Quentin Tarantino Says He Thinks He Might Have Gone Horseback Riding With the Manson Family

Cannes 2019: The director of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” discusses why people are fascinated by the 1969 murders, and whether he had qualms about portraying the perpetrator and victims on screen

Brad Pitt Leonardo Di Caprio and Quentin Tarantino Cannes Press Conference Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino at the Cannes press conference/ photo by John Phillips/Getty Images

When Quentin Tarantino was 6 years old and living in Southern California, he remembers his parents taking him horseback riding. He doesn’t remember where it took place — but at a Cannes Film Festival press conference on Wednesday for his new film, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” the director said he had a secret wish for where the excursion took place: the Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

At the time he and his parents would have gone for that ride, the Ranch, a former movie location popular with Western films and television shows, was occupied by a ragtag group of hippies who coalesced around Charles Manson, who would lead them to carry out brutal murders in the summer of 1969.

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