DIALOGUE WITH THE DEVIL
Calgary filmmaker gains new insights into U.S. killer
It was roughly a year ago when Calgary filmmaker Buddy Day first heard “you have a collect call from Charles Manson.”
It came as he was eating mozzarella sticks at an Applebee’s in Crystal Falls, Fla., enjoying a dinner break while shooting an episode of the true-crime series The Shocking Truth about serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
It was, of course, a surprise and it prompted the filmmaker to jump up and dash out the door clutching his cellphone.
“The poor waitress was left to think we were jumping out on our bill,” Day says with a laugh.
But the call was also in response to a series of letters Day had sent the convicted killer requesting access and pitching what would eventually become the documentary Manson: Voice of Madness.
Over the next year, many more phone calls from Manson were put through from California State Prison. All were restricted to 15 minutes and they never came at opportune times, if there is such as thing as an opportune time to chat with Manson. One came when Day was having Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Calgary. Another when he was putting his children to bed. But given that California law prohibits the filming of inmates, these phone calls became key to the film.
“I don’t know how many times he called me, but I talked to him off and on for the better part of the year,” says Day in an interview from his Calgary office. “Sometimes he would call many nights in a row and sometimes I would go months without speaking to him. The hard part was I had no control over when he called. So if he called, you had to answer it and take the call right then because his phone time is extremely limited.”
While Day interviews dozens of people for this documentary, the recorded calls from Manson make up the heart of Voice of Madness. Sometimes he sounds chilling and dangerous, other times like a flaky old hippie. But more often than
not, he speaks in riddles that Day attempts to unravel in service of a new theory the film puts forward about the brutal killings Manson and members of the Manson Family were convicted of committing in the summer of 1969. It goes without saying Manson is inundated with requests by filmmakers, journalists and deranged admirers alike. So the filmmaker admits he is not entirely sure why Manson chose to donate his time to Day and this film.
But his letters did clearly set out what he wanted to achieve with the documentary.
“I said something to the effect of: ‘I feel there is an untold story here and that the story that we all think we know is not true and that’s what I want to make a documentary on,’” Day says.
Manson: Voice of Madness, which opens the Calgary Underground Film Festival’s CUFF.Docs Thursday at the Globe Cinema, is focused on an alternative theory about the horrifying killings of actress Sharon Tate and six others in separate home invasions. Manson and members of his “family” — who lived with him in a counter-culture quasi-commune in California — were eventually convicted of the slayings in the 1971 “trial of the century,” a spectacle that forever established Manson as the 20th century’s pure embodiment of evil.
To be clear, the film doesn’t exonerate Manson or the killers who butchered Tate and the other victims, nor does it downplay the horrors of the crimes. They are brought to harrowing life through dramatizations and gruesome crime-scene photos. But it does suggest the narrative around the killings and Manson’s role in particular were based on a wobbly conspiracy theory involving race wars, dangerous cults and mind control. The film argues this sensational story was needed to secure a conspiracy conviction against Manson since he did not physically murder any of the victims himself.
The theory put forth by the district attorney’s office — later used as the basis of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s bestselling true-crime book Helter Skelter — was Manson was a cult leader who was inspired by The Beatles song Helter Skelter. He wanted to ignite a race war and orchestrated the murders to set one in motion. When the smoke cleared, he would emerge as a world leader.
“For anyone who reads Helter Skelter, it has a lot of holes in it,” Day says. “It’s not the most plausible theory in the world. It’s very much embedded in the ’60s. The idea that this hippie took teenagers who were librarians and wannabe nuns and converted them into serial killers through mind control and wanting to start a race war, it all seems very far-fetched.”
Through his work on the Calgary-produced The Shocking Truth, Day met authors who were working on a Manson manuscript. They suggested the accepted Helter Skelter theory may not be completely true, an idea that intrigued Day.
The filmmaker would spend a year interviewing not only Manson, but also accused members of his “family,” including convicted killer Bobby Beausoleil. In fact, of all the people Day interviews, only prosecutor Stephen Kay seems fully on board with the Helter Skelter scenario. (Bugliosi died in 2015.)
The alternative theory the film constructs is much more mundane, if only a little less convoluted. We won’t give away too many spoilers, but it begins with Manson’s shooting of Bernard Crowe over a drug deal and his fear of retaliation by the Black Panthers. From there, a confluence of drugs, paranoia and other factors led to the murders. In this theory, there was no Helter Skelter. There was no belief in an impending race war. There wasn’t even any real mind control.
“People have asked me lots of times: ‘Do you think Charles Manson is innocent?’ ” Day says. “Nobody thinks Charles Manson is innocent. Manson doesn’t think he’s innocent. He’ll be the first person to tell you he’s not a good guy. I never set out to proclaim Charles Manson’s innocence. At the same time, it’s kind of a loaded question. The documentary is about what happened in the summer of 1969.”
Day is vice-president of factual for Calgary-based Pyramid Productions, the company created by his parents Larry Day and Kirstie McLellan Day. In the past five years, he has overseen documentaries on troubled NHL goalie Clint Malarchuk and Calgary magician and fire-eater Carisa Hendrix, among others. But The Voice of Madness, which includes narration by filmmaker and musician Rob Zombie, may be his most ambitious and high profile to date.
Still, the film really boils down to a simple question, albeit one with complex ramifications, Day says.
“Is it ever right for a justice system to construct a narrative, even if it’s Charles Manson?” he says. “That’s the idea. This is something we see in the justice system all the time.”