Charles Manson hovers like a spectre in the background of Quentin Tarantino’s excellent new retro-romp Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, just as he’s haunted American popular culture ever since he orchestrated a series of gruesome murders in Los Angeles in August 1969.
The way his crimes came to represent the poisoning of the hippy ideal has given him an outsized reputation, making him appear far more powerful and terrifying than he really was. The truth is that Manson was a cruel and manipulative piece of shit, and like many pieces of shit before and since, what he really wanted in life was to be a rock ’n’ roll star.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 