The musings of Sean Paul Murphy: Editor, Producer, Screenwriter, Author. Or, Hollywood -- and beyond -- as seen from an odd little corner of northeast Baltimore, Maryland.
I do believe I have an innate eye for structure. I always have. It just came naturally to me even before I read my first book on the subject: Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by the immortal Syd Field. It was no doubt the byproduct of watching literally thousands of films growing up.
Generally speaking, most of my screenwriting tips have been cynical takes on the business and career rather than writing nuts and bolts. One day, I will have to sing the praises of the three-act structure, but today I want to discuss something that left me confused. How so you put a Big Gloom in a film with an unhappy ending?
First, let's define that term. What is The Big Gloom?
Most successful screenplays have three acts: The Beginning, The Middle and The End. What could be simpler, right? The Beginning is the set-up, where you establish your characters and the crisis. The Middle is the complication, or, as some call it, the rising action. Here your protagonist faces an increasingly difficult set of obstacles until he/she reaches The Big Gloom. The Big Gloom is the all is lost moment at the end of second act. This is when things couldn't possibly get worst for the protagonist. His/her goals now seem utterly unobtainable. However, in The End, the hero somehow manages to triumph -- at least in most American films made outside of the seventies. It's those films from the seventies that threw me off.
I found myself revisiting many of the great films of the seventies while appearing on the Yippee Ki Yay Mother Podcast. (Hopefully we will be back one day. We still have episodes in the can!) Many of those films had dark or unhappy endings, and they always felt structurally wrong to me. Analyzing them, I figured out why: There was no Big Gloom. I found myself anticipating an all is lost moment, but, in those films, the true Big Gloom is actually the end of film itself. Since I expect The Big Gloom at the end of the second act, those films always felt to me as if there was no third act.
That seeming violation of the rules of structure always left me disconcerted.
But I missed something obvious.
You can't have a Big Gloom at the end of the second act of a film with an unhappy ending, you have to do the reverse and have a Big Triumph. Instead of having a depressing all is lost moment, you have a "we made it!" moment.
One of my guilty pleasures is 1975's Race With The Devil, starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, about two vacationing couples fleeing Satanists in the Southwest after they witness a ritualistic murder. The film ends with them surrounded by the Satanists and about to die. What did they have at the end of the second act? A Big Triumph. In a showpiece road battle, the good guys seem to finally vanquish the pursuing Satanists.
Here's the trailer:
Another example can be found in 1980's The Long Good Friday, where a British gangster Bob Hoskins finds himself inadvertently battling the Irish Republican Army. At the end of the second act, we get a Big Triumph. You get the feeling Hoskins had beaten his opponents, but not so. The film ends with him sitting in the backseat of a car as a prisoner contemplating his coming death. It is a great gangster film. Check it out if you haven't seen it.
Here's the trailer:
And here's the last scene:
Many screenwriting books discuss The Big Gloom, under different names, in great detail. However, I had never seen any of them discuss The Big Triumph.
Sacred Ground: The Battle For Mount Auburn Cemetery is a feature-length documentary about a group of community activists and family members battling a Methodist church for control of historic Mount Auburn Cemetery. For years, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the only place in Baltimore where African-Americans could be buried. It is the final resting place of lightweight boxing champion Joe Gans, the first African-American world champion in any sport, and numerous leaders in the early civil rights movement. It is a registered historic landmark that had fallen into such horrifying decay that bones littered the ground and weeds covered all but the highest monuments. It is a tale of grave robbing, grave recycling and every other terrible thing that could possibly happen in a cemetery.
The film follows Lu Moorman, president of Preservation Alliance, an independent group of activists and family members, and her attempt to wrest control of the cemetery from its stewards, Sharp Street Memorial Church. Dating back to 1787, Sharp Street Memorial Church is one of the first African-American Methodist congregations. It was once the most influential African-American church in Baltimore, but its numbers have dwindled over the years and its financial resources have waned. The then pastor, Rev. Dell Hinton, appointed her father, Rev. Douglas Sands, head of the cemetery. They, too, had a plan to restore the cemetery with the help of Morgan State University, but who could ultimately be trusted to speak for the generations buried beneath its soil?
