The Creepiest Movie Villain of the Year Is in This Bizarre New Zealand Documentary

When David Farrier first wrote a blog post about the weird guy who was clamping cars in an Auckland antique shop’s parking lot and demanding hundreds of dollars in ransom, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. For years afterward, Farrier and that man, a bizarre character named Michael Organ, faced off in New Zealand courtrooms, in endless phone calls, and in person. Meanwhile, Farrier—best known to American audiences from his previous documentary Tickled, the Netflix series Dark Tourist, and the podcast Flightless Bird—dug up more and more information about Michael Organ’s remarkable, diabolical past. It took years for Farrier to understand that he, too, has become one of Michael Organ’s victims. Watching Farrier discover how he’s been outfoxed, and try to wiggle his way out of the trap, is the queasy pleasure of Farrier’s documentary Mister Organ, which opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday and begins expanding next week. I talked to Farrier—who now lives in L.A.—about what happens when you discover the “black hole” at the center of your documentary film is swallowing you whole—and what Michael Organ has been doing to Farrier since the movie finished filming. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Dan Kois: Though all of your interaction with Michael Organ happens offline—phone calls, weird coffee dates, in courtrooms—I really recognized that relentlessness that he has as being exactly the same as all the worst internet abusers that I’ve ever dealt with. Did you see similarities between this kind of old-school troll and the new-school trolls we all are dealing with all the time?

David Farrier: One hundred percent. He very much has that hyperonline mentality, but he is barely online himself. It’s that relentlessness, and just having very little empathy for how he’s making someone else feel. I think that’s the main sort of way that Michael works in the same way as a 14-year-old troll. It’s not about the effect they’re having on people, it’s just the game of it all for them. It’s entertainment.

But when something like this is happening to you online, you do have this sense that, well, this person feels empowered to act this way because of the semi-anonymity of—

The screen.

Right. People can say horrible things to you because they know they’re never going to meet you face-to-face. So it was weird to see that interaction kind of replicated in these face-to-face encounters. And in the movie we can really see you struggle to figure out the right thing to say in these moments. It’s very seldom that any of us are actually dealing with someone like that in person. What was that like?

You’ll be sitting down with this man and he’ll sort of be complimenting you, and being kind, and then he’ll be gaslighting you, and then he’ll be just saying really filthy things to your face, calling you a this and a that—stuff I’ve never been called to my face before. But it’s in this really normal social setting surrounded by beautiful antiques and objects of desire and wealth.

I think Michael has a variety of personas that he’ll slip in and out of. And meeting him, I wouldn’t know if I was going to be getting sort of flirty Michael or offensive Michael or threatening Michael, legal-minded Michael, meek and mild Michael. You just didn’t know, and he’d flick between these personalities like you would flick through avatars online. It’s just really disconcerting.

That really comes through!

What spiraled me out a lot was when he started inserting himself more into my real life. He made it clear he knew where I lived. He had a key to my house, somehow. On one side you’re getting the legal threats from him, but on the other side is, “Oh, he’s been to my house.”

There’s that sense, yeah, that he’s enjoying the little ways in which he has power over you. And one of the things he enjoys is knowing that he occupies your thoughts or your concerns.

Yeah, totally. And I thought I was invincible to that. I thought I was going to be interviewing his victims. I didn’t clock it when he was doing it to me until I was too frail in the whole process. I think my production team wasn’t aware of how off-kilter I was until I was quite far in. And I didn’t realize it until I was quite far in. Tickled was stressful, but I never felt that way. Dark Tourist was stressful, but I never felt this way. Michael just takes such great joy in destabilizing you.

Why did you keep making the movie, then?

Well, that’s what I found so interesting about him. A con man who’s just out for money I find pretty boring, but the joy he took from fucking with minds—I found that, still find that, really fascinating.

You describe him in the movie as “a black hole.” He just talks and talks and sucks everything out of you. He’s like an energy vampire.

Yeah. Totally.

Were you worried at some point when you realized that this was the person at the center of your ostensibly dramatic movie?

