Marking the 40th anniversary of the infamous murders conducted by Charles Manson’s ‘Family’ — History Television will on Sunday premiere Manson, a two-hour docudrama that boasts a lengthy interview with Manson family member Linda Kasabian. History production executive Nick Crowe talks about the genesis of the project at Cineflix Productions and how the Canadian cable channel got first run.

How did this project come to be?

It was pitched to us in June of last year by Cineflix and they had done a fantastic film on Jonestown [Jonestown: Paradise Lost] that had a similar format… It’s a story that’s obviously been covered in a lot of places and a couple of feature films, a miniseries and A&E documentaries. But this was a really unique window into it, where they had access to Linda Kasabian, who’d never done an on-camera interview before, other than a very short piece on A Current Affair in the late ’80s.

How did you get Kasabian?

That was all up to Cineflix. There’s a fantastic creative producer there, Greta Knutzen…. They had to hire a private investigator to track Linda Kasabian down; she’d gone into hiding after the trial… They eventually narrowed it down to two Linda Kasabians. When they had found the right one she really wasn’t keen on the idea of talking about this, let alone talking about it on film. It took about six months of getting to know her and reassuring her that this would be done properly. That’s all Greta’s doing.

Why depict the story as a docudrama?

The Jonestown film is so successful on a creative level, but really it’s the closest you can get to the story as possible. There are only four interviewees in the film: Linda, the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, Sharon Tate’s sister and another Manson family member. You have this incredible access and it’s largely told through the two points of view of Linda and Vincent Bugliosi, so what you end up with is the incredibly visual evocation of a great feature film but also the emotional depth of hearing the story straight from the people who were there.

We see a lot of documentaries that have recreations that are a bit like wallpaper, they just mirror what the interviewees are saying. This is a true docudrama where I think the dramatic elements are really feature quality. It is a beautifully shot and acted film, with great documentary aspects as well. It was filmed in the U.S., but certain things were shot [in Canada]. The scenes in the Spahn ranch were shot north of Toronto. They found an abandoned Old West town that had gone to seed and it was absolutely perfect. Of course, there are other scenes that could only be shot in California.

Why does Canada’s History Television have first run?

There were two theories as to when this should go up. One was for the anniversary, which is this weekend. The other theory in scheduling is that you never put something up in the summer. History in the U.S. is playing it on Labor Day weekend. There seem to be a lot of articles hitting magazines and newspapers right now anticipating this anniversary so we thought we could piggyback on that press and get a lot of attention. Internally there isn’t a lot of new stuff that goes up in the summer so we’re getting a lot of promo on the network. But I also found out yesterday we’ll be repeating it on Labor Day weekend as well.

Why is there so much fascination with Charles Manson and the Family?

I think there’s a lot more to it than just the mayhem, the murder and the true-crime aspect. It’s commonly referred to as the ‘end of the hippie [era]’ — that it’d been a really idealistic wide-eyed time and this was a real sign that there was a dark underside to it. There’s a lot of political and cultural baggage wrapped up in it as well. It really is indicative of a particular era, a time and a place. Manson is a horrible guy but also a very charismatic figure and continues to be to this day.

From Realscreen Online