David Butler, Lynda Meier and Deborah Murphy
The film was directed by David H. Butler, and written by yours truly. We both produced it with the assistance of the trusty Lynda Meier and my lovely wife Deborah Lynn Murphy. However, the film couldn't have been made without the assistance of everyone who shared their time and their stories. This was an activist piece. We began this project with a simple goal: To point a spotlight at the deplorable conditions at the cemetery to compel its owners, and the local government, to take action. For a while, it seemed like we helped. A new wall was built around the property, and the grounds were being maintained by prisoners. Sadly, conditions are now once again on the decline.
The Black News Channel went live on February 10th and will soon be widely available. Check your cable listings now. If you don't see it, call your cable provider and request it immediately.
I cannot give you any specific times when they will be airing Sacred Ground, but the network has acquired the rights for an entire year. I suspect there will be multiple screenings. Hopefully, exposure on the Black News Channel will increase awareness to conditions in the cemetery.
She claims that single people get no love in genealogy. That genealogists only care about people who marry and have children. To prove her wrong, I am going to tell the story of one of my second great-granduncles, Frank Kostohryz, a single man who it seems also felt he never got the love he deserved.
I never heard of Uncle Frank until I began working on the family tree. One afternoon, I was going through an old family photo album with my grandmother Rita Rosenberger Protani Pollock and she pointed out a photo of him. Frank was the brother of her grandfather. She remembered him. She said he was good-natured and spoke English very well. He was a tailor. She said he made a great deal of money -- by our family standards -- making uniforms during World War I, but he also suffered from hard times. She said he had to live with the Little Sisters of the Poor for a while.
That's all I got about him -- just about two short sentences. And, since he never produced any descendants to track, I left it at that. But there was more to Frank. Much more.
Skip ahead about fifteen years. My genealogical research had to take a backseat to my work on Chapel Street-- a paranormal novel about a family, much like my own, plagued by a long series of suicides. When you have multiple suicides in your family, you tend to wonder if it was somehow genetic. My research on the family tree seemed to detect a strain of depression on my mother's maternal line. As a result, to add some realism to my book, I set the origins of my novel in the Baltimore of my Bohemian immigrant ancestors.
While I was writing the book, I found a 1907 story on newspapers.com about Uncle Frank in Baltimore's German language newspaper. Despite three years of high school German classes, I couldn't make out much. I do have my trusty German/English dictionary, but I didn't have time to translate it. I put it aside until I finished the first draft of my novel. Then, rather than translate it myself, I simply posted the newspaper story on Facebook and asked if any of my German-speaking friends could translate it for me. One of them did. The news shocked me -- and creeped me out.
The story said that Frank had gone to a nightclub at the harbor frequented by a former girlfriend and shot himself.
WTF? There I was writing about suicide in my Bohemian family only to find out that one of those very relatives shot himself....
Before we go any further, let me give you some background on poor Frank.
Frank Kostohryz was born in Bernartice, Bohemia, on 16 May 1876, the son of Jan Kostohryz, a master blacksmith, and his wife Anna Cunat, the daughter of a farmer. He was one of nine children. Four of those children died before the age of three. Frank himself was named after an older brother who had recently died at the age of two. Yikes. Not a promising start, if you ask me.
The Kostohryz house in Bernartice.
Frank came to Baltimore in 1889. He was not the first member of his family to arrive. Frank's older sister Mary Kostohryz arrived in Baltimore in 1883, where she met and married a man named Vaclav Klima. Frank was followed by his older brother, Jan Kostohryz, my 2nd great-grandfather. He and his wife Maria arrived in 1892.
