An Interview with The Manson Family Writer-Director Jim Van Bebber.

By Jeremiah Kipp

The Manson Family.

Numerous films, documentaries, and tabloid specials have already been made about Charles Manson but few have plumbed the depths of mortification, sleaze and horror as writer-director Jim Van Bebber’s The Manson Family.

This psychedelic collage portrays the Tate and LaBianca murders in terribly graphic detail. But it also taps into the sex ’n’ drugs allure of 1960s’ hippy counterculture with scenes of Manson’s followers, featuring idyllic bacchanals and performance art pageants on Spahn Ranch. It also acknowledges Manson’s brief foray into recording pop music.

There’s a sense of playfulness amid the down-and-dirty drug abuse, maniacal ranting, and group manipulation. It acknowledges that idealistic kids were looking for something to believe in, and Manson Family ’s release in the current political climate offers a frightening vision of the desire to belong to a world-changing revolution.

Van Bebber previously explored a grindhouse drive-in aesthetic in his 1994 short film, My Sweet Satan, which followed the true crime exploits of Long Island based drug addict and murderer Ricky Kasso (played in the film by Van Bebber himself). He made that in the middle of his drawn-out production of The Manson Family, which started shooting in 1988 and wasn’t finally completed until this year. Various funding problems with unreliable investors continually halted shooting, and then post-production was a never-ending endurance test.

But Van Bebber is a testament to fulfilling an artistic vision with the economical odds stacked against you. Part of his strategy in keeping his Manson project alive was appealing to fans within the underground film community. He screened his movie as an unfinished work-in-progress in 1997 as the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Montreal’s FanTasia Film Festival, and released the script for the then-titled Charlie’s Family through Creation Books as well as a soundtrack CD (including music by Charles Manson, which figures prominently in the film).

“That helped keep things going, and has become part of the twisted history of this movie,” Van Bebber chuckles. “I’m not aware of any movie that had a book and a soundtrack come out years before the movie did, and that has to be the most back-asswards way of releasing a film that I’ve ever seen.” The Manson Family finally opens on October 21 in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, followed by a wider release on Halloween weekend in other major cities.

Filmmaker: Your project had a notoriously long gestation period. What sustained your interest in making a movie about Manson and his followers, considering the subject has been done to death?

Jim Van Bebber: Back in 1988, I was finishing my first feature, Deadbeat At Dawn . My partners and I had a bunch of contracts with [foreign] territories and were convinced we’d make a lot of money, which never happened. But [under that misguided notion], as soon as we got a print [of Deadbeat ] we decided to bust right into our next feature. [My producer-cinematographer] Mike King had the idea of making a film about Manson and his followers. We had just seen Geraldo Rivera’s two-hour special, “Murder In America,” where he interviewed Charlie.

Whenever they want ratings, they go to Manson — and that sparked the idea. Initially, we proposed doing something fast and cheap. But once I did some research, I said, “Hold on. Let’s do this right. This is a real case about real people.” I didn’t want to make another movie about the other side of madness, the Manson massacre, or anything like that. I wanted to comment on the media’s fascination with Manson, and how it’s fair game to try to turn any sensationalistic killer into a new version of Manson to sell commercials and get ratings. It’s pretty sick.

Filmmaker: So you wanted to confront the audience with their level of celebrity interest in Charles Manson.

Van Bebber: Yeah. Some people have described my treatment of the murder sequences as “forensic”. But if you’re going to worship the cult of celebrity and think these people were done wrong by justice, I want to remind you what they really did to innocent people. TV-movies like the original Helter Skelter and the remake flirt with the murder sequences, but they almost make them sexy by not showing the pain and suffering.

I just had the attitude of, “OK, Tate Murders, everybody’s fascinated. Well, are you really if you truly examine it?” I wanted to rub people’s faces in it then see how they felt about that [so-called] cult of celebrity.

Filmmaker: How did you finance the film?

Van Bebber: It was an ongoing process. Basically, in the fall of 1988 we shot what amounts to 50 percent of the film. From then until 1992, it was a stop and start process of raising money and shooting more…and raising more money and shooting [still] more. By 1996, I had the work-in-progress on tape. That was what we showed at festivals in 1997.

Filmmaker: Was it helpful for you to be living and working in Los Angeles?

Van Bebber: Considering I’m not really cut out for this place? [laughs ] I’m sure it’s different than working the independent route in New York. But I can tell you this film would not be finished in this completed version if I hadn’t been living out here. Certainly, this is the place to be in terms of capitalizing on the film getting a theatrical run. It’s not just Hollywood. Independent films do get made out here all the time. You just have to be optimistic. You can’t let the culture shock wear you down.

Filmmaker: But you’re also a part of the underground film movement. Do you identify yourself with the Cinema of Transgression filmmakers like Richard Kern and Nick Zedd? Your film might be classified as emerging from that tradition — with its handmade aesthetic and explicit violence.

