The Wonderland Massacre Director On Working With Michael Connelly

The final episode of MGM+’s docuseries, The Wonderland Massacre & the Secret History of Hollywood, is now available to stream. In it, best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly (the mind behind Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer) goes back through the 1981 murders on Wonderland Avenue, a case that embodied the sex and drugs era of Hollywood and inspired Boogie Nights. The murders span several corners of history and pop culture, involving famous porn star John Holmes, kingpins such as Pablo Escobar, mafiosos like Eddie Nash, and even Liberace and his boyfriend, Scott Thorson.

Connelly may be best known for his Harry Bosch novels, which have resulted in 10 television seasons worth of Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, but he also has a long and storied history as a journalist. He put his investigative skills to excellent use when putting together his Audible Original, The Wonderland Murders & the Secret History of Hollywood, but he also joined forces with documentary director Alison Ellwood to incorporate the archival footage and adapt the podcast format into a docuseries.

Screen Rant interviewed Ellwood about how she joined The Wonderland Massacre project, why Michael Connelly’s writing and journalism background is so important to the docuseries, and the challenges that came with exploring Scott Thorson’s myriad connections to the story.

How The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History of Hollywood Went From Podcast To Docuseries

Ellwood thought, “We’ve got to visually see that. It’ll be so fun,” because Scott’s story is really wild.

Screen Rant: I was really fascinated by this docuseries. I knew about the Wonderland massacre, but not any of the details. How did you first get involved with the project?

Alison Ellwood: I was aware of the podcast, and they were finishing it up when they brought me on. They started talking about doing a docuseries, and I loved working with Michael. I had access to the Zooms that he did with Scott [Thorson] for the podcast, so I got to see this sort of cat-and-mouse game with them that made me think, “Oh, my gosh. We’ve got to visually see that. It’ll be so fun,” because Scott’s story is really wild.

Screen Rant: What is the biggest shift for you when pulling from the podcast format to the docuseries one?

Alison Ellwood: Thankfully, there were amazing archives from the period that we were able to make a lot of use of. I had just finished doing Laurel Canyon and San Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time, which showed the bucolic Laurel Canyon scene with beautiful music. But by ’81, it had become literally the negative image of that, so I wanted the sort of play with negative imagery and that noir feel.

I wanted Michael’s scene with the detectives to feel like he was meeting the detectives in the weird coffee shops and places of that period. We wanted it to have a real moody feel to it.

Screen Rant: How involved were you in deciding what stays or gets added in? Did you uncover more details when going over it again?

Alison Ellwood: Yeah, we did a lot of interviews, and we pulled the stuff that made the most sense. The trickiest thing was figuring out how to structure it, but then once we figured out the structure, it was pretty clear what was going to work.

There was just so much archive that we kept finding, like when Scott got shot in Jacksonville, Florida. We had no idea that existed, and suddenly, it pops up. It was just amazing how much stuff popped up. I don’t want to give away too much, but you find out where the younger interviews with Scott came from in the fourth episode, and that’s just amazing. When we first got those, I said, “We’ve got to use those early on, but not reveal where they come from because it’s such a turning point in the story.” That was an amazing find, those two interviews.

How Michael Connelly’s Journalism Days & Detective Fiction Affected The Wonderland Massacre

“He said that this story would make a very bad fiction novel.”

Screen Rant: Michael obviously has a lot of personal connections in that world, having been an investigative journalist, but how did your interest in this type of docuseries first arise?

Alison Ellwood: True crime isn’t really my genre, honestly, but I was interested in it because it was an area that had changed so much because of the cultural and social changes. It was because of cocaine, really, and then ultimately crack. It just became such a dark story, so that was an intriguing part of it to me.

Also, I’m a huge Michael Connolly fan. I’m a fan of his writing and his series, so it was just a no-brainer that I would want to work with Michael.

Screen Rant: Obviously, Michael’s background makes his fiction writing particularly salient, but how do you feel that it has helped shape the direction of an investigative story such as this one?

Alison Ellwood: Michael gets to play the detective on camera here. He thoroughly researches his books, and he has contacts, but what was funny was that he said that this story would make a very bad fiction novel. It would be just too unbelievable. There are just so many twists and turns that he said, “My editor would think this is crazy. No one would buy this.”

Scott Thorson Was Always At The Heart Of The Wonderland Massacre Narrative

“The trickiest thing was figuring out where to introduce Scott.”

creen Rant: Did the recent passing of Scott recontextualize anything for you? I know that everything had been done at that point, but is there anything more that you hope people take away really from his story?

Alison Ellwood: I think this whole story is a cautionary tale about addiction. Were it not for being addicted to drugs, Scott Thorson, John Holmes, and so many other people and celebrities would not have been tripped up in this story at all. The drugs that the artists were using to create music were mind-expanding drugs, and then when cocaine and crack came onto the scene, those drugs were designed to addict people. That was the purpose, and it’s just such a dark tale.

Screen Rant: It’s also one that holds fascination because no one has actually really been held responsible for the actual murders. I know that there’s some small amount of justice served, but there’s a really interesting discussion in episode 4 about whether these murders could ever be fully solved. What is your take on that?

Alison Ellwood: By all accounts, the detectives and everybody who investigated this case still feel that there are at least one person, if not two people, out there who participated in the murder. It would be a matter of someone coming forward and saying, “I know this information,” and being able to corroborate it. But so many of the people involved in the crime are dead now.

All the detectives, thankfully, are still around, but it would take someone coming forward to say they have indisputable evidence that could prove that somebody did it. I don’t know that anybody does, but there were people that were too afraid to talk to us. They wouldn’t be part of the series or the podcast because of their fear of people still out there.

Screen Rant: What was the method that you used when reaching out to people? What were some of the most interesting conversations you had leading up to the docuseries?

Alison Ellwood: As a journalist, Michael had relationships with the cops way back in the day, so he would reach out to them and then they would give us names of other people. I can’t name the names because they refused to go on, but some of the detectives gave us names of other people that they thought we should talk to. Some weren’t willing to talk, but basically everybody that was willing to talk, we have in the film. Of course, it’s largely told through Scott’s perspective after the first episode, once he’s introduced.

Screen Rant: Was that always the case from the start, or were there other angles that you were looking to tackle?

Alison Ellwood: No, we knew that it was going to be through Scott’s lens because he’s connected in so many ways to so many angles of the story. When you find out in episode 3 that he was behind the crack epidemic, it’s like, “What?!” It’s just insane. We always knew we wanted it to do through Scott’s point of view or perspective, because he was so entangled with the story, but the trickiest thing was figuring out where to introduce Scott.

At one point, we didn’t even introduce him until halfway through the second episode, and I was like, “No way. We’ve got to introduce him as the cliffhanger out of episode 1.” That was the trickiest thing to figure out.

Alison Ellwood & Michael Connelly Plan To Keep Working Together

Screen Rant: Finally, what is next for you? Is there any other story that you’re already looking to dive into?

Alison Ellwood: Michael and I are hoping to do another crime story together, with Jen Casey and Nick Gilhool also as producers, so we have that. We’re developing that now. I’m also personally finishing up a documentary feature about the band Culture Club, so I’m kind of stuck in the eighties. Yeah,

Screen Rant: It is a period that holds a fascination for society even to this day. What do you think it is about that decade that keeps us invested?

Alison Ellwood: I don’t know. It’s just the indulgence and excess and drugs. But the ’80s were not my favorite decade to live through, that’s for sure. Not to mention all the bad hair!

Read our other documentary interviews here: