Q&A with Director Reginald Harkema
Q: Where did your interest in the
Manson Gang begin?
RH: I think of them less as a gang and more as a family.
My interest started when I picked up a copy of Helter Skelter and learnt that the hottest Manson Girl was a Dutch girl with a Christian background named Leslie Van Houten. I’m Dutch with a Christian background. Leslie and my mom are basically the same age.
At this time, I was listening over and over to a song by the Pink Mountaintops called “Leslie” with its chorus “My name is evil” (later learnt that it was “my name isn’t Eva”). This tune kept running through my head while I read Helter Skelter and really made me think about religion, indoctrination, temptation and how society defines evil.
Q: You must have done an enormous amount of research. What surprised you? What saddened you?
RH: What really surprised me was the banality with which the actual events unfolded and their inevitability. I guess this also saddened me.
After you ingest the apocalyptic party line that is Helter Skelter and start to do further research, you realize that Charles Manson is not some madman cult leader who could stop watches with a stare as he’s made out to be. He’s just a cheap ass Jesus pimp who would have been perfectly happy living with a harem of girls, his guitar and some gold records on the wall.
But because of a series of bad breaks and bizarre coincidences mixed in with copious amounts of LSD, Charlie snapped and took his revenge on society.
This case basically boils down to a failed hippie musician who tried to keep his harem of girls intact through fear by spinning a tale of apocalyptic doom. Because of a couple drug deals gone bad, suddenly Manson’s gloom and doom scenario seemed to be coming true and off they went.
I guess what saddens me is how Leslie Van Houten was the ultimate open, idealistic, trusting person and she got fucked. Bad timing and circumstances for a poor girl from a broken home looking for love. I get her idealism and it was one of the things that most fascinated me about her character.
Q: Have you met Leslie Van Houten or any of the people involved in the actual events?
RH: No. Early on in my research, I read a Leslie Van Houten biography written by Karlene Faith, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. My dad was a cop for the Vancouver Police Department and I figured that he could probably put me in touch with Faith. But after reading her book, I knew that she would bring an agenda to the movie that I didn’t want to be part of it. I didn’t want to make a movie that was an advocacy piece on either side about Leslie Van Houten. I see Leslie as a symbol of a much wider inquiry into how our society functions.
Q: And how do you feel about the real Leslie and her continuing parole efforts?
RH: I don’t think Leslie Van Houten will ever be paroled, but I think she should be and I applaud her efforts in that direction. I only feel this way, because she hasn’t been meted out a fair justice. If William Calley (principal of the My Lai Massacre) was still in jail and not free for the last 30 years and if many other war criminals and murderers that have gone free had been incarcerated, I’d say lock Leslie up and throw away the key.
Q: How do you see the press fascination around the Manson Murders affecting the reception of your movie?
RH: It’s hard to get an angle on what the press will think. John Waters is going out on the Huffington Post, CNN and NPR advocating on Leslie Van Houten’s behalf and getting vilified by people who can’t imagine a sympathetic angle on anyone from the Manson Family.
Any press is good press though and because the film doesn’t advocate about Leslie one way or the other, I don’t think anyone will freak out that it’s a pro-Manson film.
Q: One point the film makes is that we’re fascinated by lurid murders of individuals, but barely able to understand mass killing by government/corporations. Why is that?
RH: It’s hard to speculate on why people are fascinated by lurid murders, but I am sure they don’t care about mass killing by governments, because they don’t see it.
A turning point in my research was when I bought the infamous Manson Life magazine and saw that the letters page was all about the My Lai Massacre coverage in the previous issue. I picked up that issue and realized that the loyal soldiers of Manson breaking into homes to kill pigs was not much different from the loyal soldiers of the United States breaking into huts to kill gooks. And both stories broke and both trials happened at the same time.
