guard.

Right.

And if you didn't see it, but you noticed that suddenly she wasn't in her bed or whatever your story is, then you'd go look for her.

You'd put the lights on.

You're not going to be like, oh, I don't want to wake the neighbors.

That's absurd.

Well, the LA detectives who reopened the case would agree with you.

They felt that his story did not make a lot of sense, particularly the hours after her death, were what didn't track for them.

Yeah.

But according to Wagner's rep, both Lana and Captain Davern are, quote, despicable human beings capitalizing on the accidental death of a beloved member of the Wagner family, which

sure, I get it.

The saga continued in 2020.

That biographer Suzanne Finstead released a revised version of her biography containing new evidence from a doctor Michael Franco, who was an intern at the LA coroner's office at the time in 1981.

He claimed that he saw bruises and cuts on her body that in his mind suggested she had been pushed off of something she was clinging to.

And according to him, his superiors told him to drop it.

But in 2022, after the last remaining detective following the leads retired, the investigation came to an end.

And though the case technically remains unsolved, Wagner was cleared of all wrongdoing.

Now, for his part, Douglas Trumbull never really directed another feature film again.

He did successfully repurpose show scan technology for theme park rides, most famously, the Back to the Future ride.

We have him to thank for all those ones with the big screens and the moving platforms that always make me want to bars.

Goofy's soaring above America.

Yeah, that's what that's what the memory sequences reminded me of.

Well, great, that's what it's used for.

He also did go on to create the opening sequence in Terrence Malik's The Tree of Life that shows the Big Bang, and he passed away in 2022 at 79 years old.

So,

where does everybody

sit at the end of this strange journey?

Listen, I think Chris not talking about it and refusing to

ever talk about it is, that's weird to me.

You know, it's, it's one thing to say, like, listen, I was asleep.

I don't know

what happened.

And it's, and I'm devastated.

It's another to be like, I'm not going to talk about this.

Like, why?

You know, to his credit, he may have been pressed about it so much.

And

it sounds like they did have a very close relationship, whether it was romantic, we don't know.

So if you lost someone like that and you had had to give multiple police statements, you know, you maybe did a couple, you've been asked about it in numerous interviews.

I can see not wanting to talk about it, but I don't disagree with you that it is strange how closed-lipped he has been about it.

And I do wonder if this whole Shmagegi is why he's so weird.

I think this must have been an unbelievably traumatic experience for everyone on board that boat.

And we're never going to know what happened because Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken are, as far as we know, right, that she may have been alone.

That's what they both say.

And We just don't know.

I don't know.

If you're deathly afraid of the water and it's nighttime, like it seems to me, even if you're drunk and something's banging against the boat, first of all, you're not going to care.

You're drunk enough, you're going to fall asleep, I think.

But also go to the captain.

Like, can you fix that?

I don't want to go to the side of the boat.

I'm, it's nighttime and I'm terrified of water.

Yes.

But again, the problem with this whole entire story is that they are all.

all of them extremely wasted.

So I don't even know if you can really trust their statements from the beginning because they're so drunk.

I mean, the accounts from people on shore that these people were

schlammered before they even left to go back to the yacht and they continued drinking when they got there.

So

who knows?

We are never going to know.

It is so strange.

The thing that stands out to me, again, is what that woman came forward with in 2011, that she heard someone say, hold on, we are coming to get you.

And I would love to know who she meant.

Yeah.

Unless in his drunken hysteria, he just suddenly started referring to himself as we.

I don't know.

Or unless that stockbroker is also making shit up.

This is such a frustrating case and such a frustrating story because everyone's memory is flexible.

She was such a beloved, beautiful public figure.

I think everybody wants a piece of this story to a certain degree.

The one that I don't understand is Robert Wagner.

Shut your mouth.

Just stop talking.

I can understand.

I mean, I don't agree with it, but I can understand the captain being like, I'm going to try to make some money off of this and, you know, capitalize on it.

But like, shut up, dude.

Yeah.

Chris, what's your hot take?

Anything's possible.

I have no idea.

My instinct is

I discount almost entirely any

new recollections post.

I think that's 2011.

I'm like,

whatever.

Unless they have

reentries from

unless there is some contemporaneous accounting.

This, you know, I have held on to this memory like Amber for 40 years.

And now I'm going to tell you, okay,

maybe everything we know about memory is that it is.

Hands down, the worst form of evidence that you could possibly use if you actually want to get to the truth

of a matter.

And so that's why I just, anything, it's not to say it's not possible.

I just discount it drastically.

Well, and I think it's so interesting that this was her last movie because one of the most fascinating parts of this movie to me is when they sort of realize that

as they're seeing each other's memories, I think Christopher Walken points out he's seeing Natalie Wood's memories of himself, but what he says is that wasn't me.

That was you.

Like that wasn't really what had happened.

That was you.

The way that you believed it and saw it was a reflection of you.

It was not me.

And

I, I agree with you, Chris.

As tempting as it is for me to be like, ooh, they heard something, they said it.

You're right.

That's a really long time.

Yeah.

Here's how I'll present one option that it's going to sound extreme, but is entirely possible.

It is possible that Robert Wagner was drunk.

It's possible that he was so drunk that he pushed her off the boat.

It's possible that in his drunken state, he made a conscious decision.

Fuck her.

I'm not going to help her.

I'm not saying this, this is this, by the way.

Everything is conjecture.

