This was after the SLA shootout (in L.A.) and before any knowledge of AIDS.

I recall EST, and Synanon and MindSpring (not sure about that last one, name). Synanon had their main building right on the beach in Santa Monica at the foot of Pico. The building had started life as a famous hotel I think. Anyone walking past could look in the window and check out stuff, although I never saw anything much that was weird.

EST was also cultish — but they had a mission to feed everyone in the world. (Not sure how that worked out.)
I went to a few meetings in 1978 or so, but the people I met just grinned way too much and let me know that ‘they got it’ (and I didn’t.)
It was the EST Seminars that was infamous for not letting anyone go to the bathroom.

Scientology was getting really big then too and bought out the old Cedars- of-Lebanon Hospital building in Hollywood. (Cedars combined with Mount Sinai and is now known as Cedars-Sinai and is in West Hollywood now.)

There was also a group that I recall reading about: I’m not sure which one. Something about leaving snakes in peoples’ maiboxes — obviously they did it to people that the group didn’t like. Seems like that it was in Northern California somewhere. Also maybe stockpiling guns and ammunition.
I could be confused on which group did what.

And then the group in Oregon, who always wore red and took over an entire town — Frances Fitzgerald wrote about them in her 1987 book Cities on a Hill. There were so many of them that they took control of local politcs and made a lot of people mad.

It was a weird time; and of course two very sad expressions came out of that time.
“Drinking the Kool-Aid” from Jim Jones and his Temple.
And the “the Twinkie Defense” which was how Dan White got such a short prison sentence for killing Milk and Moscone in cold blood.

David — did I miss Parts One and Two??
And thanks for this post.

That needs to be accurate–I’m an ordained clergy member of the Disciples and was in seminary in Indianapolis at the time of the Jonestown deaths. Over the next several weeks, the atmosphere among church officials and seminary professors (almost all of whom knew Jones before he moved to California) was one of stunned horror. As a result, the process of ordination was considerably tightened up. Mainline denominations everywhere have had trouble, but for the most part the Jim Jones experience seems to have pushed them to opt for “safety” and mutual accountability rather than dynamism in pastoral leadership. I think a Jones (with all his self-focus) could develop a following again in this church, but he would have to be a whole lot more devious on the way there.

Or maybe not. One of the ways he gained credibility seems to have been his ability to mobilize numbers of people, and for church people numbers seem to be self-verifying results: he’s bringing in the people, so he must be doing something right. Someone once told me that there were questions about Jones in the Indiana region of the Disciples. “But would you be quick to raise a fuss and then risk losing about 3% of your region’s members at one go?” my friend asked. –Or have them all show up mad at regional assembly? I’d like to think a manipulator could be found out and removed, but I’m not altogether sure.

At any rate, thanks for the film, for the remembering, and for letting me make this small, but possibly important, correction.

Ken

FunnyD