The Sacrament

On November 18, 1978, Jim Jones convinced over 900 members of People’s Temple to commit mass suicide in the country of Guyana. This tragedy inspired Ti West to write, direct, and edit The Sacrament (2013), a faux documentary-style horror film inspired by the last 24 hours of the people who died at Jonestown. In this episode, we explore the life of Jim Jones, including his childhood, religious and political ideologies, and how he came to be one of the most notorious cult leaders of all time. You may be surprised just how accurate this little-known film stuck to real-life events…

Primary Sources:

Newsweek (2021)
Newsweek (2021)
FBI.gov
Will of Marceline Mae Jones
Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple (2017)

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Chapters

• 0:19 Introduction to Criminal Adaptations
• 6:30 The Sacrament and Ty West's Filmmaking
• 14:15 Plot Overview and Production Details
• 31:56 Analyzing The Sacrament's Portrayal
• 39:21 Jim Jones's Early Life and Religious Beginnings
• 1:06:09 The Rise of People's Temple in California
• 1:32:36 Guyana and the Final Days of Jonestown
• 1:51:27 The Massacre and Its Aftermath
• 2:07:47 Verdict on The Sacrament's Accuracy

Transcript

Ashley: 0:14

Welcome to Criminal Adaptations, the show where we take a look at some of your favorite movies and the true crime stories that inspired them. I'm Ashley. I'm a clinical psychologist and forensic evaluator in the state of Oregon.

Remi: 0:27

And I'm Remy. I spent over a decade working in the film and television industry in Los Angeles, California.

Ashley: 0:34

And welcome back everyone. Welcome to a Criminal Adaptations Monday. Remy, how are you doing today?

Remi: 0:42

I am doing A-OK. How are you doing today, Ashley?

Ashley: 0:47

I'm doing good. I'm excited to do our annual switcheroo episode, so that means I watched the film for this and Remy had to do all the research about the real case. And this was a doozy for you, wasn't it.

Remi: 1:02

You literally took the words right out of my mouth. I was about to just use the word doozy as well. It was a doozy. We are discussing Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre and the People's Temple. It is a lot of stuff, a lot of information, way more than I think I initially realized when I agreed to do the switcheroo for this episode. But I feel well-versed and well-knowledged on the subject now and I am ready to fill in everyone on the staggering amount of information that I have been able to gather about this man, jim Jones. But had you heard of the Jonestown Massacre or Jim Jones or any of this stuff before we decided to do this podcast?

Ashley: 1:45

I think everyone has heard of Jim Jones. It would be pretty hard to not have heard that name at some point in your life. I know the general story about what happened in Ghana and to the People's Temple, but I don't know anything about him, how he came to be a cult leader or what he was even really like.

Remi: 2:07

And that is exactly why I had wanted to do the switcheroo for this episode. Actually, I didn't know much about Jim Jones either, but it is a historical event perpetrated by someone who managed to control hundreds of people through his words, and that sort of person is very fascinating to me. I'm always curious how someone like that got into power and was able to garner this much control over this many people with ideas that sound pretty out there if you are just reading through them, like I was for this podcast, but I do feel like I know a lot more of how he got to where he did, and it is a interesting story. I think it's so fascinating finding out the history behind some of these monstrous individuals.

Ashley: 2:56

And for everyone out there who is looking at the title of this episode and thinking the sacrament, what the fuck is that? It is a movie that is loosely inspired by the Jonestown Massacre. We were kind of holding out hope that down the line there would be a movie about Jim Jones. There was one that's been in development with Amazon for a really, really long time where Leonardo DiCaprio was set to play Jim Jones, which would have been amazing. But the last time we checked it's kind of in development hell, and I think Amazon has informally said it's scrapped, which is a shame.

Remi: 3:31

Yeah, add that to the list of horrific people of history that Leonardo DiCaprio did not end up playing, because he also didn't end up doing the Devil in the White City, where he was, I believe, going to play HH Holmes, the man who literally built a hotel to murder people in. So I think he is primarily sticking with playing a good guy for the most part.

Ashley: 3:55

He was listed in that role for a while and then I think he backed out and opted to be an executive producer. And for a little bit Keanu Reeves was rumored to have been attached and then he withdrew, so I think that's another one that's kind of languishing around. I know Martin Scorsese was attached as director.

Remi: 4:14

Well, who ended up actually playing him in the movie we're discussing today, Because I know the actor's face If anyone has seen no Country for Old Men. There is a scene where the villainous Anton Sugar makes a store clerk at a gas station pick heads or tails when he's flipping his coin and the store clerk is very nervous and there's a lot of tension and you don't really know what's going to happen and it's a really memorable scene. And that store clerk is the man who's playing the character based on Jim Jones in this film, I believe. I don't know the actor's name, though.

Ashley: 4:46

His name is actually Gene Jones.

Remi: 4:48

What a coincidence. We had a similar thing not too long ago in the Chapter 27 film that we covered, but I had never heard of this film before you suggested it. I have never seen this film. I've still never seen this film, but I do know the director whose name is.

Ashley: 5:05

Ty West.

Remi: 5:07

Who has gotten a little bit of a name for himself, making the X trilogy with X, maxine and Pearl Really loved X. Pearl was pretty good. Maxine was probably my least favorite of the three, but I had no idea he directed this film. I thought X was his feature film debut, so how was his directing in this movie?

Ashley: 5:28

I had actually seen this movie, the Sacrament before, I think. I just stumbled upon it randomly and put it on, having no idea what it was about or what I was expecting from it, and I actually really, really like it. It's definitely a very small time budget, low publicity type movie, but it's really good and I would highly recommend people to watch it.

Remi: 5:53

It's a found footage film right.

Ashley: 5:56

Yes, well, with that, let's just get into the Sacrament, shall we?

Remi: 6:00

You said it again, let's do it, ashley.

Monster Trailer: 6:03

Welcome to Eden Parish you guys built all this. Father had a vision and we built heaven here on.

Ashley: 6:09

Earth. All this Father had a vision and we built heaven here on earth. The Sacrament is a 2013 faux documentary style horror film written, directed and edited by Ty West, who we introduced earlier.

Remi: 6:21

Wow, he wrote, directed and edited it, so this is a 100% Ty West film. This is his baby.

Ashley: 6:28

The plot of the Sacrament is inspired by the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, a historical event that always interested West, and it's particularly focusing on the last 24 to 48 hours of the People's Temple. Aj Bowen and Joe Swanberg star as journalists for Vice who document their co-worker's attempt to locate his addict sister after she joins a religious commune located somewhere in the South American jungle 2013 was kind of the height of Vice's power and popularity.

Ashley: 7:01

Prior to the sacrament. Ty West's directorial credits involved the House of the Devil, cabin Fever 2, spring Fever, the Innkeepers and a skit in 2012's VHS. I know we've seen VHS. I don't know what one he directed, but have you seen any of his other movies?

Remi: 7:18

I believe I've seen Cabin Fever 2, but I might be getting it confused with Cabin Fever 3. I saw whichever sequel takes place at a senior prom.

Ashley: 7:28

I have not seen Cabin Fever 2 or any of these movies other than VHS, but I'm fairly certain that Eli Roth, who is tied to this film, the Sacrament as well, worked with West on the Innkeepers and maybe House of the Devil, but the House of the Devil is one he cited as that kind of got his eye on Ty West.

Remi: 7:50

Eli Roth is a big horror movie guy. He is the quote-unquote mastermind behind the Hostel films, at least Hostel 1 and 2, and the original Cabin Fever. He's kind of fallen off in the past decade or so but back in LA I worked for a cafe in Beverly Hills for a little while to supplement my income, as many people in LA are forced to do, and he was a regular customer. He always tipped great. He complimented my latte art. He posted a couple photos to his Instagram. Really cool dude. I really like him. His films are definitely not for everyone and some of the newer ones are definitely not my taste, but he is a powerful name in the horror community.

Ashley: 8:33

Although West wasn't quite ready to break away from the horror franchise, he wanted to create something more realistic, grounded in reality and socially relevant compared to his past works. After the movie was finished, he later described the Sacrament as his most horrific horror film to date. West sat down to write the script in mid-2012. He wrote the characters with all the main actors who portrayed them in mind, except for the Jim Jones character, and that's because he was actually friends with all of them and they've worked together before. It sounds like they're all kind of actors, directors, camera people and they just really liked working together. So he wrote each of the four main characters with his specific friends in mind.

Remi: 9:19

That is very common. Most directors have their go-to actors that show up in a lot of their films. Leo and Martin Scorsese is probably the biggest example.

Ashley: 9:32

Leo and Martin Scorsese is probably the biggest example, and West actually said when he was developing the characters he actually based it on his friends' strengths and their tone and how they carried themselves. Is that pretty common too? When writing roles specifically for people, it can be.

Remi: 9:44

Yes, I feel like you can write these characters with a specific actor in mind, and in doing so, you will be playing to their strengths. You're envisioning them in this part, and I assume it's because you've worked with them and you think that they are capable of pulling this off.

Ashley: 9:59

Wes called AJ Bowen, who plays the main Vice reporter, to tell him about the idea for the movie on June 20th 2012. He told Bowen to watch all the Vice travel videos he could find and, as you pointed out, remy Vice was really just getting started at this time, so it's not like it is now when there's thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of Vice videos.

Remi: 10:20

Yeah, the Vice videos. Now is basically people going. I took LSD and went to a dog show. Here's the story. So it's not really the caliber that it was when it first came out.

Ashley: 10:32

Well, after he watched all those videos, Wes wanted him to actually create his own in the same style. The sacrament was actually greenlit three or four days after this call and a full month before the script was even finished. Wes finished the script by the end of July and used Bowen's fake travel video to attract financial investors. Eli Roth signed on to produce the film in September and gave West full creative control, calling the Sacrament the director's first mainstream movie Set. Production got underway in Savannah, Georgia, in late August. All the buildings depicted in the movie were built as fully functional cabins in a privately owned field. The cast was rounded out when Gene Jones signed on to play father slash Charles Anderson Reed just as filming began in October. Although Jones is best known for his role in no Country for Old Men, his work in a very different project is what caught Wes's attention.

Ti West: 11:28

There was an episode of Louis and he played a pharmacist and he was asking this old woman about her bowel movements and I was like that's the guy. And, um, and it's true, I mean that sounds like a fake story but it's real. And then I, we tracked him down. I just thought he had amazing screen presence, remembered him from no Country for Old Men. He did an audition, which he likes to say is terrible. Of course it's not. It's because you've seen the movie and he's like the glue that holds the movie together and yeah, you just, I mean it's like, thank God I was watching Louis that night.

Remi: 11:55

That is hilarious. I think I have actually seen that episode of Louis back in the day, when it was on FX, I think.

Ashley: 12:03

Wes provided additional details about his idea for Gene Jones's character. He wanted the cult leader to seem like a genuine well-meaning person who was driven to evil by his paranoia. In turn, jones didn't see the need to do research into Jim Jones and instead played the character like a grandfather, someone so nice that you would follow him anywhere. The title of the antagonist also has multiple meanings. Not only does father have religious connotations, but it's what Jim Jones insisted his followers call him before and during their time in Guyana.

Remi: 12:36

Including his wife, had to call him father as well.

Ashley: 12:47

Gene Jones' big moment in the movie turned out to be the first scene. He shot an 18-minute monologue interview scene that ended up being cut to about 12 minutes for the movie. Although they did multiple takes for the scene, the one that they ended up using in the movie was the first time he delivered the lines.

Gene Jones: 12:59

The first scene is the interview and it was 18 pages of script and about 18 minutes long. The film version cut it down to 12 minutes but it started out 18 minutes and I did the. I memorized the whole thing and we did it in one take. What you see in the sacrament is pretty much the first take. That really set it afire for me and for Ty, the director and everybody else, was the congregation and we started about 10 o'clock at night and the congregation had been on the set all day, very long day for them. But as I threw them in they started wanting to respond to me and say something back to me.

Remi: 13:55

And when that started coming, boy did I catch fire where a director makes someone do quite a few takes and then at the end of the day goes with the first one, because sometimes the first one, before they're overthinking it and when they're really just in the zone, that can be the most natural performance.

Ashley: 14:19

I just can't imagine memorizing 18 pages of text. It is an interview scene, so AJ Bowen's character is asking him questions, but they're really short. Most of this 12 minutes in the movie is just Gene Jones talking.

Remi: 14:33

Well, I actually know a little trick that actors do when they are memorizing lines, because they have those little breaks where the interviewer is asking questions. They will basically go chunk by chunk, so memorize the first chunk, then interview question, memorize the second chunk, so you're going chunk by chunk by chunk through all the 18 pages. It is still a staggering amount to memorize, but those little breaks in there probably helped him with the memorization.

