Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith" became a New York Times bestseller in 2003 with its examination of how the beliefs of an American religion founded in 1830 impacted a grisly double murder 154 years later. It was also a thorn in the side of the Mormon Church, where it has festered ever since: the book is still Amazon's #1 selling in Sociology and Religion. With the April 28 launch of FX's limited series "Under the Banner of Heaven" on Hulu, that pain will get even more severe.
The factual book delves into Joseph Smith's founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including its polygamy revelations, reasons for violence, and ability to grow would-be prophets. Disenchanted Mormons developed a modern-day Fundamentalist movement with several breakaway sects that adhere to their (sometimes competing) interpretations of Smith's original teachings, even as the church formally abandoned polygamy. (According to the church, which currently has roughly 17 million members and is based in Salt Lake City, "there is no such thing as a 'fundamentalist' Mormon... Polygamy was abolished by the Church more than a century ago. Today, no Church member may engage in polygamy without being excommunicated.")
The tragedy of the Lafferty family, who were renowned in Provo, Utah as upstanding Mormons, is also explored in the book. Brenda Lafferty and her young daughter Erica were brutally killed by family members who felt their actions were sanctioned by a clear revelation from God in 1984.
Bringing this narrative to the cinema took more than a decade of struggle and several false beginnings for Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning writer of "Milk" and a lapsed Mormon. Black's religious viewpoint won over Krakauer, as did Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's backing at Imagine. Attempts to convert "Under the Banner of Heaven" into a feature script, however, revealed that the intricate plot was not intended to be adapted into a good film. "I was failing," Black said.
That changed when FX decided to adapt the novel into a seven-episode limited series, with chairman John Landgraf pushing the idea and all of its intricacies. The following is a brief oral history with the showrunner, Krakauer, executive producers Howard and Grazer, and the show's lead, Andrew Garfield, in which they discuss their motives for making this dramatization of a tragedy that the Mormon Church would prefer to forget. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints did not reply to several requests for comment for this article.)
Quotes may have been gently edited and reduced for clarity, and they may have been reordered to create a unified narrative. Despite the fact that the Lafferty murder has been public knowledge for over four decades, this oral history contains spoilers for the "Under the Banner of Heaven" series' conclusion.
“When God commands you to do something…”
JON KRAKAUER: This novel was supposed to be about faith and skepticism at first. I knew a brilliant physicist and other brilliant Mormon scientists when I was growing up, and I couldn't understand how they could reconcile quantum theory and modern science with the fact that Mormons believe in the Old Testament and that the Earth was 6,000 years old and created in six days. The bishops, the president, and your fellow Mormons all advise you to "put it on the shelf" when you can't reconcile something that is church doctrine. This is how these scientists manage to reconcile their scientific beliefs with their steadfast adherence to Mormon ideals. They believe that in the hereafter, they will be a God on their own planet and will be reunited with all of their family for centuries.
Dan Lafferty looks at evidence Tuesday, April 2, 1996, during testimony in the retrial for the 1984 murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty in Provo, Utah. The evidence seen is a vacuum cord that was tied around Brenda Lafferty’s neck.
You've heard about Mark Hoffman, the man who falsified all of these documents, right? He had a Netflix thing going on with him. He appeared to be a fervent Mormon when he was actually an apostate and atheist, and he murdered to hide his frauds. I felt he'd be interesting to interview, so I emailed him when he was still in prison. For a long time, I had not heard anything. Then I received a letter from the jail, but it was not from Mark Hoffman. Dan Lafferty was the sender of the message. "Mark is my cellmate," Dan explained. He'll never speak to you, and he never speaks to the press, but you should speak with me. "You'll never meet a more dedicated individual than me."
I had an interview with Dan Lafferty, and it was the creepiest experience I've ever had. It was just bizarre... He was really helpful and truthful, and he showed no regret. "When God instructs you to do something, he needs you to do it," he explained, "and I was afraid to do it at first, but I believed." I pondered it and waited for the Lord to give me an impression, and it was plain." He only revealed terrifying, awful facts to me. He was unafraid to say anything. "I'm astonished," he declared after escaping the death penalty during his trial. "I believed they should have executed me, and I would have accepted it."
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: I grew up as a devoted Mormon child in a religious household, and I grew up as a devout member of the church. You've been raised in the church to dismiss your doubts and to put your inquiries on the back burner. Because I was an inquisitive child, I kept running into those restrictions and asking questions when things didn't make sense.
The Mormon religion had been really helpful to us. I was raised by a disabled single mother with financial assistance from the church so that the state would not intervene and I would not be taken from my mother. When violence struck our family, however, the church did not come to my mother's aid, nor did it come to my aid. I had only begun to inquire about this patriarchal arrangement, and why only a few men would be making all of the choices for every woman in the church. You stop putting your questions on the shelf after a while, and ["Under the Banner of Heaven"] had a lot of them.
