On January 20, 2002, Richard McCaslin, or the Phantom Patriot, was armed with a rifle and katana when he started a fire in the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive male only property, where the likes of Ronald Reagan and a few Bush’s visited. McCaslin was arrested after a tense stand-off with the police, landing him in prison for years.
It would be this raid and subsequent conversations between local journalist Tea Krulos and McCaslin, that would inspire the creation of the award winning documentary, American Madness, based off of Krulos’ 2020 book, American Madness:The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness.
The documentary was directed by Eric Hayden, and produced by both Kim Hayden and Krulos. It premiered in Los Angeles at the LA Film Festival and won in the “Best Documentary” category. The team also decided to set up a one-night-only screening in Milwaukee at the Avalon Atmospheric Theater on July 30 at 6:30 p.m. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the trio. To attend, you can purchase tickets online for $13.
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Krulos first heard of McCaslin when he was working on his 2013 book Heroes in the Night, which chronicled the stories of “real life superheroes,” costumed citizens who patrolled neighborhoods fighting crime. Surprisingly, McCaslin reached out to Krulos one morning — he wanted to get involved with the book.
“People would ask ‘what conspiracies did he believe in,’ all of them is the answer,” said Krulos.
He developed his Phantom Patriot persona in 2001, after a lifetime of reading superhero comics. He trained his skills working at Six Flags, portraying Batman in a stunt show and spent much of his prison time creating a comic about the attack. After his parents passed away, McCaslin started to take an interest with conspiracy theories, particularly after watching Alex Jones’ documentary Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove.
“Conspiracy theories and comic books, they’re both kind of fantasy lands,” Krulos said. “I think those things really intersected in his mind in a unique way where he was like, I can be the superhero who saves the day.”
McCaslin took a lot of his inspiration for the break-in from Jones, who snuck into the Bohemian Grove in 2000 and filmed one of their most elaborate and strange rituals, in which they burned a large owl effigy. Jones included the footage in his documentary and gave instructions on how to get to the Grove.
Krulos emailed back and forth with McCaslin, developing a bond with the superhero, who started to take a liking to political activism.
He planned a peaceful protest in San Francisco, where he dressed in his Phantom Patriot costume, marched holding a protest sign and finished the event with a speech. He invited Krulos to attend, who did accept. When Krulos met McCaslin in person after corresponding over email for about a year, he found that the skeptic was mild mannered and soft spoken.
“I was imagining he was kind of like loud and bombastic,” Krulos reflects. “But he was very polite, I thought he was genuinely funny.”
The bones of American Madness as a book started to form from these conversations. Krulos wanted to better understand what exactly made McCaslin and other conspiracy theorists tick.
“Sometimes conspiracies are true, our government has done some really messed up stuff – like MKUltra, it might sound like a wild theory, but the CIA actually did dose people with hallucinogenics to see if they could develop a mind control drug,” said Krulos. “When your government does a lot of different things like that over time, there’s a natural suspicion.”
After years of skepticism, McCaslin took his life in 2018, two years before American Madness was published.
“I was always hoping he would find a way out of the conspiracy world,” Krulos said. “Conspiracy theories create this rain cloud hanging over people all the time.”
After the publication of American Madness, Krulos went on several podcasts to discuss the book – one of which was seen by Eric Hayden, who reached out to Krulos to ask about adapting it into a documentary.
“He had a really good understanding of the book and he was passionate about bringing that to the screen,” Krulos remarked.
Soon enough, the two were ironing out details for the American Madness documentary and began production in 2021. The documentary features McCaslin’s comic book art as well as video footage he had shot as the Phantom Patriot.
“I wanted to show people that, yeah, this guy committed a crime, he got 5 felonies and he believed in some pretty wild stuff, but in a lot of ways, he’s a normal person,” said Krulos.