Ashley: 15:02

Although West originally intended for much of the dialogue to be improvised, everyone liked what he wrote so much that they ended up sticking pretty much exclusively to the script. The only exception to this was the crowd's reaction to Gene Jones's monologue scene. There were about 200 extras on site, two of which were retired Harlem Globetrotters, which I thought was pretty fun, but none of the extras had read the script beforehand. As Gene got in his groove, the crowd started responding back to what he was saying, saying things like yes, father, you know things like that, and that caused Gene to interact back. So that's really the only scenes in the movie that is improvised. It's the crowd responding to him.

Remi: 15:43

Well, I'm glad they did that, because that was definitely the type of atmosphere that Jim Jones had at the real Jonestown.

Ashley: 15:51

And that's kind of how they described it Like the crowd was just so transfixed with him that they just responded. It just came out and it just seemed natural and really went with the vibe that Ty West was looking for. And, lastly, the film was shot in chronological order, which we know is pretty rare, and wrapped in two months in chronological order, which we know is pretty rare and wrapped in two months.

Remi: 16:11

Two months is longer than I would have expected for this film. Actually, for a found footage, low-budget film like this, I would have expected it to be shorter.

Ashley: 16:30

Well, let's get into the sacrament. We open with some text that describes Vice as a multimedia company focused on international news, arts and culture, known for covering provocative and controversial stories usually overlooked by the mainstream media. Sam Turner, played by AJ Bowen, is a vice reporter and introduces freelance photographer Patrick, played by Kentucker Adley, who has a story Sam knows he needs to document. Through text we learn Patrick's sister left New York to join a sober living community in rural Mississippi, but he has since become worried about her after receiving a mysterious letter in the mail.

Ashley: 17:12

Patrick opens the letter and reads his sister's account about how she is helping build a community where people can live free, like God intended. She calls it the most beautiful place she has ever seen, lists a phone number and invites him to visit the movie. Cuts to text again as it's explained that the number in the letter belongs to some random dude who said Patrick's sister moved out of the country with the rest of the religious community. Although the man can't disclose the commune's exact location, he gives instructions of where to fly and how to find the helicopter that will take Patrick the rest of the way. Seeing this as a potential documentary opportunity, sam convinces Patrick to let him and photographer Jake Williams, played by Joe Swanberg, to tag along. A travel montage is played over the opening credits and heartbeats by the knife, a song I absolutely love but feels a bit out of place.

Remi: 18:09

Blaze. I do really like that song as well, but I can honestly say it wasn't in my head when I was reading through the true story of Jonestown.

Ashley: 18:34

Well, side note the shooting of the scene that the song is playing over. It's just like a montage of them traveling to the different airports in the airplane and getting to the rural South American jungle.

Remi: 18:47

It's a good montage song.

Ashley: 18:49

But for shooting that it primarily involved the actors flying from Savannah to Atlanta, to JFK and back again. The biggest concern was that their backpacks were just filled with random junk to make them look full, leading them to worry about security, flagging them for suspicious behavior. A helicopter lands in an abandoned field at 1 15 pm. The pilot says he'll be back at 8 am tomorrow. He agrees to wait one hour before leaving, with or without his passengers.

Ashley: 19:21

While walking along a deserted dirt road, two locals approach the trio, asking for Patrick, after radioing, to get permission to bring the other two unexpected guests to the compound. They climb to the bed of an insanely rusted truck for the two kilometer, which is about 1.2 mile drive to the only way in and out of Eden Parish. Their expectations of a hippie commune are dashed when they are greeted by two men holding machine guns who try to get them to turn over their passports, give a monetary donation and stop filming. Just as tensions are peaking, jake's sister, caroline, played by Amy Semites, warmly approaches and assures the reporters that the guns are just a security precaution. Caroline leads the reporters into a large field surrounded by huts. Almost immediately, father's voice bellows through the loudspeaker, announcing the visitors and encouraging the residents to show them hospitality.

Monster Trailer: 20:18

Here we are. Welcome to Eden Parish. What do you think? It's great, right.

Gene Jones: 20:25

Children. We have some special visitors to the parish today. Let's show them our hospitality and represent ourselves in the way the Lord has taught us. You guys built all this.

Monster Trailer: 20:37

Oh yeah, we're really hard workers. I don't think that we slept more than three hours a night for six months when we were building it, but Father had a vision and he was, of course, right, and we built heaven here on earth.

Remi: 20:53

That is actually the first clip I've seen other than stuff from the trailer and I gotta say the vibe and the mood of it is kind of what I pictured Jonestown to be like. I think they did a good job with the found footage thing of making it kind of feel like you're there, you're entering into this community. It was pretty cool to see.

Ashley: 21:14

actually, Caroline hypes up the commune while walking the crew to a bare-bones cabin filled with bunk beds for Sam and Jake, she departs to the main house with Patrick, leaving the other two to unpack. Sam and Jake go out and try to interact with the residents, most of whom completely ignore them. They finally come across five people who agree to brief interviews. The first is 75-year-old Lorraine Davis. She met father while he was recruiting residents in her small town through church sermons. She was immediately drawn to him and invited to be a member of Eden Parish, opting to leave the country as she's a widow and had nothing holding her back.

Ashley: 21:53

Next up is 23-year-old Sarah White from Melbourne, australia. She was an artist living in Brooklyn when she met father. When asked if her family knows where she is, she says Eden Parish is her family now and father has given her more than she could ever have dreamed of. Next up is 41-year-old Wendy Johnson, the head nurse of the teeny, tiny two-bed medical center. Wendy informs Sam of the number of children and elders at the parish, how most of the medical supplies were brought by residents when the commune was established and mentions that each person here sold everything they owned and donated all the profits to the church before moving.

Remi: 22:33

That is accurate.

Ashley: 22:35

The last interviews are with brothers Andre and Robert Evans, aged 19 and 23. They came to Eden Parish with their mother and sister and praise it for providing them a supportive environment free from violence. After playing a game of basketball with the brothers, sam and Jake seem skeptical about the sustainability of the community, but they do praise it for being self-sufficient and rooted in spirituality and progressive politics. Back at their cabin at 520, they notice a little girl staring at them through the screen door. Savannah's mother grabs her, says she's mute and declines to talk to the outsiders. Sam and Jake join Caroline and Patrick in the pavilion and learn that father has agreed to sit for an interview at 745 Sharp 30 minutes before the gathering, an event he is throwing to celebrate their arrival. Before leaving, caroline hands Sam a document that summarizes the values and mission of Eden Parish. In essence, it says the community strives to live as God intended and distance itself from the evils of society like imperialism, violence, poverty and racism.

Ashley: 23:44

Sam spends the next few hours drafting questions for the interview with Father, which he is surprised to learn will be done in front of the entire congregation. When father makes his grand entrance right on time, everyone erupts into applause while he hugs, waves and embraces those within his path to the stage. What follows is the 12-minute interview slash monologue scene I mentioned earlier. Sam starts with some softball questions about how father got his name and his idea behind Eden Parish, to which father basically just regurgitates what was written in the document provided by Caroline. Things do start to get a little tense when Sam asks whether isolation is necessary to achieve togetherness, followed by questions about the machine guns and the residents turning over their life savings. I'm not going to get into everything Father said, but here's a clip that should give you the gist of it.

Gene Jones: 24:36

America's coming apart, as it seems, because of the way it's being run and the values it instills. Your government is failing, friend. Now, before you call me a communist or socialist or whatever word you use for somebody who tries to help his fellow man, let me remind you of one thing All the great leaders who have tried to achieve what we have here were struck down and killed. That's right. Malcolm X, martin Luther King oh my God, jfk, rfk. Well, I'm willing to die for what I believe in. But why die fighting when you can remove yourself from the fight altogether and create something new?

Remi: 25:25

I have to say he definitely is more grandfatherly than I ever pictured the real Jim Jones or he seemed in any interviews I've seen. But what he is saying here definitely 100% seems like something that Jim Jones would be saying. They did a very good job of writing this character.

Ashley: 25:44

Well, originally Ty West imagined this as a miniseries and I couldn't find why that was abandoned. But Gene Jones did say if it would have been a miniseries then it would have been more tied directly to the Jonestown Massacre and for that he would have done a lot of research into Jim Jones.

Remi: 26:03

After doing the research that I needed to do for this episode, I think a miniseries is the only way you could tell this full story. There is so many things that would be impossible to fit into a two and a half three hour movie.

Ashley: 26:18

With about five minutes left in the interview, father commandeers control by asking Sam about his personal life. Using his love for his wife and unborn child to illustrate his points. Using his love for his wife and unborn child to illustrate his points. He abruptly elicits an end to the interview by asking the congregation if it's time to party. Caroline walks him off stage, leaving a befuddled-looking Sam in his wake.

Ashley: 26:41

Although Sam and Jake are disappointed with how the interview went, they have a blast singing, dancing and listening to music at the gathering, so much so that they say they're fully convinced of the wonders of Eden Parish by 1130 at night.

Ashley: 26:55

Their enchantment is interrupted by Savannah, who gives Sam a note reading please help us before running back to the pavilion where the party has shifted to more somber hymns. After noticing the machine gun wielding security guards patrolling the perimeter, they decide it's time to find Patrick. The first place they check turns out to be an office with a slightly ajar safe filled with passports. They run into Caroline as they are exiting and demand a speech of Patrick. He is having a father-approved threesome and lets slip that. Her real plan for bringing Patrick here is to recruit him as a member in an effort to gain financial support from their parents. Just as Sam and Patrick realize that Caroline seems a little intoxicated on something, father opens the door to a nearby house and summons her, suggesting the relationship is more than plutonic. Coincidentally, one of Jim Jones' mistresses had the very similar name of Carolyn.

Remi: 27:57

You're treading into my territory. Watch out, Ashley.

Ashley: 28:00

A few moments after Sam and Jake get back to their cabin, savannah makes another appearance, causing the men to leave the cabin in search of her. They follow her to a group of scared women who beg to go with them because this place is not as it seems. Sam and Jake seem a bit confused, but the fearful mother lets them know that all the residents they spoke to earlier were specifically chosen by father, with everyone else being instructed to avoid the visitors. She also says that they are essentially being held captive and that the congregation is kept in line by brainwashed residents like Caroline, who aren't above using violence to maintain order. Savannah's mom then reveals horrific scars across the nape of her daughter's neck, which is the reason she no longer speaks. As Savannah's mother is begging Sam to take her daughter with him when he leaves tomorrow, the group is scared off by the sounds of armed guards approaching. They question what Sam and Jake are doing with Savannah and insist they will make sure she gets back to her mother. Once back inside their cabin, father comes over the loudspeaker and summons the cleanup crew and nurse Wendy to the pavilion. Meanwhile, sam and Jake pack their things and plan to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as the helicopter returns in eight hours. However, they're unable to get any sleep as the cleanup crew spends all night setting up something in the pavilion.

Ashley: 29:24

Come daybreak, sam and Jake notice members of the congregation are already starting to gather outside. As they approach, they notice a ton of people have packed their bags and are demanding to leave, while the Brainwaff's residents, including Caroline, try their best to maintain order. As Sam and Caroline argue about the ethics of forcing people to stay who clearly want to go, savannah's mother returns and again begs him to take her daughter away from this place. Sam instructs Jake to go to the helicopter and radio back if the pilot says they can fit one extra person on the chopper. As Jake hops into the back of the rusty truck, an angry Caroline accuses them of wanting to destroy everything father has built.

Ashley: 30:05

Just like he predicted before they arrived, jake arrives at the airfield at 7.50. His argument with the pilot is disrupted by machine gun fire, which hits the pilot in the shoulder, causing Jake to flee for his life. He sprints through the woods and hides behind a log, overhearing his assailants discuss father's orders of preventing anyone from leaving Eden Parish alive. Before making his way back to find Sam and Patrick. He checks on the pilot, who is covered in blood but miracish alive. Before making his way back to find Sam and Patrick, he checks on the pilot, who is covered in blood but miraculously alive. He agrees to wait a bit longer to give Jake time to find his friends, cut back to absolute chaos at the pavilion. People are screaming, crying and shoving each other. When a man with a machete grabs Sam from behind, causing him to drop his camera as he is being pulled away. Father slowly approaches and instructs Caroline to keep filming because what is about to happen is important. Over the loudspeaker he instructs everyone to hurry to the pavilion because he has something very important to say.

Remi: 31:05

One of the most chilling facts about this is that he really did record what is about to happen next in real life.

Ashley: 31:14

Well and that was one of the cool things that I read in an interview Ty West wanted to make sure that there wasn't a point in the movie where someone would say why are these people filming still? So that's why he has both of the vice reporters drop their cameras at one point. So earlier in the scene when Jake is running, there's like the camera hiding behind a log and you think he's there, but the men with guns find the camera and he's not there, but they leave it and he goes back and retrieves it. So it's things like that and everything. Basically, with this camera that's left, it's all Caroline filming. It changes hands at different points.