Just as my grandmother Rita remembered, Frank worked as a tailor. He can be found in the 1900 Federal Census of Maryland living with his sister Mary and her family in a typical East Baltimore row house at 523 North Castle Street. What my grandmother didn't tell me was that Frank fell desperately in love with a woman sometime around 1897. Sadly, the love of his life ultimately rejected him and married another man, leading ten years later to the newspaper story I referenced above. Fortunately, more of the details were revealed in a couple of English-language stories.
Here's the first story from The Baltimore Sun, dated 27 June 1907:
SISTER FEARS SUICIDE
----------
Frank Kostohryz Wrote Her Of
Ending His Life.
Mrs. Mary Klima, 523 North Castle street, has asked the police to help locate her brother, Frank Kostohryz who, she fears, has committed suicide. She received the following letter from him yesterday: "Dear Sister: I can stand it no longer. I have been thinking of taking this step for the last 10 years. Don't blame me for what I intend to do. I bid you the last good-by. She is to blame more than I am. "The Lord only knows how I suffered because of my love for her. I have never done anybody any harm and can't see why happiness is denied me. "See my foreman, Mr. Link, at Schloss; two days' pay is coming to me. "Lovingly, Frank." Mrs. Klima said last night that her brother had loved and lost about 10 years ago. The girl who jilted him married another and is now living in East Baltimore. Since that time her brother, who is a tailor, has often referred to his bitter disappointment. Last Sunday he told her life was not worth living.
Here's a follow-up story from The Baltimore Sun, dated 28 June 1907, which also featured a photograph:
KOSTOHYRZ STILL MISSING
----------
Threatened To End Life Because
Girl Jilted Him.
Nothing has been seen or heard of Frank Kostohryz since Wednesday morning, when he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Mary Klima, 523 North Castle street, bidding her goodby and saying life was not worth living and intended to end it all. He told sister he was driven to take his life by sorrow over a sweetheart who jilted him 10 years ago and married another. Kostohryz had boarded with Mr. J. Smelzel, 706 East Baltimore street, for two years.
The story finally played out in this article from Der Deutsche Correspondent, dated 3 July 1907:
I will not translate the story. Let's just cut to the chase: Frank did not die. He was taken to University Hospital where he was nursed back to health.
What happened to him afterwards? I don't know in any detail, but apparently the inner demons that drove him to that self-destructive act where satiated by the mere attempt. I don't know what kind of psychological or spiritual assistance he received, although I suspect a truly devoted sister was a key factor, but he did not kill himself. Although it seems he never found a new love and married, Uncle Frank lived another thirty-six years before dying of pneumonia on 17 November 1943. Here's the final newspaper story about him:
KOSTOHRYZ.--On November 17, 1943, FRANK, aged 66 years, beloved son of the late John and Anna Kostohryz. Funeral from Frank Coach and Son Funeral Home, 900 North Chester street, Saturday morning at 9:15. Requiem High Mass at St. Wenceslaus' Church at 10 o'clock. Interment Holy Redeemer Cemetery.
My grandmother Rita was twenty-three-years-old when Uncle Frank finally died. Her Bohemian family was pretty close. She obviously knew about this story, but she decided to keep it secret from me ninety years after the event. That's perfectly understandable. There is a stigma attached to suicide which is not associated with any other form of death. No one wants to talk about suicide -- even the attempted variety. I doubt very much Frank would like this sad incident to define his life either. He would undoubtedly prefer my grandmother's brief biography -- that he was a good-natured guy, who did well financially and spoke English well. But I'm glad I found out about this incident.
In my family tree, Frank was a mere shadow. His essence as a human being was originally reduced to a few dates and two descriptive sentences. Now I, and posterity, have a much more rounded portrait of him. He was a man of great passion and sorrow. In many ways, we are kindred spirits.
More importantly, Frank is a great object lesson on suicide. It is not inevitable. One moment of madness does not condemn a person to that fate. Many people who attempt suicide and survive manage to put the impulse behind them. I hope Frank's story will provide hope to others wrestling with this issue.
