An Interview with Billie Mintz, the Director of ‘Making Manson’

MAKING MANSON -- Pictured: "Making Manson" Key Art -- (Photo by: Peacock)

Billie Mintz is a highly accomplished filmmaker that has worked on fiction and nonfiction stories. His most recent project, Making Manson, is available to stream on Peacock now, and we had the distinct honor of sitting down with Billie to discuss this epic and ambitious docuseries.
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John Betancourt: First off, thank you so much for putting this together. This is, this was quite the impressive docuseries, so much to pour over and so much to think upon. But I'm very curious, first and foremost, what it was that got you involved with this story overall?
 
Billie Mintz: Well, that's interesting, because when you say putting it together, it was a lot of people that put this together, especially right now, over at Renowned Films in the UK, who actually put this together. And they, you know, gave me the honor of being able to work with them and their team, and they found, miraculously, found the 20-year archive of never heard before tapes with Charles Manson, a relationship that nobody had privy to. There was, there's no record of a relationship like this with Manson in, you know, the entire comprehensive Manson that exists in the world. So, yeah, I was tasked with the responsibility to work with an amazing team to help tell the story.
 
John Betancourt: You're right. A lot of work went into this. And all involved deserve credit for showcasing a side of the Manson story we don’t really know about. What was it about that, that compelled you to want to get in the director's chair and really tell this tale?
 
Billie Mintz: You know, my interest always is these stories that we've been told that is part of the cultural psyche that really has shaped who we are. I mean, Charles Manson and these terrible murders and what happened to these people has had such an impact on us as a society. It's like, it was like, sort of our first, you know, media trauma, that every time it's told over and over again, we really retraumatize ourselves, the family members of the victims retraumatize ourselves. And so, I think that this idea that maybe that this story that we've been told is not necessarily the true story. I think that's incredibly important for so many reasons. For us to relook at these narratives, the Charles Manson narrative and other narratives that have shaped us and cause suffering that that we relook at, and having 20 years of archive from Manson, of him, talking candidly about this stuff, is a great gateway into this story that we've never had before.
 
John Betancourt: You bring up a good point that I kind of want to expand upon further. With you being now so close to this case and seeing the angles that you've seen. Why do you think maybe outside of the traumatic portion of it, the Manson case just continues to resonate with us so many years later?
 
Billie Mintz: Well, because he's our first cult leader. And you know, like, I'm not saying he's the first cult leader in the world. I'm sure there were many more beforehand, but he really was the, the first one that presented the idea to us where our consciousness became, “Wow, there's cult leaders. There are cults.” And also, you know, it was a time in life with the counterculture and the hippie movement that we're trying to break out and question life. And here came something along that really just sort of, you know, gets the credit for destroying the hippie movement. I mean, we think of Manson. It's like, it’s no longer is about free love. It's about, you know, murder. And so, I think that, like that really had an impact on us, that we have not gotten over.
 
John Betancourt: Now you had all that material, you had all these tapes, you helped put it together. What kind of challenges as a director went into putting something together that was just so large in scope.
 
Billie Mintz: Well, first of all, context is everything, right? I didn't know anything about the Manson story. I somewhat knew about Helter Skelter and the (Vincent) Bugliosi story, the prosecutor who ended up writing a book and selling billions on this story that not only won the convictions, but that created this, our collective understanding. So it was, how do you tell 20 years of a relationship in these tapes? How do you -- what do you choose? But then also, what do you assume people know, even though, even though this story has been told over and over again, you have to, you have to tell people what happened, even though they've heard it before, but some might not have, and you've got the story that takes place not over just two years of time leading up to the murders, but then 50 years after, at least the trial of like, three or four years afterwards.
 
So how do you do all this in in three episodes? And that that was, that was the most challenging, which we just went back and forth in circles. But what, you know, we landed in a really amazing place, because we had such an amazing team. And also, the executives at Peacock were so involved in in the story as well, and helping guide us with what we were allowed to do and what we were not allowed to do, which was also, you know, there's a lot governing there. Because you're dealing with victims of a crime, and also, you're dealing with the words of somebody who is being known as a serial killer, who was convicted as a killer of Aal these people. So, there was a lot to balance, but I think we found the special sauce.
 
John Betancourt: I agree. At no point did it ever feel like it was leaning away or the other. And that actually is a great time to talk about what went into the decision to offer such an objective and impartial look at a case that people really go on one side or the other.
 
Billie Mintz: Well, I think what's missing in our polarized world right now is the is the art of discourse. We've just, we've completely lost that. We have. You know, we're so split as a society and in our ideology, in our bias that we come into things, and we villainize other people for thinking other, the way we are, and we don't really come to any, you know, solutions as a society, which is what we need. We need to innovate as a society. We need to move forward. So, I think like this… Manson is interesting that like Manson becomes -- and also with documentaries too, like we don't do much documentary-ism in documentaries anymore. We're just sort of telling these stories. The press is the same way.
 