Remi: 31:51

Jim Jones recorded a lot of what he did. Most of it was audio recordings, but I do firmly believe if this had happened later in time, he would have been videotaping everything.

Ashley: 32:04

Once everyone has taken their seats, father launches into a speech accusing the visitors of trying to destroy everything they have worked for, stressing that if they don't take drastic matters fast, the government will come to burn their houses down, steal their children and kill everyone left. To avoid this fate, he instructs everyone to accept the dixie cups full of potion that we see being mixed with some sort of white powder.

Gene Jones: 32:29

We can't go back. There's nowhere to go back to. So our time is up, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. It's just stepping over to the other side. That's all it is. Let's show the world that the only peace left for us is in death. We're going to a better place now. Let's all go together.

Ashley: 33:00

And this scene is a pretty tough watch. It shows the fear in everyone's eyes and there's several different shots of children drinking this. There's a shot of mothers feeding it or injecting it into their infants. It's sad. As all this is going on, father continues to assure his congregation that what they're about to do isn't suicide. It's a way to prove their love to God by offering their bodies as a living sacrifice, the last sacrament. One by one, the congregation starts to drink their medicine, just as they've rehearsed. Despite his promises of a painless death, it isn't long before the crowd starts vomiting, foaming at the mouth, falling to the ground and screaming in agony. At 8.15 am, caroline walks into an office where Patrick is bound and gagged. Since he refuses to drink the juice. She uses a syringe to inject him in the neck and holds him as he cries and begs her to let him go until he dies. Back at the pavilion, anyone who is still alive and trying to make a run for it are either force-fed the juice or gunned down, all while father continues to stress that this is the only humane way for his people to go.

Ashley: 34:14

Jake makes his way onto the eerily silent compound at 825, quickly noticing the mass body count scattered around the pavilion. As he's walking past the cabins, he notices more people dead in their beds and runs into 19-year-old Andre, the only person who tried to protest directly to father in the earlier scene. Andre collapses into Jake's arms and asks if he and his family are going to heaven before he dies. As he continues his search for Sam, he finds Savannah and her mother huddled in the corner of a cabin. In the corner of a cabin, jake tries to get them to hide under the bed with him, but the woman seems to know that the plan won't work and cuts her daughter's neck with a large knife while promising she won't let anyone murder her. Jake watches in horror from under the bed while this unfolds and when a gunman finds Savannah's mother and shoots her before departing.

Ashley: 35:06

Once the coast is clear, patrick spots Caroline, follows her into the house and quickly realizes Patrick is dead. He tries to stop her while she's pouring gasoline over everything in sight, by assuring her that it's not too late to leave. But Caroline says there's nothing left for her to go home to because these people were her family. She tells Jake where he can find father and Sam, pours gasoline over her head and sets herself on fire. Jake finds a bleeding and tied up Sam in the house with Father sitting calmly in the corner. He goes on a diatribe about how he couldn't let his congregation live like this anymore and gave them all a way out, a new beginning.

Gene Jones: 35:45

Here we are, three of us all that's left. We couldn't live this way anymore, but I couldn't let them go. I tried, god knows I tried. I gave them all I could and I gave my way out. We were doing something great down here. We were going to change the world. This was only the beginning. Why couldn't you leave us alone?

Ashley: 36:23

After accusing Sam and Jake of bringing violence to the compound and demanding they take responsibility for what unfolded, father does a line of what I'm assuming is cocaine and shoots himself in the mouth while yelling take me, lord. Jake frees Sam and they try to escape the compound but are forced to hide in the pavilion from one of the machine gun wielding madmen. Just as their days are numbered. The other security guard kills his comrade and yells at Sam and Jake to get the hell out of Dodge. They make it out and the helicopter lifts off at 9.07am. According to the film Commentary in the original ending the pilot wasn't shot, but just as they reach altitude he yells we must follow father's orders. And crashes, killing everyone on board.

Ashley: 37:08

This alternate ending was similar to one of the many plans Jim Jones had to commit suicide. He had one of his mistresses take flying lessons and get her pilot's license, in case he ever wanted to fill a plane with members and crash it in the name of the cult. Before the final credits we get the following message 167 people died in the massacre at Eden Parish. It was one of the largest mass suicides in recorded history. Filmmakers Sam Turner and Jake Williams are the last known survivors. This documentary is the only firsthand account of the events at Eden Parish, and that is Ty West's the Sacrament. What did you think, remy?

Remi: 37:48

Surprisingly more on point than I was expecting. Actually, I am pleasantly surprised at how many cues from the real story the film seemed to take. Of course liberties were taken, but from the clips that you showed me and the description you gave, I think if Ty West had wanted to tweak a few things and turn this into a miniseries about the real Jim Jones, I think he could have done a really good job.

Ashley: 38:16

It's a very unique horror movie. It's not one with zombies or a lot of violence outside of the mass murder scene, but it does leave you incredibly unsettled, especially knowing that it is inspired by something that really happened. The Sacrament premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2013. It was available via video on demand in May 2014 and had a limited theatrical release in June. The movie grossed a measly $9,221 against its $4 million budget. Even though virtually no one saw this movie, it currently has a 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a critical consensus that reads Although the Sacrament is a far cry from an Academy Award-winning movie, it did win the Sci-Fi Jury Prize, the I Horror Award for Best Sleeper Horror and, my personal favorite, the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Blood Guts UK Horror Awards.

Remi: 39:32

Ah yes, the prestigious Blood Guts Award.

Ashley: 39:35

Never heard of any of these, but they are clearly just for horror movies.

Remi: 39:40

I'm curious what the Blood and Guts Award looks like.

Ashley: 39:45

And that is the sacrament. So now I am ready to sit back and relax while I learn all about Jim Jones and the People's Temple.

Remi: 39:55

Yes, it is time for my 18 page monologue and I want to throw out a little warning ahead of time. There are some graphic details of children dying, so I just wanted to give a warning to everyone. If that makes you uncomfortable or if that's not something you want to hear, I would definitely tune out before the ending portion of my section if you're still curious to hear the beginning portion of my section. If you're still curious to hear hands, goby dooby doo, welcome to you, welcome, welcome on you, glad you are with us. Shake hands, goby dooby doo, welcome to you.

Remi: 40:52

James Warren Jones was born on May 13, 1931, in the rural town of Crete, indiana. In the rural town of Crete, indiana. His father, james Thurman Jones, was a disabled World War I veteran who suffered from severe respiratory issues due to injuries he sustained during a chemical weapons attack. Due to James' illness, he was primarily unable to work, leading to financial struggles and marital strife between James and Jim's mother, lynette Putnam.

Remi: 41:19

In 1931, during the Great Depression, the Jones family was evicted from their home after failing to make their mortgage payments. Luckily, the family's relatives provided them with a small shack, lacking plumbing and electricity, in the nearby town of Lynn, which is where little Jim Jones spent his formative years. Growing up, jim's family often struggled to afford basic necessities, relying on financial assistance from extended family members, and even resorted to foraging through the forests and fields to supplement their diet. Though both of Jim's parents were neglectful towards him, jim's mother, lynetta, in particular, was described as having absolutely no natural maternal instincts whatsoever. Left largely unsupervised, little Jimmy would regularly wander the streets of Lynn completely naked and alone. Eventually, a group of sympathetic women in the community took notice and began providing him with food, clothing and other small gifts, just to get by.

Ashley: 42:21

Can you imagine just seeing a naked child wandering the streets? That would be so alarming.

Remi: 42:34

It seems like he was literally just left to fend for himself and he didn't know what to do. He's a small, small child when this is happening and it is a travesty how this child was treated. One woman in particular who took a shining to little Jimmy was Myrtle Kennedy, the wife of the local Nazarene church pastor. The two quickly formed a close bond, with Myrtle gifting him a Bible and encouraging him to study the scripture, along with the holiness code of the Nazarene church.

Remi: 43:02

As Jim grew older, he developed a fascination with religion and would often attend numerous services at various churches across Lynn. This kind of reminded me of the book Life of Pi, where the little boy was fascinated with religion and he was going to services all over town just hearing the different types and kind of soaking it all in. Little Jimmy was even baptized multiple times across several different denominations. This early exploration of faith is what inevitably led to Jim's desire to become a preacher, and he soon began practicing his own sermons in private. Locals would later describe Jim as an unusual child with an intense obsession with religion and death. Neighbors reported that Jim would conduct mock funerals for roadkill he had collected and supposedly he even stabbed a cat to death once for such a ritual.

Ashley: 43:53

Red flag.

Remi: 43:54

Yes, that is a surefire sign of a psychopath if they are a child murdering small animals. Whenever Jim couldn't convince the other children to attend one of his makeshift funerals, jim would still proceed with the ceremonies undeterred and without an audience. On one occasion, jim claimed to possess supernatural powers and insisted that he could fly, so leapt from a rooftop, only to fall like a bag full of rocks, resulting in a broken arm. Despite this very public failure, jim nevertheless continued to assert that he had the ability to perform miracles.

Remi: 44:30

Jones would claim later in life that as a boy, he had engaged in a variety of sacrilegious pranks, which included stealing a Pentecostal minister's Bible, then smearing cow manure over Acts 2.38, and replacing the holy water in a Catholic church with a cup of his own urine. What a little scamp young Jimmy was. Aside from his antics in church, jim frequently stole candy from local merchants, often resulting in a savage beating with a leather belt at the hands of his mother in response to his misbehavior. Jim was also known for his vulgar language and commonly greeted neighbors and friends with phrases like Good morning you, son of a bitch, or Hello you, dirty bastard.

Ashley: 45:16

It sounds like terms of endearment.

Remi: 45:19

Despite his rebellious nature, jim was an avid reader and immersed himself in the writings of Adolf Hitler, joseph Stalin, karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi.

Remi: 45:31

Some of those don't fit with the others nation with the pageantry and unquestioned loyalty of the Nazi party and began to emulate them by commanding groups of local children to goose-step in formation, while physically punishing those who disobeyed him. As a result of this increasingly disturbing behavior, many parents around town began forbidding their children from associating with Jim, and by the time he had entered high school, jim was a complete social outcast who was widely disliked by his peers and other members of the community.

Ashley: 46:08

Where's Myrtle? Why isn't she helping guide this kid in a better direction?

Remi: 46:13

Myrtle could only do so much, I think. Though Jim was a strong student who enjoyed debating his teachers, he continued to develop several peculiar social habits, such as refusing to respond to anyone unless he had initiated the conversation personally and dressing in formal church attire while carrying his Bible every day of the week. Jim's unwavering religious fanaticism only isolated him further from his peers, as he would openly condemn his other classmates for drinking, smoking and dancing, and would even interrupt social gatherings to lecture his classmates on their waning morality, while demanding that they cease their sinful ways and read the Bible with him instead.

Ashley: 46:58

I'm assuming by this time he stopped pissing in the holy water, stealing candy and calling everyone bitches and bastards.

Remi: 47:05

That was little Jimmy. This is teenage Jim. Though Jim's father had originally been a member of the Ku Klux Klan, jim himself held a deep-seated aversion towards racism, brought on by an incident he had witnessed at a baseball game in Richmond, indiana, where the African Americans in attendance were met with unjust cruelty from his fellow Caucasians. In 1945, jones's parents finally divorced, forcing Jim and his mother to relocate to Richmond, indiana, where he attended Richmond High School and graduated early, with honors, in December of 1948. To support himself during those years, jim took a job as an orderly at Richmond's Reed Hospital in 1946 and began dating Marceline May Baldwin, who was a nurse in training there.

Remi: 47:54

In November of 1948, jim moved to Bloomington, indiana, to attend Indiana University, bloomington, where he first began openly expressing his support of communism and other radical political views. Jim and Marceline continued their relationship while Jim was away at college and on June 12, 1949, the two were legally married, despite Marceline being a devout Methodist, which frequently led to heated arguments over Jim's opposition to the Methodist church's racial segregation policies. Throughout their turbulent relationship, jim subjected Marceline to various forms of emotional and physical manipulation, including fabricating the sudden death of one of her close friends or family members, only to reveal that it had been a lie. After consoling her while she was breaking down crying, jim would additionally pressure his wife to abandon her faith and embrace atheism, even though they both still attended church regularly.

Ashley: 48:56

These religious cult leaders are able to convince themselves that the evils they are doing are somehow in line with the teachings of God, when they're clearly not.

Remi: 49:12

Yes, a lot of what he's doing does not follow all of these different religions. But if you pick and choose certain aspects from a bunch of different religions and combine, them it can make what you're doing perfectly okay in the eyes of God.

