Laura Macgruder

Jeff Bridges stars in "The Men Who Stare at Goats."

Men Who Stare at Goats

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Rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity

Length: 90 minutes

Released: November 6, 2009 Nationwide

Score: 3.0

Cast: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Root

Director: Grant Heslov
Producer: George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Paul Lister
Writer: Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan
Genre: Drama
Distributor: Overture Films

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HOLLYWOOD - Actor Jeff Bridges, looking like a Malibu prophet with his bushy beard and seasoned surfer smile, says he had a bit of a flashback while filming "The Men Who Stare at Goats," which fictionalizes the oddball odyssey of a U.S. military program that tried to train soldiers to use mental powers as a weapon (and, yes, to snuff out farm animals by glaring at them).

"I found myself remembering my own experiences in the 1970s when I hung out with John Lilly, the man who invented the isolation tank and did experiments with trying to communicate with dolphins," Bridges said. "I was a test subject in the isolation tank; it was a box with about two feet of water and 1,000 pounds of salt so you would float. John was a guy who would shoot acid - he'd inject LSD straight into his veins - and go in there for 24 hours."

And what did Bridges discover as his head bobbed in the silent darkness?

"Well, it's true that when you can't see out, you start looking in," he said. "Why is John wearing that 'Star Trek' jumpsuit? Wait, what's really in this water? What if he's a mad scientist doing an experiment on me? You get carried away a bit."

If there was ever a movie that gets carried away with mind games, it's the quirky "Goats," which opens this week and stars Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey and Bridges.

Clooney produced the film, which was directed by his production partner Grant Heslov and based on the book of the same title by journalist Jon Ronson. The story is based on a real military program and, as the movie states in the opening sequence, "More of this is true than you would believe."

In the film, McGregor plays the feckless Bob Wilton, a small-town reporter who loses his girlfriend to his editor and, to prove himself a man or a martyr, jets off to cover the war in Iraq. He meets an eccentric mystery man named Lyn Cassady (Clooney) who seems like a character plucked from the geopolitical farce of "Doonesbury." Cassady reveals that he was part of a military unit devoted to the potential use of brain energies to walk through walls, transport consciousness miles away, befuddle enemies and obtain state secrets.

Bridges plays Bill Django, the drug-gobbling guru leader of the unit, who talks like a mash-up of Timothy Leary, Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Psychic Friends Network. Chatting over lunch at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara, he chuckled at the "years of research" he performed in the 1960s and 1970s to find the tie-dyed textures of the loopy character.

"I find aspects of myself that match up with the guy, and I think about the people I know and my friends through the years," Bridges said. "I went through those experiences too for the Dude character (in the Coen brothers film "The Big Lebowski"), and some people say this character reminds them of the Dude. I don't see that, really. But, I guess, if the Dude somehow got in the Army, if he got drafted and he heard about this unit, the New Earth Army, he'd sign up."

The Django character is based on Lt. Col. Jim Channon, who did, in fact, lead a New Age program at Fort Bragg, N.C., that trained its members to achieve the U.S. Army equivalent of Jedi mind tricks. Bridges sought out the psychic warrior and his First Earth Battalion to offer tips for the role.

"Jim Channon is alive and well in Hawaii, and he answered all my questions," Bridges said. "He's very gung-ho, and he's really dedicated to changing the human direction. A lot of the stuff is far-fetched and easy to laugh at, but, in my own personal view, it's headed in the right direction. We have to find some way besides killing each other. This stuff is bizarre, but I bet whatever is really going on in the universe is a lot weirder."