People in that Life Magazine flipped out about the My Lai Massacre. They published two pages of reactions pro and con. It was a divisive debate for a country about why they went to war. I would go so far as to say that Manson became a mighty convenient bogeyman to take the heat off this issue.
Now the government has figured out that they shouldn’t let people take pictures of the battlefield.
Q: Manson apparently attempted to contact Phil Spector when he was recently incarcerated in the same prison. How do you see Manson’s own desire for fame and relationship to the music business playing into the drama? There may be some details from the original story that the public doesn’t understand—particularly the role of the Beach Boys. And how does that relate to your bigger theme of individual vs. government/corporate violence? Our contemporary narcissism is a corporate invention to a certain extent, so even with respect to something like the Manson murders isn’t there a certain corporate complicity?
RH: This is a difficult question in regards to Manson. He totally wanted the fame and the stardom and all the wealth that a major label record deal could deliver him in the sixties. But he also didn’t want to compromise his music and became a pain in the ass to the record company people. Manson is kind of like the first punk that way.
The first domino to fall in this whole story was when Manson ruffles Terry Melcher’s feathers at a recording session, because Manson didn’t know how to play in a studio with a microphone arrangement. Melcher was the Byrds producer who was turned onto Charlie by Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Melcher was also the guy leasing his home to Roman Polanski when Sharon Tate was murdered there.
There is certainly corporate complicity to the ongoing “legend” of Manson. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi often rails about young people having a dangerous fascination for Manson, but he’s the one who sold 7 million copies of Helter Skelter!
Q: You’re in an interesting position as a film-maker with respect to that theme. Will your movie exacerbate our tendency to dwell on the pulp side of murder or make people think twice about their values?
RH: Certainly a movie that holds on a woman’s bloodied face for a minute as she stabs over and over with a knife while psychedelic fuzztone rock screams “Kill, kill, kill” is not shying away from the pulp side of murder. But usually that is all a movie gives you.
I want to show how the values that we have are not much different than the ones of the woman with the knife. Maybe that’s why I hold on her face so long. I wanted to capture that transition from shock and horror to bloodlust that I believe exists in all of us.
Q: How does the violence in this movie relate to the more “principled” violence in MONKEY WARFARE?
RH: The violence in LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL is principled violence. All violence is just a projection of misguided principles as far as I’m concerned.
At heart both MONKEY WARFARE and LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL are films that reject dogma. They are heartfelt cries for the audience to question their beliefs. They advocate for critical theory out of ideas manifested in the study and practice of montage . Montage is about combining images and sounds together to create new meanings. When you engage in the practice of montage, you become much more aware of the process by which meanings are created. You develop a greater sense of critical thinking.
For example, you don't accept the viewpoint given by a TV news story without questioning what was kept out of it and what was kept in to make that story (Iraq anyone? - I worked as a TV news editor after film school).
Children should be taught from an early age to combine and break down images into different meanings, so that they know different meanings can be created. I think they would look on any truths or dogmas given to them with a more skeptical eye. At least they'd think about it more closely.
Q: You’re a huge fan of the New Wave. The characters in LESLIE seem like perfect New Wave characters in a way, as well as presaging the current culture of narcissism that we touched on before. How do you see the influence of the Nouvelle Vague operating in LESLIE?
RH: The New Wave is just a part of my filmmaking DNA. Every movie I make is to me an experiment in montage, so I operate from a tradition that reaches back to Dziga Vertov rather than DW Griffith (although I can tie those two traditions together).
I was more influenced in the making of LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL by the New Queer Cinema movement and Todd Haynes, in particular (both also heavily-influenced by the New Wave).
My goal was to reach back to late sixties American cinema to do a sixties period piece, but do it as a melodrama or court room drama, genres that had fallen out of favor by the late sixties. This self-reflexive re- contextualization of genre is a hallmark of such films as “Superstar” and “Far From Heaven” by Todd Haynes. I call LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL an “agitprop melodrama”.
