The only Sundance [2011] film about cults that could actually have life as a cult film, THE WOODS has the greatest comic insight into why our current culture might inspire a search for meaning in the first place.

Hollywood is really weird to talk about in this monolithic sense because it's this microcosm of anywhere. It's full of a lot of people who have different intentions and different points of view.

I don't know if it's entirely fair to blame [Dennis Wilson] early death and complete self-destruction on his involvement with Charles Manson, but it was certainly a factor. It affected him psychologically and emotionally.

You read these stories of people who were in Hollywood in the late '60s. After they found out about the murders, everybody was like, "Have you met [Charles] Manson? Have you been to that ranch?" In some way, everybody felt connected, but what was it like for people who really were connected.

I think, because it's one of my favorite moments in [Charles Manson's Hollywood]. That series got a lot of attention and people talk about it a lot, but they tend to focus on the episodes that have more to do with the murder, Charles Manson doing something particularly weird, or Sharon Tate.

I really feel like I could do anything if given enough time.

I have a degree in cinema studies and the big paper I wrote at the end of that was about Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli. So I thought that I knew quite a bit about Judy Garland, but I read in passing that the Stonewall riots were a reaction to her death and I had never really read enough to know what that meant or how that could be true. I was interested in that I knew so much about Judy Garland, but I really didn't know this story.