The Manson -murders “investigates a conspiracy theory

In Errol Morris “New Netflix documentary” Chaos: The Manson Murders “, the Oscar-winning director investigates how Charles Manson was able to convince four” Manson Girls “together with Tex Watson to kill Savagely for him.

Based on the book ‘Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the secret history of the sixties’ by Tom O’Neill, the film investigates the secret motifs that may have fueled the Tate-Labian murders from 1969. The doc was built around O’Neill’s

“It is surprising, I believe, on Manson because it costs you deep in the mysteries instead of giving you or telling you what happened or therefore it happened,” says Morris. “It asks you to actually consider the evidence and to think about what the motivation could have been.”

Variety Speaked with Morris about “Chaos: The Manson Murders”, who is currently streaming on Netflix.

What was it about Tom O’Neill’s book that you wanted to make a documentary of it?

There are so many mysteries connected to Charlie Manson, and it is almost endless. People are deeply fascinated by that crime, not only because it was so violent and so disgusting and involved celebrities, but because no one could find out how Manson could convince these members of the family to kill him. It is not something that I could do.

In O’Neill’s book he has many inspirations about Manson and the CIA, but he cannot prove that there was a connection between Cia’s Mkultra and Manson. Was that a concern while you made this movie?

Naturally. But I identify with Tom O’Neill. In many ways it is a story of a detective who will not give up and speak as a detective and a person who has worked on detective stories and as a person who was a private investigator for years, the desire to resolve a case is what a matter resolves a matter, but that desire to end the sentence and gave a menstrual to the end and a case is overly. It becomes overwhelming the more difficult it is to finish that sentence and place the period at the end. Tom asked this question: How did Manson convince these women and men to kill for him? How did he do this? Tom’s answer is that you need a kind of external conspiracy to feel like it. But can we prove that Manson is programmed as a murderer? Let’s put it this way, there are things that suggest something like that, but it’s far from proven.

So, in essence, is his take a conspiracy theory?

We love conspiracies when we are confronted with something that we cannot understand. Consolation gives us comfort. It is an optimistic idea. It tells us, this may seem random, this may seem insane, this may seem unmotivated by everything that I can possibly understand, but when we say it is a conspiracy, everything becomes clear. The government orchestrated all this. The government has let it happen; The government planned and carried out it. But it could grab straws from a frustrated researcher. “Chaos” The film plays with these ideas. It asks you to become a researcher and to think about the case, perhaps in a way that people have never thought of. Who was Charlie Manson? How did he convince people to kill? Could it be a conspiracy, or was it just a whole series of confusion, stupidity and mistakes?

In the DOC, O’Neill Vincent Bugliosi’s ‘Helter Skelter’, the best -selling crime book in history. In the book, Bugliosi, who successfully explains Manson and the other defendants of the Tate -Labianca murders in the murders of Tate -Labianca, in the murders in the murders. O’Neill says it was something that Bugliosi came up with to sell books. Do you agree?

I think the strongest part of Tom O’Neill Bugliosi’s book is discredited. Do I believe that the “White album” of the Beatles caused these murders? Not me. I share that faith with Tom. For me it is far -fetched and there are probably a lot of explanation other than just the “white album” and the Beatles that can explain these crimes. I’m not sure, but it’s my premonition. What do we know about public prosecutors in general? We know they have been hired to be storytellers. They tell stories to the jury. Hopefully, true stories. But the most important thing is that they tell stories with which they can get a conviction. Bugliosi was saddled with a problem – how to condemn Manson from all these murders if he hadn’t been present for any of them. How do you do it? And for him it was a conspiracy and a conspiracy based on the “white album” and “Helter Skelter.”

Your last doc was ‘divorced’, which was aimed at the inhuman policy of the Trump government to separate children from their parents on the border between the US and Mexico. MSNBC Films acquired the film in October, which was important because not many distributors nowadays buy political documents. What did you think of the release of that film?

It was extremely difficult to get that film, despite the fact that I had the cooperation of Jacob Soboroff, who wrote a book about that issue through the same title, and despite the fact that I could appear in a large number of NBC interviews. NBC was really not willing to show the film for a long time. I wanted it to be shown before the elections, and they wouldn’t do it. And when they did it, it was shown in such a way that it was very difficult to look at. It was not like a film presented on Netflix; On the contrary. It was interrupted endlessly, it seemed like commercials every few minutes. The film was really not well seen.

You are currently working on a documentary about Ukraine, which has no distribution yet. Are you worried about finding a distributor?

I have to finish it. But I feel that I had to make this film because the problems in Ukraine, as we all know, are extremely important. In my opinion, Volodyymyr Zensky is a hero.