WONDERLAND explores, in Rashomon-like fashion, the brutal multiple murders that took place high atop Wonderland Avenue in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon during the Summer of 1981.  At first the case seemed to involve only the usual strung-out drug dealers and party hounds, but it quickly became elevated to a classic L.A. noir when it was discovered to be connected to the infamous porn king John C. "Johnny Wadd" Holmes.

the wonderland murders
The infamous 1981 murders on Wonderland Avenue are an indelible part of low-brow Hollywood lore, a crime that combined every sleazy tabloid ingredient -- drugs, guns, gore, sex and death.  Labeled by the LAPD as the most gruesome crime scene since the Tate/LaBianca slaughter, the tangled web of participants and victims at the Wonderland house made a clear-cut solution to the case elusive. Four people were dead (Ron Launius, Joy Miller, Barbara Richardson and Billy Deverell) and the one survivor, Susan Launius, suffered severe head injuries and was never able to identify her attackers.  John Holmes was arrested in Florida six months after the murders as a suspect in the killing of four people at Wonderland.  He was acquitted the following year.  The notorious drug kingpin Adel Nasrallah, known as Eddie Nash and played in the film by Eric Bogosian, was charged with the slayings in 1988, went to trial in 1990, but was freed due to a hung jury.  In 2001, at the age of 72, he pled no contest to a large number of racketeering charges and conspiracy to commit the Wonderland murders.  He was freed because of medical reasons after spending eight months in a federal prison.

The Wonderland murders also epitomised the end of an era - the promiscuous, pot-smoking Hollywood of the '70's ended at Wonderland, heralding the cracked-out, AIDS-decimated '80's.  The man at the centre of the Wonderland murders, former porn king John Holmes, would die of an AIDS-related illness in 1988, after a career that was rumoured to include having sex with over 14,000 women in more than 2,000 hard-core films.

the evolution of 'johnny wadd'
John Holmes did not seem predestined for a career in porn.  Born in Ohio, John grew up with his devout Southern Baptist mother, five siblings, and stepfather.  He enlisted in the Army at the age of 16 and spent three years in Germany.  Upon his discharge, Holmes headed to the promise land -- Los Angeles -- where he worked a variety of jobs including a stint as an ambulance driver that introduced him to a young nurse named Sharon, whom he married in 1965.

For the next two years, Holmes and his wife lived quiet, uneventful lives.  Holmes found work at a frozen food warehouse but the frigid conditions caused his lung to collapse. While recovering, Holmes frequented a poker parlour in Gardena.  It was in the men's room of the parlour that, legend has it, a stag photographer first noticed John's amazing potential for smut success.  The prodigiously endowed Holmes decided he'd found his calling, much to the displeasure of his wife.  Although disgusted with him and furious, Sharon was loyal to John and even though they stopped sleeping together, their bond and marriage endured. 

With the success of 1972's DEEP THROAT, THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES and BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR, porn crossed into the mainstream.  In 1973, Holmes' career began to take off with a porn series built around a private eye named Johnny Wadd.  With John's career now in full swing, having escalated quickly from print to short films to features, Sharon and John moved into an apartment complex in Glendale, which they managed.

It was there that he met the 15-year-old Dawn Schiller, who was living there with her family.  Their friendship grew into romance, but as time went on, John's experimentation with drugs had escalated into a serious and expensive coke habit.  As his addiction and life spun out of control, John took Dawn with him.   It is at this point where WONDERLAND begins.

filming wonderland
WONDERLAND begins after Holmes's career was washed-up, ended by his descent into drug addiction.  To support his habit, Holmes befriended a number of dealers and criminals including the underworld kingpin Eddie Nash.  Holmes owed Nash a fortune and supposedly masterminded a robbery at the dealer's house, in which his friends from Wonderland Avenue purportedly stole $250,000 dollars worth of drugs, cash and jewellery.  Nash reportedly discovered Holmes involvement and forced him to squeal on his friends, resulting in their murder.  But the central mystery of the Wonderland murders -- what was Holmes' exact involvement? -- remains elusive and has intrigued people for years, including director James Cox and producer Holly Wiersma.

As director Cox says, "What always interested me in this project is that its true crime which has always been a passion of mine. But this was not just a murder story. There is also a unique love story, elevating this film above noir crime and making it universal."

To get to the heart of this love story, Cox, Wiersma and co-screenwriter Captain Mauzner tracked down Dawn Schiller, Holmes's teenage girlfriend at the time of the murders, and his wife Sharon Holmes, a former nurse who remained married to Holmes even after his career choice effectively ended their relationship.  Both women, who were friends then and are good friends now, served as consultants on the film, spending time on the set during production, sharing their insights into Holmes' character and the era, and painting a very different picture of Holmes than one might imagine.

As he learned from Schiller and Holmes, "John was a real romantic," says Val Kilmer, who plays him in the film.  "He loved his girlfriend and he was still friends with his wife.  He definitely was a tortured soul who did a lot of awful things to everybody, betrayed every one he knew, every dealer he ever met, but, in a strange way, he remained absolutely loyal to Dawn and Sharon." 

Kilmer was always the filmmakers' first choice to play Holmes.  His unique way of humanising less-than-sympathetic characters, such as Jim Morrison in THE DOORS and Doc Holliday in TOMBSTONE, seemed perfect for the role.  As producer Wiersma says, "Holmes is not very likeable in the script so there has to be something about him that's charming, to explain how he was able to instil such loyalty from both Dawn and his wife, Sharon, and every time Val smiles, you see that.  Without his charm, it wouldn't have worked."

