Interview. Stanley Nelson.

"This is a movie to make you shudder," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "How many of us are so desperate for a charismatic leader claiming to have the answers that we will surrender our basic instincts for survival, along with our reason?... [T]he horror of Jonestown was caused by people's willingness to surrender their reason to a madman who was also a charismatic manipulator. And that can happen anytime and anywhere."

Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple, which has been playing to sold out audiences on the festival circuit, now begins its theatrical trek throughout the country. Michael Guillén talks with director Stanley Nelson.

Updated through 10/21.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, who also talks with Nelson, saw the film months ago at the Tribeca Film Festival: "I knew it was a powerful film when I saw it, and it's stuck with me more than any other documentary this year." People's Temple, he reminds us, "did not begin as a creepazoid apocalyptic cult," though most don't remember that aspect of the tragedy. "The idea that 909 brainwashed wackos followed their nutjob leader into death in a South American jungle is easier to swallow, perhaps, than the idea that those people were a group of essentially normal, loving, idealistic Americans who tried to build a realm of hope in the aftermath of the civil rights era, and ultimately surrendered to despair."

Online listening tip. Nelson has also been a guest recently on the Leonard Lopate Show and Annie Frisbie spoke with him in May for Zoom In Online.

Earlier: J Hoberman in the Voice, Jeremiah Kipp in Slant and Aaron Hillis in Premiere.

Update, 10/21: QuickTime trailer.

Posted by dwhudson at October 20, 2006 8:18 AM