The movie is credited as an adaptation of Tom O’Neill’s book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, a sprawling, occasionally off-the-rails investigation that eventually ties Manson to the U.

Was Charles Manson involved with the CIA's MKUltra program or any vast government conspiracy? Don't look here for answers.

Tom O'Neill was commissioned by Hollywood-centric film magazine Premiere to investigate exactly what had - by then - happened a mere 30 years earlier, when a small-time criminal, Charles Manson, was unveiled as the mastermind behind one of the most brutal and defining crimes of the 20th century.