Kilmer was less than convinced, though.  The sordidness of the story and Holmes' world turned him off and, despite pleas from the filmmakers and his agent, he refused to even read the script.  Finally his agent and the filmmakers cooked up a plan.  They asked Kilmer to consider the smaller part of Nash.  Once Kilmer read the script, he quickly changed his mind and signed on for the lead.

The presence on set of both Schiller and Holmes was a tremendous help and inspiration to the actresses portraying them in WONDERLAND.  As Kate Bosworth, who plays Dawn, says, "She wasn't just a cracked-out girl dating John Holmes.  She was an innocent in a not-so-innocent world.  And she loved him deeply."  As Schiller herself remembers, "I was fifteen when I met John.  I came from a not very together background and he fed a lot of the things that I needed.  He was my first love and very charming -- he was like a kid in many ways himself and we really connected.  And though things went bad, I'm able today to honour some of the good memories."

Seeing her past relived proved to be a very cathartic experience for Schiller, now a wife and mother who is at work on a book about her life with John.  From the beginning, she had been impressed by the research the filmmakers had done and their commitment to getting the story straight.  Says Schiller, "I really felt that it was going to be an honest portrayal, that the truth was going to be finally told."  She also enjoyed collaborating with Kate Bosworth who "was really open to listening to what my thoughts and feelings were at the time this was all happening.  She, as well as Val and Lisa, have been very sensitive in honouring the feelings we had and very committed to telling the story with respect."

Sharon Holmes feels that "the best thing that came out of my relationship with John is Dawn.  I was mature; I can understand her falling in love with him.  She got the good and the bad of John.  I had the good and I chose not to have the bad."  Sharon felt that Lisa Kudrow's tough portrayal perfectly captured the woman she was.  Says Kudrow, "Sharon, John and Dawn kind of lived like this content, untraditional family for a while. He kept them very separate and sheltered from his work -- and then he developed the drug problem.  Sharon Holmes was very straight and when she found out John was doing porno movies she cut him off," she explains. "The script's depiction of her is pretty accurate, so when I met with her it confirmed what a stoic a person she is; that she has rules and a code and she does not deviate from them."

Despite the sordidness of the film's milieu, Kilmer sees WONDERLAND as both an unusual romance and a morality play: "it's quite a vivid dramatisation of what happens why you try to get satisfaction exclusively from the senses.  It just doesn't work."

JAMES COX (Director/Co-Screenwriter)
James Cox was plucked from NYU film school after Hollywood heavyweights saw  his short film ATOMIC TABASCO.  After selling a pitch (ROCK STAR) to Jerry Bruckheimer, Cox was hired by New Line to helm their $14 million project HIGHWAY, staring Jared Leto, Jake Gyllenhaal and Selma Blair.  In mid 2001 Cox and writing partner Captain Mauzner embarked on re-writing an existing script concerning the late porn-king John Holmes, and the Laurel Canyon murders of 1981.

CAPTAIN MAUZNER (Co-Screenwriter)
Captain Mauzner has been collaborating with James Cox for almost 10 years.  They met at University of California Berkeley and attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts together. The Captain can be seen as an actor in two of Cox's films - ATOMIC TABASCO and HIGHWAY. Though this is their first produced collaboration, they have written together for years and are developing more stories together. Besides his frequent collaborations with Cox, Mauzner is developing projects on his own.
  
TODD SAMOVITZ (Co-Screenwriter)
WONDERLAND is not only the first script that Todd sold, it is also his first produced script.  But the road from script to screen was still a long one.  Todd received his B.A  from the University of Michigan and his J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law.  After two years of practising entertainment law, Todd decided he wanted to become a client instead.  Todd put his law license on inactive status, then worked several part time and temp jobs so he could spend more time writing screenplays.  Todd optioned the first script he ever wrote, was hired to write a low budget horror script and wrote for some comic book companies but he still couldn't quit his day jobs.  In 1997, D. Loriston Scott, whom Todd had met two years earlier while both worked at the Daily Grill, approached Todd with the idea to write a screenplay about the Wonderland murders.  After extensive research, Todd then teamed up with Loriston to write the original screenplay of WONDERLAND.  After three years of optioning WONDERLAND to different producers, independent producer Peter Kleidman bought the script from Todd and Loriston.  Several packaging and production scenarios came and went until producer Holly Wiersma came on board with director James Cox and got the project to Lions Gate in 2001.  Next up for Todd is an untitled youth oriented action movie he wrote with director/producer Casey La Scala (GRIND) for Gaylord Films/Warner Bros.

D. LORISTON SCOTT (Co-Screenwriter)
D. Loriston Scott has worked extensively in the entertainment business for over ten years.
After completing his tour as a Marine corpsman, he decided to stay in Los Angeles and pursue an acting career. He appeared on sever al TV shows including "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "Blossom" and "Picket Fences." After watching many of his ideas become TV shows and movies, he decided the grass was greener on the other side of the camera. He contacted an ex-co-worker, Todd Samovitz, an established writer, to collaborate on a script about the 1981 killings on Wonderland Avenue involving John Holmes. Mr. Scott's next project, an action drama, is currently in negotiations.