It seems that schlock TV personality Geraldo Rivera tried to put one over on Robert but got caught!
I love Robert's pluck, take on the big guys and do it in style by petitioning the judge to have Charles Manson as a witness!
The $3,000 that Robert was awarded in 1990 would be worth $5,470.15 today. I want to hear Robert's version of the story, don't you?
40 comments:
Oh terrific: looks like all the fruitcakes are on unsupervised day-release today. Don't forget your meds, you adorable little freaks.
Robert, what was the deal with the almost nominal amount of damages you were awarded?
Unfortunately the average troll freak also has MPD.
Congratulations on your win, Robert.
Surprise, Surprise ! I think I just got punked.
MICHAEL: Very percentive of you. NOTICE the $3,000 for "damages."
NO mention of "profits." I later sued every TV station in the country that broadcast "Murder, Live" for a % of THEIR "profits." And WON.
BUT I also got a "restraining" ORDER against the infringers and who would have thought - the Geraldo Daily show again USED some of my MANSON (Squeaky)footage.
AND my "law" career was off and running.
Who was the Canadian video distributor and did you have a deal with them?
Copyright law seems mighty complicated. Nice pic of you BTW.
I agree. Classic photo of a very thoughtful and intelligent young man in his prime...
:)
A good looking guy who is coming off an Academy Award Nomination with 'Hippy Street Cred" living in LA in the early to mid 70's...
Hmmm. There must have been a moment or two there when you had the world ( or at least a lot of hot girls and the studios) at your feet.
That is the story I want to hear lol ;)
The fame,glory and adoration that comes with having a hit in Hollywood. Let me live through some degree of separation through you lol
Yeah Robert you were punked, sort of! I had filed a draft with this post a couple of weeks ago and last week you brought up the suit in a reply to a post! If you hadn't done that, it might have lingered in the drafts for weeks.
It's all cool DEB, but SAINT it' NOT like in the movies.
Wait a minute - the "hotest" chick in Holywood got ME.
I was giving a class in film production at Merrick's Studios and TobyAnn was attending. SHE later said it was my voice, but I'm sure my bod had something to do with. OR all the real men were off in the Army and I had already returned.
Unfortunately, from the day MANSON was completed and I realized Merrick defrauded me, it seemed like I was always buried in lawsuits.
After the Squeaky Fromme / Ford incident and after Squeaky's trial, TobyAnn and I toured the country promoting the film with it's NEW release. AND before you know it I'm buried in more lawsuits like the Rivera case.
I think there were no real major studio "offers" because: Hell- they were all terrified of the Manson Family. AND then, they didn't know how much Manson had told me about the Hollywood connection.
I had a big case against Universal - RE: the Penny Daniels show - and they hit me with a string of Interrogatories asking about ANY connection MANSON might have had with Universal. I responed with quite an explicit answer and within a couple of days one of the biggest law firms in LA was quickly replaced. The new firm invited ME to their offices, explained the situation and very politely asked me: "What do YOU want?"
Thinking about a possible Hollywood connection and an alledged free pass that the police are said to have extended to stars and their families makes me wonder whether Vince played up Helter Skelter because he didn't want to involve Hollywood any more than he had to.
@Robert Hendrickson
Hi Mr H, from the photograph, you were quite the 'love God' back in the day:):) I bet you weren't safe from those Manson girls!
I don't think the sum of $3,000 was sufficient. Television production companies must know the correct procedure for procuring and paying for film clips. Glad you had the guts and knowhow to fight for your intellectual property rights.
Would you clarify how Merrick defrauded you.
Wow the story after the story... but it sounds like you got the big prize after all, so I guess its a still a happy ending
:)
YES Orwhut: Bugliosi may actually have been boxed into Helter Skelter.
AND we may never know the whole TRUTH and nothing but the TRUTH.
Especially because CM will only reveal so much. BUT then CM may ONLY know so much. IE: Attorney Daye Shinn was a con who preyed upon defendants and he was later disbarred for his actions in connection with another case.