Frank might have loved and lost, but he found a reason to keep on living.
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
Four Generations of women.
Was something spiritual passed down the line?
My upcoming novel Chapel Streetwas inspired by my experiences growing up in a "haunted" house at 21 St. Helens Avenue* in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Lauraville. This series of blogs will provide an oral history of the actual haunting that inspired the book. This entry consists of the second half of an interview with my niece Marion.
Marion differs from my previous interview subjects because she never actually lived in the house. However, her interview deals with the issue of supernatural gifts, or unusual spiritual sensitivities. Until I began this series of interviews, I didn't realize that many women in my family believe they have psychic or paranormal gifts. I believe these sensitivities might provide a partial explanation for the intensity of the haunting we experienced. However, it is not the whole story since other people who make no such claims have had intense experiences....
SEAN: I don't know if I asked you this already, but do you think it was one thing or multiple things in 21 Saint Helens?
MARION: I don't know, because I've always had it. So unless it was something from early on, I don't know. It's not like there was a point where I consciously thought it was cool or anything, and it didn't start at Grandmom's house either. So I'm not sure if it's just all the women and you in the family kind of have this or not, I don't know.
But to your other question about -- did you want to ask it again?
SEAN: Do you think, based on your, you know, perceptions, that there was more than one thing in the house? Second part of the question, if there was more than one thing, do you think any of them were human?
MARION: I think there was one major Entity that was nonhuman that was seeking probably souls, so on the demon spectrum. I do think that there were also potentially human ghosts that were -- had not very much power. I was also kind of under the impression that there were -- yeah, that there were a number of human ghosts that were basically stuck there and were at -- like, being forced there by the Entity. But I don't know if there was more than one, like, demon, other than the one main one. But I think there were probably originally human ghosts there, too.
SEAN: Well, you know, a number of people died there, and whatever was there, was there before we got there because it was there when we got there.
MARION: Right.
SEAN: They say with demons they’re presence is usually a result of either unintentionally calling a demon, i.e. with like a Ouija board or something or playing with the occult, or sometimes it's an object associated with the occult or associated with the Entity, or a place where there was suicide or lots of death or violence. And a number of people died there, but it didn't seem -- I am missing one death certificate, but other than two of that might have been victims of possible falls, but other than that, it didn't seem like there was murder or suicide in that house.
MARION: Right.
SEAN: So I would tend to think, then, maybe someone, maybe not even someone living in that house, may have been involved in occult practice or something. Because --
MARION: Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on if it's just in that house versus in other houses, too, or in other houses in the whole neighborhood. Does keep going back to the same places in that house, so it does have some connection geographically to the house. I don't think it's necessarily associated with objects, although when we moved out of the house, we were kind of quickly trying to get rid of things that were in the house, like furniture and things like that. But I think there's still a couple pieces of furniture, but I don't think it necessarily was tied to any of those objects. And it was there before other kind of occult activities may have happened in the '80s. So I don't know, it was just there.
SEAN: Yeah. I would say that, yeah, it seemed to me right now, before the Ouija board incident, the haunting mainly seemed to be centered in the closets on the second floor.
MARION: Right.
SEAN: And then after the Ouija board thing, there was a lot of activity upstairs. Unfortunately, Dougie was not there. Dougie did not experience anything, and I'm not surprised, because I didn't experience anything for over ten years. So Dougie did not experienced anything. Mark experienced stuff, and that was prior to the Ouija board.
MARION: Yeah.
SEAN: From what I'm hearing now. So something was already upstairs.
MARION: Sometimes the stuff is so mundane that you and Dougie might have been experiencing it and you didn't know it.
SEAN: The only thing that could be a false memory to me might be the organ, which is why I don't jump on that, because I do kind of remember hearing it play, like a single note once, but I'm not sure whether it could have been actually someone playing a single note --
MARION: Right.