Q: The look of the film is so interesting. It’s accurate but surreal at the same time. What was the intention behind that? Was it to represent a memory rather than recreating reality? Did you feel a certain artificiality helped to highlight the political discourse?
RH: This is a reflection of how I approach tone in my films, something that many have difficulty dealing with.
I try to structure scenes for actors to play out in such a way that they believe the dialogue they are saying, like they are in a Cassavetes film. Even if it is ridiculous and not anything anyone would ever say, the characters have to believe it. I want the audience to not have to suspend their disbelief about the characters and follow where they go.
I then want the settings to create a separation that comments on the actions and dialogue of the characters. In this sense, I guess I do want to highlight the political discourse through the artificiality, but also other aspects of subtext in the scene.
For example, I wanted a sense of physicality and guilt to permeate the gynecologist office scene where Leslie’s Mom takes Leslie to get an abortion. I asked for a huge cross-section of a pregnant womb to be placed behind Leslie for the entire scene.
Leslie was raised in a Christian home and then her mom forced her to get an abortion. In a sense, her mom sanctioned the idea of murder to Leslie. In the wake of movies like Knocked Up and Juno, I wanted to approach the issue of abortion in a more complex fashion. On the simplest level, the anti-abortion case could be made that Leslie became a murderess because she got an abortion. On a more complex level, it could be said that Leslie became a murderess, because she was taught abortion was murder and then told that murder was okay. Maybe someone shouldn’t have taught her that abortion was murder.
I guess that’s still pretty political.
Q: You’ve worked with Don McKellar a lot. How did he contribute to the movie?
RH: Don surprised me. I wanted him to play the greasy Defense Attorney, almost as an extension of his MONKEY WARFARE character. Jaded and beat down, but gone legit.
Don wanted to play the Prosecutor. I didn’t think he could do it, but I’ve known Don so long and worked with him on so many projects that I just wanted him involved. I went on faith and Don did the work. He researched, read, studied and watched film. He surprised me. Who knew Don could be so smarmy? And he did something no other actor I know would dare do. He went for the receding hairline! Put on 50 pounds for a role? That’s old hat. People in community theatre do that. Receding hairline on an actor? Never.
Q: All the young actors are exceptional—really close to the real people physically and quite convincing. Kristen Hager is especially terrific. Was it difficult for her? It’s a demanding and upsetting role.
RH: Kristen is an amazing ‘turn it off’, ‘turn it on’ actress. She transformed from Kristen to Leslie in the moment that the camera turned over.
Kristen just soaks up information and processes. I would talk on for hours about her character and she would listen, ask questions then go away. I’d come to set and watch what she came up with.
Let me put this in perspective. When pouring over research, it’s nothing to come up with an idea for a shot when you come across Leslie Van Houten saying, “I became obsessed with the knife. Once it went in, it kept going in and in. The more I stabbed, the more fun it was.” Jonny, let’s frame up a low angle CU. Props stand by with the blood! Kristen is the one who actually has to find something in herself to emotionally express this abstract idea. She’s the one we watch going through this transition. That is her weighty contribution to this whole endeavor.
I guess getting shot in the face with fake blood is difficult.
Q: Tell us a little bit about that final image and why you chose to hold it for so long?
RH: We actually held that image longer in previous cuts. This might be a case where the creator is so inured to the image that they no longer understand its power.
The song “A Child of a Few Hours is Burning To Death” plays over it and we decided to cut out after the lyrics “Her eyes are full of smoke / Her mouth is full of fire”. I guess I wanted people to dwell on its meaning. I didn’t want to just flash shock with the imagery, I wanted people to sit and think about it for a second like a George Segal sculpture in an art gallery.
For me, the image seems so much about our relationship to the violence for which our society is culpable. It’s not real. It’s a diorama in a museum. Throughout the film, the scenes with Perry and his family are placed in theatrical settings. This is where we, “the silent majority”, live. This theatrical diorama is the product of our labors.