JON KRAKAUER: I believe we are pre-programmed to be religious. I believe religion is good if it is approached with caution and tempered with practical reason. Religion, by design, is attempting to achieve the opposite, by elevating faith above knowledge and rational thought. Absolute power corrupts totally, just as absolute belief does.
I grew up among Mormons and respected and envied them. They were my pals, and they had this assurance about what would happen to them and the afterlife, and they were cheery, and their families were so friendly — until I didn't convert in high school. Then they simply disappeared, which crushed my sentiments. As a result of all of this, I decided to create this book.
Everyone had to communicate to God and heed God's directives, according to one of [Joseph Smith's] early revelations. People immediately began to respond, "Well, no." This is what God told me: you're mistaken. "I am the prophet," he says. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said. The new revelation is that only my chosen son, Joseph Smith, is the prophet." But the cat was out of the bag, and that's why, more than any other faith I'm aware of, there have been breakaway prophets throughout history. There are hundreds of sects that have split out. If your church is founded on revelations, this is a risk.
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: ["Under the Banner of Heaven"] contains material that the Mormon church warns against. For the first time, I began to understand why and where that patriarchal structure came from, as well as my own history, ancestry, and the answers to why things were the way they were when they didn't seem to fulfill the basic tenets of Mormonism — meaning they didn't seem to make the family stronger. Reading that novel hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was extremely interested in seeing if I could bring that to the screen and share the concepts with a larger audience. That was the start of a massive, long adventure.
“I was busy failing”
JON KRAKAUER: Soon after my book was out, Imagine began phoning me about it. Imagine was a name I had never heard of before. Ron Howard was a name I was familiar with.
RON HOWARD: I was struck by the fact that [the Lafferty] family, by all accounts, was a world-class success story that had utterly disintegrated into this horrible tale. What were the sources of such influences? Some of the very elements that made them strong, connected, and powerful were suddenly perverted, and fundamentalist and extremist seeds were sowed. I felt it was also really dramatic. Brian, I believe, noticed something more basic, but extremely significant.
“Under the Banner of Heaven”: Gil Birmingham as Bill Taba and Andrew Garfield as Jeb Pyre
BRIAN GRAZER: I expected it to be a gripping, gritty thriller. [laughing] I imagined it to be a gritty thriller in the vein of "In Cold Blood." It reminded me of those films from the 1950s and 1960s that were gritty and dismal. I enjoy edgy music with a strong interior spirit. It served as a warning story about the risks of fanaticism, in my opinion. I believe that if we can cinematically animate this, it will have a powerful impact on people.
JON KRAKAUER: That awful Everest TV program [based on "Into Thin Air") burnt me. They invited me to be a consultant, but they didn't pay attention to any of my advice, which was terrible. It was revolting. It was having to redo everything and just smack you in the face with it because you didn't trust the viewers' brains. "Just let us come talk to you," Erica Huggins [at Imagine] said when I eventually picked up the phone.
RON HOWARD: I went to visit him, and Lance was present from the beginning. He was a crucial member of the team. He'd previously worked with Brian on the film "J. Edgar," and had a fantastic time. I spoke with Lance about his Mormon background and how he used it to "Big Love" and how he would apply it to this project.
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: I believe I read "Under the Banner of Heaven" just before beginning work on "Big Love," when I was hired as a writer and also as "the Mormon." In those writers' rooms, I was put in a situation where I had to defend the church above all else, which was an odd position for me to be in. However, that presentation lacked the tone required to go deeply into the beliefs. If I could ever develop my career to the point where someone like Jon Krakauer would listen to me and trust me, this was the property that would be number one.
JON KRAKAUER: I was blown away by Lance's vision. "Yeah, I'm in," I said right immediately. "I want to trust you, Lance," I said. I'd gladly offer you feedback, and you're welcome to send me scripts, but I'm not interested in getting engaged." I was paid to consult, but no one specifically requested that I do so for the series. That was alright with me because I knew it may go wrong. I recognized her from the film "Into the Wild," which I like... Because there are so many moving components and they may go off the rails in a thousand different ways, it's a miracle when a movie works out well. That was something I realized and told myself. “Okay, I'm going to take a chance on Lance and Imagine since I have faith in them and they appear to be trustworthy. "I am convinced of their vision."
BRIAN GRAZER: It took us about six years to figure out how to make it work as a film. It was always going to be difficult material, you knew. We never managed to turn it into a compelling script that makes you say, "This is a movie," because, despite our best efforts, I don't believe it was. We went through draught after draught and a few different read-throughs simply to see if we could convince ourselves. It had flashes of the wonderful content and terrific people, but it felt lesser than the book in some ways. It was unable to provide the narrative with a larger, historical context. It was also aggravating since Lance continued providing more details and insight into the actual events, the crime, and the family, and there wasn't enough time to fully develop the characters. We could do the crime, but not the people, and we could do the crime and a feeling of the world, but not enable you to comprehend it.