(Could be a good POST)
HE tried to pit ME against Manson and he may have had something to do with Merrick's demise.
EQ: After I filmed the Family for about 6 months Merrick and I signed an "agreement" where HE would finance the completion of MANSON and we would split the profits 50-50. WE then took another 2 years to film the trial, etc, whereupon the completion of the motion picture HE changed the Producer - Director credits to read HIM and took off to the Venice Film Festival.
The Judge ruled that HE intended to defraud ME from the very signing of the "agreement." I got EVERYTHING because HE could NOT afford to pay me the Court judgement, which was over $200,000.
So I guess you could say all is well that ends well, especially where the MANSON film is just as popular today as it was way back then.
BTW: the photo of ME was taken at the Spahn Ranch, back then on the first weekend of filming. FUNNY, I told my sound man, who took the photo: "Don't waste any more film on ME." AND he obeyed.
@Robert Hendrickson
Hi Mr H,
Thanks for that. Glad you got your dues, especially since you were the creator of the project and were filming on your own for some time. Without you, there would have been no 'Manson'. If Merrick ripped YOU off so readily, perhaps he annoyed someone else to such an extent that it lead to his untimely demise.
Robert,
With your win record, you probably should have been an attorney yourself.
Thanks for the explanation of your problems with Merrick. I've often wondered about the details when you mentioned them in your messages.
Robert: "BTW: the photo of ME was taken at the Spahn Ranch, back then on the first weekend of filming".
Robert.Is it possible to condense your first impressions of Spahn and the Family into a couple of paragraphs? What was it that first struck you about what you found there? And how much have subsequent events changed your impressions - if at all? OR were you too busy being a film maker? (What I mean is, sometimes for example if a girl comes to model for me I have my work head on, and I'm thinking about light, shadow, balance, composition, etc - and it's only when she's left and I look at the photos that I realise I just had an incredibly beautiful girl half clothed next to me for an hour, and I hardly noticed her, because I was too busy thinking about the painting that would come out of it. Sometimes I wish I could phone them back and ask them to come back so I can look at them with my 'normal' head not my work head. Is there something similar happening when you're making a film?)
MHN said...
"...Sometimes I wish I could phone them back and ask them to come back so I can look at them with my 'normal' head not my work head"
@MHN, Mrs MHN would give you one over the head with a frying pan if these young ladies came back:):) Under these circumstances, excuses like "I'm an artist" doesn't quite cut it.
MICHAEL: YOU hit the nail right on the head, EXCEPT when we finished filming the first night, we (four of us) stopped at an all-night cafe and couldn't stop talking about what we just experienced. As best I can remember, I realized that for there to even be a Manson Family, there had to be a Vietnam WAR. They just would NOT have had ANY place to fit into 1950's America. I had also in 1967 come out of the Army, where I had learned that there really are all KINDS of people, so even the Manson Family seemed like "normal" young people to ME - with perhaps a little more "cause" in their bellies.
BUT as the filming continued, I began to realize: "Hey - this could really be something significant. I mean, killing women and children - come on - we were KILLING old men, women and babies in Vietnam EVERYDAY. BUT the word "massacre" - brought home by a bunch of 1950's type teenagers? Now, that's a new form of entertainment, like America NEVER witnessed before.
AND when "Woodstock" the movie came out, we all knew "rockumentary" was the way to go.
Mr Hendrickson, what was the deal, if any, with Bugliosi appearing on camera and his use of your film's quotes and stills as photos for Helter Skelter? Why no interviews with the defense attorneys?
What a great question CHRIS:
Bugliosi was PAID $$$$ and HE was granted permission to use certain photos and quotes as long as they were credited properly. Of course that "permission" NEVER extended to anyone else. AND now that HE is dead, those "permissions" may have expired.
