Hank's Adventures in Wonderful-land

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What an amazing story for you today! Listen to this. 

First, the tiny quick backstory. Many years ago, literally, 50–and let that sink in– I worked for Rolling Stone magazine.

And in that capacity I worked on a story investigating some actions of the CIA. It’s really too long to tell here, but the brief version is that in the process, I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA to get certain documents, the response to which was, apparently, the very first time they had used the reply: “We can neither confirm nor deny…” 

Long, long story about that. But fast-forwarding in time, a British documentary company decided to do a big feature-length documentary about the whole story…essentially, the CIA’s attempt to secretly retrieve a sunken Russian submarine in the Pacific. The doc was to be called “Neither Confirm Nor Deny.”

They interviewed me for the documentary, maybe, six years ago? And that was that. And then! And very recently, they told me it had been sold to Amazon and Apple TV, and was now available for viewing. WHAT?

I got to see it well in advance, and it is spectacular. Absolutely riveting, and a total immersion history. And you can watch it now, too, on Apple TV and Amazon. And it's got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!

But wait, there's more. I recently was notified that the documentary had been chosen to be the big opening night spectacular premiere at an event in England called the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival – – it’s like Telluride, or Aspen, but held on the east coast of England, about three hours from London, in an historic seaside town.

And, they wondered, did I want to come, attend the premiere, and be on a panel after it to discuss it.

This took me, if I am remembering correctly, about 30 seconds to decide. Of course I would!

And then I discovered that also on the panel would be Sheryl Crown, the movie’s incredibly brilliant producer, and Commander Mike Finney, who had been in the Royal Navy, and was a nuclear submariner and also handled the press after the Kursk sinking. And if that wasn’t fabulous enough, the panel would be moderated by none other than Anthony Horowitz.

So I did two things in quick succession, one. One, picked myself up off the floor after having fallen off my chair in delight. And two, booked my flight to Heathrow.

Well. if I ever had considered that, possibly, this would be a life-changing event––turned out that ‘life-changing’ was putting it mildly.

My flight to London was glamorous and astonishing. A doc festival driver picked me up at Heathrow, in a big Mercedes, and drove me to the little town of Aldeburgh, first on the M-25 motorway, which looks like it could be anywhere, and onto the A-12 to the countryside toward Aldeburgh, which was magical. 

Debs will confirm–there’s just no place that looks like this. It's right on the North Sea.

I was dropped off at the White Lion, a quaint and historic inn overlooking the north sea, and even though I had only four hours of sleep on the plane, I was absolutely floating with delight. They brought me tea in the lobby!

ANd here's the view from my hotel room. 




Aldeburgh – – how can I describe it. Bleak and gorgeous, with buildings from the 1600s, tiny and transporting, with lovely shops and lovely people–I took photos like the gawking tourist I was.

And our event would be at the quaintest cutest most wonderful cinema you’ve ever seen.

Thursday and Friday we all chatted and had lunch and drinks and chips and wine and and dinner and lobster and onion soup and–ah. I can’t even begin to tell you.

Then Friday night was the SOLD OUT premiere, here is our picture in front of the posters (they later gave me one to take home.) 

And another at the panel afterward. I've admired Anthony Horowitz for years, and interviewed him several times–but this weekend was our first in person meeting. He was so brilliant, and the panel was fabulous. Sheryl and Mike were amazing and so knowledgeable.

Saturday, the wonderful Sheryl and I went to Snape Maltings— I will just let that sink in. And we walked down the rocky vast beach to "The Scallop," a… shall we say, controversial sculpture on the shore, in honor of Benjamin Britten, who lived in Aldeburgh. 

(And then there were more movie screenings and celebrations and two incredible gasp-worthy dinner parties which, sadly, it would have been gauche to photograph..)

I met so many incredible people — the incredible reporter/ presenters Nick Robinson and Stephen Sakur of the BBC, and Anthony Horowitz’s brilliant wife, Jill, who is the producer of the amazing Magpie Murders on PBS, as well as Foyle’s War. (I gushed to her way too much, what can I say.)

And they have another fabulous show in the works, Moonflower Murders, and I cannot wait!

I could go on about this, but I have to say it was a marvelous and transporting adventure. And so incredibly odd, isn’t it, that’s something I did 50 years ago, 50 years ago! continues to change my life today.

We now return to our regular programming.