Trivia / Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones

• All-Star Cast: One of the most impressive casts for a Made-for-TV Movie of its era, with a Star-Making Role for Powers Boothe as Jones, plus Ned Beatty, LeVar Burton, James Earl Jones, Veronica Cartwright, Randy Quaid, Brad Dourif, Diane Ladd and Ed Lauter, among others.
• California Doubling: The Jonestown scenes were filmed in Puerto Rico and the U.S. state of Georgia.
• He Also Did: Ernest Tidyman (who wrote the novel and screenplay of Shaft, plus the screenplays for The French Connection and High Plains Drifter) wrote the teleplay.
• Star-Making Role: Powers Boothe, who at that point was mainly a stage actor who'd only done a few bit parts in movies and TV, was universally praised for his convincing navigation of Jim Jones' complex Protagonist Journey to Villain. Boothe won an Emmy and became a familiar Hollywood face in the next few decades.
• Underage Casting:
  • Father Divine was probably around 80 when Jones met him—no one's entirely sure of his real name (possibly George Baker) or birth year (maybe somewhere around 1875 or 1880)—but he's played by James Earl Jones, who was 49 at the time.
  • The scenes set in 1978 have 32-year-old Powers Boothe playing 47-year-old Jim Jones.
• What Could Have Been: Tommy Lee Jones was the filmmakers' first choice to play Jim Jones, but he was busy filming Coal Miner's Daughter.

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