I believe Mr."B" is a very important ingredient to the MANSON film, as without HIM, there is NO Helter Skelter. As for the defense attorneys, who needs a LOSER? Plus, the three girls and Manson say more than the those attorneys could even comprehend sufficiently in order to add ANYTHING of value. The two cops, who bribed Ronnie Howard, could have been more interesting on camera than probably ANY attorney, BUT then THEY were NOT about to TALK truthfully - OR maybe Ronnie Howard and V. Graham were kind'a lying about EVERYTHING.
Has anyone watched "Manson Family Vacation" yet? I noticed that there's a good quality rip of it floating around the net on a few sites.
I wouldn't recommend anyone Googling something like "Manson Family Vacation Online Free", because then you might stumble upon a version of the film that you did not pay for and might accidentally watch it for free.
This is the only footage Geraldo's ever done that's worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0yN0dGNfwk
I'm quite a non-violent & unassuming young Mansomaniac, but seeing that slimy bastard getting his nose knocked in always makes my day a little brighter. Nice to know you yourself got to rub a small something into that same nose, Mr. H. Rivera is an oily prick (and not the good kind of oily prick..) who did a lot of damage to American journalism- and apparently to more 'small-time' film-makers pulling themselves up by their bootstraps rather than raking in the $$$ through selling tabloid trash.
Yeah, Vermouth that was a great clip.
I'm torn on Geraldo. I can remember as a kid seeing him as a bad ass Viet Nam war correspondent. He'd embed himself with troops - bullets literally flying nearby. But somehow he became a slimy talk show host outing women he slept with.
Plus - and here's the part that pains me - he's an Arizona Wildcat. It's difficult for me to hate guys who attended Arizona but sometimes I gotta draw the line - like Rob Gronkowski playing for the Patriots...
Word, Matt. Word.
That's your own (sports) tribalism coming out, Matt- you're revealing your own prejudices! You're no better than those white racialists! (jokes jokes)
I wasn't aware that Geraldo was ever not a total knob-head, that's actually pretty interesting. Reminds me a bit of a journalist here called Ray Martin. Guy had a distinguished career as a serious investigative journalist for many years, but by the 1990s he'd fallen mightily- ended up hosting a nightly 30min tabloid show exposing 'dodgy landlords', 'neighbours from hell', and 'amazing new diets!!'. His show's reporters literally dug through peoples' trash to get their 'scoops'. He'd become such a has-been that while growing up (I was born in '87) I wasn't even aware he'd ever been anything BUT a tabloid hack until I saw some old footage of him from the 1980's. Was actually quite staggering.
Anyway, fuck Geraldo. Is he still on telly in the States?
ZIGGY: YOU maybe got it FREE, but everyone else actually PAID for it.
The OWNER (studio) can deduct $$$ from every illegal download (streaming) made off a pirate website - from their income tax. So if they take in $1,000,000 legally and say there are 100,000 illegal showings and a normal ticket price is $10 - they don't have to pay ANY income tax.
Like wise, IF a major studio makes a billion dollars off a big hit like "Trans-genderinformers" but there are so many millions of illegal downloads, the STUDIO may NOT have to pay ANY taxes. So YOU might say: "Hey, what the fuck do I care - I saved 10 bucks." EXCEPT some other people then have to make up for the millions of dollars LOST in TAX revenue that would otherwise go to paying our "soldiers." Of course, everyone else KNOWS who that is: It's THEM ! AND that's WHO you are really fuck'in out of THEIR hard earned money.
VERMOUTH: I sure DID feel the way you do now, BUT for me, I now realize that if not for Geraldo, I may never have taken the LAW so seriously. THUS it changed ME forever. In fact, I never even gave a shit about whether Helter Skelter was the TRUTH or not. AND I damn sure NEVER cared about the word MUSLIM. Think about it: Charles Manson's right hand man and personal chauffeur mentions that Charlie talked about the Black Muslim's in connection with HIS Helter Skelter, BUT nobody in law enforecement including the Prosecutor pays ANY attention to the ONE word that stands OUT like a red flag waving on top of the White House.
AND it's the ONE word that nobody wants to talk about even TODAY.
So long live HELTER SKELTER! AND as Bobby Kennedy once said: "Every society get the LEADER it deserves."
