Reports Say Bill Hader Is Developing An HBO Show About The Jonestown Massacre And I'm Very Torn Over The Idea

First, there was a plot point on The Studio about the Jonestown Massacre -- which you can watch with an Apple TV+ subscription, by the way. Then, an announcement that SNL vet Bill Hader is developing a TV show based on the cult. At first, my lizard brain got excited. I’ve been interested in cults and the Peoples Temple, in particular, for years. Then, something I heard in one of the more recent documentaries about Jonestown started creeping into my brain. Now, I’m really torn on how I feel about this possible TV show.

It’s Easy To Get Caught Up In Cult Watching

There are tons of documentaries, podcasts, and books about cults. It’s really easy to get sucked into some of the incredible stories of religion, drugs, sex, violence, and death that so often go with the largest and most notorious cults in the last couple of centuries. The Peoples Temple, the church started by Jim Jones in San Francisco in 1954, that eventually led to the mass suicide of Jones and his followers at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, is the most notorious and the most terrifying of them all.

I’ve read books and watched countless documentaries about Jones and his followers, some better than others, of course. For a long time, I had a morbid fascination with the cult and often used gallows humor with friends when talking about it. I even had a coffee cup with a picture of Jones on it with the words “Drink Up” underneath it. I would laugh when I used it, and my friends, when they would see it, would also laugh.

The tragedy didn’t directly impact me, it happened decades ago when I was just a baby, so for me, it was more or less a cultural news event, no different than Watergate or the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Jokes were fair game. Late-night TV hosts joked about it, so could I. Hell, “drink the Kool-Aid” has become part of the American lexicon. Here’s the part where I have to point out they didn’t actually use Kool-Aid for the poison-laced drinks at Jonestown; it was actually a brand called “Flavor Aid.”

A Documentary About Jonestown From Last Year Changed My Mind

As I said, there are countless documentaries about Jonestown, and last year, one of the best hit streaming. Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown, which you can watch on Hulu, is one of the most in-depth looks at the tragedy ever produced, and in particular, it has a number of interviews with survivors of the massacre and the family members of some of the people who died.

In the film, they talk about how hard it is to deal with the cultural zeitgeist surrounding the church and the suicide of its members and of cult leaders in general, especially Jones, of course. It got me thinking about how I would feel if a family member of mine had been one of the victims of Jones’ insanity. How would I feel every time I heard that phrase, “drank the Kool-Aid,” knowing that my loved one had died from doing that? In short, it made me completely re-evaluate how I thought of the event. I threw the coffee mug away, and now I bristle when I hear someone joke about the events in Guyana in 1978.

So that leaves me where I am today. It’s not that I’m still not fascinated by cults and why people are drawn into them. I’ve always understood that people end up in them for many reasons, and it doesn’t mean they are stupid, or gullible, or anything like that. People are people, and we can all get enamored and attached to things that aren’t good for us and fall victim to cult thinking.

So, do I want to see a TV show based on the events of Jonestown? Well, yeah, I do. Should I want to see it? That’s a question I’m not ready to answer.