SEAN: -- or you know, I just heard these stories from I guess Mark and Laurie, and just imagined it. But the rest of the stuff that happened to me firmly exists in a place in time that I can identify.
MARION: Yeah. But things like misplacing something, that could have happened and you wouldn't necessarily have noticed. You may have just thought you were slobby or something.
SEAN: Yeah.
MARION: Or if you think that there were people in the house and there wasn't anyone there. When I was really little, I always remember there being lots of people in the house. So there would be no way for me to remember if any of those were not real people.
Natalie, Marion, Emily
SEAN: Was this you in your original note or did Natalie say she always felt that there were other adults there and just assumed they were family friends?
MARION: I think Natalie said that, but I always thought that, too. But everyone who was older than a kid is an adult in my memory.
SEAN: Yeah. So what's your overall thoughts regarding all this and how it affected you? But before we go there, are you still having the dreams?
MARION: I do periodically have dreams about the house, but the entity's not in it. It's usually I'll have a dream where the house is empty and we have to go back in and get something. Or like, it oftentimes is like somebody ran inside and we have to wait for them to come out or something like that. When we left, I often would get dreams even when we were -- even after Grandmom had moved out, where it was kind of saying things like -- not necessarily saying things but impressing on me like, Oh, you'll be back. Sure you're leaving now, but you'll be back. So I will not go back there.
But yeah. I think a lot of the times now if I have a dream about that house, it often is at the same time as, like, it's a new setting for a stress dream because your brain always likes to come up with new settings for those. The entity's not in it. But I'll have dreams with other kind of things in them, but not that one.
SEAN: Now, in your letter you sent me, an e-mail, you say sometimes you will actually see in a room there'll be people and some will be real and some won't be real?
MARION: Yes. Yeah. Like I think it was at maybe Beth's house, there was somebody that was walking downstairs, standing on the stairs, looking at the party, walked away. That person wasn't really there.
SEAN: Did you tell Beth?
MARION: I think so, and then they said like, oh, yeah, that'll happen. Like, that's not the first time they've heard that one before.
SEAN: Oh, okay.
MARION: But usually if I see any ghosts, it's kind of like the corner of my eye or I'll look at it and it will be kind of like a smoky wisp thing that is kind of similar to those other things, what I said when I was really little. That I might see head on, but most of the time, you know, if there's a ghost there, it's more like the feeling of one, or if I'm remembering it, like, oh, yeah, there was somebody standing right there.
SEAN: Now, do you get the sense that they're trying to communicate with you in any way or that they're aware that you can see them?
MARION: Yes. I think that's what it is. Is for some reason, I must be more visible or something to them. If there is a ghost there, they always kind of seem to come over to me. Maybe it's like -- I don't know. I've kind of thought about it, maybe it's just they are kind of excited to see that somebody can kind of see them. But a lot of times, they're just more residual ones anyway that are kind of just attracted to me for some reason. A lot of times, like a place will feel kind of hostile, and then once they come and check me out, it kind of is not hostile anymore.
SEAN: Do you have the ability to turn that off?
MARION: Um, I do -- like, I did practice -- they used to kind of follow me. And that happened to me when I was in college around that same time as everything else happening, where I would have a dream about this ghost who was walking up and down these stairs, and she asked if she could follow me around for a while because she couldn't get out of these stairs. And so I was like, oh, sure, and then she was in real life following me around. And that is around the point where I was kind of like, I have to figure out how to make it so that they don't follow me anymore. So I do have some mental tricks to make sure that they know that it's okay if they see me, it's okay if I see them, but they can't come with me.
SEAN: Yeah. That's unadvised, to allow them to come with you.
MARION: Right. Well, that's what I kind of had to practice in my subconscious. Because things -- you know, a lot of times I'd get those dreams and stuff, but I think it's when I'm sleeping, it's because I don't really have that conscious ability to be able to stop it. So once I figured that out, it's not so bad.