Thanks for the response Robert - very interesting indeed. So right from the get-go, literally from day one, you felt that there was an almost axiomatic connection, a causal connection, between what was happening in Vietnam and what you found at Spahn. I'd love to know, how much of that was subjective? I mean, was that your reading of what you saw, or was that something that was coming out of their own mouths?
I understand Vietnam was a shadow over everything. Here and now, in the age of stupid, we still take what we feel to be the most important issue of our times, and apply it everywhere we look: hence a dumb windbag can sit on the BBC's primetime political debate show last week and declare that the rise of ISIS is due to climate change.... But Vietnam - was this something they were explicitly talking about at Spahn on a day to day basis?
OMG MICHAEL: Great question - Now I know why Queeny "banned" my films from the virgin eyes of HER loyal subjects. Some SMART chick she was.
YES, Geraldo in the jungles of REAL Vietnam? BUT HE was a "draft dogger" just like Bill Clinton, Steve Spielberg, David Geffon, S. Stallone and most of the Laural Canyon crowd.
Instead, a Black or Brown uneducated man Died from a pungie stick - so THEY could LIVE and later entertain US!
Semms to me - LBJ had one Hell of a sense of humor OR he was an
"out n' out" RACIST !
When I was a kid there was a VN vet that lived nearby. He once said to me, "Make no mistake, this is a black man's war."
MATT: There is a NEW doc on PBS about the Latinos being specifically targeted for the infantry in Vietnam. Of course, the BLACKS were also.
AND I am an actual "witness" to the intentional "proceedure" used by the U.S. "government" (LBJ) to place less-educated men on the
actual "battlefields" (rice-paddies) while more educated WHITES got the officer / office or better jobs.
BUT then LBJ was likely just a dufuss carring out HIS predecessor's agenda.
EXCEPT that LBJ's signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, within 30 days of HIS escalating the Vietnam Conflict into a WAR can hardly be considered a coincidence.
Vermouth, Geraldo still haunts the public from Faux News (Fox News). Ironically appropriate.
Robert Hendrickson said... AND I am an actual "witness" to the intentional "proceedure" used by the U.S. "government" (LBJ) to place less-educated men o@n the
actual "battlefields" (rice-paddies) while more educated WHITES got the officer / office or better jobs."
Hi Mr H,
The same thing has been going on for centuries in Britain. The so-called 'ordinary person' was put in the front line, and those who attended British Public (i.e. expensive, private) schools were officers. There's nothing new under the sun!
Mr Hendrickson do you consider that you were documenting an ongoing story or that by your very presence you were actively distorting their behaviour?
Were they just happy murderers before the idea of becoming well-known for their revolutionary acts against the establishment encouraged them to adopt a more militant stance?
Your liasing with Manson with regards to filming, do you sometimes feel that you encouraged them to consider themselves and their cause as something of greater meaning (as say an act to trigger the imminent revolution)?
By you, I am also refering to Merrick. You allude to Merrick attempting to influence the outcome of the trial to improve the financial success of the film. Was it about documenting and making a profit or manipulating the subject matter to ensure profit?
Did you and Merrick work well together throughout the project?
Christopher said:
"Were they just happy murderers before the idea of becoming well-known for their revolutionary acts against the establishment encouraged them to adopt a more militant stance?"
I've often wondered the same thing - how revolutionary or environmentalist were they really before they hit the headlines? Were these just things they discussed when they weren't committing petty crimes, getting stoned or having an after dinner orgy?
Obviously we know about the burning of the earth moving equipment but did they for example ever go on any protest marches or get involved in any constructive environmental stuff?
@Robert Hendrickson - It would be a shame if downloading or streaming fucked these "soldiers" out of money :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html
On another note, and I see it's been mentioned a bit here, in "Inside the Manson Gang" you mentioned Laurence Merrick making deals with both sides and "judicial gangsters". Were you in the dark about the specific details of most of Merrick's dealings? Like, for instance, what he may have paid certain people to appear in the film and the legitimacy of some of the people who appeared in the film, ie. the 3 former "cellmates" (not Ronnie Howard) of Susan Atkins, who hitherto had never existed before the film and whose testimony would have assisted the prosecution? Was it beyond Merrick's level of deceit to fabricate something like those 3 women?
