HBO’s Phoenix Rising is full of infuriating and sickening details about Marilyn Manson’s violent dark side. Few are as sobering as when Evan Rachel Wood reminds us of how their abusive relationship — and by extension, her reputation — was turned into tabloid fodder.
In the second episode of the two-part documentary, Wood recalls that her relationship with Manson went public in early 2007 in an Us Weekly article titled “Evan Rachel Wood’s Bizarre Love Scandal”.
At that time, Manson was one of the biggest rock stars and was married to pin-up and burlesque icon Dita Von Teese. Wood’s acting career had just begun to light up with a series of “troublesome teenager” roles. Although she was assigned as one of Hollywood’s “these” girls, the difference in strength was obvious to everyone. But, as the article showed, no one looked at such things. Instead, the magazine positions Wood as part of a “crazy love triangle” that pits her against Dita.
She notes that in a tiny commercial in the corner, reporters mention Manson’s terrible temper, his “increasing use of drugs and alcohol” and the fact that he threw and broke things. But, according to her, the article was not about that.
Its main goal, along with the headline flurry that followed, was to smash the budding starlet as a homemaker. Manson’s explicitly sexy video for “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” in which she stars, only spurred that engine on.
By this point in Phoenix Rising, Wood and her family have described how traumatic the experience was, which makes reading the horrific headlines especially embarrassing. Wood recently claimed that Manson raped her while the cameras were filming the music video. Back then, gossip aggressor Perez Hilton hilariously branded her “whore Evan Rachel” by scribbling “nasty” and “ho” over her photo.
Wood was gaslighted, brainwashed, abused and isolated while all this was going on, she said. Manson’s mental and physical torment quickly escalated after that.
She, too, was only 19 years old. Manson was 37 years old.
RELATED: Manson’s disturbing lawsuit against Wood
And while the public saw Wood and Manson as a tumultuous couple that ceased to exist until 2011, the experience she recounts in Phoenix Rising is that of a cult captive and domestic abuse survivor. What audiences viewed the breakup obscenely, she describes as a final escape. The disgusting thing is that her living nightmare was framed as entertainment news and celebrity gossip.
It’s kind of a grand tradition in the American entertainment industry, especially when it comes to rock stars. Just as Tina Turner spent years dealing with reporters who molested her to survive her physical abuse to give them fresh quotes, Wood and Manson were treated like dirty ticklers.
Wood is now filming Westworld, a role she took on after a recurring role on True Blood that gave her career a second wind. Her life and glory are completely in her power. Despite this, as we see in Phoenix Rising, she has real reasons to be deathly afraid that Manson and his fans will harm her, her fellow accusers, and her fellow activist Ilma Gore. His faithful bombarded her with death threats. Other survivors, some of whom are featured in the documentary, report being watched.
So when she starts her story by saying, “I’m here to talk about Brian Warner… also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” it should be taken as a risky move into what could turn into a very bloody battle.
(Manson, through his lawyer, insists that the allegations by Wood and his other accusers are false. He recently filed a defamation lawsuit against Wood and Gore in Los Angeles County Superior Court ahead of the debut of their HBO documentary.)
Some may be tempted to confuse Phoenix Rising with the many recent documentaries about exploitative institutions and famous people accused of rape and sexual harassment, falsely believing that Wood’s story is a different version of the same story.
This is only true in the most general sense, as each predator uses its fame and power to gain the trust of its prey. However, Phoenix Rising also proves that each of these documentaries provides new insights into how rape culture and our acceptance of it is spreading through society and into our collective mindset.
Wood publicly named Manson on February 1, 2021 in an Instagram post. This comes years after the recovery process that led her to testify before Congress in February 2018 in support of the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights Act. A year later, she lobbied the California Senate to pass the Phoenix Act, which she hoped would extend the statute of limitations for domestic violence crimes from three years to 10 years. (Gov. Gavin Newsom eventually signed the Phoenix Act into law, although the extension was extended to five years.)