“I have met the most boring man on planet Earth, and he is my essential character.” A nightmare for any documentarian! Michael would tell a story over two hours, and eventually it made some sort of narrative sense. It would be confusing, but it had intrigue and you could kind of follow it. But you can’t have a two-hour scene of Michael telling a story.

Right.

He was boring, and he told stories in a way where you couldn’t edit them down. Although, once you had hours and hours and hours of him on tape, it became a good challenge to try and figure out how an audience could experience what I experienced, but in a shorter fashion. And we got there, but it was a real challenge.

Well, there’s that scene where you’re being filmed listening to him rambling on speakerphone, and you’re just like, “I’m on mute.”

Yeah.

How long was that happening?

David Farrier in Mister Organ. Drafthouse Films

Years! Years. You would just have to mute him, just to stay sane. I don’t want to speak with a bunch of woo-woo, but he does have a certain way about him where he does dull you down. It’s this way he modulates his voice. I think something in that does fuck with your mind. I’ve never felt this way with anyone else, and I still don’t quite know how he did it, but I became a very different version of myself, mentally, around him. I wish there was a way to explain it. I guess it’s in the documentary, but I feel like the documentary shows a hundredth of what he actually is.

You’d need a 200-hour director’s cut.

You do. You need the Blu-ray box set.

It turns out that, like, everyone in Auckland has a Michael Organ story. Even the freaking mayor of Auckland despises the guy.

New Zealand is just really small and everyone knows everyone. Michael thrives because he creates a sense of paranoia, and you feel like the world’s closing in. And when someone like Michael knows where you live in New Zealand, you feel very exposed. There’s no way you can really get away from it. You would bump into Michael Organ on the main street if you’re going out that night for a drink. You know what I mean? It was very claustrophobic.

You just might end up moving to L.A.

You might end up moving to L.A., which was the way I literally got out of the chaos. Moving here was a huge mental health step. I don’t think many people would say that about moving to L.A., but it worked for me.

How has Michael responded to the movie?

First of all, in New Zealand, Michael went to see the film a number of times. He sat in the back and—surprise, surprise—talked through most of the movie.

What an experience, to be in that audience!

Oh, it’s surreal. You’re watching this sort of monstrous character unfold in front of you and then you realize, he’s behind you. A number of audiences in New Zealand had the 4D experience of Michael Organ being in the cinema with them, which is crazy to me.

He’s gone after you, personally, right?

Some of it I can talk about, and some of it I can’t. Something he did that was really novel is he dragged me into a bunch of court cases that I had nothing to do with. That was very clever. He manipulated and weaponized the New Zealand courts to drag me into things. I thought I’d gotten away from it all, but suddenly, I was having to Zoom in for days to New Zealand court cases to give evidence in cases that I had nothing to do with. And try explaining Michael Organ to a judge—it’s a really difficult thing to do. You start to sound like the crazy one if you try to explain to a judge what is going on.

“Oh, and I’ve made a documentary film about this guy.”

Totally. I tried to get one of the judges to watch Mister Organ. I’m like, “The film is playing at the cinema in your town. If only you could watch this film, you would understand what is happening right now.” With the film coming out in America, I’m like, “Will that create more news about it, and will he hear about it, and will that activate him again to do something else?” So I’m curious what he’ll do next.

Between this and Tickled, you really have a knack for making movies about guys who make your life hell afterward.

There are a lot of similarities between Michael and David D’Amato from Tickled. They were both sort of obsessed with religious history, Roman Catholicism, sexuality. Pretending to be lawyers online. Those two men are very similar and both extremely narcissistic.

Are you someday just going to make a movie about a nice guy who doesn’t do anything weird?

I do keep thinking it would be really nice to make a film about someone who’s pleasant, and I am excited to be around them every day. Maybe a musician that I love. But I find it interesting being curious about people and having to push a bit to get answers. If they just gave them to you, I think maybe it would be boring.

It would be less stressful, though. So I’m going to keep this in mind.