Van Bebber: I admire what they were doing in the 1980s, and saw their influence on a lot of kids younger than me. I admire any sort of alternative cinematic artistic movement, whether it’s the French New Wave or Neo-Realism or whatever… an alternative to Hollywood filmmaking. But I was always trying to make real features. Deadbeat at Dawn was conceived of something that would play the third bill at a drive-in. I was always trying to be commercial about it whereas I think they were more just artistic expression. I view The Manson Family as more of a true-crime movie.

Filmmaker: If you don’t want to titillate or exhilarate the audience with your onscreen violence, what do you expect them to take away from The Manson Family?

Van Bebber: Hopefully, a greater understanding of this case. It’s become such a piece of American folklore. [District attorney] Vincent Bugliosi (the author of Helter Skelter ) sold the jury and the public on the idea that Charlie Manson wanted to start a race war based on ideas from “The White Album”. While I’m sure he did bring that up in his acid rants, I think that was just drug talk. In my research, it seemed like the crimes were just one violent episode leading to another that they had little control over. Things spiraled out of control for them, despite Charlie’s efforts to hold the group together. It became this gigantic train wreck.

So many other accounts of the case, especially film accounts, have left out crucial things that were lynchpins. Everyone concentrates on Sharon Tate, but the murder of Gary Hinman was just as valid — or the previous slaying of a Hollywood dope dealer. These things all led together like dominoes tipping over.

Filmmaker: How did you choose to represent Manson within the film?

Van Bebber: In some ways, it was in response to the way he’s been portrayed in movies 1like The Death Master and Steve Railsback’s “I’m gonna blow your house down” huffing and puffing in the original Helter Skelter, where he’s baring his teeth like a pit bull and glowering all the time. I’m sure Charlie acted that way in court, or whenever he wanted to intimidate someone, but how could he have acquired up to 33 people at one time up on the ranch if he was so anti-social? I tried to show the more whimsical, charismatic, softer sides of him. You see him blow up like a baby sometimes, but I wanted to make it a more layered performance.

Filmmaker: It’s interesting that you chose to include Charles Manson’s music.

Van Bebber: That was quite a search. My producer and I worked through several bootleg companies, ready to send us contracts and take our money for something that would have amounted to nothing legally. As it turns out, a man named Phil Kaufman, who wrote a book called The Road Mangler, owned the real copyright. He served time with Manson and got him to sign a contract that gave him the recorded music. I made a deal with him to include five of Charlie’s songs in the movie.

Music was, and is, a driving force in Manson’s life. It was certainly his calling card to be attractive to runaways he found in Haight-Asbury. It was a unifying thing for the family, and it became their big dream. Manson was working Hollywood pretty good, and he impressed a lot of musicians from Neil Diamond to Neil Young. He brought his family in to Dennis Wilson’s house. There were a lot of reasons for them to think they were going to succeed. You would have had a whole different Charles Manson if he actually had recorded a hit album! Things could have gone very differently, I think! [laughs ] It wasn’t his intention right off the bat. He wanted to fit in. He really did.

Filmmaker: Your film feels very loose, like a psychedelic collage. How much of it was improvised?

Van Bebber: Everything was scripted. You’ve got to make your days. We tried to move as fast as possible, but also gave people the time to drum up this reality. We took everybody out to our horse ranch location for a few days before shooting, just so everyone could hang out and eat together. Everybody was dressed in character. We worked our way into it. It was just a good mix of people. Everybody came to play.

Filmmaker: Did they feel more comfortable with the nudity and orgy sequences because you were acting as well, playing loyal Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil?

Van Bebber: I’m sure that helped. Having the director naked during their nude scenes gave them a comfort zone, so the crew isn’t all dressed and they feel like their being ogled. But throughout the shoot, I was always very hands on — being the coach, the cheerleader, the director, the psychiatrist, whatever gets the shot done, you know?

Filmmaker: Do you use the framing device of present-day newscaster Jack Wilson (Carl Day) putting together a program on Manson and receiving an authentic Manson Family snuff film to say this is not just about some weird nostalgia for things that happened long ago?

Van Bebber: Right. I wanted this to be an ongoing thing that feeds the fantasies of disenfranchised youth. It is what it is. It’s a commentary on this part of Americana.

Filmmaker: You’ve been working on this film for over 10 years. How do you feel about releasing it now, in our current hotbed political climate?

Van Bebber: I’ve got to say, there is a weird thing about timing sometimes that you can’t predict. Our timing was incredibly bad on Deadbeat at Dawn, but with the mood of the country such as it is, it seems like a good year for The Manson Family to come out. I’m just pleased as punch that the film is shown in a finished form that I’m proud of, and that it’s getting a theatrical release. While we were making it, I knew we were taking an NC-17 or unrated approach. I would tell everybody, “I hope to get an art house release like Bad Lieutenant or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer .” And here we are. It’s happened. [laughs] And that’s pretty cool.