SEAN: So I just want to make a point, is that you felt the thing -- the Entity, you believe you were feeling the Entity away from the actual house itself?
MARION: Yes.
SEAN: You could feel its influence on you?
MARION: I could, yeah. And it made me feel like really crazy. Like, I was afraid I was going to go crazy.
SEAN: Now, obviously you know where I'm going now. This is sort of the fundamental question that started this investigation. Do you think that in any way, the Entity could be responsible in part for Laurie or Mark's death?
MARION: I can kind of -- I'm keeping my mind open to it. Obviously I don't want it to be a thing like mental illness is caused by supernatural things, but I did always kind of feel like, if I thought about it too much, that I could actually go crazy. So I could see you getting a couple of people tipped in the direction of being a little bit more insane, like triggered in that way. So potentially, maybe with Mark. Although, I mean, he had a host of problems. But I mean, that stuff does get triggered.
And if it is able to visit you when you're sleeping, I guess you could continue to experience it outside of the house. Also if you have this constant feeling of oppression, that can kind of -- if she was -- with Laurie, was experiencing that, that could also kind of give you some tendencies, probably, toward suicide. But I don't necessarily think it was there when she did it. It may have affected their mental state possibly, but I wouldn't -- there's no way I could scientifically test it, though.
SEAN: Yeah, well, that's my impression, is that it left a sense of oppressiveness, which according to the recent information I got regarding Mark and his experiences from one of his friends about his experiences up in that room and the voices he was hearing, and the voices were feeding his paranoia.
MARION: Yeah, right. I could see if you have that inclination to have some mental illness, that would be a weak point, that it would definitely be able to influence that.
SEAN: Did you feel that --
MARION: So potentially.
SEAN: Did you feel that it was trying to influence you towards suicide or other --
MARION: No.
SEAN: -- madness?
MARION: I always kind of felt like I could go crazier if the Entity wanted me to. I always kind of felt like that. I also would get kind of feelings of like, oh, you think this clairvoyance stuff is kind of cool, right? Like, don't you want to know more? Don't you -- you know, basically like if you pay a little bit more, you could get more out of it. Which is stuff that I had never really thought about as being potentially influenced by the Entity until fairly recently where I -- yeah. Where it was kind of like, it was giving me a little taste of stuff for curiosity's sake, and I would like -- if you want to the really good stuff, though, you got to pay to play.
SEAN: So what's causing this reevaluation? Is it the blogs, is it the interviews that's causing you to reevaluate your own experiences?
MARION: Yeah, it's the interviews. A number of years ago, I was researching the house, because I was working for a cultural research management company and I had access to deed research and stuff like that. So I had always been interested in the house and I have done a lot of background research for it, and I had always thought for years that it would be really great if somebody collected an oral history of people's experiences with it.
But then the more I've been thinking about my kind of everyday activities, the more I kind of think about how much of that was influenced by the Entity. Since I always had those dreams, it always felt like that was the real thing, but I always kind of felt like since I didn't actually live in the house, that no one really would have accepted that I was having real experiences with it since I wasn't living there.
SEAN: I really felt I put this Entity in a box, and sort of ignored anything that didn't fit my preconceived notion of how I experienced it. But you know, I've really tried to come into this with an open mind, and it is changing my feelings. For example, for me to think that there is more than one is a big leap for me.
MARION: Oh, really?
SEAN: Because I just thought I only experienced one thing. And it's funny though, I would, like you, say because of its strength and/or size, I assumed it was male, but it really wasn't male. You know what I mean?
MARION: Right. Yeah.
SEAN: It had a perception of maleness to me but it was not male. And I will say, I never saw it, it never spoke to me, but it would react to things I would say.
MARION: Right.
SEAN: But once I realized it would react to things I would say, I just wouldn't address it anymore, for the reasons you expressed earlier that interacting with it was empowering it. So I just stopped interacting with it.
MARION: Yeah.
