Ti West, Jonestown, and the Big Lie

Article Provided by Steamshovel Press (http://www.steamshovel.press)

By Ryan Carey

Does a statute of limitations exist on how long Hollywood can exploit a tragedy? Or continue to shill for the corporate/government (it’s not as if the two can be said to be “separate” entities at their top levels anymore) power structure in terms of promulgating a carefully-manufactured cover story?

Apparently, the answer to both questions is “no,” since wunderkind (nominally) “indie” horror director Ti West — a guy whose two most recent efforts, The House Of The Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011) established his reputation as a unique new voice in genre cinema — has opted to re-visit the Jonestown massacre for his latest effort, The Sacrament, which was released in a limited theatrical run earlier in 2014 and is now available on Netflix and various other home-viewing platforms. And while there is a certain amount of technical and artistic competence in West’s new film that’s worthy of admiration, especially in terms of some of the performances given, one has to think that the researchers who spent so many years debunking the official “Company line” (yes, that C is meant to be capitalized as there’s no doubt which “Company” we’re talking about here) in regards to the massacre at Matthew’s Ridge, Guyana — folks like the late, great Mae Brussell and John Judge — would be shaking their heads in disbelief if they could see this thing.

I’m taking it as given that most Steamshovel readers are already well familiar with alternate(and more accurate) theories as to what Jonestown was all about , and that most, if not everyone, reading this has already read, or is in some way, shape, or form acquainted with the contents of, The Black Hole Of Guyana, Judge’s seminal essay exposing CIA ties with the principal “players” and financiers of what amounted to Jim Jones’ slave labor concentration camp, so there’s no need to preach to the converted, as it were. My question is whether or not Ti West came across either the work of Judge, Brussell, Michael Meriers, or anyone else when researching his script, and if so, why he chose to completely blow it off.

It’s frankly nearly impossible to believe that he never encountered any non-mainstream-media-approved “takes” on what happened there, given that the most rudimentary Google search for Jonestown drags up numerous so-called “conspiracy theories” instantly. In fact, one could argue that Jonestown is one of the most written-about topics in the entire parapolitical milieu, trailing only the JFK assassination, the moon landings, and 9/11 in the amount of digital “ink” spilled on it. In short, it would take either the biggest set of blinders anyone’s ever worn, or blatantly willful neglect, for West to either not stumble upon, or to deliberately ignore, the wealth of material that’s out there at the touch of a button. My money is on the latter.

Does a statute of limitations exist on how long Hollywood can exploit a tragedy?

It’s also worth pointing out that West is hardly alone when it comes to filmmakers milking Jonestown for a buck — notorious Mexican exploitation director Rene Cardona Jr. was first out of the gate, more or less directly on the heels of the incident itself, with 1979’s Guyana : Crime Of The Century, which also saw release under the equally verbose title of Guyana : Cult Of The Damned. Cardona had cashed in on tragedy before with his 1976 effort Survive!, which was the first film based on the 1972 Uruguayan rugby team’s plane crash in the Andes mountains and their ensuing struggle against the elements (Tinseltown later put their sheen of “respectability” on these events a couple of decades later with the critically-lauded Alive), but primarily his career was built on the ability to glom onto ideas that were rolling around in the larger cultural zeitgeist of the time and crank out low-budget semi-thrillers based on them. 1977’s Tintorera : Killer Shark, a blatant and largely ineffective Jaws rip-off, and 1978’s dull, plodding The Bermuda Triangle are prime examples of the sort of thing he was known for.

He was also known for blowing most of his meager budgets on one or two semi-big-name stars, usually folks who were well into the twilight of their careers, in the hopes that having a formerly-bankable box office draw on board would give his “quickie” projects both a better chance at turning a profit, and a greater level of gravitas. That was probably just dreaming on his part, though — having John Huston’s name atop the posters for The Bermuda Triangle didn’t save it from getting a well-deserved critical lashing, and the presence of a slumming Joseph Cotten and Yvonne De Carlo (TV’s Lily Munster) didn’t do much to buttress the overwhelmingly negative press reaction that Guyana : Crime Of The Century/Cult Of The Damned received, either.

