Opening Night at the Brooklyn Film Festival Watching "Manson Family Vacation" (a report and a review)

The Movie Blog was invited to the opening night of the Brooklyn Film Festival ( the week-long event is being held at the Wythe Hotel in, obviously, Brooklyn, NY, with the closing ceremony and awards taking place on Sunday, June 7^th). Before the film (Manson Family Vacation got the opening night screening, directed by first-time feature filmmaker J. Davis, starring Jay Duplass and Linas Phillips, which I cover later in this piece), I was invited to partake in a fun little cocktail hour! Here are some of my observations of the opening reception of the festival:

The Wythe Hotel has a hip outdoor patio area walled-in with exposed brick (though I don’t know if it is still exposed brick if you are outside. I think then it is just regular brick). There are cool exposed light bulbs strung like Christmas lights overhead (and these are definitely exposed, because I could see them).
There was free alcohol (in the form of the generous Beaujolais Wines people) and alcohol I could pay for if I felt like flashing a little cash (never something I aim to do).
Most of the people in attendance dressed up far better than I did (though my tattered jean shorts did find some compatriots hanging from the thin waists of some very trendy Brooklynites).
There is fun conversations to overhear, such as one woman describing the bladder problems she suffers from after doing molly (I only listened, because I was standing alone, not talking to anyone).
If you want to feel like a big shot, it is possible! You can get your hands on the prestigiously shaded gray ticket as opposed to the dingy yellow ticket I was given (I don’t know why, but I really wanted a gray one).
The movie was shown on the big screen with a fleet of folding chairs set up in front of it. We all tucked in and got cozy. There was a homey feeling in to it. I could see my audience-mates very easily and actually watched some of their faces as they watched the film (they wore some very funny, wholesome, and genuinely weird expressions I’ve never seen before). I even got to strike up a couple of conversations due to the close proximity and armless build of the seats. It made the movie watching experience that much more communal. It must be what a movie in the park is like, a heavenly experience I hope to enjoy some day.
Here’s a terrible photograph I took of the reception, so you can be there with me:

Thank to you the Brooklyn Film Festival and the Wythe Hotel. And please get tickets ASAP. The festival goes on all this week (June 1-7).

The film, Manson Family Vacations, is the first feature directed by J. Davis, Jay Duplass and Linas Phillips play brothers who love each other at arm’s length. Nick (Duplass) is a successful family man. Conrad (Phillips), Nick’s older, fuck-up of a brother, is on the way to a new job, but first wants to have a day of fun with Nick. But Conrad’s “day of fun” includes stopping at the sites of the horrific murders committed by the Manson Family in the 1970s. Conrad is a Manson Family follower, and Nick, absolutely not a Manson Family follower, begrudgingly agrees to go along.

Manson Family Vacation is a sappy bro-comedy with a bro-‘oad trip tacked on. Nick and Conrad drive through Southern California on their way to Death Valley, looking for Manson touchstones like the Tate and La Bianca houses, and trying to find a mysterious man named “Black Bird” who has promised Conrad a mysterious job. Along the way they tackle such family issues as Conrad’s adoption, their father’s hard ass, no-showing a funeral and the inherent insensitivity in idolizing Charles Manson. Shown strategically throughout are short clips of Manson being interviewed and saying weird shit that is both profound and profoundly sad.

It doesn’t stop there. We hear the music Manson made (which is pretty good), see the inside pages of “Helter Skelter,” and get a general idea that Charlie Manson really isn’t all that bad. And while the last part is totally unintentional, it is something you could take away from the film. Manson Family Vacation is possibly about something much deeper and crazier (like what it might be like being Charles Manson’s offspring), but this is lazily circled around.

Yet this is what makes Manson Family Vacation such a treat. Though at times rushed, and with dialogue that toggles between genuine and labored (too much of it serving as exposition and backstory), that Charles Manson is the film’s heart complicates every moment, forcing us to consider things the average insular family dramedy. There’s a great twist at the climax, a nice report between its leads (Duplass and Phillips feel like they actually are related, both in the script and real life), and then there’s the fun and timelessness of the road trip in a movie. Shout out to Tobin Bell, Lenora Pitts, Suzanne Ford, Ray Laska, little Adam Chernick (for looking the most like a future serial killer), and, of course, to Charles Manson. I suppose without him, there’d be no Manson Family Vacation. It’s no silver lining, mind you, but food for thought.