‘Mindhunter’ and Tarantino Take Down Charles Manson By Turning Him into a Loser

Fifty years ago, the Manson Family murders shook the United States in a way very few crimes had ever done before. Seven people were brutally murdered by the followers of Charles Manson, an ex-con turned wannabe folk singer turned cult leader. Most notably, a pregnant starlet named Sharon Tate was killed in her husband Roman Polanski’s home. The murders were seen as a sort of loss of innocence for America, and the players represented different aspects of the old and new Hollywood colliding in horrific ways. The killers were all middle class kids who had turned to the counter culture for meaning and found only rage. However, it was their leader, Charles Manson who became an instant bogeyman, haunting America for decades to come. Even though Manson wasn’t personally responsible for the murders, he was seen as an unhinged architect of death and he held the public’s fascination until his death in jail in 2017.

This summer, actor Damon Herriman is playing Manson in two high-profile projects that delve into the Manson Family murders in very different ways. First, is Quentin Tarantino’s sun-soaked fairy tale version of events, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The other is Season 2 of Netflix’s Mindhunter. What’s unnerving about both projects is how they defang the myth of Manson. Both Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Mindhunter remove Manson from the murders, and both kind of present him as a total loser.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BOTH ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD AND MINDHUNTER AHEAD

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was pitched as Quentin Tarantino’s take on the murder of Sharon Tate. Margot Robbie plays the actress as an angelic ingenue dancing her way through iconic Hollywood locations. She’s too beautiful, too pure to suffer the horrific incidents that claimed her life. So Tarantino spares her. In his version of events, the Manson family members change course and hit her neighbor’s house. There Tex Watson (Austin Butler), Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison), and Patricia Krenwinkel (Madisen Beaty) meet superhuman stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), action star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Rick’s new Italian starlet wife Francesca Capucci (Lorenza Izzo). Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel are all horrifically murdered in an over-the-topic fight sequence. The Manson family never kills Sharon Tate and her houseguests, the LaBiancas are spared, and it becomes a blip of a story.

Not only does Tarantino fail to give the Manson Family the oomph of a successful murder spree, but he only gives Manson a single scene in the whole film. Early on, he arrives in a Twinkie truck at 10050 Cielo Drive, looking for music producer Terry Melcher. He is turned away by Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), Sharon Tate’s best friend and frequent houseguest. There’s an eerie moment when a seemingly friendly waves at Tate, but that’s it. That’s the only moment the infamous murderer gets in 161 minute-long film. Not only that, but he comes across as a desperate hanger-on, name-dropping his association with Brian Wilson. He’s an absent figure with no control over what happens, and not the larger-than-life Svengali of sin we know him as.

Even though Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a revisionist history version of the Manson Family murders, Mindhunter also strips down Manson’s power by leaning on the facts of the case. In Mindhunter Season 2, Episode 5, the FBI team that’s been studying the psychology of serial killers finally lands an interview with the most famous killer in America, Charles Manson. However, before we meet him, we hear again and again, that he’s not actually a serial killer. He’s not even a killer at all. As Jonathan Groff’s Agent Holden Ford says, “What we need to find out is how a diminutive, uneducated ex-con convinced a group of middle class teenagers to brutally murder seven strangers.”

Mindhunter doesn’t stop with the Manson insults. Ford also lays out the facts of the case, pointing out that Manson wasn’t one of the killers. He even goes so far as to point out that Manson’s whole philosophy is borrowed from another cult leader. “He’s a fraud,” partner Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) says. Later, when Ford and Tench visit Manson in prison, they drop in on Mindhunter “favorite” Ed Kemper first, who calls Manson a “charlatan” and makes a dig at his small size. When Manson finally arrives, he is indeed small, wiry, and kind of…ridiculous.

While Herriman’s Manson is definitely charismatic, he’s also nonsensical. He rambles. He shifts blame. He doesn’t have a total handle on things. He proves himself to be a liar. Later, it’s even suggested that Manson only went along with the crimes because he was otherwise losing control of the Family. It was Tex Watson who pushed to commit the murders. He was the one who wound up murdering the pregnant Sharon Tate.

Later in that same Mindhunter episode, Ford sits with Tex Watson (Christopher Backus), who now sees his actions through the prism of his newfound Christian belief. He takes responsibility for his crimes, but says Manson ordered him to do it. He also explains how Manson used mind games and drugs to manipulate the Family. Nevertheless, he admits they aren’t really the “Manson murders.” “Those people are victims of the Watson murders,” he tells Ford. Sure, Manson manipulated the family, but maybe that’s because it was the only kind of power he could wield. He needed Tex Watson and a bunch of girls to commit the crimes he fantasized about. That’s…kind of lame.

By hammering home that Manson wasn’t a murderer, but a diminutive loser who never had the nerve to kill or the talent to succeed elsewhere, both Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Mindhunter strip Manson of his power. After all, Manson’s strength was his mental hold on people. Through storytelling, these films shift the focus away from Manson and place it on the real killers, the real victims, and fictional heroes dreamed up by Hollywood. And so, fifty years later Hollywood finally has the last laugh on the maniacal Manson. They’ve taken back the narrative and made the monster look like a sad little man.

Watch Mindhunter on Netflix