You can’t make a silk purse out a sow’s ear no matter how hard you try, it seems, and Cardona’s Jonestown flick is definitely sow’s ear-level stuff all the way. Some Hollywood-style melodrama is injected into the proceedings by having some of the “campers” begin to openly resist their leader’s increasingly fanatical whims, but by and large it’s a rote re-telling of the already-heavily-ficitionalized version of events that played out on the evening newscasts circa ’78 and ‘79. About the only thing it has going for it is the performance of Stuart Whitman as Jones stand-in james Johnson (his “commune” thus bearing the requisite name of Johnsontown), but even that’s not enough to save this tasteless affair from its own “let’s get this in the can ASAP before the public has moved on” trappings. Whitman oozes a kind of controlled sleazy megalomaniacal menace that probably isn’t too far off the mark, but it would be a real reach to say that the film is worth watching for him alone.

A less-exploitive take on events would come down the pipeline in 1980 in the form of the made-for-TV movie Guyana Tragedy : The Jim Jones Story, a rather more somber and less sensationalized dramatization of the official line that features a veritable all-star cast including Ned Beatty, Irene Cara, Veronica Cartwright, Rosalind Cash, Brad Dourif, Meg Foster, Diane Ladd, Ron O’Neal,and Randy Quaid, among luminaries of the time, and is anchored by a stellar lead performance from Powers Boothe, who knows exactly when to “flip the swtich” between being quietly, coolly scheming and outright in-fucking-sane. It may be worth noting that Boothe, one of Hollywood’s far-more-numerous-than-Fox-“news”-would-have-you-believe right wing contingent, has always excelled at portraying these types of “evil mastermind” characters — he’s currently playing one on the hit TV series Nashville — but, when presented with the opportunity to play true dangerous and disreputable schemer Alexander Haig in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, he turned in an uncharacteristically subdued and borderline-reverential portrayal of the man, with Stone himself saying in the film’s DVD commentary track that Boothe “certainly gave him (Haig) the benefit of the doubt.” Funny how that works.

To West’s credit, he does at least show that many people were less than willing to go gently into that less-than-good-night and were either forced at gunpoint to do so or else just plain shot

Still, despite far greater production values, a tight, well-paced teleplay by Shaft screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (and here you thought the presence of Superfly himself, Ron O’Neal, was this movie’s only Blaxploitation connection) and a powerful, mesmerizing take on Jones , there’s nothing in Guyana Tragedy to contradict officially-sanctioned history, and those of us who were waiting for some glimmer of the truth to come out on either the big or the small screen would be holding our collective breath for a long time.

In fact, we’d be doing so until 2006, which is when acclaimed documentarian Stanley Nelson released his years-in-the-making Jonestown : The Life And Death Of Peoples Temple. Originally produced for PBS television’s long-running American Experience series, Nelson’s film was so universally well-received that it was picked up for a limited theatrical run, and in addition to giving a more full accounting of Jones’ background and shining a light on the fact that the former Ku Klux Klansman’s conversion to leftism might have been far less than sincere, this film is notable for oneother thing beyond its previously-unseen footage and raw and emotional survivor interviews — near the very end, when the so-called “White Night” is being discussed in painstaking detail, former Temple member Tim Reiterman says, through tears, “you can call it suicide if you want, but I know those people were murdered.”

Granted, it would have been welcome if a bit more context for this quote were provided — there’s nothing about Jones’ long-running association with notorious CIA torture dispenser Dan Mitrione, nothing about the population of his camp being kept drugged to the hilt, nothing about his past as an undercover informant working against the African-American community in Indianapolis while pretending to minister to their needs — but there it is, right out in the open. Somebody said it. The people at Jonestown did not commit suicide. In addition to Nelson providing the most thorough accounting on film to date of Jones’ manipulation at best and brainwashing at worst, this telling quote from Reiterman shines more actual insight into what really happened in Guyana than all previous cinematic explorations and/or exploitations of the story combined.

All of which brings us back to Ti West and The Sacrament and makes one wonder why a “hot property” director such as him wouldn’t throw the door to the truth open a bit more widely now that it’s at least ajar, unless one of the purposes behind The Sacrament is to function as a sort of cinematic “mop-up” job and round the cattle back up into the barn before they can run off too far. That’s the thing about myths, you see — they occasionally require a bit of routine maintenance.

