INTERVIEW: Wondery investigates Charles Manson, the early years

True crime and podcasting have become eternally wedded in recent years. Ever since the successful launches of Serial, Dirty John, S-Town and others, listeners have tuned into these riveting, scary broadcasts almost like the fireside chats of yesteryear.

The newest entry comes courtesy of Wondery. Young Charlie details the early life of Charles Manson, the infamous serial killer who died recently in jail. Over six episodes, listeners can hear the written script of Larry Brand (Halloween: Resurrection) brought to life by host Tracy Pattin and actor Stephen Lang (Avatar). The podcast has become highly rated, rising to the top of Apple’s podcast charts.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Brand about the legacy of Manson, his followers and the murders that frightened a nation in the 1960s. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.

What interested you in this project?

My Wondery production partners, Rebecca Reynolds and Jim Carpenter, had created a successful podcast called Hollywood & Crime. The first season-and-a-half dealt with the Black Dahlia, and a series of murders that might or might not have been connected to her death. They were looking for a subject to finish out season two and mentioned Manson. I wondered if there was way to come at it from a new angle — not simply telling the story of the murders and investigation — and the name Young Charlie popped into my head.

The Wondery series is bifurcated into two timelines. One, narrated by the show’s host, Tracy Pattin, begins the morning the bodies are discovered and ends with Charlie’s arraignment. It’s entirely from the perspective of the authorities and public. The other timeline, narrated by brilliant actor Stephen Lang, is from Charlie’s perspective. It finds him as a 5-year-old, watching his mother being taken off to jail on an armed robbery charge, and ends the night he sends his followers out to kill everyone at the Tate residence. 

What was the research like to tell these stories?

Beyond reading [Vincent] Bugliosi’s book, Helter Skelter, and a relatively recent Manson bio by Jeff Guinn, I scoured the Internet for documentaries and archival footage of Charlie and the Family. He did quite a few interviews, most notably with Dianne Sawyer in 1994 and Tom Snyder in 1981. In addition there are recordings of his various parole hearings. Then there was the more old-fashioned library research, done by Tracy Pattin and producer Jim Carpenter. Jim sent me probably a hundred contemporaneous articles about the murders and search for the killers.

Did the details ever get so scary or unsettling that you needed a break?

I think there are what I would call ‘method writers,’ who, like their actor counterparts, immerse themselves so deeply in a story that they may need time to unwind and get away from the events they’re describing. Then there are writers who are more clinical about it — more akin to surgeons who are so absorbed in the technical aspects of an operation that they don’t dwell on the fact that there’s this split-open human being on the table in front of them. I’m more in the latter category. With Wondery and Young Charlie, no matter how deeply I descended into Charlie’s mind, it’s gone as soon as I step away from the computer.

What do you think listeners can take away from the podcast?

The question that has haunted us for almost 50 years now is, how could this have happened? How could these kids, who seemed indistinguishable from their counterparts frolicking in the mud of Woodstock, have gleefully committed these horrific murders? My hope in making Young Charlie is that by the end of the six episodes, people will have a real insight into how and why it happened, how Charlie developed the skills he needed to get into these kids’ heads, and what kind of self-selection process drew them to him.

I don’t think understanding the events makes them any less horrific or macabre — it certainly doesn’t in any way exonerate the perpetrators. I often get asked if I’m concerned that the show might ‘humanize’ Charlie. Well, Charlie was human — as was Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. So it’s all the more important that we de-mystify these occurrences and situate them within the wide — and sometimes horrifying — spectrum of human behaviors. 

In your opinion, why have true-crime podcasts become so popular?

We didn’t evolve in continent-wide communities, but in small groups where knowing what was going on with our neighbors was essential to our survival — who could be trusted and who couldn’t; who would share his food and who wouldn’t; above all, who was a threat to us or our family. This is also why we tend to be natural gossips.

When we hear about a crime — a murder or a missing child — it activates those evolutionary alert centers in our brains, even though it might have happened a thousand miles away and represents no direct threat to us. If you eliminated crime from the artistic palette, there’d be very little left in world literature — including [William] Shakespeare. Take away sex — a major feature in gossip — and there’d be almost nothing left. But on a more intellectualized level, I think that when we examine the extremes of behavior — whether they be heroic or murderous — we discover more about what it means to be human.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Young Charlie, a new podcast from Wondery, is now available. Click here for more information.