\u201cWhen my dad found out, he couldn\u2019t bring himself to tell me for two months because it was so dark,\u201d Maddox told the Guardian.<\/p>\n
This discovery is the subject of Maddox\u2019s documentary<\/a>, My Grandfather Charles Manson, which premieres on Hulu<\/a>. Throughout the documentary, Maddox works through complex feelings around being related to one of the most infamous criminals in history. \u201cI come from a murderer,\u201d she says in the first few seconds of the film. \u201cWho the fuck would accept me?\u201d<\/p>\n But what begins as almost a philosophical exercise on the origins of evil, with Maddox seeking to understand her grandfather through interviews with members of the Manson Family cult, evolves quickly into a practice of unpacking generational trauma and making peace with a legacy inherited from flawed figures.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a highly personal process that feels akin to sitting in on a therapy session, which Maddox is filmed doing several times throughout the film. But the decision to document this for an audience came almost instinctually, Maddox said.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up kind of lonely and when you grow up pretty isolated and lonely, you want to be heard and seen. I think it nurtures you to want to tell people and shout from the rooftops who you are and what your story is,\u201d Maddox said in an interview. \u201cThat\u2019s just how I was built and raised, to be a storyteller, and maybe hopefully this allows someone else to feel a little less lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Maddox, 26, is young enough that she was able to grow up away from the shadow that Manson \u2013 and the bizarre trial of the Manson Family members \u2013 has cast over the collective psyche of American culture. She only learned of his crimes when she was a teenager and Googled \u201cHelter Skelter\u201d by chance after listening to the Beatles\u2019 White Album, but she didn\u2019t truly comprehend the impact of his crimes until a few years later, when she watched Quentin Tarantino\u2019s bloody blockbuster, Once Upon a Time \u2026 in Hollywood<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the svengali-like leader of the Manson Family cult, in August 1969 Manson had instructed his followers of mostly disaffected young women to enter the home that the actor Sharon Tate, who at the time was eight and a half months pregnant, shared with her husband, Roman Polanski (Polanski had been shooting a movie in Europe). There, they brutally stabbed and killed Tate, alongside the Hollywood hairdresser Jay Sebring, heiress Abigail Folger and family friend Wojciech Frykowski. The followers also shot and killed a fifth person, houseguest Steven Parent. The next night, the Manson Family broke into the home of the supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, and stabbed them to death as well.<\/p>\n Manson and three female followers, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, were convicted of murder and conspiracy to murder, with another follower, Charles \u201cTex\u201d Watson, convicted later. Manson died in prison<\/a> in 2017 at the age of 83.<\/p>\n Throughout the documentary, Maddox and her co-director, Alexandra Orton, juxtapose happy home videos of her father, Daniel Arguelles, laughing and doting on her as a chubby-cheeked baby, with clips of Manson, raving and wild-eyed, a Nazi swastika carved into his forehead. The physical similarities between Manson and Arguelles are striking \u2013 they share the same sharp features and penetrating brown eyes \u2013 but throughout the film, Maddox grappled with other traits Manson shared with her father: childhood trauma, mental health issues, a certain unpredictability that could manifest in volatile ways.<\/p>\n Arguelles, who Maddox described as a great dad, had been conceived during a one- or two-night stand and was raised by his mother and stepfather, who sent him to military reform school when he was young. \u201cMy grandma, God bless her, rest in peace \u2013 I knew her as a kid, and she kept the secret to her grave,\u201d Maddox said. \u201cBut when she was a mother to my father, she didn\u2019t treat him the way he deserved to be and I think it was because of who his dad was \u2026 the biggest trauma that I could think of with my dad was how no one validated his experiences in childhood, and so that\u2019s why he felt the need to tell me about them when I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
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