BLACK, DUSTIN LANCE: What the hell was I thinking? [laughing] It was unthinkable. I had maybe 300, 400 pages in my first draught, and I showed them to Ron Howard, who was so kind that he continued being tremendously encouraging, but you know what? I was failing miserably. "Well, where have you been all this time?" some people ask. I was like, "I'm too busy failing." [laughing]
I ultimately put it down for a while since it was impossible to give it properly. And, actually, it'll be a drama, and dramas are getting less and less popular in movie theatres. Dramas that were going to be four hours long, for sure. "Hey, the miniseries is a valid form again," Brian Grazer commented the day he phoned me. "How do you feel?" That was a wonderful day. I figured that if I had seven, eight, or nine hours, I could accomplish it.
RON HOWARD: I'm glad we switched to a long-form format. I'm pleased that we were able to connect with John Landgraf, who and his crew added a lot of creativity to our celebration. In addition to being a bright businessman, he's a fantastic storyteller. It was a perfect fit for what we were attempting to accomplish. He noticed Dustin Lance Black's personal connection to the narrative, appreciated it, fostered it, and challenged it. I'm glad we weren't able to make it into a film. I believe we would have always felt as though we had sacrificed what we liked about the book.
“This is a really incredible thing to act”
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: The filmmakers must have an idea of what people would really watch and tune in to. Something about it has to seem like a hook, something more than just expressing the facts. To comprehend this crime, you must first study Mormon history, which is why I decided to write an investigation tale with fictitious characters. We needed to accomplish what the novel did, which was to ask the reader to be active rather than passive in piecing together the past and present in order to figure out who did what and why.
BRIAN GRAZER: That's one of the most fascinating aspects of the fictitious characters based on John Landgraf. "I believe we need a character that can offer us the audience's viewpoint on this," he stated. "Let's have someone with something at risk, and emotional interest in the world, culture, and religion," it grew into. It was a true creative breakthrough, in my opinion.
“Under the Banner of Heaven”: Andrew Garfield as Jeb Pyre
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: This narrative takes place nearly entirely in Jeb Pyre's head. We're with a character that is attempting to put it all together, so we begin to do so as well. We're using Mormon history to attempt to figure out who did it, why, and where they are, just like the book does. That was the book's gimmick. Unless you developed it, we didn't have the first-person perspective, which is a fictionalization. I'll confess that I'm a bit chuffed about it. It is based on genuine events—dramatized, admittedly, but true events nonetheless. And thank heavens, the powers that be at our network not only liked the notion of making it investigative and a true-crime thriller, but they supported it and pushed for more of it, which I appreciated.
ANDREW GARFIELD: I think Lance's creation of this persona was a stroke of genius. When [the book] originally came out, I was the first to read it. I was intrigued and interested, and I believed there were mysteries in there for us to understand as human beings in order to extend our awareness about how men can get to the point of committing such horrific, evil crimes in the name of virtue, and righteousness, God, and love.
That type of psychological unpicking, which Krakauer does so brilliantly, gently, and gracefully, was fascinating to me. Going on that trip this character, Jeb Pyre is forced to confront his previous mistakes as his internal psychological framework begins to crumble. He begins to broaden his awareness. That piqued my interest and seemed actionable and playable.
Truth pulling me on one side, which is just me doing my job to the best of my ability as a man who believes he's decent, with integrity, and wants to honor the memory of these two souls who were taken in such a horrific and violent way — but then there's this equal tension coming from the other side, which is what will happen if I pursue the truth if I unpick the past if my psyche starts to dissolve, what will happen if I pursue the truth, Is it still possible for me to be a person? Without this theological system, am I just an emptiness inside? Is it possible that I will lose the love of my life? My mother, my wife, and these two wonderful kids that we made are the four loves of my life. That is a very tremendous show of courage.
RON HOWARD: Lance was certain from the start that he didn't want to be the last man standing. Throughout the process and while filming, we had advisers. It wasn't all according to Lance's perception and understanding of the situation.
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: Not only did I spend a lot of time in Utah, but so did a lot of other people. Some of the performers, including Garfield, visited Utah and met active Mormons. In a chat with one of the real investigators, he expressed his desire not to be depicted and not to have to go through this again. I was more than willing to make up the detectives.
I understood when people were frustrated with me versus truly being warm with me. And let me tell you, that ain’t easy in the Utah valley [laughs] but I speak Mormon. I’m fluent in it, so I also know when “Mormon nice” is actually not that nice. I don’t know how you do this show without that.
