Jonestown doc?
paulnice
924 Posts
Anyone see this flick yet?I was old enough to remember when this happened and it's always been a fascinating subject for me for many different reasons.Aside from the occasional exploitation crap (well, there was the one with Powers Booth and LeVar Burton that was okay), there's never been any real, honest account of this story on film.A friend of mine from the Bay who used to date Jamalski actually remembers attending service which was held while Jones and his flock were still in San Francisco.She told me that her father came and got her and her mom the fuck outta there right before the congregation bounced down to Guyana.Her pops had to literally grab her from the arms of Jones during a service.Jones had apparently brainwahed her mom and even poisoned Brooke's (her name) food to make her sick enough so as to convince her mom that she needed to be in their care. 
Saw the trailer and it looks pretty good... Jonestown trailer There's also an old audio doc from npr called "Father Cares".Very riveting stuff.Peep it... Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown
Saw the trailer and it looks pretty good... Jonestown trailer There's also an old audio doc from npr called "Father Cares".Very riveting stuff.Peep it... Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown
Comments
Aside from its tragic end (which I'm not trying to belittle in any way), the People's Temple story has such a weird racial dynamic-- even having seen it, I find it hard to fathom a white minister attracting a largely black congregation, let alone taking them to the lengths he did.
That one was amazing exploitation crap. Crazy to see dramatizations like this on TV when you're a kid. Powers Boothe saying, "Put him in the box!" still haunts everyone at ego trip to this day.
Yeah, that was pretty crazy stuff.
The "crap" in particular I was referring to was a Mexican-produced trash-fest that I always managed to get confused w/the Powers Booth one when I'm at the video store.
The Powers Boothe one had Ned Beatty as the Senator right? And Lavar Burton? I always thought Boothe's performance was pretty great! He really took that shit round the bend!
I too was old enough to remember that being in the news and it really peaked the 'crazy cults' interest, especially growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist Church in the Midwest, we were then subjected to ENDLESS propoganda about every imaginable cult there was at the time. As if I was gonna be solicited by Moonies in Mankato, MN.
I saw a doc about this from the 80s, I think, and Jone's racial politics were a major part of his ministry(before he went completely nuts) and did bring down some very real local government oppression regarding his congregation and their 'mixing it up'. That stuff still threatens a lot of people.
Do Mexican actors play all the parts? I'd rent.
Cantinflas as Jim Jones.....I'd watch
Jesus that shit fucking freaks me out still.
this has been documented
coincidently jim jones was aquainted with the guy who killed john lennon [hinkley]
and that has also been documented
there was a US senator that was investigating jim jones and his compound in guyanaa
as well as the CIA connection and he got shot while he was down there- i think on the runway just as his plane flew in'
whooops
there are loads of conspiracy /investigations focused on this neat little ingenious
use of Kool Aid.
also i think powers boothe passed on himself not that long ago
he did a great job as jim jones
he was a fine Actor and an excellent "B" guy who had "A" skills but never got the props he deserved
how many times did he get typecasted into playing alexander haig or a stern scumbag authority figure?
lol
All Things Considered: Remembering Jonestown
I think Powers Boothe is still alive. If he's died, it was pretty recent, but I swear he is still with us. He just starred in Sin City and is on Deadwood.
Southern Comfort! Yes!
Yeah fuck yeah that's it.
Yeah, it's a pretty good cast, actually: Irene Cara, Brad Dourif, Randy Quaid, Diane Ladd, Albert Hall, Madge Sinclair.
Ron O'Neal plays the corrupt Guyanese army colonel, and there's a great scene where one of the congregation's WGs suggestively eyes him in a meeting w/ Jim Jones, thus convincing Priest to allow JJ & co. to build the ill-fated Jonestown compound.
Off-topic, but Levar Burton was killing the TV movies back in the day. Anyone remember the baseball bio-pic, One In a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story? Or Dummy w/ Paul Sorvino?
Mark David Chapman killed Lennon. Hinkley shot Reagan.
And there was no "acquaintance" with either.
(Although there was a connection via World Vision, which is strange, but that's about it)
The congressman that was killed on the runway was one Leo J. Ryan from San Francisco, who went down at the behest of some frantic relatives trying to get their loved ones back from Jonestown.
His trip had nothing to do with investigating Jones links to the CIA.
Btw, there's loads of stuff that's been documented on the origins of hip hop too.
A lot of it is bullshit.
Joseph Cotton of all people was in it (not as Jones though).
Hey, it's a check.
I have the dvd. I'll drop it off w/Jared next time I'm around the way.
Which was the flick Levar Burton was in where he played a kid who worked at a dog kennel?
He hooked up with some girl and had a summer romance w/her but ended up knocking her up.
They got scared and went to some fly-by-night abortion clinic after he scrounged up the 200 bucks.
He waited outside the building for her to get done and after waiting awhile he goes in to find the "doctors" had bounced, leaving his girl dead and bloody on the table.
According to imdb it's Billy: Portrait of a Street Kid. I never saw that one, but it sounds like it belongs in the LB pantheon.
One In a Million was when he played LeFlore - career criminal who gets a tryout w/ the Detroit Tigers & turns his life around & becomes an all-star. Billy Martin has a cameo as himself (he was managing Detroit back then).
Dummy was the one where he was a deaf & dumb mute who's wrongly accused of killing a prostitute. The only lawyer that'll defend his case is Sorvino who's himself deaf.
I saw the performance in the doc and thought it was kind of meh. Basically just a loose and lo-fi Earth, Wind & Fire cover done in a disco-funk style.
I mean, as far as cult bands go, they could maybe hang with the Apollo Stars or J.O.B. Orchestra, but it was real conventional.
I heard this on the NPR segment a few weeks ago. It is one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard.
After I saw the doc I was poking around online and read that among the tapes found at Jonestown was a recording made by Jones in the hours after the mass suicide/murder (he didn't die from poisoning but instead from a gunshot wound inflicted afterwards). Could be bullshit, but I wonder what that would sound like.
I shudder to think.
I went and listened to the tape again - I have no idea why aside from morbid fascination - but when I started hearing children crying in the background, I had to turn it off.
Interesting website run out of SDSU on Jonestown by the way:
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/
good tips on those Jonestown & Cocaine Cowboys vids