Remi: 49:28

In 1951, the couple moved to Indianapolis, where the now 20-year-old Jim Jones began attending meetings of the Communist Party USA and grew increasingly frustrated with the persecution of communists in America, fueling his desire to merge his political beliefs with religious influence. By early 1952, Jim announced to his wife and her family that he had decided to become a Methodist minister to put real socialism into practice.

Ashley: 49:58

The religion that he forced his wife to give up.

Remi: 50:06

Yes, practice the religion that he forced his wife to give up. Yes, there is quite a bit of hypocrisy in Jim Jones, You'll come to see. Surprisingly, Jim was offered the opportunity to start his ministry by the Methodist district superintendent shortly after, despite Jim's controversial beliefs in communism. In the summer of 1952, Jim was hired on as a student children's pastor at the Somerset Southside Methodist Church, where he spearheaded a project intending to build a playground open to children of all races. However, in early 1954, Jim was dismissed from his position for allegedly stealing church funds, though Jim would later claim that it was because the church leaders had refused to allow African Americans into their congregation.

Remi: 50:47

In 1953, Jones attended a Pentecostal ladder reign movement in Columbus, Indiana, where a woman prophesied that he was destined to be a great prophet with a powerful ministry. Though skeptical of the woman's prophecy, Jim decided to just roll with it and took to the podium to deliver a sermon in front of the entire audience. This experience convinced Jim that the racially integrated and rapidly expanding Ladder Reign movement could expedite his goal of becoming a preacher. So Jim manipulated his wife into leaving the Methodist church and joining the latter rain movement, which sought to restore the practices and beliefs of early Pentecostalism. That same year, Jim began preaching at a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in Indianapolis known as the Laurel Street Tabernacle. Between 1953 and 1955, Jones held healing revivals at the church while also traveling to speak at other latter rain congregations, including one in Detroit.

Remi: 51:53

Unfortunately, Jim's time at the Laurel Street Tabernacle would come to an end in 1955 when the Assemblies of God assigned a new pastor who strictly enforced the denomination's ban on healing revivals. We will get into the details of what a healing revival is in just a bit. Unwilling to conform, Jim left and established his own church called the Wings of Healing, which would later be renamed the People's Temple or just People's Temple. I call it the People's Temple, but it is just called People's Temple. But it sounds weird if I just call it People's Temple. You know what I mean. Initially, Jim's new church attracted only about 20 members who had followed him from the Laurel Street Tabernacle. So Jim took a part-time job selling pet monkeys in order to raise additional funds.

Ashley: 52:44

Where did he get these monkeys, and were they like the little ones that like sit on your shoulder?

Remi: 52:48

Yeah, they were the tiny monkeys. It didn't really go into where he got the monkeys from, but it's an interesting way to supplement your income. Jim also recognized the need for greater publicity, so actively sought ways to grow his ministry and recruit more followers. Jim soon forged a close relationship with a network of churches that embraced the latter reign movement known as the Independent Assemblies of God, which was known for minimal requirements for ordaining ministers and fully embraced divine healing practices. Ministers and fully embraced divine healing practices.

Remi: 53:25

By June of 1955, jim held his first joint meeting with a renowned healing evangelist named William Bram, who was a prominent figure in the global healing revival movement and had gained notoriety for his uncanny ability to tell church attendees their names, addresses and reasons for seeking prayer before inevitably declaring them healed.

Remi: 53:43

So these are the type of things where people go and they have something wrong with them, like they are blind or they can't walk or something like that, and the minister heals them right then and there. These are largely known as a sham, and that's why a lot of churches don't allow this sort of thing to occur. Well, jim was, of course, captivated by Bram's methods and quickly began learning how to replicate these telepathic tricks himself. In 1956, jim was officially ordained as a minister in the Independent Assemblies of God by Joseph Mattinson Bowes, who was also a prominent leader in the Latter Rain movement. Wasting no time at all, jim soon organized a major healing convention, scheduled for June 11th through the 15th at the Indianapolis Cattle Tabernacle. To draw in larger crowds, jim arranged for William Bram to share the pulpit with him again, resulting in their second joint meeting attracting an audience of over 11,000 people for their first campaign.

Ashley: 54:49

Holy shit, that is a ton of people 11,000?.

Remi: 54:55

It is staggering the amount of people that are involved with this the crowds, the influence. It's crazy. I had no idea this many people were involved in this sort of thing. During the convention, bram publicly endorsed Jim Jones and prophesied that God was using the event to launch a great new ministry. By the end of the convention, many of the attendees had been convinced that Jones possessed supernatural abilities and, with Bram's backing, regular attendance at the People's Temple soon surged to over a thousand due to the convention's widespread publicity. Quite a jump 20 to a thousand. Jim was particularly effective at recruiting African American attendees, which only expanded his church's influence within the community. Following this success, jim renamed his church the People's Temple Christian Church Full Gospel, which was later shortened to just People's Temple.

Remi: 55:55

Jim participated in a series of multi-state revival campaigns alongside Bram throughout the late 1950s, allowing him to establish deeper connections within the latter reign movement. One aspect of this movement which Jim was particularly fascinated by was the belief that certain individuals could become direct manifestations of God, thus possessing supernatural abilities. Followers saw these gifts as a sign of the second coming of Christ and believed that those endowed with them would usher in a millennial age of heaven on earth. Jim adapted this doctrine to support his own vision of a utopian society and by the late 1960s, jim was declaring that he himself was a divine manifestation of Christ. The Revolution, which further reinforced his growing influence over his loyal followers. Many of Jim's most effective recruitment tactics were borrowed directly from William Bram, including his claims of being the reincarnation of Elijah, the prophet, the voice of God and a manifestation of Christ. Jim's entire ideology and ministry were also heavily influenced by Bram, including his various doctrines, methods and style, as well as the apocalyptic belief that the end of the world would soon be at hand. However, Jim did eventually distance himself from the latter reign movement following a bitter dispute with Bram, which culminated in Jim prophesying Bram's death. It has been theorized that the disagreement may have stemmed from Bram's racial teachings or his increasingly vocal opposition to communism.

Remi: 57:33

Around this time, jim also became aware of an African-American spiritual leader of the international peace mission movement named Father Divine, who would soon become another key influence of Jim Jones's ministry. Divine's claims of divinity were often criticized by Pentecostal ministers, and while Jim publicly disavowed Father Divine's teachings, he secretly began adopting many of Divine's practices, particularly those related to communal living. Divine additionally inspired Jim to introduce social outreach programs within the People's Temple, including a soup kitchen, free groceries and clothing distribution to those in need. By 1958, jim was gradually exerting greater control over his followers' lives and began implementing disciplinary measures within the People's Temple that closely mirrored those used by Divine's peace mission. In 1960, jim Jones aligned his People's Temple with the Disciples of Christ denomination, after church leader Archie James assured Jim that his political beliefs would be tolerated. In 1964, jim was formally ordained as a minister within the denomination and the People's Temple remained affiliated with the Disciples of Christ until its tragic end in Jonestown.

Remi: 58:52

So he is just hopping from one religion to the other. Oh, you guys don't like what I'm doing here. Oh well, hop over here, they're okay with it. Oh, you guys don't like that aspect of it, I'll go over here, maybe these guys will. He's picking and choosing what works for him, which is not how religion works. I think that same year, indianapolis Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jim the new director of the city's Human Rights Commission, which Jim used to amplify his own views through local radio and television programs. During his tenure, jim played a significant role in integrating various institutions throughout Indianapolis, including churches, the telephone company, the police department, a theater and an amusement park. Jim even set up sting operations to expose restaurants that were refusing service to Black customers.

Ashley: 59:42

It's kind of crazy that I'm saying this, knowing everything that this man becomes and aspects about him thus far that are less than ideal, but as far as him being elected as someone to be involved in human rights, he's actually not the worst choice.

Remi: 1:00:04

I don't disagree with you. It is surprising that this is a very evil man, and it is clear that he is cultivating power and finding things that work directly with what he believes, and all of that. But it does seem like he did do some legitimate good for the community as far as desegregation goes. In fact, in 1961, jim was briefly hospitalized and, due to a clerical error, was placed in the Black Patients Ward, but rather than move to the White Ward, he instead chose to stay and assisted the Black patients by making their beds and emptying their bedpans. The political pressure generated by Jim's actions during this situation is what eventually led to the Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital's desegregation. As a result of Jim's activism, the People's Temple became a target for white supremacists, leading to the church being vandalized with a swastika and a dead cat being thrown at Jim's home following a threatening phone call.

Ashley: 1:01:08

In his mind he's like yay time for another funeral.

Remi: 1:01:12

I was just going to say. I do not know if he held a funeral for the cat that was thrown at his house or not. By the end of 1961, indianapolis had made significant progress towards racial integration, and the publicity surrounding Jim's activism only helped further expand his growing congregation. Jim also extended his commitment to racial diversity into his personal life, as he and his wife Marceline adopted multiple non-white children throughout the years and would commonly refer to their household as a rainbow family. They began by adopting their first child, agnes, who was part Native American, in 1954, followed by three Korean-American children named Lou, stephanie and Suzanne in 1959. That same year, marceline gave birth to their only biological child, stephen Jones. Then, in 1961, they became the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child, who was named Jim Jones Jr. They later adopted a white son named Tim, whose birth mother was a temple member, and Jim would go on to father yet another son, jim, john or Kimo, with a different temple member named Carolyn Layton.

Ashley: 1:02:24

Carolyn Mentioned her.

Remi: 1:02:27

Jim soon began claiming to have received visions of an impending nuclear attack on Indianapolis. In January of 1962, jim read an Esquire magazine article that identified South America as one of the safest places to escape a potential nuclear war and became convinced that the People's Temple needed to relocate. Jim soon traveled to South America in search of a new home for him and his followers, but found the language barrier to be extremely challenging. No duh, jim. In mid-1963, jim moved his family to Rio de Janeiro where they worked closely with the poor in the slums and favelas. However, jim was still unable to find a suitable location for the People's Temple and eventually became overwhelmed with guilt for abandoning the civil rights movement back in Indiana. During Jim's absence, regular attendance at the People's Temple also dwindled to fewer than 100 members and was on the verge of collapsing.

Ashley: 1:03:28

Is that because he wasn't there?

Remi: 1:03:30

He was in Rio de Janeiro working with the poor for about a year. Jim finally returned to the States in December of 1963, but continuous financial struggles and low attendance forced Jim to sell the original church building and relocate to a smaller space nearby. To maintain his followers' commitment, Jim preached that a nuclear war would devastate the world on July 15, 1967, leading to a socialist paradise after the fallout, and began urging his congregation to relocate to Northern California with him. This led to Jim and about 140 of his most loyal followers moving to Redwood Valley, California, in July of 1965, while the rest of his congregation stayed behind in Indiana. Once there, Jim took a job as a history and government teacher and an adult education school in the nearby town of Ukiah to recruit new members for his people's temple. He achieved this by subtly integrating Marxist ideologies into his lessons and planting loyal temple members in his classes to assist with recruitment. Within the first few months, Jim had gained 50 new followers and by 1967, an additional 75 members from the Indianapolis congregation were convinced to move to California.

Remi: 1:04:49

In 1968, the California branch of the People's Temple was formally admitted into the Disciples of Christ denomination, which Jim used to boost his church's credibility and promoted the temple as part of the 1.5 million member denomination. This worked like a charm and by 1969, the People's Temple membership in California had grown to over 300 members. Throughout the years, Jim combined influence from William Bram's Latter Rain Movement, Father Divine's Economic Socialism, along with his own communist belief, into a hodgepodge theology he called apostolistic socialism. By the early 1970s, Jim rejected traditional Christian teachings, publicly declaring that Christianity had a false understanding of God by referring to Christianity's concept of God as a sky god who was no god at all. Instead, Jim proclaimed his own divinity and would assert that he alone was the one and only true God.

Ashley: 1:05:50

Just breaking another 10 commandment right there.

Remi: 1:05:54

No, he's picking and choosing. He took part of the religion that allowed people to say that they're God, and he incorporated it into his new one, so all this is okay by his rules. Jim additionally dismissed King James VI as an alcoholic and a slave trader while circulating a pamphlet Jim had authored, titled the Letter Killeth, which harshly criticized the King James Bible. Unsurprisingly, jim then insisted that he was the true prophet and the only one capable of properly interpreting divine teachings.

Ashley: 1:06:29

How convenient.

Remi: 1:06:31

Jim would also frequently use scare tactics to maintain his followers by warning them of an impending nuclear race, war, apocalypse where Nazi white supremacists would imprison people of color in concentration camps.

Remi: 1:06:45

And the only way to survive this was to follow Jim Jones's teachings.