So, I think this was a really great experiment where we take posthumously Manson's words, bring them into a room, bring all the people into the room that have been telling the story for so long, and who have been affected by this. Even you know, one of our subjects is the one of the victims, Steven Parent, his brother, Greg Parent, who grew up with this terrible thing that happened to his family, to his brother, this terrible story that he'd been told. And we bring them all into a room to engage, engage with Manson, and engage with this story, and engage with me, because, you know, I'm asking the questions, and I think it just shows that, you know, we do not need to spoon feed people. We are all grown-ups. We're all conscious beings, and it's really important that people will walk away with different understandings. And I think that's what makes a successful story, not telling you this is what the way I want you to think.
 
John Betancourt: What do you hope people do take away from this story?
 
Billie Mintz: I think we just need to keep looking back at our stories that we're telling, the stories that continue to harm us. This is a story that harms us about a cult leader, who brainwashes people and is able to control people's minds and I don't think that does us any service, trying to understand why these people lost their lives. And I think when you stay in some sort of fantastical story, you're not healing. You're not finding closure. And what I would love people to walk away with is some closure around such a terrible part of our history. And I would like the family members, the surviving family members of the people who had lost their loved ones. To watch this and learn a little more that maybe they didn't know about in in this gruesome retelling of the story that's always been told.
 
John Betancourt: I think one of the advantages of where you sit in the director's chair, is that you know, you get to take away some unique perspective for yourself. What surprised you the most about this story as it unfolded and came together?
 
Billie Mintz: You know, the one thing that always comes to my mind is just like… this iconography around Manson. And when we think about Manson, we think about this bearded guy, this bearded cult, hippie cult leader. And, you know, one of the things he said that is just so, sort of like, it seems so trivial, but this man never had a beard, up until the moment we saw him with a beard. Like we think about this guy with a beard who, like, led this cult. And you know, that's our image of Charles Manson, but he never had a beard. He's from, like, the 1950s he's not he was much older, and he was like, in his 30s in the hippie generation. Most hippies were like teenagers and early 20s. And this guy was a guy who never had a beard. And the reason why he had a beard was because they didn't give him a razor when he was in jail. And so, he when he comes out, and we first, we don't have any documentation of Manson before the murders, before he was caught after the murders.
 
And so, our impression of Manson is this, like bearded hippie cult leader. And when you learn that he never had a beard, I think that opens up, you know, it's an epiphany, and it opens up a whole new understanding of not just what actually happened, but what we were told then happened, and how we ourselves are not just -- we're not just necessarily manipulated by Manson but manipulated by the media. And I think, like that's the biggest thing, is the way the media manipulates us. And I think that's where documentary filmmaking has a great responsibility and continues to have, especially with Peacock, because we did the same thing with Selena and Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them, the other documentary that we made, is that us to really try to understand, in all things going on, in all things that have happened, how have we ourselves been manipulated?
 
John Betancourt: You know, that's a really, really good point, because my introduction to Manson was that exact photo that you displayed in the documentary, where it's just the crazy eyes and the hair and everything, and I do appreciate, obviously, they know that you don't humanize him necessarily, but that you do just present a complete picture.
 
Billie Mintz: Yeah, I don't want, I'm not trying to get sympathy for Manson, and I don't think humanizing Manson necessarily leads to sympathy. It's just like it's a better understanding of what happened, who Manson was, and why this happened, that that will serve us so much more than this cartoon, cardboard character that we've created. You know, humanizing is important because, you know, regardless of what people have done or what has happened, like we need to understand the humanity behind it.
 
John Betancourt: I think what I appreciated the most, was the fact that you gave us, you gave us a perspective into his childhood, which I don't think anybody's ever really covered before. I didn't know about it. So that was very educational for me to know that A led to B, led to C, and this is probably the most comprehensive look at the Manson case and Charles Manson period, which is a wonderful thing. What are you hoping the legacy of this is going to be?
 
Billie Mintz: Makes me think of what Tyson just talked about regarding legacy. Did you see that video that's going viral of Tyson talking about legacy?
 
John Betancourt: I did. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
 
Billie Mintz: Now I'm afraid to talk about legacy, because Tyson, you know, he has, he has that way about him. The question is, is what I just think that we will… after we watch this show, I want us to go back and watch other interviews with Manson, other shows with Manson. Watch everything. Watch the comprehensive Manson of the mythological Manson, the collective Manson that we've gone to learn, and now with this sort of further insight, go back and watch, rewatch everything. And I think there'll be more of a discernment into what is the ridiculous, what could be true and what could not be true, and what actually like just watching the interviews Manson gives, these cryptic interviews throughout the ages that like you just think he's talking crazy talk, which he is. But now, knowing what we know now, from watching Making Manson, he was dropping a lot of bombs that went over our heads, definitely went over the interviewers’ heads. And I think that if anything this series could do, is be a sort of a decoder to not just Manson but the Manson story.
 
John Betancourt: The last question I have for you today, what did you ultimately take away from what you learned about Charles Manson?
 
Billie Mintz: You know, I feel I'm being a little repetitive, but that that everybody, I don't, I don't want to use the word deserves, but everybody should have an opportunity for people making any judgment, like anything that says about it, to have their own -- make sure they have all of the information, or at least know that they're missing some of the information before being stuck in their ideology of what is truth, really like, we need to decipher what have we been told and what could be untrue about what we've been told.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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