Everything, yes.

Exactly.

I'm just suggesting.

And it's possible that since then, in his mind, he has completely rewritten the narrative.

Yeah.

And he actively remembers an argument.

with Christopher Walken.

And he has no recollection at this point of

shoving her off of the boat.

That is entirely, that happens.

People repress memories, erase memories, replace memories.

What's so there's, yes, there it is possible.

There is a version where he is a guilty man and has been actively changing his narrative to cover his own tale.

There is also a version where the story he tells himself has changed over time and he has felt compelled to become his truth.

Become his truth, right?

And he's he's felt compelled to present that to the public at various touch points.

And that's not to let him off the hook by any point.

My point is simply that's what's frustrating about stories like these where there's very little actual physical evidence, right?

Everything, even her injuries are, well, it could have been this or

could have been this.

And so I just think, again, anything unfortunate, like

the tragedy was the circumstances of Natalie being on the boat.

Yeah.

being drunk, being in an unhappy relationship.

Yeah.

Also that her career and her motherhood and her family was being used against her right when she already very much sacrificed her career for an extended period of time in order to make herself available to her children oh yeah he's off a series regular on a tv show yeah yeah and it's it's it's just so cliched and it's so boring and it's like get another get another complaint dude like you know but it is it is the attention thing right it that's what it comes down to it's it maybe she's getting more attention than me but also just really uh, it's that need to be the object of somebody's every desire.

And that's, I mean, we see it now in the trad wife thing, I think, big time.

Um, but this, I don't, I think it's a mistake that we've fallen into, maybe men more so than women, to expect,

uh, to be, to expect to be worshipped in some way by our partners, as opposed to in a good, balanced relationship where we care about each other and want to help each other succeed.

Also, don't marry a Hollywood star if you're worried about not getting enough attention or that her focus, like she's going to be busy.

Yeah.

Well, I think there could be like a power plate component to that too, where he thinks maybe, you know, I'll marry her and then she'll sacrifice her career for me.

And that means I'm that much better.

And, you know,

or maybe, you know, they're young and they fall in love and he's dumb and he doesn't fully think it through.

That's also entirely.

That's most likely.

You know?

Yeah.

You think it, we're in love.

It'll work out.

And then you get older and it'll work out a second time.

No, seriously, yeah.

And then you realize, no, it's hard work and blah, blah, blah.

And anyway, not that she didn't do the hard work.

She obviously did.

I also think that it's

part of what's sad about this story.

I mean, what's devastating about this story is her childhood.

and what happened to her in her childhood and that that got has gotten superseded by her tragic death.

Because I think the story of the abuse that she endured at the hands of her mother and at the hands of people in Hollywood is an important story because it keeps getting repeated over and over and over and over.

And I don't know what the solution is because there doesn't seem to be, I mean, people keep getting hired who do these horrible things.

But well, now it's even worse.

I feel like with

social media,

you can become a star outside of the Hollywood system as a child.

And this was exactly the reason that my mother, my parents, but my mother was so hesitant about me being an actor.

And my career took off much faster than anybody could have anticipated.

But it was theater and it was localized.

And this was before social media.

So

I wasn't everywhere because of it.

I was a star in New York.

I was a star on Broadway, but not all over the place.

And I booked a TV show when I was, I guess, 12 with Linda Lavin, and she wouldn't let me go.

I mean, she was sick, and there was nobody to go with me to Hollywood, but her thing was like, you're not going there.

That place is

the devil's playground, and I'm not letting you go there as a young girl.

And I also, you know, looking back, there are roles that I think I lost

at a very young age to girls who were prettier than me and I that's disgusting because the reason like why does it matter if a if a if an 11 year old girl is pretty well Hollywood right and so it's a it's a really scary industry especially for children.

I agree.

I was most disturbed, I think, about what I learned about her early life

and her mother and just what a strange,

what a strange and dark existence she had had.

And that fortune teller thing is so weird.

Yeah.

It is, but, but.

Chris, get out of here.

You know the experiment?

You put a thousand people in a line and you have them all flip a coin and whoever has heads sits down and the rest.

You think that fortune teller witness, every single person that came into their fortune telling hut was like, beware of dark water.

Your second child.

One day I'm going to do that, right?

Put a thousand people in a line, have them flip a coin.

Everybody that gets heads sits down.

And you just keep repeating that until there's one person left.

And that last person will have flipped heads 10 times in a row.

And they'll say, I had a feeling.

I had a feeling.

I just, by the fifth one, I knew it was going to be me.

And it's really compelling.

But you're not interviewing the 250 other people who flipped it three times in a row and said, I had a feeling this was going to be the one, you know?

I just think, yes, it's odd.

It's unusual.

It's very specific.

Sure.

There's also 8 billion people in the world.

All right.

Chris, get out of here.

Thank you so, so much, Daisy.

Thank you for joining us on this journey.

Please go listen to Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Egan.

It is really wonderful.

Thank you.

It's especially good during this spooky season.

Very appropriate, but appropriate year-round as well.

Go give it a listen.

Again, it's Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Egan.

And thank you very much for being here.

Thank you so much.

This was super, super fun.

And if you all enjoyed this little exploration that took us outside the boundaries of a film in the way that we would typically cover one, let us know.

And hopefully, we will do some more of these.

That's it for now.

Thank you, Daisy.

Go to patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing music by David Bowman with research from Laura Woods.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

The power is ours.