SEAN: So once again, it's a science, and I look at it this way. If there is indeed a spiritual dimension, and I believe there is, if you look at 100 percent of that spiritual dimension, and hundred percent of our dimension here, the overlap between the two is probably less than .0001 percent. So we are looking at it in a totally dark way. Our ability to know what is going on in that realm at any given moment is essentially impossible for us to figure out what is going on.
MARION: Yeah.
SEAN: No matter what your religious world view is. Because even if you believe the Bible's right, that everything in the Bible's correct about these entities, there is so little in the Bible, you know what I mean?
MARION: Yeah.
SEAN: If you put all those passages together, it's not going to explain everything that people who've lived through -- what we lived through -- need to know. Particularly the why. We do not have the why.
MARION: Yeah. And usually religion seeks to answer the why questions. But science doesn't usually, so that's why it would be very difficult to apply scientific principles to that type of thing as well.
SEAN: And also it seems that the Bible, the possessions are almost always involve people and not places. But it seems to be pretty common that demonic entities will inhabit places for one reason or another. But that's not necessarily the whys and wheres. Is it bound there or does it want to be there? Suppose you're an Entity like the one in the house. This is something that is probably timeless in a real sense. If it could go anywhere, why would it want to stay at 21 Saint Helens Avenue?
MARION: Yeah, I know.
SEAN: To me, that's very puzzling. I would at least go to the Bahamas a couple weeks. Then again, sometimes it was absent. But that doesn't mean it was absent from that area. It may have just meant it was at one of the other houses.
MARION: Yeah, or it just was absent from one person. Because if a lot of it is psychological, you know, if you're on a hiatus, it doesn't mean that it is necessarily on a hiatus. But it does seem to be very attracted to that location, which is kind of strange. Because I really would have thought that it would follow us out of it.
SEAN: Yeah. And also it seems as though it is attracted to that location, and people are saying it was everywhere in the house, that there was no clean place. It did seem particularly attracted to those closets, and also the closet in, as you kids would call it, the Hell Hole. And I'm wondering if that's just because it appears as a shadow thing to people. Maybe because it is a shadow, it stays in the dark. That's why there's less activity during the day.
MARION: That hallway was really dark, though, and it wasn't in the hallway. Well, there was that closet in the hallway that was creepy, I guess.
SEAN: Yeah.
MARION: Well, and the bathroom was really creepy, the closet that was part of it in the bathroom, and that wasn't dark. And it was a sun room, for ding dang's sake.
SEAN: Yeah. But I mean it seemed like it was mainly in your mother's room. That was her room. You know, in that main closet there. But as John said, everyone was always looking at that door when they were in that bathroom.
MARION: He's right. I never took a shower in there because then I wouldn't be able to watch the door or watch the closet. You'd have to have your back to it.
SEAN: Yeah. Well, I tell you what, thank you for your appearance. Is there anything else you would like to say?
MARION: I don't know. There's going to be lots of things that I wrote down or whatever, but I think that's the general gist of it.
SEAN: Okay, well, great. Thank you very much, and we will talk later. I'm turning off the camera.
Marion
Here's another clip from the interview:
Notes:
*21 St. Helens Avenue was the original address of the house when it was built. The street name and number changed over time, but I use the original address to protect the privacy of the current owners.
My novel Chapel Street was inspired by the haunting. You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
I appreciate his work. I respect his work. If I'm flipping through the channels and I land on one of his films, I'll probably watch it. That said, I do not love his work. I often found their brilliance matched by their self-indulgence. More importantly, not of his films have ever really engaged me on an emotional level. To me, they were simply insightful genre deconstructions loaded with pop culture references. Tellingly, I do not own any of his films on Blu-Ray. But I'll buy this one.
That surprises me.
