‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ And ‘Charlie Says’ Paint Very Different, But Equally Necessary, Portraits Of The Manson Family
By Jamie Righetti/July 30, 2019 10:00 am EST
It’s almost easy for modern audiences to forget just how tumultuous the 1960s were. In 1963, Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his own home. Months later, a bomb planted in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church killed four young girls. That November, the President of the United States was assassinated in front of hundreds of people while driving through Dallas. Fast forward to February 1965, when Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom. One month later, peaceful protesters marching for voting rights were violently attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Blood Sunday.” In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated just one month apart. All the while, Vietnam raged, the body count climbing on both sides, scarring both the Southeast Asian landscape and the men who returned home broken in both mind and body. These are just some of the “highlights.” There was a revolution in the streets and a revolution in the sheets. A generation disenchanted by the American Dream, eschewed “traditional” values, dabbled in drugs, grew out their hair, and espoused free love ideals. But the advent of television meant being unable to feign ignorance at the bodies piling up overseas and in segregated cities at home. And so, turn on, tune in, drop out. But underneath it all, violence always simmered. In 1969, it finally boiled over. The legacy of Charles Manson has always loomed over Hollywood, weaving an insidious web that made glitz and glamour unwitting allies with brutal murder. With the 50th anniversary of the Manson Murders looming this coming August, it was inevitable that Hollywood would become introspective and sort through the tea leaves once more to try and decipher just who left the back door open wide enough for evil to slip inside.Those attempts, in part, come in the form of two films, Charlie Says, from American Psycho director Mary Harron, and Quentin Tarantino’s highly-anticipated Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. (A third Manson-centered film, The Haunting of Sharon Tate, grossly suggests Tate had premonitions of the murders, indirectly placing blame on her, and won’t be discussed here.) Although the two films take drastically different approaches to Manson and his followers, both offer vital answers to the myriad of questions we’ve puzzled over in the aftermath of August 1969.
A Tale of Two Families
Perhaps lost in the shuffle of Charlie Says but certainly vividly present in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is the truth that The Family were grifters, constantly seeking souls to pull into the fold and indoctrinate, even when Manson wasn’t physically present. “Charlie’s really gonna dig you,” Pussycat keeps telling Booth upon his initial arrival. And why is that exactly? Perhaps because, like Dennis Wilson before him, Booth comes complete with a fancy car and Hollywood connections that Manson would find useful. Tarantino isn’t interested in unpacking the reasons for their indoctrination, valid as they might be. Instead, Manson’s women are just as shifty and untrustworthy as he is. Even if accepted into the fold, you need to sleep with one eye open. Both Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and Charlie Says are essential viewing to try and unpack the puzzle of how and why the promise of the 60s came to such an abrupt over two nights in August 50 years ago. The truth, however, lies somewhere in the middle; the shadowy area where two things can be true at once, a place which always causes a sense of unease in the pit of our stomachs.It’s easy to look at the carnage left behind by the Manson Family and feel nothing but rage. How can Susan Atkins, who infamously told a pleading Sharon Tate “I have no mercy for you” also have been a victim in her own right? Does ascribing victimhood strip her of her complicity of the crimes she committed? In Tarantino’s eyes, it does, and he treats Atkins with supreme irreverence, viciously breaking her nose and teeth, turning her into a screaming ghoul before toasting her to a crisp with Rick’s flamethrower for good measure. Harron, instead, focuses on Atkins’ penitential reform in prison, where she discovered and immersed herself in Christianity, seemingly trading one fanatical devotion for another. Charlie Says reminds us that Manson Family remain a cautionary tale of complexity, reminding us how our quest for identity can sometimes find us stumbling down the darkest paths, ones that rot us from within. Victimhood can take many shapes and faces, and while we should find compassion for all, it is also time for Tate’s legacy to shine more brightly than ever. And this is the enduring promise of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, which reminds us that no matter the length of time we are given, we can touch the people around us with love that can truly endure. And that’s worth remembering.
‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ And ‘Charlie Says’ Paint Very Different, But Equally Necessary, Portraits Of The Manson Family
By Jamie Righetti/July 30, 2019 10:00 am EST
It’s almost easy for modern audiences to forget just how tumultuous the 1960s were. In 1963, Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his own home. Months later, a bomb planted in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church killed four young girls. That November, the President of the United States was assassinated in front of hundreds of people while driving through Dallas. Fast forward to February 1965, when Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom. One month later, peaceful protesters marching for voting rights were violently attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Blood Sunday.” In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated just one month apart. All the while, Vietnam raged, the body count climbing on both sides, scarring both the Southeast Asian landscape and the men who returned home broken in both mind and body. These are just some of the “highlights.” There was a revolution in the streets and a revolution in the sheets. A generation disenchanted by the American Dream, eschewed “traditional” values, dabbled in drugs, grew out their hair, and espoused free love ideals. But the advent of television meant being unable to feign ignorance at the bodies piling up overseas and in segregated cities at home. And so, turn on, tune in, drop out. But underneath it all, violence always simmered. In 1969, it finally boiled over. The legacy of Charles Manson has always loomed over Hollywood, weaving an insidious web that made glitz and glamour unwitting allies with brutal murder. With the 50th anniversary of the Manson Murders looming this coming August, it was inevitable that Hollywood would become introspective and sort through the tea leaves once more to try and decipher just who left the back door open wide enough for evil to slip inside.Those attempts, in part, come in the form of two films, Charlie Says, from American Psycho director Mary Harron, and Quentin Tarantino’s highly-anticipated Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. (A third Manson-centered film, The Haunting of Sharon Tate, grossly suggests Tate had premonitions of the murders, indirectly placing blame on her, and won’t be discussed here.) Although the two films take drastically different approaches to Manson and his followers, both offer vital answers to the myriad of questions we’ve puzzled over in the aftermath of August 1969.
Charlie Says
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
A Tale of Two Families
Perhaps lost in the shuffle of Charlie Says but certainly vividly present in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is the truth that The Family were grifters, constantly seeking souls to pull into the fold and indoctrinate, even when Manson wasn’t physically present. “Charlie’s really gonna dig you,” Pussycat keeps telling Booth upon his initial arrival. And why is that exactly? Perhaps because, like Dennis Wilson before him, Booth comes complete with a fancy car and Hollywood connections that Manson would find useful. Tarantino isn’t interested in unpacking the reasons for their indoctrination, valid as they might be. Instead, Manson’s women are just as shifty and untrustworthy as he is. Even if accepted into the fold, you need to sleep with one eye open. Both Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and Charlie Says are essential viewing to try and unpack the puzzle of how and why the promise of the 60s came to such an abrupt over two nights in August 50 years ago. The truth, however, lies somewhere in the middle; the shadowy area where two things can be true at once, a place which always causes a sense of unease in the pit of our stomachs.It’s easy to look at the carnage left behind by the Manson Family and feel nothing but rage. How can Susan Atkins, who infamously told a pleading Sharon Tate “I have no mercy for you” also have been a victim in her own right? Does ascribing victimhood strip her of her complicity of the crimes she committed? In Tarantino’s eyes, it does, and he treats Atkins with supreme irreverence, viciously breaking her nose and teeth, turning her into a screaming ghoul before toasting her to a crisp with Rick’s flamethrower for good measure. Harron, instead, focuses on Atkins’ penitential reform in prison, where she discovered and immersed herself in Christianity, seemingly trading one fanatical devotion for another. Charlie Says reminds us that Manson Family remain a cautionary tale of complexity, reminding us how our quest for identity can sometimes find us stumbling down the darkest paths, ones that rot us from within. Victimhood can take many shapes and faces, and while we should find compassion for all, it is also time for Tate’s legacy to shine more brightly than ever. And this is the enduring promise of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, which reminds us that no matter the length of time we are given, we can touch the people around us with love that can truly endure. And that’s worth remembering.
