Nelson’s account of the Jonestown tragedy: tight, deep and dark

Originally published in Current, June 26, 2006
By Mike Janssen

he most lasting cultural debris from the 1978 Peoples Temple massacre in Guyana may be a few chilling photos and catch phrases about “drinking the Kool-Aid.” Documentarian Stanley Nelson dug deeper.

Nelson’s Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple takes a second look at a tragic story that the director says “we all thought we knew.” Jonestown forgoes stereotypes of Temple members as zombie-like cultists. It instead shows how Jim Jones, the temple’s charismatic founder, lured them with a message of social justice only to sacrifice them to his own demons.

The doc will appear on American Experience in April. Nelson’s 2003 film “The Murder of Emmett Till” aired in the WGBH series.

The director was inspired to explore the history of Jonestown three years ago, when he heard a public radio program marking the 25th anniversary of the Guyana killings. Until then, Nelson says, he knew only what most people know about the massacre — “that more than 900 crazy people had committed suicide in the jungle with a madman.”

Yet former congregants spoke fondly of the Temple’s early days, revealing another side of the story. Intrigued, Nelson interviewed more than 30 Temple members and assembled audio and video footage never before used in documentaries about Jones.

Jonestown presents a fast-moving, tightly edited chronology of Jones’s rise and fall, starting in his home state of Indiana, where he founded the Temple. His message of racial tolerance met with controversy, prompting him to move to California, where his congregation ballooned in size.

Nelson was surprised to learn that although Jones was white, almost 80 percent of his congregation was black. “It was really a black church,” says a former Temple member in Jonestown.

Interviews with Jones’ congregants form the film’s emotional core. Speaking of the Temple’s message of social harmony, the subjects seem filled with an old and powerful enthusiasm. “We were alive in those services,” one says.

“But then, when they talk about what became of the church and the tragedy in Guyana, it’s almost like they’re talking about two different things,” Nelson says.

Jonestown recreates the Guyana settlement’s last days by assembling footage shot by an NBC camera crew, previously viewed only in bits and pieces. The crew had accompanied U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.), who was murdered by Jones’ gunmen. One crew member continued capturing footage until he, too, was shot and killed. His camera’s image dissolved to static.

As the film winds down, church members who didn’t move to Guyana with Jones describe the crushing loss of their parents, children and siblings. Two of the film’s subjects who survived the carnage recall escaping into the jungle after seeing loved ones die.

“That ability, to make people trust in a filmmaker enough to tell a really deep and dark story from their past, is a rare talent,” says Mark Samels, e.p. of American Experience.

Samels says the retelling takes an emotional toll on the viewer: “It has that awfulness of something bad happening to you, where your mind at the same time says, ‘This is happening’ and ‘This isn’t happening.”

Jonestown has been screened at film festivals around the country, including this month’s American Film Institute Silverdocs Festival in Silver Spring, Md., and will be released in theaters this fall, making it eligible for a Oscar consideration. A DVD edition will feature additional interview excerpts.