And on that note — let’s get back to the flick, shall we? West employs the “found footage” or “mockumentary” style of filmmaking so ubiquitous in modern horror (most folks trace its lineage back to the runaway success of The Blair Witch Project, but in actuality it was first — and in my opinion most successfully — employed in Ruggero Deodato’s notorious 1980 Italian film Cannibal Holocast), so essentially what he’s going for here is a “what if Jonestown happened in the internet age?” angle, and it’s a pretty obvious approach since this material lends itself well to the “immersionism” style of journalism so popular online these days. To that end, he has a three-man crew (composed of fellow “splat-packer” Joe Swanberg, AJ Bowen, and Kentucker — -dear God, that’s a stupid name — Audley) from vice.com (you know them — they’re the folks whose coverage of what was really going down “on the ground” in Ferguson, Missouri recently absolutely blew the mainstream media’s slanted take on things out of the water) go down to an unnamed South American jungle nation to investigate the happenings at a religious commune called Eden Parish when one of the triumvirate’s sister, a recovering drug addict (played by Amy Seimetz) sends a letter back home that sounds just too damn good to be true.

From there, we basically know how everything else plays out. That probably sounds mighty dismissive, but shit, it’s true : the unnamed country is Guyana, Eden Parish is an obvious stand-in for Jonestown, and the camp’s leader (portrayed superbly by Gene Jones) even goes by the self-appointed title of “Father,” as Jones himself did. Our internet journalists essentially fill the role played in real life by the late congressman Leo Ryan and the team of reporters and photographers he brought down with him down to the jungle in that they’re threatening to expose the phony “socialist paradise” that Jones (who was, in point of fact, a hard-line right-winger despite his public pronouncements to the contrary) said he was constructing for what it was — a slave-labor camp — and neither they, nor the people living there, can be allowed to survive once “father”‘s sadistic shell game has been exposed as a fraud. From there, it’s just a matter of time until the final — and titular — sacrament occurs and everyone offs themselves.

To West’s credit, he does at least show that many people were less than willing to go gently into that less-than-good-night and were either forced at gunpoint to do so or else just plain shot. To his discredit, he portrays all of the armed “security” goons at Eden Parish as being black, when, in truth, all of Jones’ inner circle — including every single person he entrusted with firearms — was white. The blacks, for their part, were forced to work the fields and do the heavy labor of construction, etc. — the place was pretty much a plantation and concentration-camp.

Please don’t misunderstand, though — for all its toeing of the “establishmsnet line,” the series of events that play out in The Sacrament are definitely frightening in and of themselves, and West, in his role as writer/director, makes sure they all pack a reasonable enough punch. But you’d have to have been living under a rock for most of your life to not know how this is all going to end — unless West had decided to take a few risks and break with the spoon-fed, fictitious media narrative we’ve all been fed for over 30 years now. Needless to say, he never does.

Does that mean The Sacrament isn’t worth checking out? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that — especially now that it’s streaming on Netflix and you can see it for free (I’d been eagerly awaiting its debut on there and watched it the day it came out — it’s also, of course, available on DVD and Blu-ray, although I can’t fairly comment on the specifics of those versions). West is still a promising young (ish) horror auteur whose career is well worth following, and while this film doesn’t measure up anywhere near The House Of The Devil or The Innkeepers — hell, I’d even argue that Cabin Fever 2 was better — it’s still got its moments, especially when Jones (as in Gene, not Jim — thus marking him as the third Hollywood actor who’s able to assume the persona of a charismatic, but deadly, egomaniac with ease — could it be the two jobs are not so dissimilar?) is on the screen.

Truth be told, though, you can live without it, too. I’m not nearly as sick of “found footage” horror as most of my fellow quasi-professional critics are, but there are literally dozens of better examples of the genre available on Netflix alone, and for a film supposedly centered on “new journalism,” the fact that West misses the big story in regards to his subject is, frankly, inexcusable.

POSTSCRIPT

I’d like to take a moment to dedicate this article to John Judge, who passed away earlier this year due to complications resulting from a series of strokes. In addition to doing unparalleled work on the Kennedy assassination, Mr. Judge was also arguably the loudest and most eloquent voice in the wilderness seeking to raise awareness of what really happened at Jonestown. His meticulous, well-grounded , journalistic approach was second to none, his conclusions nearly universally sound, and his organizational work within the political assassination research community without equal.

Perhaps more important than all that, though, is the fact that he was a person of conscience and compassion and spent almost as much time doing anti-racist, anti-sexist, and military “counter-recruitment” work as he did unearthing the truth about government cover-ups and crimes. Although I never had the privilege of knowing the man personally, I knew him through his work, and I know that work continues to inspire countless others to follow in his courageous footsteps. Our world is a richer place for his having lived among us, and a poorer one indeed for his passing.

Ryan Carey maintains a movie and comics review site at trashfilmguru.wordpress.com and contributes to several film and comics-related websites and publications including dailygrindhouse.com, sequart.org, Through The Shattered Lens and Weng’s Chop. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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