Was Merrick also the one responsible for the "Voice Of Charles Manson" subtitle when Steve Grogan was singing "Helter Skelter". I assume that it was, because you've always been honest and readily admitted that it was Grogan when asked.
"Vermouth, Geraldo still haunts the public from Faux News (Fox News). Ironically appropriate." - Matt
Oh, please, Matt. "Faux News"? How edgy!
EQ: YES, but LBJ actually "conned" the Black and Brown young folks to commit MURDER for HIM, in the furthering of HIS agenda. AND he also divided an entire nation in the process. Of course, I guess you would have to of been THERE to fully understand the far reaching consequences.
An entire generation of Vietnam Veterans will have to pass-on before the healing will even begin and WE know the newby generation is just waiting for us to DIE. BUT "you" bastards keep inventing these miracle drugs and shit to keep us alive. It's almost like you get some kind of kick out of watching us squerm.
YOU even have US to "blame" for all your problems, so what are YOU going to do when WE are all gone. Elect a "queen" so you can cry in her arms.
YES - we're the "bad" guys - KILLED women and children, BUT you guys are such a bunch of cry babies, all you do is CRY, CRY, CRY when someone points a gun at you. AND then, God forbid some crazy actually pulls the trigger.
The collages are pumping out thousands of social workers, grief counslers, and NOW even "dogs" are being trained to "comfort" the survivers.
AND all WE got is some 80 year old punk, who can withstand over a year in the "hole" (the worst a prison can throw at you) and HE just walks away and smokes a cigarette.
Doesn't ANYONE see the writing on the wall ?
Robert Hendrickson said... "AND all WE got is some 80 year old punk, who can withstand over a year in the "hole" (the worst a prison can throw at you) and HE just walks away and smokes a cigarette."
Hi Mr H,
Yes, indeed. I think we have to give Charlie credit for his resilience over the years. He has survived everything which has been thrown at him. The subject of how we treat elderly people in the prison system was raised in Scotland just yesterday. For a number of years, we have been adapting prison cells to accommodate wheelchairs etc, but there are now plans to place the very elderly, ill inmates in secured retirement homes.
In one of your posts above, you talk about the famous people who were draft dodgers. When you were filming out at Spahn you must have known that a number of these young men were also draft dodgers? Paul Watkins was the obvious one, but what about Tex, Bobby, Bruce?
Robert, you guys elected a queen 7 years ago.
ZIGGY: Ahhh, me thinks YOU want the TRUTH, but can you handle the "real" TRUTH. BUT the "real" truth is very subjective. IE: When you OR I say "cellmate" in a DORM that can mean ANY of 50 girls who all bunk in that room, cause that is THEIR cell, at that time.
It usually takes thousands of years for truely "objective" historians to then sort out all the "agendas" that influenced a story through the ages.
"Noah's Arch" is probably the greatest example of an "evolved" story designed and re-designed to suit the times.
Steve Speilberg's "Shindler's List" is another. In a very entertaining manner HE turns an out an out Nazi into a warm and fuzzy regular guy.
So for ME it was kind'a like a Hogan's Heros type thing, but I KNOW more about WWII than the ordinary person
I think you want to travel back (mentally) to the beginning of all this Manson Family stuff for some REAL answers. BUT the Judicial System (the government) has already destroyed the "beginning" and created its own TRUTH for its own purpose. AND that's how it has been surviving since time began.
A few highly evolved beings make "mental" slaves of ALL the rest.
AND that was Manson's message "The establishment is NOT your friend."
And HE was NO genious - the U.S Constitution implies the exact same message.
THUS, it was the "IMAGE" that made us "aware" of HIM. Long hair, beard, talks in parabells - well, you get the picture.
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