Remi: 1:06:50

Jim continued by promising his followers that they would later emerge from the ruins of this post-apocalyptic wasteland and rebuild a utopian communist society where the old world once stood. In the meantime, jim continued to reinforce fear and loyalty amongst his followers with regular prophecies of fires, car accidents, injuries and death towards anyone who dared stray from his teachings. And keep in mind, all of these people have seen Jim Jones supposedly see the future, so this reinforces the fear that they would have if he's saying your car is going to explode or you're going to die if you leave. They've been just brainwashed to take all of this at face value. Jim even created his own baptismal formula and began baptizing converts in the holy name of socialism. Now I bet you're all wondering did Jim Jones really believe all of this, or was he just sort of some exceptionally manipulative con man? Well, believe it or not, many historians remain divided on this subject. But in a 1976 interview, jones did openly identify himself as being an atheist. So make of that what you will.

Ashley: 1:08:08

What do you think?

Remi: 1:08:09

I think that a real religious person would not be picking and choosing different aspects of all the religions that fit what they wanted to create their own. That's not something that I think people who actually believe what they're doing would do. So I am of the mind that I don't think that he believed any of this. I think he saw this as a means of building his congregation, building his followers, building a humongous group of people that hung on his every word, and that seems to be something that he loved. He was someone who was neglected as a child and gained a fascination with being the center of attention, giving speeches, having people hanging on his every word, but I don't think the subject matter behind what he was saying really mattered to him.

Ashley: 1:08:55

It sounds like to me thus far he believes fully in the righteousness of his socialist political views and is using religion to gain mass followers Because as a child he's going around at all of these different churches and seeing the power that the different priests and pastors have over their congregation. So I think that seed was built in him from a very young age.

Remi: 1:09:24

I believe he was passionate about his political movements, but the religious stuff, yeah. I think he was just utilizing that To maintain control over his growing congregation. Jim established a planning commission composed of his most trusted lieutenants to manage the temple's communal lifestyle. New members were required to turn over all of their assets to the church in exchange for free room and board, while members who worked outside the temple were ordered to donate the entirety of their income to help fund the community. To generate additional income, jim assigned groups of his followers to work on various projects and established an agricultural operation in Redwood Valley to grow food for temple members To enhance the group's public image, the temple also organized large-scale community outreach projects and would commonly perform volunteer work across the region.

Remi: 1:10:15

However, jim's behavior began to become increasingly paranoid and erratic and it continued to escalate after moving to California, which was only exacerbated by Jim developing a dependency on illegal drugs in order to continue functioning. In time, jim began exerting even more control over nearly every aspect of his followers' lives, including their personal relationships and sexuality. This included demanding sexual favors from both male and female members of the temple, while coercing others into getting abortions.

Ashley: 1:10:52

It wouldn't be a cult story if there wasn't some sort of sexual misconduct involved.

Remi: 1:10:58

It does seem like every cult leader ends up having sex with all of their followers. At some point it always gets to that level of abuse of power. Those who refuse these sexual interactions would often face severe consequences, such as reduced food rations, extended work schedules, public humiliation or even physical violence. With membership still growing exponentially, Jim informed an armed security force to help maintain control over his expanding legion of followers, while additionally ensuring his own protection.

Ashley: 1:11:31

Do you know anything about the background of the members that are joining at this point? I see the members that have joined at the beginning being brainwashed enough to stick in it, but the fact that people are joining now, when he is clearly tipped over the edge at this point, how are people being convinced to come and join this group?

Remi: 1:12:01

different branches of his church going on right now, and it seems like most of what's going on with the control over his followers is occurring in California. So there's still recruiting going on in other areas, but I feel like the people who are in California are the ones who have already been indoctrined and they're ready to move out and give everything to this cause.

Ashley: 1:12:18

Okay, so if people are continuing to join the California base, they're probably from his outside sex.

Remi: 1:12:26

Yes, if you're moving to California, you're at the I'm turning over all of my financial aspects. You're giving up an absurd amount of control over your life if you're taking that step into California. But there are still a lot of people that are in the other branches that are following his words, but they haven't made that leap yet. So once you move to California, those are the true diehard believers. Jim firmly believed that major cities would provide greater opportunities for recruitment and political influence, so the temple's headquarters was eventually moved to San Francisco and continued by establishing two new branches of the church in San Fernando and Los Angeles, so expanding all over the West Coast.

Remi: 1:13:07

In 1970, jim and 150 of his followers held a lively faith healing revival at San Francisco's Missionary Baptist Church, accompanied by a soulful performance from the People's Temple Choir. I feel like that song captures the mood of his type of church services. They were lively, they were fun. People were singing and dancing and shouting Praise God. It was a fun church service. So you know, you hear all of these things happening later on, but initially, coming to something like this, it would be a blast.

Ashley: 1:13:57

I think they're pretty good. That is the type of music that was played in the movie, just this upbeat, everyone's dancing and clapping and just having a great time, and it's what led the vice reporters to be like well, this seems like a great place to be.

Remi: 1:14:15

During the service, jim wowed his audience by appearing to miraculously heal a man of cancer right there on the spot, though Temple insiders later admitted that the healing was staged in order to attract new members.

Ashley: 1:14:29

Shocking.

Remi: 1:14:31

Despite this, jim's staged healing revival was a massive success, resulting in about 200 new recruits for the People's Temple. Because of this, jim continued to perform even more healing revivals across the state of California for the next several years, and here's a little clip from one of our sisters blind from her childhood.

Jim Jones & Congressman Ryan: 1:15:06

It could be hysterical blindness, whatever, we're not concerned. She was blind and could not see. Now look at my face. I'm going to hold up some fingers. You concentrate hard. I love you, the people love you. Most importantly, christ loves you. What do you see? How many fingers? Three.

Ashley: 1:15:49

Okay for those of you at home, jim Jones is on the stage and the woman he is talking to, who is supposedly blind and cured, is far, far, far away from him. So you're telling me these healing rituals were just him saying trust in God, trust in me, you're cured. He didn't touch them, he didn't like pour water on them or cast demons out of them. He was just like meh repent to me and you can see.

Remi: 1:16:06

No, not even repent. Look at me and you will see. And that is just a small clip of the video. The whole video is full of miracles. He's doing them one after the other. This isn't just a section of the sermon, this is the whole sermon. So once this lady leaves, someone else comes up and it just goes on and on like that. So all of these people are witnessing this guy just doing miracle after miracle after miracle, and it's all people who are not repenting. They're just looking at him.

Remi: 1:16:36

They're looking at his face and he's saying we love you and all of these things. I can understand why a normal person in the audience would be like, wow, this is kind of amazing and we didn't have this in our clip. But at the beginning of the service, before he starts, he has everyone in the audience stand up, hug their neighbor and give them a kiss on the cheek before he even starts to do anything, just to get up and love your neighbor for a minute. So on the surface again, I don't buy into this healing stuff at all, but if you were to, I can understand how someone would see this and be very wowed and in awe of this sort of thing.

Remi: 1:17:17

Jim additionally cultivated alliances with journalists from the San Francisco Chronicle and other media outlets in an attempt to garner positive public press.

Remi: 1:17:27

However, jim's faith healing claims began facing media scrutiny in October of 1971, after a news report exposed one of Jim's alleged miracle healing services in Indianapolis, leading to an investigation by the Indiana State Psychology Board in 1971. One doctor accused Jim Jones of quackery and challenged him to provide tissue samples of the so-called cancerous material that had supposedly been expelled by Jim's followers during some of these revivals. So I don't know if people have seen this sort of thing or not, but this was something that occurred in the 60s and 70s during healing revivals, where they would cure people of cancer and the person would literally cough up something that was supposed to be the cancer that was inside of their body, like a little chunk of something, and that would be the cancer being expelled and they were cured so a visual representation of them being cured of cancer, basically, it was later revealed by Temple Insiders that these alleged cancerous tumors had in actuality just been chicken gizzards all along.

Ashley: 1:18:37

Gross, so those people just had to hold gizzards in their mouth until they were allowed to cough them up.

Remi: 1:18:42

I think they had them in their hands and then, when the time came, they put them in their mouth and coughed them up. They had a similar scene like this in the film man on the Moon with Jim Carrey, where he's looking for alternative medicine to help cure his cancer and he goes to one of these doctors and he witnesses them faking removing cancer from his body. Temple members would also gather personal information about potential recruits through inquisitive phone calls under false pretext, giving Jim the illusion of clairvoyancy when he would later reveal these details to them during one of his services. So he would have his followers call people and say like would you like to take a survey or we're confirming your information for your bill, things like that, in order to get any information from them that they could, that he could later use Sneaky.

Remi: 1:19:34

In September of 1972, journalist Lester Consolving ran a series of articles in the San Francisco Examiner lambasting Jim's claims of divinity and exposing his miracle healings as simple parlor tricks. Despite this, by 1973, the People's Temple had surged to over 2,500 members, along with another 36,000 subscribers to the Temple's fundraising newsletter. With his temple's rapid expansion and the press now closing in around him, Jim became fearful that he may lose control over his followers, so began planning to relocate the people's temple in an effort to escape the public scrutiny and allegations he had become so synonymous with. Jim would eventually choose Guyana for this purpose, since the government was open to outside groups settling there and the country had just recently undergone a socialist revolution which aligned swimmingly with Jim's rhetoric.

Remi: 1:20:32

On December 13, 1973, Jim was arrested and charged with lewd conduct for allegedly masturbating in front of an undercover LAPD officer in a movie theater restroom near MacArthur Park. Remarkably, the charge was mysteriously dismissed only a week later, on December 20th. But the details of this dismissal remain unclear, since the court file was sealed and all records were destroyed under the judge's order. Is that a common thing? Records were destroyed under the judge's order.

Ashley: 1:21:03

Is that a common thing? The judge orders that the records be destroyed. I don't think so. It sounds like maybe the judge was a part of the people's temple in some way, or someone did some sort of bribery.

Remi: 1:21:13

I don't know if he was a part of it, but Jim did have a lot of connections, so I feel like that had to have played a factor in this connections.

Remi: 1:21:22

So I feel like that had to have played a factor in this. That same month, jim and one of his key advisors traveled to Guyana in search of land for the temple's relocation, and by the summer of 1974, supplies had been purchased, fields were cleared and a power station had been installed. By that December the first 50 settlers had arrived, while Jim Jones remained in the United States to continue his futile battle against the mounting negative press he had been receiving. By the mid-1970s, jim Jones had leveraged his growing congregation to establish strong political connections and played a key role in George Moscone's mayoral election win in 1975. Played a key role in George Moscone's mayoral election win in 1975. As a sign of gratitude, the newly appointed mayor rewarded Jim by appointing him chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission and even brought Jim along with him to a private meeting with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale, resulting in Mondale publicly praising the temple mere days before the 1976 election.

Ashley: 1:22:23

So much for separation of church and state.

Remi: 1:22:26

First Lady Rosalind Carter also met with Jim Jones multiple times during this period and even spoke at the grand opening of the People's Temple headquarters in San Francisco, where Jim received a louder ovation than she did. Finally, in March of 1977, another expose was published in New West Magazine, written by Marshall Kuldiff, which detailed accounts from former temple members describing the physical, emotional and sexual abuse they had experienced at the hands of Jim Jones. During this time, the temple controlled over $10 million in assets and, realizing that the time to flee may soon be at hand, Jim quickly began moving the temple's financial assets overseas, while selling off properties in the United States.

Ashley: 1:23:11

And none of that property that he's selling can be taxed, because religious organizations are tax-exempt.

Remi: 1:23:18

Exactly, are tax-exempt. Exactly, jim then urged his hundreds of followers to move down to Guyana to be part of a wondrous new socialist paradise free from media scrutiny, which Jim boasted as the purest communist community to have ever existed. Less than two months later, in May of 1977, jim Jones finally arrived in Guyana along with 600 of his followers to continue the development of Jim's new utopia, which he called Jonestown.

Ashley: 1:23:49

God, so he was only there for like a year.

Remi: 1:23:53

He had sent a lot of people there to set up things and, yeah, he stayed in America pulling political influence and it seems like he had almost created this as like a last resort escape type thing If things really got bad in America. He did have this set up down in Guyana. Jim even produced promotional videos for Jonestown featuring interviews with residents claiming that they would never even consider returning to America, even if given the opportunity.

Jim Jones & Congressman Ryan: 1:24:20

That's right to get myself straight. Kevin Grubbs looks after the bananas. Do you want to go back to the States, kevin? No way Can't get you to go back. What about you, vincent? You won't even be here a day. How do you feel about it? No, I wouldn't want to go back. And I see that Tommy. He looks like he's very contented. Do you want to go back? Well, you're all happy. You here, you happy, tom? Yeah, oh, that's good, david, he's doing a good job. He's in charge of the pig race.