When I first read that Tarantino was going to do a film about the Manson murders, I remember groaning audibly. I was once a voracious reader of true crime. I read quite a bit about the Manson murders, and the last thing I wanted to see was another historical rewrite from Tarantino along the lines of Inglourious Bastards. However, as the film went into production, I began to consider it more favorably. I had long doubted the narrative prosecutor Vincent Bugiliosi put forward in his bestseller Helter Skelter: that the murders were simply the act of a mad cult leader trying to start a race war. But the murders were not random. They were about revenge. They were meant to send a message. Sharon Tate and her friends died for being at the wrong house at the wrong time. The Helter Skelter motive was a convenient device to avoid showing how deeply Manson and his family worked their way into Hollywood. (If you'd like to know more about that, check out the Charles Manson's Hollywood series on Karina Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This.) Perhaps, I thought, Quentin Tarantino could get to the true heart of the matter.
He didn't. And I'm glad he didn't. Instead, he delivered something much better. The two-hour-and-forty-one minute film barely touches on Manson. Throughout the bulk of the film, Manson and his followers are little more than an ominous shadow on the horizon. Instead, the film concentrates on the friendship between a fading TV star, Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stuntman/ gofer Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt. While Booth seems perfectly satisfied with his place in the world, Dalton fears for his future as Hollywood's taste turns from the 1950's style pretty boys to embrace a hippie culture he doesn't like or understand.
How does any of this relate to the Manson murders? Well, Dalton happens to live on Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, right next door to the house rented by director Roman Polanski and his pregnant wife Sharon Tate, played wonderfully by Margot Robbie. If Charlie Manson represents the dark underside of the counter culture, Robbie's Sharon Tate represents the naive promise of the hippie movement. She moves through the film like a delightful ray of sunshine, all the while filling the viewer with dread since we all know her fate....
The pace of the film is leisurely as we slowly get to know Rick and Cliff. Rick had a promising film career but finally made a name for himself as the star of a TV western. Now, his series is gone and his film career has stalled. He finds himself reduced to playing guest star spots on other people's shows. Cliff, on the other hand, is content to be Rick's gofer. He certainly has the time to do so. His career as a stuntman has stalled because of rumors that he murdered his wife, despite the official ruling that it was a tragic accident.
One of my problems with the later Martin Scorcese films was his over reliance on Leonardo DiCaprio as his cinematic alter ego. I'm sorry, but I never thought DiCaprio, while a fine actor, possessed the necessary weight and gravitas for those serious roles. However, DiCaprio is perfect in this film. He magnificently embodies the colossal self-doubt and arrogance of a star in decline. And Brad Pitt more than matches him step by step. His Cliff Booth is easy-going and loyal, and more than a little wise, but also hard as a rock. There isn't an ounce of fear in him. He isn't intimidated by Bruce Lee or even the Manson Family.
Here's the Bruce Lee fight scene:
In perhaps the tensest sequence in the film, Cliff gives on of the Manson girls a ride out to the Spahn Movie Ranch, where he once worked as a stuntman. Cliff doesn't like what he sees. Fearing the owner George Spahn, played by Bruce Dern, might be a prisoner, he insists on seeing him and refuses to take no for an answer.
Slowly, the film ominously rambles toward the night of 9 August 1969 when four members of the Manson family decided to pay a call on Cielo Drive. I'm not going to tell you what happens, but I must admit it left me with a smile. In fact, I found myself smiling throughout the entire film. The reason this film topped my list for 2019 has nothing to do with art. I simply enjoyed it the most. It was a great time at the movies.
In addition to the great performances, the film benefited from a fine and insightful script and assured direction from Tarantino. One of my main criticisms of Tarantino's work is his susceptibility to cultural self-indulgence at the expense of the story. This, however, was the perfect vehicle for him. This film IS essentially an examination of culture. It allowed Tarantino to freely indulge his film homages and references in a way that enhances and forwards the story.
Still, perhaps what gave me the most joy watching this film was the way it evoked the period. I was only a child in the sixties. I certainly didn't grasp all of the nuances of the culture at the time, but everything about this film, the costumes, art direction, production design and music brought me back to 1969. It felt so real and authentic. I loved it.
My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