“Under the Banner of Heaven” with Andrew Garfield as Jeb Pyre
ANDREW GARFIELD: I met some incredibly fascinating people across the faith spectrum, from LGBTQ ex-Mormons to feminist Mormons or previous Mormons who had to leave in order to claim authority over their own lives, to people who are very active in the faith, to bishops who are trying to change the faith from the inside, and to detectives who are struggling with their own faith. People enjoy conversing. People like telling their stories.
During my study, I met a police officer, a detective, and a Mormon who had the same experience, although with a different case. There was a case involving — I won't go into detail since he spoke to me anonymously — but the activities were justified by quoting Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. He had a mental collapse as a result of his Mormonism. He's now on the other side of it, and he knows what it's like to live with it. He's living with this expanded consciousness, which is holding all of these things in tension.
I didn't meet any fundamentalists, but I didn't believe it was necessary for me to do so in order to portray [Jeb]. It was definitely more beneficial for me to initially encounter fundamentalism through the tale itself, with all of the terror and shock that this particular breed of fundamentalist delivers than through the character.
“They will not be sending me a flower basket”
JON KRAKAUER: [Black] didn't want to mince words when it came to faith's part in the murder. I was blown away by the scripts. I was expecting to be disappointed, but it was well beyond my expectations. I thought it was clever that he created a character named Jeb Pyre who did not appear in the book. I was ecstatic that so much of it was correct.
Lance's depiction of absolute monarchy — how the Mormon church is a dictatorship — was one of my favorites. It's all about maintaining control over the members. It's a little better now, but anyone who criticizes the church, no matter how dedicated, risks being excommunicated. Only in 2013 did the Mormon Church acknowledge for the first time that Joseph Smith had several wives. That's incredible. The internet is the sole reason they did it – the only reason they ever confess anything. Outside pressure is the only way they correct what's broken. Finally, due to Lance and others, gays are not automatically sent out unless they wish to engage in sexual activity. You can be homosexual, but you won't be able to have sex. Right. That makes perfect sense.
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: They're not going to give me a bouquet of flowers. [laughing] We were taught in the Mormon church not to question things, to trust the present prophet, and to avoid looking back into our history. Outsiders debating the faith of the church's history are frowned upon by Mormons. They take things personally and become enraged when others do.
So, just as they went after Jon Krakauer for nitpicking things they thought he got incorrect, I'm sure they'll go after me. That's exactly what's going to happen. And they'll make a list of things they think are incorrect. But I'll tell you something: I did my homework and worked really hard to get this perfect. Right down to the hue of the paint on the walls of Kirtland Temple [laughs]. They'll come for me, and if I made a mistake, I'll accept it, but we tried really hard to avoid that. But, to be honest, their critique is unavoidable. That is a characteristic of Mormons.
JON KRAKAUER: I know for a fact, based on emails that have been leaked to me, that the church is concerned about this series and is unsure what to do about it. "We're not going to make the same mistake we did when Krakauer's book came out," I hear over and over. I have no idea what they're going to do. I don't believe they are aware. I'm wondering if my novel irritated them... I've only seen the first five episodes, after all. But, based on what I've observed, if my book enraged them, this is likely to enrage them much more.
Some of the criticism I received for my novel, and I'm sure we'll get for the series, was that the Laffertys were not caused by the church's violent past. It was patriarchy and misogyny, and all of the stuff is true. You won't be able to separate them. This is the culture of the church, which was shaped by and influenced by violence.
Every Saturday, [imprisoned fundamentalist leader] Warren [Jeffs'] followers pray for my death, something I learned a few years ago and think is still true. They're all there. They had been ordered to do so. I mean, I'm not very concerned, but it's true. For these people, blood atonement is a genuine thing.
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: I was sitting with Mormon church leadership when I received the rights to the book, and I told them I was going to do it. They summoned me to a meeting at the Joseph Smith Memorial building on Temple Square. "Listen, I'm going to do this," I told those present. I'm aware that you were critical of Jon's book. I've read over your problems. You have my phone number if you have anything more you want to communicate with." I never heard from them after that.
But, listen, we don't do it nearly enough these days. I have serious difficulties with the Mormon religion, yet I have a lot of close, loving Mormon friends. It's simple to launch an attack from distance. From the silos we live in, it's simple to assault. When you have major disagreements, like I do with the church leadership, it's much more difficult and, frankly, potentially productive to sit across from one another.
The vast majority of Mormons are kind, friendly, and family individuals. But I believe it is past time for the church's leadership to change. If they're unhappy with the show, I believe they should respond to Pyre's inquiry in episode 5, "What type of Mormons are you defending?" Perhaps there will be a revelation that corrects some of the flaws in that faith that have been causing so much harm for so long.
Hulu will air "Under the Banner of Heaven" on Thursday, April 28.
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