Ashley: 1:24:45

Two observations. One he's sporting the sunglasses that Gene Jones is wearing in the movie the Sacrament. These like aviator-style glasses. He's always wearing the sunglasses. Jim Jones loves his sunglasses. Second observation is it's so manipulative that every single person he is asking in that video if they want to leave are children.

Remi: 1:25:08

Well, about 400 more settlers arrived in Jonestown following this video. In the coming months, Life in Jonestown turned out to be no picnic whatsoever, with members being required to work six days a week from 6 30 am to 6 pm, with only an hour for lunch. Luckily, by mid-1978, Jim's health had deteriorated, so his wife took on more management responsibilities, reducing the work week to just five days. During the evenings, Temple members were ordered to attend mandatory meetings in the central pavilion, where they would participate in hours upon hours of socialist teachings and activities, primarily led by Jones himself.

Remi: 1:25:53

Over time, Jim Jones and his leadership began implementing sophisticated mind control techniques inspired by communist regimes such as North Korea and Maoist China.

Remi: 1:26:03

By controlling all the information his followers received During these communal meetings, Jim would read the news and portray the United States as an evil imperialist force, while glorifying leaders like Kim Il-sung and Joseph Stalin, further reinforcing his idea that Jonestown was truly the last refuge from the corrupt and crumbling world that they had all escaped from. Jim's control and influence over his followers soon began extending even further into their personal lives by forcing every single temple member to publicly declare that they were homosexual, while Jim claimed to be the only true heterosexual amongst them. In reality, Jim Jones was bisexual and would use his unmitigated authority to regularly coerce both male and female followers into sexual relationships with him. Among those brought to Jonestown was a child named John Victor Stoen, whose birth certificate listed Timothy and Grace Stoen as his biological parents. However, Jim, who at one point had a sexual relationship with Grace, claimed that he was actually John's biological father, and when Grace left the temple in 1976, Jim ordered that the child be taken with him to Guyana to avoid a custody battle.

Ashley: 1:27:21

And the mom just let him take her kid.

Remi: 1:27:25

Yeah, he had a lot of control over these people. Even after Timothy Stone defected in 1977, jim still kept the boy and refused to let the child leave Jonestown. In response, timothy Stone and other defectors formed a group called Concerned Relatives, who were determined to free their loved ones from Jonestown, whom they claimed were being held against their will. In April of 1978, the Concerned Relatives compiled numerous documents, letters and sworn affidavits detailing the abhorrent human rights violations occurring in Jonestown.

Ashley: 1:28:02

Are any of these defectors people that were in Guyana and left?

Remi: 1:28:07

Yes, Timothy was in Guyana when he left, but it's one of those situations where he's leaving but there's hundreds of people that are still there supporting Jim Jones. Is he going to demand that the child is his in front of all of these devoted followers? It would probably be pretty intimidating, and Jim has his security force now. This information, compiled by the concerned relatives, was then mailed to the press along with members of Congress, and soon caught the attention of a California congressman named Leo Ryan. Two months later, another former Temple member named Deborah Layton had escaped Jonestown and provided her own affidavit detailing chilling new allegations of horrific abuse, control and the grim reality of Jonestown's substandard living conditions. According to Layton, Jonestown residents were deliberately undernourished and were forced to survive on a meager diet consisting of rice for breakfast, rice water soup for lunch, then rice and beans for dinner, along with a sparse serving of vegetables a few times a week, while elderly or enfeebled members received only a single egg per day.

Ashley: 1:29:19

Rice water soup. So is that just the water that the rice was cooked in?

Remi: 1:29:24

I don't know for sure, but that is what I would imagine it to be. Yeah.

Ashley: 1:29:28

So just milky-looking water.

Remi: 1:29:32

Yeah, it's not going to be very flavorful or delicious, I would imagine.

Ashley: 1:29:38

Or nutritious.

Remi: 1:29:39

No, and these people are working grueling schedules and surviving on basically just rice. Well, the residents were at least given a break on Sundays, because they were given their own egg along with a cookie. Well, jones himself typically ate heartier meals, which included meat under the pretense of needing special food for his blood sugar problems meat under the pretense of needing special food for his blood sugar problems. With the mounting accusations, this inevitably led to the US Embassy conducting two welfare checks in Jonestown, along with the IRS starting an investigation into the Temple's finances. As Jonestown's conditions worsened, jim's paranoia spiraled out of control and he became convinced that the US government was planning a raid on his commune. To prepare for this, jim began holding intense drills, which he called White Nights, to test his followers'. Loyalty and readiness.

Remi: 1:30:33

Drills would commence at random whenever residents would hear Jim's voice echoing out a jarring alert over the community's loudspeakers. Residents would hear Jim's voice echoing out a jarring alert over the community's loudspeakers. On certain occasions, jim even ordered his men to open fire on the trees from the surrounding jungle in order to simulate an attack. This would signal that all residents were required to gather in the central pavilion, surrounded by armed guards carrying rifles and crossbows, while having absolutely no idea if the drill was real or not.

Remi: 1:31:01

One of the most intense drills lasted for nearly a week in September of 1977 and became known as the Six Day Siege, during which followers were confined to the pavilion, deprived of sleep and forced to endure endless hours of Jim's frenzied speeches. By 1978, the white knight drills had become even more extreme, with Jim Jones announcing that he would be distributing poison for everyone to drink. Fruit Punch was then served, as the crowd sat in silence, weeping and waiting to die. After being made to wait an excruciatingly long time in terrified anticipation, jim finally revealed that there was no poison and it had just been a test.

Ashley: 1:31:44

They don't show this in the sacrament because it's just the last 24 to 48 hours, but in his final speech he does say like drink just as we rehearsed. So it's kind of alluding to that they've already done these sort of drills.

Remi: 1:31:59

That was going to be something I knocked the film for, but okay, that's good to know.

Ashley: 1:32:03

It's very, very quick, but he does say that.

Remi: 1:32:06

Through these white knight drills, jim was able to convince his followers that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies were actively plotting against him, while conditioning them to view suicide as their only escape.

Ashley: 1:32:19

God, life on this compound was far darker than I ever knew.

Remi: 1:32:24

I could not imagine the misery and fear that these people were living in. And you're there. I'm sure a lot of them were probably thinking there's no way out, like there's armed guards everywhere, I don't have a plane, he has all of my belongings and I'm in another country. Like, even if you wanted to leave at this point, you couldn't.

Ashley: 1:32:43

Yeah, I mean, I understand how they think that there's no way out for them Because, in all honesty, for most of them there wasn't.

Remi: 1:32:51

On at least two occasions, residents reached a revolutionary suicide vote in the pavilion where the entire community rehearsed their mass suicide. To ensure his influence remained inescapable, jim Jones had his sermons, rants, political ideology and fear-driven propaganda played on an endless loop through the loudspeakers across the commune, keeping the residents of Jonestown in a constant state of psychological manipulation the residents of Jonestown in a constant state of psychological manipulation, and that is literally torture.

Ashley: 1:33:24

That's one of the methods that have been used in war. Torture is just playing something on a loop, non-stop.

Remi: 1:33:31

Punishments for disobedience were severe, with some members being locked inside a coffin-shaped box and buried several feet underground, while being verbally abused and berated by the other temple members for disloyalty. The majority of Jonestown's population primarily consisted of minors and the elderly, but due to scarce health care, minimal education and dwindling food rations, the situation had become dire and the entire community was suffering the consequences. Jim Jones himself was also deteriorating as his drug abuse escalated and his physical condition worsened. Jim suffered from convulsions, partial blindness and a grotesque swelling in his extremities, which Jim then treated using a cacophony of drugs that included Valium, quaaludes, stimulants and Barbiturates, causing Jim's weight to decrease dramatically.

Remi: 1:34:25

The situation inevitably reached its boiling point in November of 1978, when California Congressman Leo Ryan organized a fact-finding mission to Guyana to further investigate the growing number of reported human rights violations occurring in Jonestown. Ryan was joined by relatives of Temple members, along with an NBC camera crew and reporters from several newspapers. On November 15th the group arrived in Guyana's capital and on November 17th they were flown directly into the heart of Jonestown. Realizing that barring the congressman would only validate Ryan's suspicions that Jones was hiding something, jim decided to host a welcoming reception for Ryan's delegation in the Central Pavilion veiled under the facade of normalcy, with Jim's followers playing along by presenting Jones Town as a blissful paradise.

Ashley: 1:35:17

And that's how it is depicted in the movie. The gathering is viewed as this event they host all of the time, and so it's not unusual that it's going on this night.

Remi: 1:35:29

Well, during the event, one temple member named Vernon Gosney managed to covertly slip a note to NBC reporter Don Harris, which was then given to Congressman Ryan. The note read Dear Congressman Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, please help us get out of Jonestown. A nearby child happened to witness Gosney's act and quickly alerted other Temple members. Until he had received this note, the congressman had no reason to suspect that anyone in Jonestown were being held against their will. Here's a short clip of Congressman Ryan confronting Jim Jones with this new information and the note he had just received.

Jim Jones & Congressman Ryan: 1:36:12

He's the one that I'm just talking about. Yeah, this is the man. I want to leave his son here. Doesn't it concern you, though, that this man, for whatever reason, one of the people in your group? People play games, friend. They lie, they lie. What can I do about lies? You people are going leave us. I just beg you, please leave us, bill. We won't bother nobody. Anybody wants. Please leave us, bill, we will bother nobody. Anybody who wants to get out of here can get out of here. We have no problem about getting out of here. They come and go all the time. I don't know what kind of game People like publicity, some people do, I don't. Some people like publicity, but if it's so damn bad, why is he leaving his son here?

Ashley: 1:37:07

Can you?

Remi: 1:37:07

give me a good man. I don't want to victim blame here, but confronting him with that note was a big mistake. A lot of the discussion boards that I was reading online about this were going over this exact thing. Why would you directly confront him like this? And you can can tell by the interview he's frazzled, it's caught him off guard and I think the congressman wasn't in fear for his life at all and that's the only reason that he would do something like this.

Ashley: 1:37:31

He came in here with eight other people, two camera crews and as a congressman, so he probably assumed that I am here to find facts and this is a fact. And if I can catch this guy on camera admitting to something or seeming guilty to something, that's going to bolster his evidence that he can then bring back to the United States to elicit some sort of emergent response.

Remi: 1:37:57

And he had absolutely no reason to believe the tragic, insane series of events which is about to follow were going to occur.

Ashley: 1:38:08

Yeah, that's something no one would predict.

Remi: 1:38:11

The following afternoon, on November 18th 1978, ryan and his delegation, along with 15 additional Temple members who had expressed their desire to leave Jonestown prepared for their departure. Whispers of defection had spread quickly throughout the community and as tensions continued to rise, a temple member named Don Sly unsuccessfully attempted to attack Ryan with a knife before being thwarted. Though Jim Jones initially made no attempt to stop the defectors from leaving, internally, jim's rage was quietly spiraling out of control. In an effort to calm the community, jim's wife, marceline, broadcasted a message over the settlement's loudspeakers, claiming that everything was fine and urged residents to return to their homes immediately. Fine, and urged residents to return to their homes immediately. Congressman Ryan wanted the entire group to fly out together, fearing retribution for anyone left behind, but that would require a second plane, which delayed their departure.

Ashley: 1:39:12

So this is kind of like the scene in the sacrament when Jake is basically telling Sam like we can't save these people, we have to get out. And Sam just cannot bring himself to leave Savannah behind. So why he sends Jake to go to the plane and to radio him back? He just cannot bring himself to leave this little girl who has scars on her neck, doesn't speak and a mother begging him to take her. So he opts to stay behind to try to rescue her, because he knows if they leave, who knows what's going to happen to these people that have now publicly vocalized their dissent?

Remi: 1:39:49

Which is completely understandable. You know that if you were to leave anyone behind, even if it's for like an hour or two, those people are not leaving, and I think the congressman was trying to save as many people as he could on this initial visit, knowing, or at least hoping, that there would be more to come. Little did they know that behind the scenes, jim's final plan had already been set in motion, with Jim's aides preparing a large metal tub filled with a lethal concoction of diphenhydramine. Large metal tub filled with a lethal concoction of diphenhydramine, promethazine, chloropromazine chloroquine, chlorohydrate, diazepam, cyanide and grape flavor aid.

Ashley: 1:40:32

That's basically a mix of a shit ton of sedatives, poison and flavored water.

