Where sci-fi, beat and New Age meld

“Mock Up on Mu,” an experimental collage of sci-fi, spy, Western and horror genres, intersperses found footage with new live-action scenes. “Mu” wittily speculates on how history and cultural messages were shaped by three significant Californians and their interrelationships: jet-propulsion pioneer and Aerojet Corp. co-founder Jack Parsons; New Age movement instigator Marjorie Cameron, Parsons’ third wife; and sci-fi writer and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The Examiner spoke with director/writer Craig Baldwin. 

How long did it take you to make the movie? It’s really more my lifestyle, I’m surrounded by films as you can see, I work on films all the time, and I’m constantly working through these ideas; the last film I made was in ’99, so let’s say seven or eight years. [laughs]

How much of Hubbard’s incantatory public speaking in the film is actually from his writings? The last quarter is almost all primary sources from Parsons and Cameron, but at no point do I quote Hubbard at all. [laughs]

So has Tom Cruise come to kick down your door, or have you had hassles from the litigious Scientologists? I was really encouraged by the “South Park” episode on Tom Cruise — I immediately called my lawyer and said, “If they can do that, I can do this,” and I changed the character’s name back to L. Ron Hubbard. I’m not really down on Scientology — I think the E-meter or any kind of feedback system is good, getting in touch with memory is good — but I’m interested in Hubbard as a huckster and powermonger.

What inspired “Mock Up on Mu?” I used the anecdotal history of the menage — Parsons started an occult/New Age commune, and Hubbard ran off from their commune with Parson’s second wife — as a small backstory in my previous film, and that was enough to raise the ire of the Scientologists. They e-mailed me and called me, and they sent me a three-page letter of official denial, and when I read that letter, then I knew what the core of my next film would be!

What was your goal in making “Mock Up on Mu?” I’m trying to look at these three subcultures, beat, sci-fi and New Age, a great vibrant period of California history. I am a child of these three braidings, the subject matter is Californians — I’m a Californian, my father worked for Aerojet ... It’s an allegory.

When we first spoke, you said that with this film “the style is the message.” Can you say more? In every DNA molecule the whole self is within each chromosome. The form itself embodies the whole. My thing is about deconstruction and analysis through obsessive reworking of historical film clips. My content is about world events. My method is this collage.