Six days ago Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson posted a comprehensive projection piece about an alleged Eyes Wide Shut-level orgy scene in episode six of True Detective, which airs tonight on HBO. The orgy will happen at some secluded, manor-like lodge in Geurneville, California, a small town on the Russian River that I’ve personally visited a few times. Nice town, nice country vibe.
Guerneville, you should know, is a couple of miles from Monte Rio, which of course is where the fabled Bohemian Grove is located. (Here’s a map of the area.) A private 700-square-acre retreat for powerful white guys, Bohemian Grove is known for having hosted all kinds of pagan bonfire celebrations with guys wearing animal heads and loin cloths and pissing in the bushes. The Wiki page quotes Bill Clinton as describing the Bohemian Club as a place “where all those rich Republicans go up and stand naked against redwood trees, right?” On the Watergate tapes Richard Nixon is heard saying that he’s visited “from time to time…but it is the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine.”
Anyway Colin Farrell‘s Ray Velcoro has discovered that there’s a connection between Bohemian Grove sex parties and the late Ben Caspere, Mayor Austin Chessani (Ritchie Coster), Vince Vaughn‘s trigger-man Blake Churchman (Christopher James Baker) Dr. Irving Pitlor (Rick Springfield) and Russian thug Osip Agranov (Timothy V. Murphy). It seems that this jaded fraternity has been involved in sending prostitutes to some Bohemian Grove-like gatherings in Guerneville “in order to collect dirt on the wealthy and powerful,” Robinson writes. (I gradually picked this up on my own, but it takes me two or three viewings of each episode plus online plot recaps plus a special catch-up session at the Sherman Oaks True Detective night school on Ventura Blvd. to sort it all out.) Apparently McAdams’s detective has wangled an invite and will attend in disguise (dark brown wig, slick evening dress).