Remi: 1:40:37

As Ryan and his delegation began boarding two planes at the Port Ketayuma airstrip in preparation for their departure, jonestown's armed security force, known as the Red Brigade, arrived on the scene in a dump truck heavily armed and, without warning, opened fire on the first plane, while one of the supposed defectors inside the second plane, named Larry Layton, pulled out his own concealed gun and began shooting at the passengers. Congressman Ryan, along with NBC journalist Don Harris, cameraman Bob Brown, san Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and Temple member Patricia Parks, all lost their lives during the brutal ambush. Miraculously, some did survive the attack, including a member of Ryan's staff named Jackie Speer, deputy chief of mission Richard Dwyer, nbc producer Bob Flick, sound engineer Steve Sung, as well as reporters Tim Reiterman, ron Javers and Charles Krause. Several defectors also managed to escape by fleeing for their lives into the surrounding jungle.

Ashley: 1:41:44

And so there were some people on the plane that did make it out.

Remi: 1:41:48

Only one person on the plane died. Surprisingly, everyone else fleed for their lives. There's several different accounts of where people hid. One man hid in a ditch for like over a day. People ran into the jungle and there is no account of what happened to them. They literally just fleed for their lives and no one knows what happened from there. It was a situation of just run or die.

Remi: 1:42:13

Back in Jonestown, Jim Jones received word that his guards had failed and some of Ryan's group had survived the ambush. Word that his guards had failed and some of Ryan's group had survived the ambush, Fearing that the US government would soon send the military to seize Jonestown in retaliation. Jim gathered his followers in the Central Pavilion that evening and informed them that the congressman was now dead. Jim continued by warning his followers that the US military would inevitably lay siege on their community with intentions of slaughtering every last member, and the only way to escape this horrific fate was to initiate Jim's plan of revolutionary suicide. Most disturbingly, a 44-minute audio recording of the event was later discovered, offering a glimpse into Jonestown's terrifying final moments, which can easily be found online in its entirety and is most commonly known as the Jonestown Death Tape.

Jim Jones & Congressman Ryan: 1:43:10

Please, for God's sakes, let's get on with it. We've lived. We've lived as no other people have lived and loved. We've had as much of this world as you're going to get. Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it. It's far, far harder to have to watch you every day die slowly, and from the time you're a child to the time you get gray, you're dying. It's honest and I'm sure that they'll pay for it. They'll pay for it. This pay for it. This is a revolutionary suicide. This is not a self-destructive suicide, so they'll pay for this. They brought this upon us and they'll pay for that.

Ashley: 1:43:50

I leave that destiny to them again two observations of this clip three I. The first is this is incredibly disturbing that this was going on for fucking 45 minutes. Second, how big of him to say he's not drinking this juice because he wants to stay behind and make sure everyone gets to where they need to go and the government can just do as they wish with him.

Remi: 1:44:18

I listened to a good portion of this video and it is extremely disturbing If you want to hear it. It is out there. It is even on the Wikipedia page for Jonestown. But something that I found really unsettling was the cries of the children that you hear in the background throughout all of it, and there's also portions where the audience does speak.

Remi: 1:44:40

They talk about what should we do? Should we commit this act? Should we do something else? The congressman is dead. They have an open discussion about this for quite some time and, in the end, this is the choice that they all came to.

Ashley: 1:44:55

The other observation I have is he sounds so frenzied in this, whereas in the sacrament, when James Jones is urging his followers to drink the juice, he's very, very calm and just saying like this is the most humane way to go. This isn't suicide, we are just sacrificing ourselves. It'll be, painless, whereas here James Jones is basically saying drink it as fast as he can with some sort of weird lisp he's acquired.

Remi: 1:45:24

I firmly believe that Jim Jones was on a lot of pharmaceutical drugs when this occurred. You can tell he's kind of slurring his speech in this clip and in the earlier clip with the congressman he wasn't. So my assumption is he knew this was coming so he just loaded up. So my assumption is he knew this was coming so he just loaded up on all the pills he had and then went out to his congregation. Jim Jones had previously instructed his medical team to research alternative ways to exterminate the population of Jonestown, since there wouldn't be enough bullets to kill everyone. Jonestown doctor Larry Scheidt was the man who first suggested sodium cyanide for this purpose, and since 1976, the temple had been receiving regular shipments of cyanide acquired through a jeweler's license obtained under the pretense of using the substance to clean gold.

Ashley: 1:46:16

Jesus, so he was planning this for a really long time gold Jesus.

Remi: 1:46:23

So he was planning this for a really long time At least two years, yeah. Then, in May of 1978, dr Scheidt even suggested testing the cyanide on a large pig in order to gauge the poison's effectiveness. Though it is unknown if this test actually occurred or not, a paper trail was later uncovered revealing that Dr Scheidt had ordered one pound of sodium cyanide from the chemical company in California that same year, which is roughly enough poison to kill 1,800 people. On the night in question, jones's aides carried a large metal vat containing a dark purple liquid that had been prepared by Dr Scheidt into the pavilion, as a line of guards armed with crossbows circled the pavilion, surrounded by another ring of guards carrying guns.

Ashley: 1:47:07

I have a question Is there any evidence that Larry Scheidt felt guilt or remorse for helping to orchestrate this? And I ask this because in the movie, when Jake is wandering around trying to find Sam, he does go into the infirmary where he finds Wendy the nurse who is clearly this Larry Scheidt character dead in the bed with a note that she had written and dropped before she died that said God, please forgive me.

Remi: 1:47:36

As far as I could find. No, this was this doctor's idea. He performed tests. He ordered it. He was basically the person that came up with this entire thing, because Jim Jones asked his team to think of quote-unquote creative ways to exterminate the entire community, because they couldn't use bullets. Because they couldn't use bullets, mothers were then instructed to bring their babies forward, under Joan's directive that the children would be the first killed. Infants were then fed the poison through syringes, and those who refused had their children taken by force. The grape-flavored cyanide was then distributed to the community, with anyone who refused being forcibly injected with the deadly poison. In the ensuing moments, parents watched helplessly as their children began to scream out in agony from the effects of the painful toxin, then, one by one, fell silent, only to be joined moments later by their mourning parents.

Ashley: 1:48:35

That is so manipulative having the parents do this to the kids first, because how are you going to change your mind?

Remi: 1:48:42

I think that was by design. He had been thinking about this for two years and I think that he knew that if he started with the children, the parents would feel that they didn't have a reason to stay. As the population of Jonestown steadily dwindled, the guards themselves were ordered to imbibe the poison as well and obediently followed suit, along with the rest of the community. As fear and panic ran rampant, jim Jones looked on callously as his loyal followers slowly died off in anguish, suffering and screaming all around him, until Jones himself finally placed the barrel of a .38 Smith Wesson to his right temple and pulled the trigger.

Ashley: 1:49:23

His decision to kill himself in this way just further highlights how much of a coward this man is. He's making his entire congregation watch on as their kids and loved ones die, and in an incredibly painful, painful way, and he takes the easy way out.

Remi: 1:49:43

I had to research the effects of cyanide for this episode and I think a lot of people think that it's a quick death, like you pop a pill and you're dead a minute later. It is not. It is a slow, painful, agonizing death, and I could not imagine just the atmosphere going on at this time. It would have just been filled with screams. And the fact that this coward watched all of this and then chose the easy way out after all of this is just so despicable. In the end, a total of 909 people tragically lost their lives that day, including 276 children, making Jonestown the single greatest loss of American civilian life until the September 11th attacks in 2001.

Ashley: 1:50:34

909 people. That is insane.

Remi: 1:50:38

It is a staggering number. I was shocked when I first read that number. I knew it was a lot of people. I did not realize that it was almost a thousand people In the movie it's 167. You could not get 900 extras and that's, in my opinion, why they showed it at that level, in my opinion, why they showed it at that level. 167 is still horrific, but 909 is something that I can't even fathom.

Remi: 1:51:07

85 members of the People's Temple did manage to survive the ordeal by escaping into the jungle as the horror unfolded, Jim Jones's three sons, Jim Jr, Stephen and Tim Jones, also survived, since they had been in Georgetown with the People's Temple basketball team during the time of the poisoning.

Remi: 1:51:26

When the brothers heard what was occurring back in Jonestown, they immediately drove to the US Embassy to alert authorities, only to be turned away by Guyanese soldiers who had just learned of the initial airstrip shootings. So they were already focusing on the congressmen that they didn't even have time to start looking into this other thing that was occurring. By the time the Guyanese military finally arrived in Jonestown, they were greeted by hundreds upon hundreds of lifeless bodies lying scattered across the vast commune landscape. Jim Jones was discovered with a single gunshot wound to the head in the central pavilion, with his official cause of death confirmed to be suicide. During the fallout, the US military organized an airlift to recover the multitude of corpses and return their remains to the United States. Meanwhile, Jim Jones's three surviving sons, Tim Stephen and Jim Jr, were all placed under strict house arrest and interrogated for five days.

Ashley: 1:52:26

What happened to his other kids, because he had like six, seven of them, so were they all here.

Remi: 1:52:31

From the documentary that I watched on this. He has four children that survived this. So these are three brothers, and there's one other one that survived this. So these are three brothers and there's one other one that survived this.

Ashley: 1:52:41

What about the? I can't remember his name. The kid that was left on his own that he said was his, but probably wasn't.

Remi: 1:52:50

He was not listed amongst the survivors.

Ashley: 1:52:54

That is so interesting to me because it sounds like most of them were not at Jonestown when this went down. So I wonder if that was part of the plan, if he had them out of the commune when he knew Congressman Ryan was coming, or if it was just a coincidence. Part of me really really thinks that he purposefully made it so they were away in case this plan wasn't acted so they were away in case this plan was enacted.

Remi: 1:53:26

Part of me does think that it is very weird and coincidental that his sons were away during this time, because I do think that this plan was a last resort for Jim Jones. I don't think this was something he was planning on doing when the congressman came. I think this was something that he enacted because things had gone so badly and the congressman was dead and news of what was going on there was inevitably going to get out. So he enacted this. But I have to believe that in the back of his mind he thought, if things go sour, it would be better if my three sons were away playing basketball rather than here during this.

Ashley: 1:53:59

That's what I think. I don't think when the congressman landed, jim Jones thought it's going to end this way, but I do think in the back of his mind he knew there was a possibility of things not going his way and if that was the case things were going to end badly for him, the congressman and everyone in Jonestown at the time.

Remi: 1:54:22

Jim's son, tim, and another Temple basketball player named Johnny Cobb were taken back to Jonestown in order to assist in identifying the bodies. Stephen, jim's only biological son, on the other hand, he was accused of being involved in the deaths and was subsequently imprisoned in Guyana for three months, while Jim Jones Jr returned to the US under police surveillance for several months until eventually moving in with his older sister, suzanne, who had already distanced herself from the temple long before the massacre. So that's the fourth one.

Ashley: 1:54:55

It really sucks for those kids, but there's no way the government can just be like all right bye. They would be under such intense questioning. There's no way you would think that they had no idea that their dad was going to do something this terrible.

Remi: 1:55:11

And I don't go into detail on this because it's already a very long episode, but Stephen, his biological son, probably did some of the most helpful work after this event took place. He took it upon himself to help survivors return to life. He worked with anyone who had been a part of the temple to help them reintegrate into society. He literally spent the rest of his life trying to make right the horrific thing that his father did. So Stephen is a good man. I will say that.

Ashley: 1:55:46

I can't imagine being any of these surviving kids. Your whole life is shadowed by what your father did.

Remi: 1:55:55

While searching through the chilling ruins of Jonestown, federal investigators happened upon the last will and testament of Jim Jones' wife Marceline, containing a directive to transfer any remaining temple assets to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was later uncovered that the majority of the temple's money had been held in foreign bank accounts and had already been electronically transferred before the massacre, including $7.3 million into Soviet accounts, which is the equivalent of $35 million today when adjusted for inflation. Soon news of the horrific event inevitably reached the media and became commonly referred to as the Jonestown Massacre. Concurrently, christian leaders across America were quick to distance themselves from Jim Jones by denouncing him as satanic and asserting that his ideology had absolutely no connection to traditional Christianity.

Ashley: 1:56:52

How convenient.

Remi: 1:56:54

There's a lot of public figures that were scrambling to cover their asses. After this came out, a lot of people had publicly endorsed Jim Jones and this church, and it was a very bad look for a lot of people. Even the Disciples of Christ, which had previously ordained Jones as a minister, started implementing stricter ethical guidelines and created a new process to remove ministers in an effort to prevent another situation like Jonestown from ever happening. So, tightening those rules a little bit, maybe we shouldn't just allow anybody to be an ordained minister just willy-nilly. Numerous political figures who had once supported Jones and spoken highly of him and his work in the past found themselves in quite the pickle and scrambling for explanations. Some admitted that they had been deceived, only to realize too late the extent of Jones's manipulation.