All the while, she refused to reveal the name of her abuser, a decision that became increasingly untenable as reporters began to piece together the pieces of her relationship history.
Rising of the Phoenix joins her in the heat of this as she works with Gore to repair the pieces of her memory prior to naming Manson, director Amy Berg illustrates with creative sensibility.
Berg has a history of carefully studying the histories of powerful institutions that encouraged or covered up sexual abusers. The first was “Deliver Us from Evil” in 2006, the catholic church’s burning exam. In 2014, she produced The Secret of Open Doors, in which five former child actors talk about the sexual harassment they endured while working in the film industry.
Her and Wood’s approach in “Phoenix Rising” seems more targeted, aside from the allegations against Manson reflecting the music industry’s broader refusal to respond to allegations of rape and sexual harassment that have been leveled against several artists.
But if R. Kelly’s Survivor demonstrates how unceremoniously rejects the justice of black women, and W. Kamau Bell’s “We Need to Talk About Cosby” analyzes how his character carefully exploited his father image in order to operate as a series for decades. rapist with no repercussions, Rise of the Phoenix explains why it can take years for survivors to come clean.
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We may think we know the answer to this question, given the common objections of prosecutors Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein about career retribution and reputational damage. But Wood and other survivors of Manson want people to realize that it takes years for people suffering from trauma to fully realize that terrible crimes have been committed against them.
And in Wood’s case, her anguish was disguised as a rock and roll romance, much like Manson’s anti-Semitism and racism are disguised as artistic irony, used to shocking effect.
Piece by piece, Berg wraps Wood’s straightforward story and the stories of other survivors in a dreamy veil inspired by Lewis Carroll. In doing so, she captures the gothic style of Manson’s world from the point of view of a girl who Wood says she was and others thought she was before she met him. Copiously intertwining Nicoletta Ceccoli’s hazy, surreal animations in each episode, along with pre- and post-Manson photographs of Wood, the film plunges us into an interregnum between innocence and morbid horror.
Recall also that Wood’s relationship with Manson took place in the same decade when the media turned Britney Spears from a virgin pop star into “Crazy Britney”, an out-of-control woman unable to manage her life and business. Spears was an international superstar then, and Wood’s film career was just beginning to take off.
What chance did she have that her claims of abuse would be heard or believed, let alone understood then?
At several points in Phoenix Rising, Wood uses Manson’s own words from his memoir to back up her claims and show that he, too, is a broken, flawed man. It’s done out of empathy, like everything else, for the same reason she made the documentary in the first place.
The actress emphasizes that she knows it’s too late for her story to lead to prosecution, but by coming forward she hopes to warn potential victims and perhaps inspire authorities to take other victims’ stories seriously and stop Manson.
Her personal reason for creating “Rise of the Phoenix” exists in tandem with his broader goal of explaining why the laws regarding reporting crimes in the family are inadequate. She spent the first few years of her recovery on the run, she explains, from the threats of Manson and his followers, as well as her memories of his torture.
She boldly allows viewers to witness the pain she goes through as she goes through the worst of her experiences, as well as giving insight into how she was healed through fellowship with other survivors and a love affair with her parents, brother, and son.
In that regard, Phoenix Rising leaves us with a sense of hope, at least from Wood’s point of view. As the documentary at the end of both parts recalls, authorities have launched an investigation into Manson’s claims, but to date, no charges have been filed against him.
But a female choir joined in her voice, including Game of Thrones star Esme Bianco. Manson’s label Loma Vista turned him down, as did his manager and his agents. His acting career also stalled after American Gods Starz and Creepshow dropped their plans for him to appear.
None of this guarantees that Manson’s accusers will get justice or that the rocker’s career or image is irreparable. But it does give those he allegedly harmed a hearing, and the rest of us have something else to consider when we’re reminded to believe survivors, including those the Hollywood gossip machine originally labeled as villains.
The two-part “Rise of the Phoenix” airs Tuesday and Wednesday, March 15-16 at 9:00 pm on HBO. Both installments are available to stream on HBO Max. Check out the trailer below on YouTube.
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