Remi: 1:57:49

The Jonestown Massacre exposed many deep flaws in how cults were being monitored. After it was uncovered that authorities had received numerous warnings and tips regarding the dangers of the People's Temple, yet no official investigation was conducted until the incident had already occurred. Although the People's Temple was now only a memory, there were still some individuals who continued to follow the teachings of Jim Jones well into the 1980s. Many survivors struggled to reintegrate into society and refused to speak publicly about the incident for decades, due to the public stigma surrounding Jonestown. Others, including Jim's biological son, stephen, spent years rebuilding the remnants of their tattered lives, while assisting other survivors in the process and sharing their own experiences of Jonestown through interviews and various forms of media.

Ashley: 1:58:38

I think both of these reactions are completely understandable. You have the one type of person who is thinking I want to share my experience to make sure this doesn't happen again. And you have the other person who just wants it all to go away and not to have to constantly relive their trauma.

Remi: 1:58:58

And both sides are equally understandable, and the documentary which I watched about this. The majority of the interviews in the film are from survivors who are speaking of their personal experiences.

Ashley: 1:59:10

And we'll have that documentary listed in the episode notes if you are interested in watching.

Remi: 1:59:17

Today, the infamy of Jonestown lives on in the form of various documentaries, films, books, music, art and even this very podcast. Possibly the most disturbing impact on society has been the addition of the phrase drinking the Kool-Aid as a term symbolizing blind obedience, despite the fact that Flavor-Aid had actually been the beverage consumed by the residents of Jonestown, and that was the true story of Ty West's the Sacrament. What do you think, Ashley?

Ashley: 1:59:49

Wow, I am kind of speechless over here. I obviously knew that everything that happened at Jonestown was horrific and that it wasn't this lovely, peaceful community of happy residents frolicking in daisies and living life at its fullest. There's no way it would have ended like this if that's the case, but I did not know or realize how scary and horrible it was for everyone that lived there from the second they got there horrible it was for everyone that lived there from the second they got there.

Remi: 2:00:24

I could not imagine the fear that the residents of Jonestown were living in even before this night where everything happened the drills that they were forced to go into, the manual labor, the shortages of food and punishments. You were given even less food and you already weren't being fed, and I just would be in constant anxiety. I would be constantly having panic attacks. This would be the most stressful, horrific situation to find yourself in and, to make it worse, you are in another country and you're stuck. There's nothing you can do about it, so you're just subjected to this madman's lunacy on a loop for years. There's no way it wouldn't affect you.

Ashley: 2:01:07

And a madman who, when you first met him, didn't seem like a madman. He seemed like someone that started with these ideas. That seemed admirable Equal treatment for everyone, anti-racism.

Remi: 2:01:23

Those were admirable ideas. His concepts of desegregation and stuff those were really beneficial concepts to be introducing to society.

Ashley: 2:01:33

The other aspect of this that shocked me was just the intense preparations and planning that he took. I don't know why that shocked me, because to pull off something like this, to have 909 people die by drinking this punch, that's obviously not something you can throw together on the fly and implement. But the amount of work he did and consultation that he did with people that were there, that were his trusted colleagues and probably esteemed members of this community, is just so tragic.

Remi: 2:02:09

I think that Jim Jones knew that the end was gonna come. I don't think he knew when, I don't think he knew that this situation with the congressman was gonna end how it did, but I think he knew from when he sent everyone to Jonestown and he stayed in America to keep navigating things over there. Things got worse for him. The government was cracking down on him. He was under more and more investigation. The IRS was looking into his funds. He knew that this was not going to last much longer and I think because of that, those couple of years where Jonestown was set up and he stayed in America, he knew that when he went down there Jonestown was the last resort and that's his last stand. And I think he knew that going in. But nobody else did.

Ashley: 2:02:57

This also makes me have a really weird idea, but I feel like somewhere in the schooling that we get in the United States, something like this should be included, because there has been so many cults that have popped up and ended badly, and I feel like this is just such a good example of why people should be hesitant and question when certain leaders try to get this all-encompassing authority and loyalty.

Remi: 2:03:33

My opinion is nobody should ever put 100% of their faith and trust into one person. Nobody is infallible. Everyone has their secrets, Everyone has their side that they're not showing people. And Jonestown is really the cult story. If you think of cults, you think of Jonestown, you think of Jim Jones and all of the cults that we've watched documentaries of for years and years now. They all have a very similar pattern as Jones Town, maybe with a far less extreme ending, but they all start off as this one man having this cause. That seems like a good cause, seems like something that people can get behind. And just as time progresses it becomes darker and darker and darker, and by that time the people have been there so long they've given over everything. There's no turning back. It's horrific. I couldn't imagine being in such a situation.

Ashley: 2:04:32

Well, I for one am very glad we opted to do this episode. We questioned whether we were going to do it for two reasons. One, the movie is just so unknown. And the second, we thought, well, everyone has already heard about Jonestown, so hopefully, by listening to this, it does two things. It interests you in watching the Sacrament because it actually is a very, very good movie. It's well shot, well acted, well directed, and we hope that we provided you with some new information about Jonestown.

Remi: 2:05:01

And I have to say I do wish that Ty West got the opportunity to make that miniseries Based on the description of the film you gave and the clips that you showed me. This movie is way closer to reality than I would have expected. But we'll hold off on that for the time being, until our verdict. But for now let's jump into our objection of the week. Your Honor, I object. And why is that, mr Reed?

Jim Jones & Congressman Ryan: 2:05:30

Because it's devastating, to my case, overruled, good call.

Ashley: 2:05:34

And as a quick reminder, our objection of the week is the most unnecessary change from the true life to the movie adaptation, not necessarily the biggest Remy. Why don't you kick us off with your objection?

Remi: 2:05:48

All right, this one was harder than I expected. I know it's a pretty short film and it's a long story and a lot of the changes made were big changes and a lot of the changes made were big changes. So it would go against the spirit of this section of the podcast if we went with like Vice News or something like that. So what I went with was the fact that nobody set themselves on fire. No point at Jonestown was there any person that set themselves on fire. There was no fires. That part was unnecessary. I can understand it was done for dramatic purposes but yeah, nobody ever set themselves on fire in Jonestown.

Ashley: 2:06:28

The one I'm going to go with is that in the movie Father didn't have a wife. I think it actually would have been much more interesting if Ty West would have included that there was a wife, but shown Caroline showing the crew around and then going to father at the late night scene when she's intoxicated and it's clearly alluded that she's being called for a sexual reason.

Remi: 2:06:53

I agree with you. You got my vote on this one. Poor Marceline, she was there the whole time being horrifically, mentally and emotionally manipulated, and physically at times, I'm sure, being at Jonestown. So, yeah, I agree. I think that adding her to the film would have been very easy and I think it would have added more to the character, knowing that he had a wife there that was following along with him.

Ashley: 2:07:18

Yay, I'm so glad. Usually you've been killing it this season with the objections. No, that was a good one.

Remi: 2:07:24

But now let's go into the main part of our podcast, our verdict.

Narrator : 2:07:31

At the conclusion of each episode, our hosts will deliver a verdict based on the film's accuracy. If the film is an honest portrayal of the events, then it will earn a not guilty verdict. If the film is an honest portrayal of the events, then it will earn a not guilty verdict. If the adaptation is mostly factual but creative liberties were taken for the sake of entertainment, the film will be declared a mistrial. But if the film ultimately strays too far from the truth, then it will be condemned as guilty and sentenced to a life behind bars.

Remi: 2:07:59

Since I started things last time, I'm going to let you start things this time, Ashley. So what do you think?

Ashley: 2:08:06

Before I say my verdict, I just want to preface this by saying the movie is depicting the last 24 to 48 hours of the people at Jonestown. So, because of that, our verdict is going to be based on the last 24 to 48 hours of the people at Jonestown. And I am shocked to say this. I was convinced that when we started this just because it was a horror movie from 2013 that made so little money that no one had ever heard of that it was no doubt going to be guilty, but my verdict is mistrial. I am very surprised with how much, especially because it was advertised that this movie was loosely inspired by the Jonestown Massacre. I don't think this movie was loosely inspired by the Jonestown Massacre. I think this movie was based on the Jonestown Massacre.

Ashley: 2:08:58

There are so many similarities from just the timeline of it. All these outsiders came, they were introduced to this community that, on its face, seemed like a lovely place for people to live. They get slipped a note and then the curtains start falling and the leader is scrambling to prevent the American government from learning what is going on. Has everyone drink juice, shoots himself in the head and the big differences. I see that Ty West took a lot of them are obviously because of budgetary reasons. He couldn't have 909 extras so he scaled it down to 160. He couldn't have the news affiliate that went in to this place be NBC, so he picked Vice News.

Ashley: 2:09:52

Even putting those aside, it probably would have gotten a not guilty verdict from me. But the whole reason why the reporters go to Jonestown in the first place aren't because a congressman is like investigating human rights violations. It's this guy who's like is my sister okay? And then I think the other reason why it gets a mistrial for me versus a not guilty is just really how the Jim Jones character is portrayed in the Sacrament. He is a much more calm, soothing presence than Jim Jones obviously was at the time and that was by design. That's how Gene Jones wanted to play him and he achieved his goal. For all those reasons I am going to say Mistrial, but with the caveat that this movie was surprisingly close to getting a not guilty verdict for me.

Remi: 2:10:42

And I am right there with you. Surprisingly, I went into this with a guilty verdict and after hearing you talk about the events again, we're only focusing on those two days, because that is what the film focused on. I was shocked at how many little things that it actually carried over, from Jim Jones's suicide to the note to the massacre occurring on the second day. There was a lot of stuff that was lining up way more than I would have imagined, especially after watching the trailer. Again, I haven't't seen this movie, but it seems to have lined up in a lot of different areas. The framework is there, and that is my definition for a mistrial. The framework is there. That is the actual story, surprisingly, but because they updated it, making it modern day, making it vice, not including a congressman, the ending with the woman setting herself on fire, things like that kind of go into crazy town, in my opinion, and not as on point.

Ashley: 2:11:50

And even the things like in the movie there's only one dissenter and he is quickly shot down. Versus in real life it was more of a conversation.

Remi: 2:11:59

But that's time constraints too. I firmly believe that if ty west was given the opportunity to turn this into a mini-series, actually basing it fully on jim jones, he would have done a really good job. Surprisingly, I'm amazed I'm even saying that like this was a horror movie found footage thing and I definitely went into this thinking this is just going to be a cheesy horror. There's no way. But they actually aligned a lot of the details.

Ashley: 2:12:30

In all the interviews with him he does stress that he was very fascinated by Jim Jones and cults and that that's why he chose this as his first grounded in reality movie, and I think his interest and research into Jonestown really shines.

Remi: 2:12:50

You can definitely tell that this is someone that has actually researched the real events and that the real events played a heavy, heavy, heavy influence on this story that he created, and my hat's off to him for the scenes I saw of the dialogue.

Remi: 2:13:07

It all seemed very in line with the type of sermons Jim Jones would have been saying and the mood. I know. It's far less people. It would have been hundreds of people as opposed to less than 200 in the film, but from the clips I saw the atmosphere of the landscape with the loudspeakers and it just captured what in my head, I thought Jonestown would have felt like, and that in and of itself is very, very admirable, especially for a found footage horror movie like this that's produced by Eli Roth. They definitely were not going for accuracy, but I think the director included it just because it was something he was interested in and I think if he was given that opportunity to do the full story he would have done a great job. So, yeah, surprisingly, mistrial all around on this one. After giving Gucci a guilty verdict last week, this movie gets a mistrial. I'm fucking flabbergasted, ashley.

Ashley: 2:14:06

Well, with that, hats off to you, ty West, remy, what do we have coming next week?

Remi: 2:14:12

We will be discussing Aileen Wuornos and the film Monster.

Ashley: 2:14:18

Yes, we are doing our single serial killer episode of the season and we elected the most infamous, well-known female serial killers, Eileen Wuornos.

Remi: 2:14:32

I've only seen this movie once in theaters, when it came out many, many years ago. I love Charlize Theron, I love Christina Ricci and I am really looking forward to revisiting this.

Ashley: 2:14:45

And stay tuned at the end of this episode for a sneak peek of the trailer. But before we depart, thank you very much for listening. Please remember to like, comment, subscribe and we will see you all next week for Monster.

Remi: 2:15:02

And until next time everybody court is adjourned. So where?

Narrator : 2:15:07

are you headed? Put the cigarette out. You don't know me.

Monster Trailer: 2:15:13

Why is the thing so horrible? You can't even imagine it. It's usually a lot easier than you think. Shelby that garble you to a dick, right? No, I know what I'm doing and you're never gonna understand it, all right, so you gotta trust me. You never really know until you're the one standing there. You think nobody ever talked dirty to you before. I just like to settle first you know Me. Who killed that man? What do you think?

Monster Trailer: 2:15:42

You can't kill people, says who People kill each other every day. I think that all these people just didn't know yet who I was going to be, but one day they'd all see.